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I Kindly Babysat Free, Got My Shop Smashed—Why Cry?
NovelShort
Completed
Over summer break, I cleared out half my phone shop, free of charge, to watch the kids of the two-income families in my neighborhood. When they were thirsty I boiled water, when they were hungry I cooked noodles. The air-conditioning bill alone ran me over three thousand dollars. But right as school was about to start, Louis's mom from next door showed up at my door with a crowd of parents and let loose on me. "Who are you trying to fool, playing the good Samaritan? You just wanted us to buy those junk phones of yours, didn't you?"
Chapters (4)
第1章
Over summer break, out of pure goodwill, I cleared out half my phone shop and watched the neighbors' kids for free while their working parents were away.
When they were thirsty, I boiled water. When they were hungry, I made noodles. The AC alone ran me over three thousand dollars.
And then, right before school started, Curly's Mom showed up at my door with a whole crowd of parents, cursing me out at the top of her lungs.
"Who are you pretending to be? A good person? This was all just to get us to buy those junk phones of yours, wasn't it?"
"My son had perfect vision, twenty-twenty, and after one summer here it's twenty-forty. That's on you."
"The radiation messes with a kid's brain development too. You owe every one of us twenty thousand in medical fees."
I patiently explained that the display units were all locked in the cases, that the kids only came here to do homework and play games.
But they weren't satisfied smashing my display case. They wanted to report me to the trade office for pushing sales on customers.
I looked at this pack of parents baring their teeth and clawing at me, and my face went cold.
"Money? Not a cent. And the kids, I'm not keeping a single one of them."
Perfect timing, really. This money-losing business, I was done with it anyway!
...
"Oh, who do you think you're scaring? Let me tell you how it's going to be."
Hearing me, Curly's Mom took a swaggering step forward.
"You don't pay up, we tear this crooked little shop of yours apart and you shut down today."
Behind her, a few of the parents joined the jeering, yelling for me to hand over money if I wanted peace.
I looked at the display case shattered across the floor, let out a cold laugh, pulled out my phone, aimed it right at her face, and hit record.
"Go ahead, smash it. This case runs sixty-eight hundred, the stock in here is worth two hundred thousand. If that's not enough to land you in jail, I lose."
Curly's Mom yanked her hand back fast, but her mouth still wasn't backing down.
"You got the guts, go ahead and sue me. This is a civil dispute. I've got no money to pay, so what are you going to do about it?"
Curly's Mom's crony hid behind her and chimed in under her breath.
"Right, we're the customers here. You run a shop and you've got the nerve to make trouble for us?"
Seeing they didn't dare lay another hand on anything, I let out a cold laugh, walked into the back room, and came back with three extra-large garbage bags.
Curly's Mom froze. "What are you doing?"
I ignored her, bent down, and swept every last thing the kids had left in the rest area into the bags.
Then I knotted them shut and shoved them sliding straight across the floor and out the door.
"Take your stuff, take your precious little brats, and all of you get out."
Curly's Mom stood there stunned. She hadn't expected me to be so decisive.
"Daniela Henson, what's the meaning of this? I work during the day. Where am I supposed to put my kid?"
"Your kid. What does that have to do with me?"
I pushed every one of them out and hauled the shutter down.
Curly's Mom kept pounding on it from outside, cursing.
"You've got no conscience, Henson. Those kids called you so sweetly, and this is how you treat them."
"You crazy old spinster, no wonder you're pushing thirty-something and still can't get anyone to marry you."
I couldn't be bothered. I just called up the contractor I knew and had him come remodel.
The crew worked fast. In a single night they turned the rest area into a storeroom.
Looking at the cartoon stickers still stuck to the floor, I thought about the two months of costs I'd covered and the effort I'd poured in.
I didn't feel the slightest bit sad. If anything, it was pure relief.
Just after dawn, Curly's Mom and the others came back with their kids, grinning like nothing had happened, hoping to freeload the space again.
"Dani, sorry to trouble you today. Still a week left before school starts."
I sat behind the counter and pointed at the sign in the doorway.
"Read it carefully. This is a phone shop, not a daycare."
"The case you smashed yesterday, a lawyer's letter will be at your house soon."
Curly's Mom was so furious her mouth twisted.
"What's that supposed to mean? Didn't we agree you'd help watch them all summer?"
"When you were smashing up my shop, did you agree on that with me?"
