Hesitation
It was another sleepless night, but he was rather busy this night.
Shao Liyin didn't know when he stopped crying, but he knew what he should do after the tears stopped.
He hadn't shed tears for a long time. Ever since his mother passed away when he was twelve years old, his tears seemed to have dried up.
He thought he would never shed tears again in his life.
But when faced with the same trade-offs, he hesitated again.
That day, while standing on the balcony and looking at the midsummer night sky, he made a decision: he wanted Tong Xiao to come and study.
He took a leave of absence and asked Sister Chen to help him contact some people to register Tong Xiaolai's household registration.
Then we went to the school that Tong Xiaolai had stared at in a daze that day. The bulletin board at the school gate listed the outstanding candidates for this year's college entrance examination.
Tong Xiaolai dropped out of school in the first grade of junior high school, and he planned to let him transfer to the second grade.
After finding the school leader and using Sister Chen's connections to act as a go-between, the school finally agreed to make an exception and accept Tong Xiaolai as a transfer student, but he had to pay a school selection fee of 20,000 yuan.
Shao Liyin froze in place, tightly gripping the phone in his hand. The world seemed to have gone blank...
He paid a fine of 30,000 yuan when he registered his household registration, and his total savings were less than 50,000 yuan.
For the four years before he turned sixteen, he lived a life similar to Tong Xiaolai. He was too young and no place was willing to take him in to work. If he was caught, he would not just be fined.
After he turned sixteen, Sister Chen took him in as an apprentice, with a fixed salary of three thousand yuan per month.
His expenses were not high. After deducting 580 yuan a month for rent, utilities, living expenses and some daily expenses, he could save at least 1,000 yuan every month. Adding the installation fee he shared with his master, his savings in two years were over 40,000 yuan.
When he registered his household registration, he paid the 30,000 yuan fine without hesitation.
He had originally planned to find a suitable opportunity and reliable channels to donate the money he had saved. Now that he was supporting Xiaolai, he considered it a good deed. He still had 10,000 yuan left, which was enough for his living.
The principal mentioned 20,000 yuan, and he could also take it out by combining his remaining savings and the various small change in his phone. But if that were the case, he would be left with nothing.
So he hesitated at that moment.
And in that moment of hesitation, the situation that he had tried hard to forget filled his mind madly, and he fell into an inextricable state of self-blame and confusion.
He sat in this small room of less than ten square meters for an entire afternoon.
He looked around the room. There was a pair of cheap plastic slippers at the door. The simple cloth wardrobe next to the door no longer contained only his work clothes. There were two stacked plastic stools under the small wooden table next to the wardrobe.
The once empty small balcony now began to produce smoke from the gas stove, pots and pans appeared on the simple marble partitions, toothpaste and toothbrushes were placed in pairs by the sink, and the clothes hanging on the balcony were no longer just his.
Everywhere in this house were traces of the existence of another person. His name was Tong Xiaolai. It was he who brought him home, gave him a name, and promised to treat him well.
He said, "No matter how I live my life, my brother can only be better than me, not worse."
——"Isn't he living a good life now?" he asked himself.
This homeless child had nothing to do with him, but he was willing to take him in, give him a place to stay, and even spent money to get him a formal identity and household registration. Who can do this?
He felt that he had done enough and that his life was just like this.
"What do you mean by 'nothing more than this'? Just because you yourself are living a 'nothing more than this' life, do you want the people who follow you to live a 'nothing more than this' life as well?"
That afternoon, you got off at the No. 1 Middle School station and looked at it for a moment on the platform. Did you forget it?
The bulletin board contained photos of outstanding candidates who had taken the college entrance examination this year. Xiaolai stood there that day, carefully looking at every person in the photo, and staring at the teaching building inside the gate with obsession. That was the kind of obsession that only someone who longed to go to school would have.
The whole afternoon.
If he had not found you, but had found anyone else, would he not just stand outside and stare, but could he have sat in the classroom with those students and listened to the teacher's lecture?
——"But what does this have to do with me!"
He knocked over the books on the table and bedside table, and threw all the books he could find in the house to the ground.
Who doesn't want to go to school? Who has ever cared about Shao Liyin? Why should he care about Tong Xiaolai, a random acquaintance?
