After being in the army for two years, he returned to his hometown and took up farming.
He needed the money since he was broke.
Somehow, he managed to gather just enough to open a steamed bun shop and he stopped farming then. However, since his father wasn’t one to just let a thief escape when he saw one, he ended up maiming the thief. As a result, he had to give up his steamed bun shop to the other party as compensation.
By then, he had also borrowed a lot of money and had a lot of foreign debt.
It was a point in his life where he was so poor, that he didn’t even have the money to celebrate the New Year. Seeing no other hope, he decided to look for his comrade-in-arms.
His comrade-in-arms lived within the country and came from a pretty rich family. Both his parents were civil servants so they naturally had a pretty good life.
However, every time his father arrived at his home according to the address he had been given, his comrade would never be available.
It was nothing short of cold and disappointing back then.
While they were brothers, they were extremely close to each other. They had even made a pact that their future sons would be brothers as well. If one of them bore a girl, then they would become a couple instead.
Well, apparently that pact was just a joke to his comrade.
From then on, he didn’t try to contact him anymore.
Finally, when his father was at the ripe age of twenty-two, Gerald’s grandfather finally told his father that he was actually a rich heir.
His father was then led to start up a business before he was finally able to inherit the riches of the Crawford family.
It wasn’t until both Gerald and his sister had been born that his father and mother finally returned to their hometown. They both controlled their businesses remotely while also planning a proper poverty system to educate their children with.
Gerald could clearly remember that it was his neighbors, Mr. Winters and Mrs. Winters, who had taken care of Gerald and his sister for a large portion of their childhood. Their parents were always busy making money abroad to pay off their family’s debts.
His parents would only come back to visit them twice or thrice a year at most to check up on their progress.
That was a basic summary of everything that had happened.
As for when his father would finally meet up with his comrade-in-arms again, it happened when Gerald was ready to begin his high school life. His father had brought him over to meet up with his old comrade-in-arms. Gerald’s father remembered that his comrade had said that he did well in his studies. He now wanted him to help Gerald look for a good school.
When they finally locked eyes at the parking lot of his comrade’s home, his comrade-in-arms simply said that he was busy with a meeting the moment his father asked for his help. He then immediately changed the topic and told his father to meet him again sometime in the future to reminisce about the past.
In the end, Gerald managed to enter a prestigious high school through his own good grades.
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