Midnight Bookstore

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

“Mum, I’m back,” the girl pushed open the door and said. She could hear her parents arguing.

Her parents did not really care if she was back, or if she had eaten dinner.

Her father was paralyzed and had to lie on the bed. He could still move a little, but there was nothing he could do apart from taking care of his bladder with a urine bucket.

Her mother had to wake up early every day to set up the breakfast stall.

The atmosphere of their family was meant to be like what the news had always talked about. Poor, but unyielding and heart-warming, with the family members supporting one another.

She should be doing good in her studies to make her parents proud.

Unfortunately, it was rare for fairy tales to happen in reality. Her family was very different from the families that the news usually reported.

His father was paralyzed, yet instead of cultivating his moral character and behaving ethically, he had an extremely bad temper. He kept scolding her mother who was working hard to feed the family, and kept accusing her of having affairs with other men.

He said her mother was a shameless b**ch.

Her mother would argue with her father and then her father would start throwing things around. The man was most likely going to spend the rest of his days scolding people from a bed.

However, she did not feel sorry for her mother, either, as her mother would occasionally come back home wearing some jewelry and clothes that were clearly not her style.

She once saw her mother and another man going into the same motel that she and her boyfriend were going to.

They almost went into the same lift. If she had not reacted quickly and told her boyfriend that she wanted to go to the washroom, she would have found herself in an awkward situation.

It was a broken family. It seemed to be swaying in the wind and the rain, but it was already filled with holes.

She had no idea why her mother did not divorce her father. She did not understand why her father was totally unaware of the position he was in after he had lost the ability to work or even do the house chores.

It was what she did every day, her daily routines.

The entry exam had long become an unachievable dream for her. Her results were just horrible, enough to bring her to despair.

She was a little regretful that she had accused her class teacher of sexually assaulting her for a few ten thousand yuan during middle school.

Her mother got very emotional, as did her father. Her mother did not go work for a few days after hearing about it. She called a few relatives over and used a stretcher to carry her paralyzed father to the entrance of the school.

The husband and wife cried out in agony.

The reporters came like sharks that had smelled blood.

Anything that was related to virtue, ethics, and human nature were always the reporters’ favorite. These incidents were usually less risky and did not cross the line, but would usually make it to the headlines.

The way that the incident ended completely took her by surprise.

She only wanted some extra money to buy some clothes.

Her class teacher, who was also her Chinese teacher, knew her family’s situation. He tried helping her a few times by paying the extra fees the school had for her.

His mother would occasionally invite her over for dinner too.

Teacher Ren was not married, and since she kept visiting him in his office and his house, it simply left the people with a lot of room for imagination.

Rumors were already spreading before she falsely accused her teacher, but she did not really care much about it.

However, when her teacher stumbled into her when she secretly went to a bar to have some fun, he was cold to her. He seemed very disappointed in her.

His mother no longer invited her over to dinner anymore. He stopped paying her fees and providing her with any financial aid.

She was very angry about it.

She then tried to threaten her teacher and asked him for money. She needed money to buy the lipsticks, clothes, and online goods that she was interested in.

However, her teacher rejected her, even though she was threatening to tell the public about it.

Even now, she still believed her class teacher was truly a foolish person. He even knocked on the table and snapped, “Facts speak louder than words.”

But was that really the case?

After the news started spreading, he was immediately suspended by the school. He eventually lost it due to the enormous pressure the public put on him.

He tried fighting back by responding to the voices online in a reasonable manner.

Even though she was just a middle schooler who was bad with her studies, she could tell that her teacher’s responses were powerless.

They seemed like valid arguments to prove how righteous and fearless he was, but to the outsiders, it looked like he was reluctant to admit his mistakes. He was arrogant and full of himself, thinking that he could just get away with it because he was a teacher.

The man had been teaching Chinese his whole career. He had taught his students how to write a nice essay, but his own writing was not that impressive.

The people did not wish to see his kind of responses. His arguments were similar to the writing style of Lu Xun, and had clearly triggered the public.

