After the parents' meeting, Lao Lin rode his bicycle very fast.

Lin Chaoxi felt that he might be a little shy because he was too sincere.

Few people's lives are changed by a few words from others.

But if this happens, it is not so much the listeners who are lucky, but the person who is speaking who is lucky, that his passion and hope have not been wasted.

But in most cases, there is no such thing as an instant solution, unless you are already pushed to the edge of a cliff.

I feel that "I can't go on like this" and that "if I take another step back, I'll be crushed to pieces"...

However, it must be said that most of the time, life is like a pot of slowly boiling warm water, and few lucky or unfortunate people can clearly experience the moment when they have reached the point of no return.

Parents no longer surrounded the teacher in three layers, and many of them left in silence with their children.

Neither Bao Xiaomeng's mother nor Zheng Matt's father said anything else.

Maybe you feel there is a problem, but you are powerless and it is difficult to find a way to solve it.

When Huajuan and Lu Zhihao came to find them, they felt strange looking at the empty classroom.

Lu Zhihao: "Did your class end so quickly?"

Lin Zhaoxi: "Uh, a little thing happened..."

"What is it?"

Lin Chaoxi had a conflicted expression and didn't know what to say.

Pei Zhi: "Master is here to hold a parents' meeting today."

"Oh~ No wonder~" Huajuan and Lu Zhihao suddenly realized and accepted it instantly.

Wednesday is the day they go to the Internet cafe to surf the Internet, and it never changes, even during parent-teacher meetings.

They walked out of the school carrying their schoolbags. The weather was getting colder day by day. At around five in the evening, the city began to be shrouded in darkness.

Lin Chaoxi blew a breath of hot air into his palms, and saw a police motorcycle parked at the school gate.

The other party took off his helmet and rushed into the school gate without even locking his bike.

That was Chen Zhu's father.

When he saw her, Chen Zhu's father was stunned. His tired face showed obvious annoyance. "Is the parents' meeting over?"

"Ah...it's over..." Lin Zhaoxi answered subconsciously, and then added, "But the teacher should not have left yet."

"Thank you." Chen Zhu's father was about to leave, but turned back and called her, "Classmate..."

"ah?"

"Chen Zhu... How is Chen Zhu doing recently?"

Lin Chaoxi was embarrassed. She hardly saw Brother Sleepyhead recently. How should she answer this?

"It's... okay..." She whispered the last three words very softly.

"Has Chen Zhu been attending classes recently?" Chen Zhu's father asked with great concern.

Lin Zhaoxi was stunned.

Father Chen understood what had happened and rushed towards the teaching building even more anxiously.

——

There was a thick curtain hanging in the door of Naimao Internet Cafe. When he opened it, the smell of hot cigarettes and instant noodles hit him in the face, and Lin Chaoxi coughed twice.

It was very hot and stuffy in the Internet cafe, and the cramped space was filled with shouts and the sound of people typing on the mouse keyboard.

Lin Chaoxi walked to the place where they usually went online, and Brother Sleepy was already sitting there.

The moment he saw Chen Zhu, Lin Zhaoxi remembered that he had accidentally betrayed him just now, and couldn't help but smile awkwardly.

Chen Zhutou didn't even raise his head, he was still absorbed in the operation.

Lin Chaoxi thought about the father-son relationship between him and Lao Chen. Even if he couldn't cover up his lie perfectly, it wouldn't be a big problem, so he sat down and turned on the phone.

Pei Zhi was looking at an English-language math website, and Lin Chaoxi didn't know what he was studying. As usual, she clicked on a high school math website and started to do questions.

If she were asked what the difference is between junior high school math and high school math, she would find it difficult to explain.

During that time, Lao Lin was in a coma and she worked every day to earn money. It was also the most difficult period for her to learn high school mathematics.

She just couldn't understand a lot of function problems and it was hard for her to wrap her mind around them. She knew very well that there was a new way of thinking about the problem. If Lao Lin could wake up and give her some advice, things might be very different.

Yet she then, and even now, could not help but wonder whether the difference was intellect or something more innate.

She was deep in thought when she heard the voice of Brother Sleepy beside her: "Your test paper."

"Ah?" Lin Chaoxi turned to look at him.

"Show me your test paper, the midterm exam."

"Oh oh oh." Lin Chaoxi didn't think much about it. She opened her schoolbag and rummaged through it. After she took out a few test papers and handed them to Brother Sleepy, she felt something was wrong.

Brother Sleep God wants to see her paper?

But she didn't need to wonder, Chen Zhu had already started to look through her test paper in the hazy light of the Internet cafe. Page after page, not very seriously, but very carefully.

He read it from beginning to end, and even Lu Zhihao and Huajuan, who had been surfing the Internet nearby, put down what they were doing and secretly took a look.

"How does it feel to have such good grades?" Chen Zhu asked, ignoring them.

Lin Zhaoxi thought about it seriously and wanted to be humble, but the answer he said became: "It seems... quite good?"

Classmate Lu Zhihao, who didn't rank among the top five in his grade, glared at her.

Lin Chaoxi patted Lu Zhihao on the shoulder and was about to speak when someone opened the curtain of the Internet cafe.

Against a dark background, a man in a traffic police uniform stepped into the Internet cafe.

His face was angry and uneasy. The dim and hazy street lights outside the house penetrated into the small Internet cafe through the gap he had opened, and the cold wind rushed in. They who were sitting by the door shivered at the same time.

When the Internet cafe owner saw the civil servant, he quickly stood up.

Chen Zhu's expression changed, and he handed the test paper back to her. He bent down slightly, turned off the machine, and wanted to leave, but it was too late.

