Principal Jin stomped his feet frantically on the ground, shouting and yelling.
He seemed not to see the three people standing in front of him. He turned and ran out, stumbling along the way and scaring many students.
When they heard him yelling loudly that there was a ghost, many of them changed their expressions suddenly.
Wu Weiwei wanted to stick his head out to watch the fun, but Chen Ling pulled him back: "Don't let anyone see you. We might come to this school again."
"He was so angry just now, but he is still willing to let us handle the matter?"
"Why not?" Chen Ling was very confident. "If we hire someone else, it means that more people will know about Rong Xin's dirty deeds, and the risk of the matter being spread out will also increase. For the sake of the school's reputation, Principal Jin's best choice is to let us continue to participate."
Wu Weiwei suddenly realized, "So we just need to go back and wait?"
Chen Ling pointed at the cardboard box in Jiang Yu's hand and said, "Let's go to Zhou's house first and see if we can get some information from his family."
Zhou Yuanxin's home is in a newly built staff community. The community is not small and has beautiful greenery. The security guard at the door was guarding the door diligently. When he saw strangers coming, one of them stepped out of the security room with a notebook in his hand.
"Who are you looking for? Please sign in."
"Look for room 201, unit 3, building 6." said Chen Ling.
"Oh, Chief Tao's house. Just go in. No need to register."
"Chief Tao?" Chen Ling said, "We are not looking for Chief Tao, but for Zhou Yuanxin's mother, Ms. Lin Hong."
A head popped out of the security room, and the man said, "That's Section Chief Tao's home."
The security guard standing outside nodded to Chen Ling, "Are you talking about Zhou Yuanxin, the skinny little boy who always walked with his head down? He passed away not long ago."
"Yes, that's him. Security guard, do you know him?"
"Everyone living in this courtyard is from the same unit, so how could they not know each other? The child's father died early, so he moved into Tao Zhiyong's home with Lin Hong when he was only a few years old."
"Then do you know what Zhou Yuanxin's relationship is like with his family?" Chen Ling asked.
When the security guard mentioned this, he frowned. He avoided answering because he was hesitant. He just said vaguely, "It's not bad."
Combining the facial expressions and tone of voice, it should not be very good.
The group said goodbye to the security guard and counted down the buildings one by one. In less than ten minutes, they found Zhou Yuanxin's home.
Too many people can easily arouse suspicion, and it can be a bit troublesome to explain everyone's identity.
Chen Ling took the cardboard box from Jiang Yu and said, "I'll go in alone. You guys wait for me outside."
Zhou Yuanxin's family is just an ordinary family, there won't be any danger. Jiang Yu loosened his hand and patted the back of the young man's hand as his fingertips withdrew, "I'm just outside the corridor."
It's not a life-and-death separation, and Wu Weiwei really couldn't understand why these two people were so clingy. He turned around and walked out of the corridor and sat on the small flower bed outside the unit door.
He heard steady footsteps, and he looked up to meet Jiang Yu's cold face.
"Brother Jiang, do you want to sit down?"
Jiang Yu glanced at the flower bed where ants were crawling and said, "No."
Wu Weiwei thought so too. It was so dirty. Brother Jiang looked like a germaphobe. But he felt that if Chen Ling asked, Jiang Yu might give a different answer.
Chen Ling stood in front of the security door and pressed the doorbell.
The person who came to open the door was a little boy, who was pretty and well-behaved. He pouted and tilted his head to look at the young man outside the door.
"Who are you looking for?"
"I'm looking for your mother." Chen Ling bent down slightly to prevent his tall body from causing oppression to the child.
The little boy looked at him timidly, turned around and shouted inside: "Mom, someone is looking for you."
Soon after the words fell, a woman in home clothes and slippers came out.
The woman seemed to be still busy, wiping her sweat with a tissue in her hand. Seeing that the person outside the door was unfamiliar, she showed a hesitant and puzzled expression: "Excuse me, who are you?"
"Auntie, I'm Zhou Yuanxin's classmate." Chen Ling softened his tone, pretending to be young and young with ease.
The young man was wearing a T-shirt, his hair was neat and tidy, and he looked at himself with pursed lips. He looked well-behaved and quiet, and it was hard to doubt the truthfulness of his words.
The look in Zhou's mother's eyes was like a stone thrown into a calm lake. After a slight ripple, it returned to calm.
"You are Yuan Xin's classmate. Come in and sit down." She glanced at the box in the young man's hand, and when her eyes fell on the form, her pupils shrank.
Chen Ling walked into the entrance hall and saw the spacious living room and exquisite decoration.
It can be seen that the family's financial conditions are not bad.