-So, you’re saying that we are all wrong, and you’re the only smart one here?-

There was no way they were going to accept it.

The attacks were even fiercer after that.

Normally, when a celebrity was caught in some scandal, they would immediately hire a public relations company to handle the situation and calm the people.

If they tried to be reasonable and talk about facts, if things were really that simple, most public relations companies would end up in bankruptcy.

The people also found out a piece of information. The teacher had an uncle who was a section chief in the local education bureau.

He was just a little section chief in his fifties. He scrupulously abided by his morals and was an old pedant, too. He liked studying the philosophy of the mind. As such, he did not have the best social relationships. He was already in his fifties, so he no longer had any chance to rise further.

{TL Note: Philosophy of the mind is a study branch of Neo-Confucianism.}

However, a short headline was enough to describe the information, The background of the perverted teacher exposed!

It was the fuse for what happened next. The people recklessly vented their anger, thinking that they were fighting the evil influence of society to serve justice.

The media tried to get more views and exposure from the incident.

It was the sumptuous banquet that she had started, and it ended when her teacher jumped from a building.

In order to let the school return to normal, the authorities decisively paid her family a few tens of thousands of yuan. It was like a nail in the coffin.

If the school was not feeling guilty, why would they compensate her for the loss?

She grieved for a night and regretted it for a month after learning of her teacher’s death.

She grieved for a night because she still had some conscience.

She regretted it for a month because she discovered that she would have earned a lot more if she had used the same trick when she was at university. It might have gotten her a recommendation for postgraduate studies, or more compensation.

She took out a purse from her pocket. It belonged to the girl called Lin Yi, her classmate. There was a lot of cash in it, and a lot of VIP cards.

She was disdainful. -Humph, a rich person. A rich b**ch.-

She took out the five thousand yuan in her pocket and placed it inside a locked drawer. She had gotten some impressive loot today. She had received many donations after the prior incident , but she had to split it with her parents.

——

The girl removed her makeup and washed her hair.

She opened the browser again and logged into Zhihu.

She was preparing to write about her day, like how she had a brother-in-law who owned a bookstore, a sister who worked as a doctor, and a father who owned a pharmaceutical company and was once the chief of a hospital.

She wrote about her classmate who was once sexually assaulted by her class teacher, but was actually a b**ch. Her classmate had lost her purse today, and even though she despised her classmate, she still took five thousand yuan from her brother-in-law and gave it to her classmate.

Five thousand yuan was just the extra of her monthly allowance. She was treating it like charity.

She had lots of followers. Every time she posted something, many people would respond and react . She liked the feeling. She found her new life through it.

She was actually struggling to distinguish between reality and the virtual world. She believed she was actually Lin Yi.

There were people that mocked her for looking down on the poor just because she had a wealthy background.

She calmly replied, “Who cares?”

She turned off her laptop and prepared to rest for the night. Staying up late was every woman’s nemesis. She had to take good care of herself. Her skin was the most valuable thing that her parents had given her.

She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

The argument between her parents was still ongoing. Her father smashed his cup while cursing her mother. Her mother cursed back, saying how useless he was, and why didn’t he just go and die instead?

She even suggested that if he dove under a car, he would have fulfilled his responsibilities as a man since the family would be compensated for his death.

The girl laughed when she heard the argument, and went back to her bedroom.

She saw a person sitting on her bed as soon as she opened the door.

It was a man. He was smoking, and tipping the cigarette buds into the lid of her skincare product.

She had no idea what reaction she should have facing him.

The man had turned on her laptop again. He seemed to be reading her post on Zhihu.

The silence lasted for around three minutes.

She finally asked in a trembling voice, “What are you doing here?”

She knew who the man was. He was Lin Yi’s brother-in-law, who owned a bookstore.

Zhou Ze tapped the cigarette into the lid of her skincare product.

Her lips twisted. It was a very expensive brand. She could only afford it after spending a night with an old man.

Zhou Ze looked at her with a faint grin and said in a serious voice, “Give me back my money!”