"Mom, I'm home."

The girl pushed open the door and called out, only to be greeted by the sounds of her parents arguing from inside.

Whether she was home or not, whether she had eaten dinner, none of it mattered in her parents' eyes.

Her father was paralyzed in bed. Although he could move a little, he couldn't do anything other than barely manage to use the spittoon to relieve himself.

Her mother had to set up a breakfast stall outside every day, getting up early and working late.

Logically speaking, the atmosphere in their home should be like many of the television reports and newspaper articles,

Poor but resilient,

Yet still filled with family warmth and harmony.

She herself should have excellent grades, making her parents proud.

But perhaps fairytale stories were a minority after all.

Her own home was very different from the similar reports she had seen before.

Her father, paralyzed at home, had failed to cultivate his moral character. He had a terrible temper, especially towards her mother, who worked outside every day. He would often scold her, saying she had another man, a lover on the side.

He would say her mother was shameless, a whore.

Her mother would argue back every time, and then her father would throw things and roar.

The strength this man had left in the second half of his life was probably all used up yelling at people from his bed.

And she couldn't bring herself to completely sympathize with her mother because of the small pieces of jewelry and some clothes that her mother occasionally brought back. They were clearly not the kind of things her mother would buy herself.

And once, she and her boyfriend were at a hotel when they ran into her mother, who was supposed to be out buying ingredients, entering the same hotel with another man.

The two groups almost got into the same elevator. If she hadn't reacted quickly and told her boyfriend that she needed to use the restroom first, a terrible and awkward situation might have occurred.

This was a broken home,

Seemingly teetering on the brink, and in fact, leaking air from all sides.

She didn't know why her mother wouldn't divorce her father, and she didn't know why a father who was lying in bed, unable to work and earn money, or even do housework, didn't have a shred of self-awareness.

In short,

She habitually used her key to open the door,

Habitually heard her parents arguing,

Habitually walked into her small room in the attic,

Habitually poured herself a glass of cold boiled water,

Habitually opened her latest model Apple laptop,

Habitually took out her newly purchased gentle makeup remover,

Habitually opened the videos of the beauty bloggers she often watched,

Habitually logged into Zhihu.

This was her life, and this was her current rhythm.

The college entrance exam had long been an unattainable dream for her because her grades were too bad, so bad that she had already given up hope.

She regretted it a little,

Regretted that she shouldn't have said her homeroom teacher had assaulted her back in middle school, just for a few thousand yuan.

Her mother was very excited, her father was very excited. After she said this, her mother didn't go out to set up her stall for several days. She called some relatives and carried her paralyzed father to the school gate on a stretcher.

The couple cried and wailed,

Miserable and wretched,

Reporters came swarming like sharks smelling blood.

Moral ethics, the lack of humanity,

Were often the hottest topics that reporters liked most at the moment because they didn't cross any lines and had extremely low risks, but the hot topic effect they could reap was immense.

In short,

The way that matter developed was somewhat unexpected.

At first, she just wanted a little more pocket money to buy clothes.

Her homeroom teacher and language arts teacher knew about her family's situation and had helped her out a bit. He would even pay some of her school fees in advance.

Occasionally, Teacher Ren's mother would also invite her to eat at their home.

Teacher Ren wasn't married yet,

And plus the fact that she often went to his office and home,

It did give many people a chance to make unfounded speculations.

Rumors had already started before she exposed him, but at that time, she didn't care.

Although, she had heard about them.

Once, after she secretly went to a bar and was seen by the teacher on her way out, the teacher became cold towards her. He seemed very disappointed, disappointed in her.

His mother no longer asked her to eat at their house,

He even stopped paying some of her school fees in advance,

And no longer helped her out.

This made her very angry.

Then she threatened to expose him for assault if he didn't give her money. She needed money. The lipstick she had her eye on, the clothes she had her eye on, the imported goods she had her eye on, all needed money to buy.

But the teacher refused her, even if she threatened to expose the matter.

Even now, she felt that her homeroom teacher from middle school was indeed a scholar.

At that time, he even knocked on the table and scolded her, "Justice resides in the hearts of the people."

However,

Was that really the case?

After the matter blew up,

He was directly suspended from his job by the school.

The immense pressure from public opinion eventually caused him to collapse.

He had angrily fought back,

Had refuted online in lengthy statements,

Full of classical Chinese phrases,

Even though she was just a middle school student at the time, she was just a dropout, she could still see at that time that the teacher's rebuttals were very pale and also very weak.

Although it seemed forceful and filled with righteous indignation, unafraid of rumors.