Mother Zhou walked to the wall, picked up the mop leaning against the wall, and put it in the small pool on the balcony. When she returned to the living room, she deliberately went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water for the guest.
"Thank you, Auntie." Chen Ling put the box on his legs on the coffee table, "This is Zhou Yuanxin's stuff."
Mother Zhou's face turned pale, and she gently touched everything inside with trembling fingers. The sadness that she had hidden finally came out at this moment.
"Yuan Xin is a good kid. I am the one who let him down. It's all my fault..."
The woman choked as she clutched one of her shoes. The shoe was old and small, and obviously not something that the sixteen-year-old Zhou Yuanxin could wear. But he always carried the shoe with him from this family that did not belong to him to school like a treasure and put it away carefully.
"I bought this for Yuanxin when she was 13 years old and in junior high school. She was obviously very happy at the time, but she insisted on shaking her head at me and said she didn't like it." Mother Zhou smiled, tears spreading from her eyes and hanging precariously at the end of her eye sockets.
"He has always been very sensible, so sensible that I forget that he is only 15 or 16 years old, not yet an adult."
"The thing I regret most in my life is that I shouldn't have agreed to let him go to Rongshen and live on campus..." Mother Zhou gently put down her shoes and pulled her hair with almost hatred and self-loathing.
When she looked up again, her eyes were red and she was filled with pain, annoyance and regret.
However, in a flash, all these emotions were completely cleared up by her, as if everything just now was Chen Ling's hallucination.
"I'm sorry to have to listen to all this nonsense from you."
"It's okay." Chen Ling put down the cup in his hand, "Auntie, besides coming here to deliver something today, I have another thing I want to ask you."
"you say."
"Did Zhou Yuanxin go home for the last month's vacation?"
"Yes." Mother Zhou was somewhat repulsed by this question, with obvious avoidance in her eyes.
She tucked her fallen hair behind her ears and asked, "Why do you ask that?"
"I don't want to pry into your family's privacy. I just want to know if Zhou Yuanxin behaved strangely the last time he came back, before he committed suicide."
"Yes." Mother Zhou said, "You know, your school has two consecutive days off at the end of the month. In the past, Yuan Xin would stay at home for one day, but that day... that day..."
As he was speaking, he suddenly hesitated, frowned, and there was a hint of obvious rejection in his eyes.
"Dad beat my brother that day!" the child screamed, full of dissatisfaction with this incident.
He rushed out of his room, clenched his fists and stood in front of Chen Ling, "Dad is really bad at beating people. He always beats my brother, and my brother doesn't dare to fight back. It hurts so much."
"Tao Yi!" Mother Zhou picked up the child and put him on her lap, scolding, "Children are not allowed to interrupt when adults are talking!"
The little boy pouted and clutched his mother's clothes with his little hands, looking very unconvinced.
Mother Zhou seemed not to want to talk about family matters. She skipped over the fact that Zhou Yuanxin was beaten and continued, "After a big fight at home that day, he left, saying he was going back to school. But when it was almost time for dinner, he came back again, all messed up, with a bruise on the corner of his mouth. I don't know who he had a fight with. I asked him to take a shower but he refused. When I asked him if he wanted to eat, he ignored me. When I spoke again, he stared at me..."
That look was really scary.
There is a sharpness in the calmness that makes people shudder.
No one knew what was said. Chen Ling did not delve into the part that Zhou's mother had hidden, and asked, "Then what?"
"Then he went into the room." Mother Zhou's face changed, and there was a strange emotion in her voice, "But at night, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I found his door open and no one was on the bed..."
Zhou Yuanxin rarely gets up in the middle of the night, so when she found out her son was gone, her first reaction was that he had run away.
Mother Zhou found her cell phone and called her son, but it was turned off.
Who would go out to look for someone in the middle of the night, let alone a teenage boy with behavioral abilities
She put down her phone and went to the bathroom. Just as she was about to turn on the light, she suddenly saw someone standing on her toilet.
The dim light blurred the man into a dark shadow, which was swaying strangely from side to side, like a tireless tumbler.
Mother Zhou screamed in fright, reached for the light switch and pressed it hard.
As light filled the bathroom, she saw the man's eyes suddenly open from being closed.
"Zhou Yuanxin! Why are you not sleeping so late at night and scaring people in the bathroom!" After a brief shock, Zhou's mother angrily pulled the man off the toilet lid and pushed him out of the bathroom with gritted teeth.
Because of what happened that night, Zhou's mother hated things like tumblers so much that she threw away her youngest son's tumbler toy early the next morning.
Chen Ling took a sip of water and asked, "Auntie, can I use the bathroom?"
