There is no need to worry about the family's livelihood. Xu Jin's shares were taken over by his partner at a very generous price. There is no need to calculate the property she left behind carefully. A quick inventory shows that it is already very considerable. As long as Xu Xilin does not gamble, take drugs or be a playboy in the future, even if he achieves nothing, he can live a comfortable and worry-free life.

But when Xu Xilin returned to school, he suddenly didn't know what to do.

He didn't know whether he had let it go or not, but he just didn't care much about his academic performance. Life and death are determined by fate, wealth and honor are determined by God, good or bad grades are the same, and there is really nothing worth fighting for in the future, so it's better to just muddle through.

When people around him heard about what happened in his family, they became more cautious than each other.

Cai Jing didn't dare to talk to him for a while and wrote down everything he had every day on paper.

Lao Cheng felt extremely guilty about the joke "If something bad happens, the house will collapse", so he silently followed him every day, filling his cup with water as soon as the get out of class was over, sneaking out of the school at dinner time every day, and buying food for Xu Xilin in various ways. He was late several times because of this.

Even Qilixiang didn't dare to criticize him too harshly, for fear that something she said inappropriately would irritate him.

Xu Xilin asked Qilixiang for leave, claiming that he wanted to go home and spend time with his grandmother in the evening and did not want to attend evening self-study.

Although Qilixiang struggled for a while, she still signed the form for him, and then she told him worriedly: "You have special circumstances, you don't have to come to school for evening self-study, but you can't stop studying when you go home. If you... waste your time, you will delay yourself."

After "if", Qilixiang originally wanted to say "If your mother knew that you had to neglect your studies because of her, she would definitely be worried", but when the words came to her lips, she felt that such words were too cruel to say to a child, so she had to temporarily change it to a bland warning.

As expected, the words didn't hurt or itch at all. Xu Xilin just responded perfunctorily and didn't take it to heart at all.

Xu Xilin had no interest in studying to begin with, and the only reason he had been willing to study hard in the past was out of a sense of responsibility - he felt that he should have decent grades, go to a good university in the future, be better able to integrate into the mainstream values ​​of society, and make his family less worried. It was hard to say whether his family would be proud of him, but if he could achieve something, Mr. Xu in their family could retire earlier.

...But these are of no use now.

Xu Xilin missed evening self-study classes and basically did nothing after returning home.

At first, he would take his old basketball and shoot hoops in the small stadium in the community. Later, as the weather gradually got colder, there was no point in being outside except standing in the northwest wind, so he started to go home and play games online. After two days, he got tired of the games and began to read DVDs, read books and comics out of boredom - all of which were rented from a small shop in front of the school, with a daily rental fee ranging from 50 cents to 1.5 yuan.

Xu Xilin could not understand romance novels, and because of mental fatigue, he could not empathize with the ambitions of many protagonists to dominate the world. He could not finish reading most of the leisure books. He selectively flipped through several martial arts novels by Jin Gu Liang Wen and Mr. Wolongsheng, and then became fascinated by weird horror stories.

He collected a lot of ghost story books from street stalls, horror movies from various countries, and audio recordings of Zhang Zhen telling ghost stories. Every night when he returned home and closed the door, he would begin his own night life of ghosts and wolves howling. He would get scared from time to time, which was barely considered exciting.

His family members didn't dare to say anything to him. They would just nag him a few words, neither too loud nor too soft. He would just agree but never take it to heart.

After living a life of drunkenness and dreaming for more than a month, Dou Xun finally couldn't stand it anymore and broke in when Xu Xilin was watching a horror movie.

Just then, a ghost with a green face and fangs suddenly jumped out on the computer screen. Xu Xilin was startled by the two loud noises inside and outside the screen. The blood on his face quickly retreated to his limbs, and he turned his head away with a pale face.

Dou Xun's eyebrows twitched, and he almost softened his heart.

But after Xu Xilin was startled, the expression on his face froze instantly, and his eyes swept across Dou Xun's face indifferently. He turned his head to pause the video and asked half dead: "What? You scared me."

Dou Xun took a deep breath and took out a stack of test papers from his schoolbag. The test papers were neatly clipped together with plastic clips. There were also a few small notes on them, with Cai Jing's handwriting, Lao Cheng's handwriting... and even Yu Yiran's handwriting, reminding him which test paper should be completed by what time.

The new notes covered the old ones, more than half of the time had passed, but the test paper that needed to be done was cleaner than my face.

Xu Xilin couldn't help but frown: "Why do you keep searching my bag?"

He snatched the stack of test papers angrily, rolled them up roughly and stuffed them into his schoolbag.

Dou Xun: "Didn't you tell us before that if we wanted to use or eat anything, we could just go to your bag and look for it?"

"I told you to take whatever you want, but I didn't tell you to stuff whatever you want, did I?" Xu Xilin threw the bag onto the bed expressionlessly, "I was wondering why it was so heavy."

As Xu Xilin spoke, he sat back in his chair and was about to reach for the mouse when Dou Xun suddenly stepped forward and turned off the monitor.

Xu Xilin hissed angrily: "Did you take the wrong medicine, or did Doudou bite you?"

Dou Xun said word by word: "Get up and do your homework."

"It's unreasonable." Xu Xilin thought.

He raised one eyebrow high and said in a non-violent and non-cooperative manner: "Go do your serious work. I don't want to write today. Don't make a fuss."

He turned the display back on and continued to enjoy the stereo ghost screams from the original soundtrack.

Dou Xun stood by in silence for a while, then decided that "a gentleman should talk less when it is time to take action."