But in the eyes of outsiders, this was like a dead duck with a hard mouth, self-righteous, wanting to muddle through by relying on his identity as a teacher.

The teacher had taught language arts his whole life, teaching batches of students how to write good compositions, but his "composition" was not well-written.

What the outside world and public opinion wanted to see was not his style of writing, and his forceful rebuttal and satire with a "Lu Xun" style even stimulated the nerves of outside public opinion.

What,

We're all wrong?

Only you are wise?

Impossible.

Then, came an even more intense counterattack.

Nowadays, if a celebrity gets caught up in a scandal, they have to immediately hire a PR company to smooth things over with various manipulations.

If it were really that simple to reason things out and present the facts,

Then most of the PR companies would starve to death.

And at that time, another piece of news was dug up: one of the teacher's uncles was the section chief in the local education bureau.

A very small section chief, over fifty years old, usually abided by morality and was also an old scholar who liked to study xinxue (the study of the mind), and because of this, his interpersonal relationships were very poor. At fifty years old, he had no chance to rise any higher.

But the outside world only needed a short headline for this news: Beastly Teacher's Background Revealed!

Everything completely exploded.

People indulged in venting their "anger," feeling that they were fighting against the dark forces and human power,

The media enjoyed reaping the traffic and exposure,

This was a gluttonous feast she had started.

In the end, it ended with the teacher jumping off the teaching building.

And the tens of thousands of yuan that the school initially paid her family to appease the situation and restore normal teaching also served as the "final conclusion" to this incident.

If they weren't guilty,

Why would they pay money?

Right?

After learning of the teacher's death,

She was in pain for one night and then regretted it for a month.

Pain for one night because she still had a conscience;

Regret for a month because she realized that if she had waited until she was in college to do this again, she could have profited even more, such as getting a recommendation for graduate school, such as more compensation.

She took out a wallet from her pocket. It belonged to a girl named Lin Yi. She was her classmate.

There was a lot of cash in the wallet, as well as many VIP cards.

A mocking smile appeared on the corner of her mouth: Heh, rich people.

Rich bitch.

Then she took out the five thousand yuan from her pocket and put it in her locked small drawer. She felt that today's harvest was good. In fact, she had received many donations afterwards, all of which she and her parents split in half.

She removed her makeup and washed her hair,

She reopened the webpage,

Logged into Zhihu,

Today, she was going to write about her day.

For example, she had a brother-in-law who owned a bookstore, she had a sister who was a doctor, and she had a father who owned a pharmaceutical company and had also been the president of a hospital.

She wrote that today, a classmate who had been assaulted by a teacher but was actually a green tea bitch lost her wallet. She despised her in her heart, but still took five thousand yuan from her brother-in-law to give to her.

Because five thousand yuan was just a fraction of her monthly allowance.

Just consider it pity for that green tea bitch.

She had a large group of fans who followed her updates. As soon as she sent a message, many people would come over to reply and like it. She liked this feeling. Here, she had found a new life for herself.

Sometimes, she couldn't even distinguish between the virtuality of the internet and the reality of real life.

She felt that she was Lin Yi.

Of course, there were also people who satirized her for looking down on the poor just because she was rich and had a good family background, calling her a snob.

She calmly replied: whocare?

She closed her computer, ready to rest. Staying up late was a woman's enemy. She needed to take good care of herself. Her appearance seemed to be the only valuable thing her parents had left her.

She went to the bathroom to wash up.

Her parents' argument was still going on. Her father was smashing cups and scolding her mother. Her mother scolded him back, calling him a good-for-nothing and asking why he didn't hurry up and die,

Go find a car on the road and lie under it, and then give the family a sum of money as compensation, which would be considered fulfilling his responsibility as a man.

She smiled when she heard this.

After washing up, she returned to her bedroom.

She opened the door,

Only to find a person sitting on her bed,

A man,

The man was smoking a cigarette,

And the ashes were falling into the lid of a skin care product she had just bought.

For a moment, she didn't know how to face this man.

The laptop she had closed was reopened by the man,

The man was reading her replies on Zhihu.

Silence,

Lasted for about three minutes.

She finally tremblingly asked, "What are you doing here?"

She knew him. She had just seen him. He was Lin Yi's brother-in-law who owned the bookstore.

Zhou Ze stuck the cigarette butt in her skin care product.

Her mouth twitched. That one was very expensive. She had bought it back after accompanying an old man once.

Zhou Ze looked at her with a smile that was not a smile,

Then said very seriously:

"Pay back the money."