"Of course." Mother Zhou led him to the bathroom door and pointed at the toilet lid. "He was standing there."
Chen Ling looked up and saw a horizontal pipe above the toilet lid that was not covered by the ceiling.
Is he practicing hanging
Chen Ling shook his head, thinking that the idea was a bit absurd. He walked in, closed the door, closed his eyes and chanted silently.
After a moment, he opened his eyes.
The bathroom was very clean, so Zhou Yuanxin was not blinded by the dirty things at home and behaved strangely. Jiang Yu said that there was something else hidden in the school, and that thing might be the culprit or even the murderer of Zhou Yuanxin's suicide.
Of course, it does not rule out that Zhou Yuanxin chose to commit suicide.
In the brief contact, Chen Ling could feel that Zhou's mother's attitude towards her eldest son was very contradictory. There was disgust, guilt, and love.
Zhou Yuanxin did not have a good life in this family. The fact that he was often beaten by his stepfather could easily cause indelible damage to his body and mind, leading him to the path of self-destruction.
Chen Ling washed his hands and went out. As soon as he opened the door, he heard banging sounds coming from the living room.
Mother Zhou, who was standing in the living room, hurried to open the door and helped her drunk husband into the house. She asked with concern, "Why did you drink so much again? Sit in the living room first. I'll make you some hangover soup."
"What's the point of drinking sobering soup? I don't want it! Help me in quickly." The drunkard spoke in a bad tone and pulled his wife back to him.
Mother Zhou's scalp was pulled so hard that it hurt. She frowned but didn't dare to resist. Instead, she persuaded him in a gentle tone: "If you don't drink it, you will have a headache when you wake up tomorrow."
The drunkard cursed and took a few unsteady steps toward the sofa.
Mother Zhou was too thin to hold on any longer, so she fell onto the sofa with her husband.
"What the hell is that!" the drunkard cursed, opened his eyelids which were heavy with alcohol, and dragged out the box that was against his lower back.
He rummaged through the box with empty eyes and threw the contents all over the floor.
Mother Zhou just opened her mouth and did not dare to disobey her husband's behavior.
The drunk picked up a half-filled form, looked at it under the light for a long time, suddenly spat, roughly crumpled the paper into a ball, and kicked the coffee table in front of him hard.
"Even if he dies, I won't let him live easily!" He grabbed his wife's arm angrily, "Where did you get this? Did you get it from school?"
"It's none of your business, Auntie. I delivered the things." Chen Ling walked out, pretending not to notice Mother Zhou's embarrassed expression.
"Who are you?" The sudden appearance of the stranger helped the drunk regain some sanity.
He was tall, with a fat belly, his hair was combed sleekly, and his clothes were decent, but all these external appearances formed a sharp contrast with the ferocious expression on his face.
Chen Ling: "I am Zhou Yuanxin's classmate."
"That kid is timid all day long, like a quail. I didn't expect he would have classmates. I thought he was just a rat crossing the street in school." The drunk snorted and grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth.
"Zhou Yuanxin is a very good person, he is not a rat crossing the street." From the warning in the "suicide note", Chen Ling could feel Zhou Yuanxin's kindness towards his friends.
He did not blame the other person for standing by and watching, nor did he blame the other person for being weak. He just said, this place is not a good place, let's go together.
How could such a person be a rat living in the shadows
Chen Ling looked at Zhou's mother. The woman was staring at the ground with an unpleasant expression, not daring to say a word in defense of her son.
Her weakness caused her son to be insulted even in his death.
This home does not belong to Zhou Yuanxin. Apart from his younger brother who is willing to stand up for him, no one truly protects him, loves him, and cares about him.
"Uncle, you are a leader in the company. If this kind of talk gets out, it will be bad for you to be accused of insulting and abusing your stepson. It will affect your future."
Enterprises have high standards for personal integrity and reputation. If word of beating and insulting the stepson gets out...
Promotion? It’s possible in this lifetime.
"How dare you threaten me!" The drunkard was completely sober. He pulled the tie around his neck roughly, revealing a ferocious expression as if he wanted to eat someone. "Believe it or not, I can get you out of school with just one word from you."
When facing a man like Tao Zhiyong who is irritable, manic and self-righteous, the more domineering and fearless he is, the more likely he will lose control of his emotions.
Chen Ling put one hand in his trouser pocket and smiled provocatively, "I don't believe it."
The drunkard was out of breath and breathing rapidly.
Throwing away the tie in his hand, he walked forward step by step, saying sinisterly: "Sure enough, your classmates are not good people either. Didn't your father teach you not to disobey your elders? Then I will teach you a lesson on their behalf today!"