He suddenly pulled Xu Xilin's chair back, and while Xu Xilin's center of gravity was unstable, he hugged Xu Xilin's upper body with both hands and lifted him up from the chair with brute force.

But Xu Xilin was not a quilt after all, so it was not that easy to carry. He staggered when Dou Xun pulled him hard. When he came to his senses, he jumped up in frustration and knocked Dou Xun's hand away with his shoulder: "What are you doing? Are you bored?"

Universities are all in the suburbs, and Dou Xun has classes every afternoon. It takes him two hours to get back from school, no matter how fast he tries, to accompany Xu Xilin for one night. In the morning, he has to catch the earliest bus back to school. If he has a class in the first period of the morning, he basically doesn't even have time for breakfast and has to rush straight to the classroom. He runs back and forth every day, exhausted, is it all because he has nothing better to do?

Dou Xun's temples throbbed for a moment, and he suppressed it by force, and played the words again like a tape recorder: "Go do your homework."

Xu Xilin threw his face impatiently: "What's it got to do with you!"

In fact, between them, Xu Xilin had always been giving in to Dou Xun, either overtly or covertly. Even when he got impatient occasionally, he would just walk away and be fine after a while. Except for the small misunderstanding at the beginning, Xu Xilin had never yelled at him so harshly. Dou Xun didn't have time to get angry for a while and was a little confused.

Xu Xilin took a few deep breaths, vaguely realizing that he had overreacted. He quickly said, "Thank you for your kindness. If you have nothing to do in the future, don't get up at five in the morning and run back and forth in the middle of the night. I don't mean to get a 750-point score. You don't have to waste your energy on me."

Dou Xun said quietly: "Aunt Xu asked me to be your tutor."

For so many days, no one dared to mention Xu Jin in front of Xu Xilin. They all avoided the topic tremblingly, fearing that he would remember it. Only Dou Xun, who didn't understand the ways of the world, blurted it out.

This sentence was like water into boiling oil, which immediately broke Xu Xilin's reverse scale.

"I am the boss now, I have the final say, what she said is out of date," Xu Xilin's face froze, and he said coldly, "Can I double the tutoring fee for you? Stop bothering me!"

Dou Xun: "If she knew you were wasting the time she no longer had, she would beat you to death."

Xu Xilin was choked by this sentence for two seconds without reacting, and then suddenly changed his tone: "Get out!"

"If you're like this, you'll only have two functions left: hurting the hearts of the living and disappointing the wishes of the dead," Dou Xun said without thinking, his tongue sharp as a knife. "When the hearts of the living are almost hurt by you, who can you show your character to? What's the point of acting like a spoiled child to your mother? She can't see it!"

Xu Xilin grabbed Dou Xun by the collar.

Dou Xun banged his back against the wall, but he still refused to shut up: "It's gone, it's gone. You don't understand such a simple truth. Is your brain out of date?"

The two of them started arguing without controlling the volume, and Grandma Xu and Aunt Du downstairs heard it. Grandma's legs made it difficult for her to go upstairs, so she quickly instructed Aunt Du to come up and separate them.

Aunt Du stood at the door, at a loss: "Hey...what...what..."

Xu Xilin glanced at her gloomily, restrained his temper to some extent, pushed Dou Xun out of the door, slammed the door shut, and locked it from the inside.

Aunt Du sighed and whispered to Dou Xun, "He must be feeling bad. He's not usually such a jerk..."

"I know," Dou Xun said calmly, "Auntie, please move aside."

He waved his hand to signal Aunt Du to step aside, and walked up to knock on the door: "Xu Xilin, open the door."

Xu Xilin ignored him. Dou Xun knocked four or five times tirelessly, then took two steps back and kicked the closed door.

The loud noise scared the dog downstairs awake from its sleep, and it screamed in panic. Aunt Du almost had a heart attack, and she covered her chest with her hands, saying "Amitabha".

The wooden door shook for a moment under the heavy weight, and bits of wall dust trembled and fell down.

Dou Xun's forehead veins throbbed violently, he slightly stretched his legs that were hurting from the shock, then changed his leg and kicked again. He didn't know where he had learned the deadly kicking skills from. Aunt Du didn't have time to say anything, he had already kicked several times in anger. The bedroom door was not strong to begin with, and it couldn't withstand his violent destruction that was determined not to give up until the south wall was kicked down. The door lock screamed hoarsely and died.

The door was wide open, and then Xu Xilin threw his schoolbag out of the room. The schoolbag fell all the way across the living room and rolled to the stairwell. The lock broke, and all the books, papers, and pens in the bag fell out and rolled from the second floor all the way to the first floor.

Xu Xilin: "Fuck you, Dou Xun, you are looking for death!"

"I didn't," Dou Xun said, "You are the one seeking death."

Xu Xilin was so angry that he almost picked up a chair and hit Dou Xun, but Aunt Du stopped him by yelling, "What are you doing! Xiaolin! Put it down now!"

Xu Xilin's knuckles turned pale and blue. After a moment of stalemate, he waved his hand in anger and smashed the chair against the bedroom wall, then turned around and left without saying a word. He rushed downstairs and ran to the door, leaving without even changing his shoes.

Xu Xilin opened the door suddenly and looked at the man who was about to ring the doorbell.

Zheng Shuo was stunned for a moment, then smiled at him gently: "Why, you want to go out?"

"You..." Xu Xilin stopped abruptly in his tracks as he was about to rush out. His shattered rationality was revived in an instant under the dual stimulation of outsiders and the early winter night breeze.

Xu Xilin cleared his hoarse throat with difficulty and asked, "What's the matter with you coming here so late?"