Her face went completely warped. She grabbed Curly by the arm and shot me a vicious glare.
"Come on, let's go. Who wants this dump anyway."
"There's definitely something wrong with her phones. Guilty conscience, that's what it is. I wouldn't leave my kid here now even if she begged me."
A few of the kids, shoved along by the adults, stuck out their tongues and made faces at me.
"Bad lady. Cheapskate."
"My mom says you're an old maid."
I looked at these children who'd been taught all wrong, my face blank, and turned to pull the shutter down.
That night, in the neighborhood group chat that had gone quiet for a while, a message from Curly's Mom popped up.
"Sharing some good news. Boss Lambert down on the corner just opened an arcade and he's letting the kids in for free."
"Not only does it have big soft-glow eye-friendly screens, you can connect to the free Wi-Fi too, and you get free skins when you download games."
"Now that's someone who truly cares about kids, Boss Lambert. Not like certain people who run a crooked shop and play saint while they're rotten to the core."
The parents below all fell in line, piling on one and praising the other.
But for someone like me, who'd done seven years of security engineering at a major tech company, I knew exactly what the free Wi-Fi trick was.
Classic long-con setup, made to hook exactly these people who chase a free deal.
I only let out a cold laugh and locked my screen.
Set aside the urge to help. Respect other people's fate.
第2章
Over the next few days, though, Curly's Mom's revenge came right on schedule.
For three days straight, not a single customer walked into the shop.
Even neighbors passing by would stop in front of my door and spit hard on the ground.
That was when the landlady I'd always gotten along with best showed up out of nowhere, her face like a storm cloud.
"Dani, I'm not renting this place to you anymore. Move out."
I set down the phone screen I'd been wiping.
"Aunt Vera, there's still two years on the lease."
Her eyes slid away from mine, but her tone was full of disgust.
"I'll eat the penalty for breaking it. Curly's Mom told everybody already."
"Said you got passed around and used up by a bunch of older men in the big city, cleaned out of all your money, and slunk back home with your tail between your legs."
"A woman with a past like that, hanging on here at my place. It's bad luck, that's what it is."
A ripple of stifled laughter came from outside.
I didn't have to look to know Curly's Mom had brought her crowd to eavesdrop at the wall.
Something cold settled in my chest, but I kept it off my face. I pulled out the lease we'd signed at the start and pointed at the penalty clause.
"Aunt Vera, according to the contract, terminating without cause means you owe three times the rent plus depreciation on the renovations. Eighty-five thousand, all told."
"The moment that money hits my account, I'm gone."
The instant she heard how much she'd have to pay, her expression shifted. She muttered a few sour words under her breath, then turned and left.
Curly's Mom's ringing laugh carried in from outside.
"Well? Didn't get thrown out, huh? Doesn't matter. It's only a matter of time."
Watching their backs as they walked off, I dialed Director Finch at the community center.
"Director Finch, that senior anti-fraud outreach program you kept bringing up. I'll take it."
There were a few seconds of silence on the other end, then a delight he couldn't hold back.
"Oh, Engineer Henson, you're finally coming out of retirement."
"This neighborhood's fraud-prevention work doesn't move an inch without your technical support, I swear."
"I'll fast-track it right now. The special grant and the equipment will be over to you this afternoon."
I'd figured a few years grinding away at a major tech company had worn my body down enough, and I'd come home to run a quiet little business.
But the shop wasn't going to stay quiet anyway, so I might as well do something that mattered.
Before long the approved grant paperwork and the teaching equipment arrived at my shop.
I redid the layout and hung up a banner marking it as a community-designated cybersecurity service point.
Every afternoon, I taught the neighborhood's older folks an anti-fraud class in the shop.
"Never, ever tap a link like this. Tap it and your phone stops being yours."
"Anyone who asks you to transfer money to 'verify' something is a scammer. A hundred percent."
The seniors listened closely. Some jotted notes in little pads, some held up their reading glasses to photograph the screen.
And that wasn't all. After class, I taught them how to make video calls to their kids far away,
how to build a folder in the phone's photo album to keep pictures of their grandkids.
Stanley Chavez was a retired principal. The first time he managed to send a voice message, he was so worked up his lips were shaking.
"Dani's got real patience. My daughter loses it after teaching me three times. You went eight rounds and never once got mad."
I smiled. "Come by anytime you've got a question, Stanley."
He went home and told his daughter, who happened to be an operations director at a publicly traded company.