Father Chen strode over with great momentum. He stopped in front of Chen Zhu and slapped him in the face.

There was a crisp "pop" sound.

Chen Zhu was knocked unconscious, his face was thrown to the side, and his black hair covered the left side of his cheek. There was a brief moment of silence in the Internet cafe.

Chen Zhu's father's chest kept rising and falling, his eyes were wide with anger. His hand was still raised, Lin Zhaoxi's heart was beating violently, and he was so scared that he couldn't say anything.

Sure enough, Father Chen raised his hand again, and just as he was about to wave it down, someone firmly grasped his wrist.

"It would be too much if you hit me again." Pei Zhining's gentle voice rang out.

It means that the first time doesn’t count.

Father Chen struggled, but Pei Zhi remained motionless.

Looking at his seemingly slender but extremely explosive wrist, Lin Zhaoxi's heart, which had risen to his throat, finally slowly calmed down. When Pei Zhi said he would fight, he really wasn't trying to scare Matt Zheng.

"Look at what you are like now. Don't you want to study hard? What can you do in the future if you continue like this?" Chen's father let go of his hand, turned around and yelled at Chen Zhu.

Chen Zhu's cheekbones were crimson, and his expression was the most standard "what can you do to me", just like any rebellious teenager in anime.

Father Chen couldn't control his son at all. When he turned around and saw Lin Chaoxi, his face turned green: "I thought you were a good boy! What kind of person are you, sneaking online with him!"

"Are you crazy?" Chen Zhu asked coldly.

"I didn't do anything sneaky. My dad gave me money to go online," said Lin Zhaoxi.

"You promised your uncle that you would supervise him and tell him to stop playing games online. His teacher said that he didn't do any of the papers in the midterm exam and got a perfect 0!"

Under the lamp, the middle-aged man's hair was disheveled, and he looked anxious and at a loss.

Lin Zhaoxi knew that the courage he had mustered to teach his son had disappeared, and he became the father who didn't know what to do with his son again. He couldn't even educate his son positively, and could only look for some slim hope in the strange girl.

Chen Zhu was too lazy to pay attention to him and walked straight out of the Internet cafe with his schoolbag.

His father chased after him, unable to even hold Chen Zhu.

Lin Chaoxi and Pei Zhi looked at each other, and neither of them chased after him.

After that, Chen Zhu never went back to the Internet cafe.

They only go online for 2 hours a week, and when the time is up, they turn off the computer and leave.

Because of Chen Zhu's incident, they didn't talk much afterwards and the atmosphere was a bit depressing.

Walking in the dark alley, there was light coming from the street park at the end of the alley not far away.

Huajuan stretched his waist and asked: "What are we having for dinner tonight?"

Lu Zhihao: "Wonton?"

Lin Zhaoxi: "Lamb soup?"

Pei Zhijing walked forward without saying a word.

Lin Chaoxi followed him for a few steps and suddenly stopped on the side of the road.

On the small stone bench in the park at the entrance of the alley, someone was drinking.

Under the street lights, in the cool night, a light breath drifted away. Next to his stool was a dozen beers and a baked sweet potato.

Seeing them, he held the beer can and took a sip.

That is Chen Zhu.

"He's drinking, he's definitely a bad boy!"

Lu Zhihao held her and whispered something, so it was Pei Zhi who walked to Chen Zhu's side and sat down first.

Lin Chaoxi smiled at Lu Zhihao and walked over to sit down. Huajuan followed suit, but Lu Zhihao stood there awkwardly.

The winter night was very quiet, and one could even hear the faint sound of bubbles bursting. Lin Chaoxi looked up at the night sky. Just when she thought Chen Zhu was going to tell her something from his heart, she suddenly heard Chen Zhu ask, "Have you been abroad?"

This is obviously a question to Pei Zhi.

Lin Zhaoxi: ...

"Yeah." Pei Zhi replied.

"What is it like abroad?"

"It's hard to describe. If you want to listen, I might talk for a long time."

“Have you ever been to America?”

“Yes.”

"Have you ever been to the headquarters of Blizzard Entertainment, the one that plays the game I play...?"

"no."

Chen Zhu felt a little lost and even slightly drunk.

Lin Chaoxi didn't know what Lao Chen had said to him, but the most likely possibility was that they were just arguing and didn't say anything.

It is precisely because of this that he feels even sadder and more unwilling.

"I heard that the streets there are full of flags and there are huge sculptures at the gates..."

Chen Zhu paused at this point, perhaps out of shyness. He did not use any of the adjectives in the middle, but just said in a barely audible voice, "I really want to go and see it."

"Then let's go and take a look." Pei Zhi said.

Chen Zhu sneered.

He wanted to say something about the family gap, but the boy's self-esteem made him grit his teeth.

"I'm so tired." He looked at the sky, drunk and even a little incoherent. "Before, I felt tired from studying, so I started playing. I was annoyed when my dad scolded me, but I didn't feel tired at all. In fact, I know that the most tiring thing is having no hope. Compared with having no hope, everything is easy to deal with."

Winter night.

The long sentences that Chen Zhu seldom uttered, along with the scent of alcohol and sweet potatoes, drifted away bit by bit in the night sky.

The five children sat under the street light and fell into a long silence because of this sentence.

Lu Zhihao had a tangled expression, and Huajuan smiled helplessly.

Lin Chaoxi blew a breath of hot air into his hands and then rubbed them gently.

There was a crackling sound.

Pei Zhi opened a can of beer and took a sip, his expression sober and calm, not affected by the alcohol at all.

"Let's go check it out," he repeated. "Open the website and see if there are flags on that street, see if there are sculptures at the gate, see how others get there, see how you can get there..."