Chapter 355 A Gift from Heaven
After the funeral, Richard calculated that since there was no tuition fee in public schools, this money would be enough for him to finish his four years of high school if he saved money. He could also work part-time to save money for college.
But things never go as planned. One day when he came home from school, he found that his house had been burglarized and the money left by his adoptive parents had been stolen. He immediately called the police and contacted the bank, but the money was never recovered.
The adoptive parents probably anticipated that this day would come, and had already made a will, leaving the ownership of the property to Richard. Before the funeral, the lawyer came and suggested that he sell it or rent it out, and he could find a cheaper place to rent a house, so that he wouldn't have to live too hard.
Richard didn't want to.
His adoptive parents loved him very much, and the house was the only thing they left behind. It was full of beautiful memories of family and love, and he was reluctant to leave it.
When I was in the second grade, a man who claimed to be my adoptive father’s cousin suddenly came to my house and took away the house using "legal and compliant" means.
Richard's part-time job didn't bring much income, so he could only rent a cheap place. The conditions in this place were poor and the public security was also problematic, but he had no choice.
The place they lived in was shabby, and there were often no water or electricity, especially when the weather was hot, and they couldn't take a shower. Even though Richard would go to the public toilet to wash, he would sometimes still go to school smelling.
His original friends gradually distanced themselves from him after his adoptive parents passed away. His current situation gave some bad kids an excuse to bully him.
Richard didn't want to cause trouble at first, because his adoptive parents taught him too well, he hated those behaviors, and didn't want to become like that. He just wanted to work and study steadily, finish high school, and then go to college, and when he had money in the future, he would take back his adoptive parents' house.
But his tolerance only made these people worse. Bullying him in school had become a common occurrence. They even went to his part-time job and ruined his employment.
After that, every time Richard changed a part-time job, they would make trouble. In the end, no store in the community was willing to hire him.
Richard was cut off from his source of income, and after he ran out of money, he went to the community to get free food, queuing up with a group of homeless people. However, this kind of free food is not available every day. A homeless person told him that he could also go through the trash cans behind the restaurant, where he could find the expired food that customers could not finish or that the restaurant disposed of, which was very rich.
Sometimes, after drinking cold water all day and feeling really hungry, Richard would go to the back of the restaurant to try his luck.
To be honest, when he went there for the first time, the shame of losing his dignity wrapped him from head to toe. The thought of finding food in the garbage made him feel so sick that he wanted to vomit, but he couldn't vomit anything.
That time, Richard met the homeless man who told him this method, and the homeless man greeted him: "Hey, you are here!"
He handed the pizza to Richard and said, "This packaging is clean. I just heard from the clerk that the customer only took one bite and thought it was not tasty, so he didn't want it."
Richard couldn't reach out his hand.
"Take it, this is a gift from God." The homeless man stuffed the pizza box into Richard's hand, turned around and rummaged through the trash can, found a bottle of Coke that had just expired, and danced with joy, "Let's go, let's find a place to sit. We have food and drinks, today is a lucky and perfect day."
After finishing his "dinner", Richard thanked the homeless man and went back to his rental house.
The homeless man took a few gulps of the remaining half bottle of Coke, waved at him, looked up at the street light, and said with a tone that was unclear whether it was sadness or resignation, "When I first came to the lower world, I was the same as you. But it's more important to stay alive, so just get used to it."
Richard didn't go rummaging through the trash cans very often, but he would run into this homeless man almost every time, and sometimes he would even see him feeding stray cats with food.
Whenever the homeless man saw Richard, he was almost always visibly injured.
There seems to be a tacit understanding between the two. They don't ask about each other's past, nor do they talk about your or my present, let alone their respective futures. When they meet, they rummage through the trash cans together and laugh at the same time for a "God-gift."
In his spare time, Richard would pick up some junk and sell it for money. However, there are also regional divisions for picking up junk, and he would not be lucky every time.
One day at the end of the month, Richard went to sell junk after school, but was stopped by those bad boys again. He was beaten up, his money was robbed, and he returned to the rental house with a bruised face.
As soon as I entered the house, someone knocked on the door. It was the landlord who came to collect the rent.
Richard reached under the bed and pulled out a flat iron box. There were only a few coins and banknotes in it, which added up to less than ten dollars, which was not enough to pay the rent. So he asked the landlord to give him some time.
The landlord had heard something about his situation, and now seeing that he had been beaten up again, he suddenly asked, "How are your grades in school?"
Richard didn't understand why he asked this and replied, "All A's."
The landlord looked him in the eyes and confirmed that he was not lying, then he pulled up a worn-out chair and sat down. "There are no children like you in this area. Most people, let alone children, even adults, would probably give up on themselves if they were faced with a predicament like yours. And you can still maintain hope for the future, which is really rare."
Richard said, "I want to go to college."
The landlord smiled, not in a mocking way, but with a hint of appreciation: "Kid, going to college is not that easy, and it's not something you can do just by talking about it. Well, I'll give you some time, and I'll come over again at this time next month."
Before leaving, the landlord said one more thing: "Weak people cannot survive in the wild."
"I'm not weak." Richard whispered, "I just want to live a peaceful life and then leave here."
The landlord pointed at his swollen eyes and said, "Then may I ask, have you found peace? In your current environment, not resisting is weakness, and weakness means you can be bullied."
After that, Richard hid a knife on his body. When he was bullied by those bad boys, he fought back desperately, leaving bruises on each of them, with a sinister look in his eyes: "If you want me to die, I will drag you to hell with me."
After several times, these people finally got scared, and Richard's "ruthlessness" spread, so some people came to him to ask for help. The money offered was not small, but Richard refused without hesitation.
He knew very well that he must not touch those things, not even a little bit. Otherwise, his life and future, as well as his entire life, would be dragged into an endless swamp, until he would rot in it and could never climb out.
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