That weekend she came into my shop and bought her dad a new phone, and before she left she got my number.
"Boss Henson, from now on our company will come to you for phone accessories too."
That kind of word-of-mouth rolled like a snowball, and more and more seniors showed up for the classes.
Their kids sent more and more business my way.
Curly's Mom saw it all, and it ate at her.
She deliberately hauled out a Bluetooth speaker, aimed it at my shop door, and blasted some trashy club music at full volume.
Stanley clapped his hands over his ears.
"Who is that? How can anyone have so little decency?"
I picked up a basin of dirty mop water, walked to the door, and splashed it right at Curly's Mom's feet.
It spattered up one pant leg, and she shrieked and jumped back.
"Ow! You want to die?"
I held the empty basin and let my face go cold.
"Make trouble at my door again and mess with community outreach, and the next basin goes in your face."
She shook all over with rage, jabbing a finger at me as she cursed.
"You cheap trash, you wait. Sooner or later I'll make sure this outreach point of yours never happens."
I didn't bother answering. I just turned and went back inside.
I'd barely sat down when Lesley Whitney from next door came hurrying in, phone in hand, looking panicked.
"Sweetheart, come take a look. My phone's got some kind of curse on it lately, pop-ups jumping up all the time."
"It just charged me fifty bucks a second ago. Can you check if it's got a virus?"
I took the phone and, out of habit, hooked it up to my computer and ran a scan on the back end.
But the data on the screen sent a cold sweat down my spine on the spot.
第3章
It turned out to be a deep backdoor program, and it was still steadily sending data out.
"Lesley, have you connected to any Wi-Fi you didn't recognize lately?"
Lesley grinned, a little embarrassed.
"Just Boss Lambert's place. Curly's Mom said it was free, so when I took my grandson there to play, I connected a few times."
"There's something pretty serious wrong with your phone. I'll need to keep it and do a deep clean."
Lesley suspected nothing and left with a stream of thanks.
That night, after I closed up, I sat down at my computer and hooked the phone up to my professional gear.
Cracking a trojan at this level wasn't hard for me.
But after a few hours of analysis, I realized the situation was worse than I'd expected.
It could copy everything on the phone, right down to capturing the passwords on payment apps.
The source was, as I'd guessed, the arcade, and the data was landing overseas.
I knew at once this was beyond anything some corner-shop owner could pull off. There was a ring behind it.
I was still sorting the evidence when the neighborhood group chat started blowing up again.
Louis's mom fired off several fat cash gifts, her tone giddy.
"Everyone, Boss Lambert's got a late-night special going."
"Just connect to the Wi-Fi and sign up as a shop member, and you get two hundred dollars cash back."
Curly's Mom followed right behind.
"I already collected mine, two hundred bucks hit my account instantly. Boss Lambert really is a gem of this neighborhood."
The other parents in the group who had no idea what was going on went wild, all asking how to do it.
I had no fondness for these people, but I couldn't just watch them walk off a cliff.
Out of professional principle, and to cover myself as someone who knew the truth, I posted a message right away.
【Neighbors, I'd advise against connecting to free Wi-Fi. There's a security risk.】
The moment it went out, the group exploded.
Louis's mom was instantly furious, spitting curses in a voice message.
"Daniela, have you got any shame? Jealous that Boss Lambert runs a generous business, so you smear him on purpose."
"Go take a piss and look at your own reflection, see what kind of trash you are."
Curly's Mom sent another voice message.
"Exactly. My son plays games there every day, been connecting for half a month, not a cent missing from his card."
"You're a piece of garbage a man dumped. What gives you the right to point fingers here?"
In the span of a few minutes, hundreds of messages, the whole group flooding with filth.
Then Curly's Mom, the group admin, kicked me straight out.
I let out a scoff, screenshotted every message, and packaged all the evidence.
Early the next morning, I'd just rolled up the shutter to head out and file a report when a wave of stench hit me in the face.
The whole door was smeared with rotten vegetable leaves and grease, flies swarming everywhere.
Pressed into the grease was a sheet of white paper that read: Rotten black-hearted trash, get out of the neighborhood.
I pulled up the storefront camera footage on my phone. The picture was clear. It was Curly's Mom and her crowd.
After dumping it all, she'd even flipped my shop door the middle finger.
And not far off, buying breakfast, Curly's Mom was making a point of pointing me out to the person beside her, laughing loudly.
