"...and I've been trying to work with her, but it's so difficult," Lun Mei grumbled to her father, the middle-aged woman tracing the edge of her teacup while her father busied himself with dinner. It was late at night - the only time she could ever get a moment with him, as it turned out. The elder Mei was practically a nocturnal creature, taking pleasure in nightly trips to the convenience store for some smoking tobacco and making small talk with the women there.
Lao Mei contemplated his daughter's grumbling, humming as he did so, while he oversaw the steaming dumplings on his stove.
"Your friend - does she know what is right and what is wrong?" Lao asked, the spry man rubbing a small mustache in thought.
"Yeah, she's a functioning adult, holds down a job, but she's all the time talking about how life is so hard for her, and I keep trying to tell her -"
"You have spoken of this friend before, Lun," Lao stated patiently as he leaned against his chipped cabinets, crossing his arms across his wiry chest.
Lun frowned and cast a disapproving expression to her father.
"She... has some problems.Her kid and Lacey's play a lot, and I try to be there for her," Lun conceded.
Lao shook his head at her as he fished out the shumai dumplings from the steamer using a pair of chopsticks. Serenely, he seemed to float over and sit down with the whole plate, and he handed his daughter a pair of chopsticks.
"You have a fundamental problem, Little Duck," Lao intoned as he pointed his pair of chopsticks at her placidly. "You want to save everyone. You make it your business to."
"I mean, I don't try to save people..." Lun said around a mouthful, and Lao gave her a disbelieving look with raised eyebrows.
"Ever since you were a little girl, you wanted the best for people, but you also thought you knew what was best for people too. It got you into many fights," Lao said with a chuckle at the recollection. "You would tell them what they should do, and you would find someone you thought needed your guidance and help. You would tell me 'oh, she is not so bad - she is just troubled' or 'he is becoming such a good person, Baba.' And then you would complain because your friends were not so nice later."
"Okay? And?" Lun asked a bit defensively, feeling the familiar sting of truth. Her father was always a very astute judge of character, though she hated to admit that he was rarely wrong of the people she brought home.
"You cannot change other people for their own good, Little Duck," Lao said, taking another dumpling. "You can only be a signpost. You cannot be the road."