Twenty thousand yuan! Every penny of his money was hard-earned money. Why would he throw it away for no reason?
He also wanted to get a driver's license, and then save for two years to buy a used car so that he wouldn't have to take the bus for two hours every day. He also wanted to take the self-taught undergraduate exam and then take the postgraduate exam after completing his undergraduate studies.
All of this costs money, who can give him the money?
——A flyer floated out from the books scattered on the ground. It was an advertisement for academic advancement. It was the flyer that Tong Xiaolai looked at while eating that day.
The flyer became particularly dazzling, and turned into calls of "Brother Li" flying from in front of his eyes to his ears.
He was the one who gave Xiaolai his name and took him in. Xiaolai was his younger brother, not a stranger they met by chance.
He has no education, but his younger brother should study, because only by studying can he have a bright future...
——"Can he really be anything?" It was a sneer.
Xiaolai wasn't necessarily a scholar, was he? What kind of person would drop out of school in the first year of junior high and become a wanderer? They must be some lazy idiots who don't like studying, right?
——"What? Do you want Xiaolai to be like your mother again?"
In order to escape, you pulled out the other person's tube and cut off his breathing life. You coward.
Now, before Xiaolai even starts, you have already concluded that others cannot read, and you want to cut off their path to study?
——"No! I didn't!"
Shao Liyin had a splitting headache, as if she was being torn in two. Finally, she lay down on the bed and stayed there for the entire afternoon...
The quarrel in his head never stopped for several days. When the villain called "self" was finally about to defeat the villain called "conscience", he turned to the book of applied mathematics on the bedside.
Although it is a self-study textbook, it is also knowledge points that are only available in universities.
Where he was stuck, someone had marked the most critical assessment points with a pencil, and pointed out the key steps so that he could understand it, while still leaving him room for his own thinking.
And this advice comes from someone who dropped out of school in the first grade.
Up to this point, all his entanglements seemed like a joke.
Tong Xiaolai is smart. He can learn everything he doesn't know.
Tong Xiaolai is sensible and has never made any requests in all the time he has been here.
Tong Xiaolai was considerate and was willing to stay with him, a man with nothing, and be a cook.
He just gave the other person a tile to sleep on, but the other person seemed to want to repay him with his whole life.
Compared with all this, he seemed so dirty and ugly.
Everything is just like it was six years ago.
That night he cried out all the tears he had accumulated for six years, and he swore that this was the last time.
What happened to his mother once was enough. He didn't want to have another one. Because of his selfishness, he lost the light he should have had.
He got up, found the cardboard box, put the books on the bedside table into it, sealed it, and put it in the corner.
After paying 20,000 yuan in school selection fees, they no longer have any money left, but they still have to live, and they have to pay tuition for junior high school and high school. If they are admitted to university, they also have to pay university tuition.
What he needs to think about in the next few years is making more money. He can only put the self-study undergraduate study on hold for now.
He packed up the books, pooled the money from several bank cards and WeChat accounts, and transferred it to one card, totaling 25,000 yuan.
The school selection fee, some miscellaneous expenses and living expenses are just enough.
After everything was done, he sat on the ground, waiting earnestly for Tong Xiaolai to wake up.
When he saw Tong Xiaolai sitting up from the ground, his eyes sparkled. He looked at the somewhat confused Tong Xiaolai with a smile and pinched the other's cheek which had finally grown some flesh.
"Xiaolai, wake up, go cook, okay? I'm hungry..."
Tong Xiaolai looked at the tired face that was obviously from not sleeping all night, but the eyes that were shining, and knew that the troubles that had been bothering him for many days had been solved.
He fell asleep last night listening to his son crying. He didn't know why he was crying and had no way to comfort him, but he didn't dare move and disturb the person on the bed, so he could only force himself to sleep.
Now it seems that this person really just needs to vent his emotions through crying.
No matter what, it would be best if he could figure it out. Otherwise, if he endured it for another two or three days, even the strongest person would end up in the hospital. He quickly packed up and went to cook some porridge and stir-fry some vegetables.
Shao Liyin had a rare good appetite. After finishing a bowl of porridge, he looked at Tong Xiaolai and said, "Xiaolai, after you're full, I'll take you to a place. I guarantee you'll like it!"
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