"Home is where we return. But family are those we cherish".
As family - A story of the non-blood related who share their lives together as family.
The story began when Mr. Thao - owner of an offal porridge shop was serving a young customer. This boy was Ly, and he was pretending to look for his money then made a run for it with his serving after seeing Mr. Thao was busy talking to other customers. Mr. Thao tried to catch him but he could not keep up.
Ly was an orphan that lived with his grandmother in a rundown house. He made a living for both him and his grandma by selling lottery tickets. But one day when he was on his usual route to sell tickets, a group of strangers got him surrounded, beat him up and tried to steal all of his tickets… Meanwhile, Mr. Thao happened to walk by and noticed the situation, he immediately rushed over. The strangers fleed and Mr. Thao had no choice but to help Ly up and dust him off… The two did not say a word and as soon as Ly came to realize it was Mr. Thao, he got embarrassed and ran away.
Mr. Thao noticed Ly usually wandered around his shop. That morning, he witnessed Ly being up to the same old trick - stealing food and getting chased from alley to alley. Seeing a kid of such a young age having to struggle to get by, Mr. Thao got curious and felt a bit of pity towards his life, and only after secretly following him for a while did he find out Ly did all those things for his sick grandmother's sake. From that day onwards, whenever Ly had already left for work or school, Mr. Thao would come over to look after his grandma bringing porridge, sometimes hot rice with poached pork, fish soup and even medicine. He asked the grandmother to not say anything to Ly about this. However, Ly was such a smart and sharp kid that he could tell where the porridge containers came from just by their look and smell.
With Mr. Thao's help, it was like a burden was lifted off Ly's shoulder thus he got more time to study. After his classes, Ly continued with selling lottery tickets to save up in order to pay his debt of grace. He would stand reservedly at a corner and wait until all the other customers had already left to approach the shop to pay back his debt. But not only did Mr. Thao not take the money, he also encouraged the kid…"Do you want your grandma to be upset? A good person does not just steal from people in any case, remember that".
To be continued...