I didn't waste any more attention on them. I cleaned it up as fast as I could, grabbed the evidence, and went straight to the economic-crimes squad.
"Officer, I want to report a crime."
At first Officer James took it for an ordinary dispute.
But when he plugged the flash drive into the computer and saw the professional analysis I'd submitted, his expression changed in an instant.
"This lead... we've been watching it a long time. We could never find the local foothold."
He leaned back in his chair and dragged a hand down his face.
"Half a year ago we got a tip that an overseas money-laundering crew had a downstream hub here in the city."
"But we searched for ages and never pinned down the exact spot. You've done us a huge favor."
Officer James finished reading everything and fixed his eyes on me, bright and intent.
"Miss Henson, no, Engineer Henson. Your technical skills are exactly what we need."
"I need you to be our informant and technical consultant, to hold the situation steady for us."
"Just three days. Within three days, we'll follow the thread and take the whole lot of them down in one sweep."
第4章
I agreed to Officer James's request.
For the next three days, I acted like nothing was wrong. I opened the shop as usual and kept teaching the seniors their anti-fraud classes.
The pointing and whispering around me, I let go in one ear and out the other.
Curly's Mom saw me swallow such a big humiliation without a word, and she only grew smugger.
To show off how clever she was and how much sway she had in the neighborhood, she led the group herself every single day.
She marched the parents and kids over to Pockmark Lambert's place to check in, terrified of missing even one day's freebie.
"Boss Lambert's got new perks again today. Show up late and you'll miss out."
And every time they connected, they were feeding me fresh data, helping me pin down the trail faster.
The day we closed the net happened to be the same day the community officially unveiled the plaque for my demonstration site.
First thing that morning, Director Finch hauled over the flower baskets and set them on both sides of my shop door, the red silk tied up nice and pretty.
The old folks came too, sitting inside sipping tea, waiting for the district office leaders to unveil the sign.
Director Finch stood at the microphone and was just about to declare the ceremony open.
"Hold on!"
A commotion broke out at the door.
Curly's Mom shoved her way in with seven or eight parents, elbowing through the crowd, a banner stretched out in their hands.
Scrawled crookedly across it: Crooked merchant Daniela Henson, dead to all conscience, using charity as a cover to swindle people's money.
The whole place went dead silent in an instant, everyone staring at the scene in shock.
Curly's Mom charged up to the district leader, jabbing a finger at me, righteous with fury.
"Sir, you've all been fooled by this woman."
"She uses the excuse of teaching old people to use their phones, and secretly transfers all their pension savings out."
She pulled a few printed, blurry screenshots of charges out of her bag.
"Everyone look. Here's the proof."
Then she yanked Mabel Edwards over from beside her.
"Go on, tell the leader. Isn't it true that right after class at her shop, your money was gone?"
Mabel Edwards hid behind Curly's Mom, her eyes darting away, not daring to look at me.
"When she was teaching me, she tapped my screen a few times, and not long after, money went missing from my card."
The truth was, I knew Mabel Edwards hadn't been able to resist the temptation. After class she'd snuck over to Pockmark Lambert's and connected to the Wi-Fi.
But at the last moment, I couldn't call it out on the spot.
The onlookers didn't know what was really going on. Seeing the poor, helpless old woman, they blew up at once.
"Tsk, tsk. Decent-looking face, but what a filthy heart. Swindling old folks out of their burial money."
"How did the community approve this? How can someone like that be allowed to run charity work? Isn't this letting the wolf in the door?"
"Young people these days really will do anything for money. Arrest her, quick."
The district leader's face went ashen. Bowing to the pressure of the crowd, he set the plaque back down, cold-faced.
"Boss Henson, the public is reporting this kind of thing, and the impact is far too damaging."
"Today's unveiling ceremony is canceled. You'll suspend operations and cooperate with an investigation for now."
Hearing the leader's ruling, Curly's Mom was thrilled. She walked up to me and sneered under her breath.
"Take me on? You're still too green. I told you long ago, you're finished."
"This dinky little shop of yours shuts down and clears out today. You'll never claw your way back in this lifetime."
I said nothing. I only lowered my head and glanced at my watch.
Curly's Mom frowned.
"You're about to be finished, and you're still checking the time?"
I lifted my head and smiled faintly.
"The timing. It's just right."
The words had barely left my mouth when a wail of sirens rose in the distance.
