The screen flickered and the playback began.
Sophia was six years and ten months old.
Inside Home 034, Building 12, in the crowded slum apartments, the rooms were small, the walls were peeling, and the air was heavy with the smell of fried oil and damp clothes. Victor, her father, had grown noticeably heavier in recent years. His face had lost its sharpness, his belly strained against his shirt, and he carried the weary air of a man who had long stopped caring about appearances.
That evening, when Victor returned home from his errands, he found his daughter Sophia practically glowing with pride. In her tiny hands, she clutched a crisp invitation letter, holding it out for him to see as though it were the crown jewel of her young life.
"Look!" Sophia exclaimed, her eyes shining, her small chin lifted high. "This is for me!"
Victor leaned over, squinting at the paper she held up. The letter read:
Invitation to Miss Sophia to audition for the role of the daughter of King Zhuangxiang of the Great Qin Empire. Details regarding role requirements, audition schedule, and line preparation are as follows.
Sophia clutched the paper tighter and announced triumphantly, "This is the next big television series inviting me. I'm better than you, Daddy!"
Her tone was full of childlike pride, a mixture of innocence and defiance.
Victor, however, merely snorted with disdain. He waved his hand dismissively and said with his usual careless tone, "It's just a small supporting role. Don't you see who the real star is? The core of the story is Emperor Qin Shi Huang. You're at best playing a little side character. What's there to be so proud of?"
The smile vanished from Sophia's face. Her little chest puffed up, her cheeks flushed red, and anger burned in her eyes. She wanted to argue, to scream, but before she could, Victor stood up and said, "Go out and buy groceries."
With that, he dragged her along.
They rode together on his old electric bike toward the marketplace. The wind tangled Sophia's hair as they passed rows of street vendors. Farmers from the outskirts carried their baskets of vegetables to sell—fresh cucumbers, green beans, stacks of potatoes. Beside them, others roasted chicken legs on makeshift grills or sold hot fried cakes that filled the air with rich, savory scents.
Sophia sat upright on the bike, her small hands gripping the seat tightly, her wide eyes following the delicious food and colorful comic books on display at the stalls. She longed for them—the meat pies steaming in the cold air, the brightly illustrated books waiting to be opened. Her lips parted, her eyes shone with hope.
But Victor ignored all of it.
Instead, he parked at a small stand selling books and picked out two dull exercise workbooks for her and a stack of simple, brainless novels for himself.
Sophia clenched her teeth so hard it hurt. In that moment, she swore deep inside her heart: she would fight this man to the very end.
Back home, Victor cooked as he always did. Tonight's dinner was surprisingly good—potato stew with chicken served over rice. The smell filled the cramped apartment. But when the food was laid out, Victor, as always, practiced his strange mix of vegetarian habits and self-denial.
"I'll stick to potatoes," he said calmly, serving only the vegetables onto his plate.
All the chicken went to Sophia.
After dinner, Sophia retreated with the audition script sent by the program team. She sat on her bed and began rehearsing the lines, whispering them to herself, practicing with all the seriousness of a seasoned actress trapped inside a child's body.
Her voice was soft yet firm as she read:
"You are like my sunshine, but it turns out I can live well without the sunshine."
"Fu Jian Tianya, the wind and dust chased me to death. I swept away the jackdaws, and the wind and clouds were all over the place. Who made me let go? Until I met her."
"Several sighs of sorrow and joy—how ridiculous, my life is up to me."
"Even if you are the proud son of the sky, sitting on thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, in the end, you can only hold a handful of loess."
Her small body swayed with the script's actions as she imagined herself on stage, her eyes gazing into the distance. She tried to pour every bit of emotion into each line, each gesture.
But then, from the living room, came a laugh.
"Hahaha! What are you laughing at? These are good lines!" Sophia shouted, annoyed.
Victor's lazy voice drifted back, "Not as good as the lines from the novels I read."
Sophia froze. Impossible. She clenched her fists and declared stubbornly, "No! These are better!"
At that moment, Victor appeared in the doorway. His Mandarin was clumsy, unrefined, and he deliberately stumbled over the words as he declared with mock drama:
"If I return to the world, all the rebels will die!"
The line should have sounded powerful, commanding—but from his mouth, it was broken, almost ridiculous.
Sophia's brows knitted tightly. "That's wrong," she muttered to herself. "It should be: 'The day I return to the world, all the rebels will die!'"
She immediately corrected the line in her notebook.
From the living room, Victor's voice rang out again:
"I started the story of Qin with a long sword in hand, and the end of Qin must also end with the long sword!"
The words carried force, but the delivery—clumsy, half-smiling—made Sophia grimace. She quickly rewrote it:
"This story that began with a sword will end with a sword."
Victor didn't stop. Another line boomed from the other room:
"You were arrogant and arrogant like a good man at that time. They are not worthy of being my enemy."
Sophia wrinkled her nose in disgust and changed it again:
"Pride in the four directions. You are not worthy of being my enemy!"
When she looked at the three rewritten lines, she felt an undeniable satisfaction. Her version sounded sharper, cleaner, better. Her lips curled into a small, triumphant smile.
Meanwhile, in the living room, the truth was revealed.
The camera showed Victor at the table, not rehearsing, not even glancing at the script. He was wrapping dumplings quietly, his large hands folding the dough with a kind of practiced care. From time to time, he would raise his voice and throw out one of those deliberately flawed "novel lines" into the bedroom.
And all the while, a smile lingered on his face. A warm, gentle smile.
He wasn't mocking her. He wasn't truly careless.
He was guiding her.
By giving her "bad" lines, he forced Sophia to think critically, to rework, to improve. By stumbling over words, he sparked her stubborn defiance. By acting foolish, he lit the fire of her determination to outdo him.
And so, a little girl sat in her bedroom rewriting her script with fierce concentration, believing she was proving her father wrong, while outside, a man wrapped dumplings with joy, silently shaping her into someone stronger.
The audience watching the playback was stunned.
Victor wasn't hiding ignorance—he was hiding wisdom.
He wasn't crushing her spirit—he was feeding it.
And Sophia, unaware of the quiet truth, believed she was fighting against him, when in reality, she was walking a path he had carefully paved for her.
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