I took a deep breath, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Uncle, you’re right. I did eat at your house a lot when I was younger. But do you remember? I always waited until your big dog, Bobby, finished eating before I dared to go to the stove and take the bowl that was specially left for me. Sometimes there’d still be scraps of meat in the dog’s bowl, while my bowl only had watery porridge.”
Denna hurried to interrupt, but I raised my hand to stop her. “As for the tuition, you may have forgotten. But my dad knelt in your main hall back then and signed an IOU, mortgaging our house, agreeing to three percent interest, before you finally lent three hundred dollars. The village committee’s accounts should still have a record of this.”
Yovie’s eyes turned red. She planted her hands on her hips and stood firmly in front of me, her voice fierce.
“The first thing Lora did after starting work was repay her debts. She worked all day and streamed at night, saving up enough to pay back every cent with interest. Not only did she pay the interest, she even gave each family an extra thousand dollars. And as her uncle, you even said the interest was too little back then!”
She pulled out photos from her phone, “Over the years, Lora has donated 14,000 dollars to repair the village roads and another 7,000 dollars to build a school. Do we need to go through all these accounts?”
The villagers looked at each other and some began to shrink back. Uncle Jackson opened his mouth, his face turning pale and then red.
The village chief’s daughter, Olive Brown, pushed through the crowd with a few young people. She crossed her arms and looked at me sideways. “Lora, it’s pointless to bring up these old accounts now. Back then, helping you was out of kindness. Isn’t it only natural that you give back to the villagers now? Besides, it was your own promise to help the villagers sell the mangoes for free. You can’t just go back on your word, can you?”
The young people behind her all nodded in agreement.
Olive then looked at the mango boxes in the warehouse and sighed. “We know you’re not short of money and you always say during your livestreams that helping farmers should follow the rules. You can’t just break the rules yourself, can you? You ate so many mangoes while livestreaming; you can’t just let that go for free.”