Little Heinz wrote in his diary: my 6-year-old sister adopted me when I was just born.
"Would my parents have loved me more if not for my sister?" Heinz would sometimes wonder.
But in truth, if it weren't for his sister, perhaps no one would have loved him at all.
Charlene dislikes everything about Gimmeishtump. She yearns to escape her hometown as soon as possible, so she studies exceptionally hard. By the time she graduates from elementary school, she earns admission to a boarding school in another region. However, the high tuition forces her to give up the opportunity.
After attending a local middle school in Gimmeishtump for a year, a cross-regional cooperation program is introduced. With policy support, the government agrees to cover most of her boarding school tuition. Her family contributes their savings, combined with the money she saved from odd jobs, allowing her to finally transfer to the boarding school she had always dreamed of.
She detests the gloomy, gray atmosphere of Gimmeishtump. The only vivid color she ever sees is the bright red blood that flows when she injures her arms while working. She doesn’t resent the scars on her body—she knows they will heal one day. To her, they are the only path that leads away from this place.
Charlene originally believed she had no attachment to Gimmeishtump—until her younger brother Heinz was born. At the time, she overheard whispers in the hospital hallway about a child so ugly that neither of his parents were present at his birth. After little Heinz let out his first cry, it was a girl barely taller than the edge of a table who took him from the doctor’s arms. Looking at the baby in the swaddling blanket, Charlene wondered—don’t all newborns look the same?
Heinz seemed to cry himself tired in her arms and gradually fell asleep. Charlene patted his cheek and woke him up again. That day, she carried her wailing brother through nearly a lap and a half around the hospital before heading home. She wanted everyone in the hospital to know that the child rumored to be unwanted had been taken away by his sister.
When charlene was little, she has to be the garden gnome. Standing in the biting cold wind, she didn't feel sorrow or loneliness—only a quiet vow to herself that she would one day redeem that gnome. (And she did.) For as long as Heinz could remember, that garden gnome had always been there in their yard.
It was at this moment that Charlene realized—only with money comes the possibility of love, and only then can one truly experience it.
