At night, the meal is over.

Qi Baobao and Zhou Xiaomo, who drank some wine, were washing dishes and washing dishes in the kitchen, because they drank wine at dinner, so the faces of the two girls were slightly drunk.

"Sister Qi, Xie Lu, thank you for taking care of my brother." Zhou Xiaomo chatted with Qi Baobao while washing dishes.

"Thank me for what, his kid can bear it, how can he ask me to take care of it, he is taking care of me." Qi Baobao said, "Xiaomo, it's you, you should thank him well, for you, he has suffered a lot this year." ”

Zhou Xiaomo secretly wiped away her tears and said gratefully: "I know that he is always so good to me and doesn't care about his body at all. ”

"Yes, he's a man who doesn't know how to get tired." Qi Baobao said with emotion, "I never thought that a young man who didn't finish high school would have the perseverance to stay up late and study by himself under the street lamp, I never thought that a young man who was dizzy and afraid of heights would have the courage to grab food with those people who were in the dark, and I never thought that a young man who had nothing could come to this point in just one year......"

Zhou Xiaomo listened to Qi Baobao's words, tears had already fallen, and after a pause, she asked Qi Baobao: "Sister Qi, you may have seen those scars on his back, right?" ”

Qi Baobao was stunned for a moment, and then nodded slightly, after all, the time I saw the bare back of the weekend was undressed in the hospital for the weekend, so when I thought of that scene, Qi Baobao looked slightly drunk, she nodded slightly, and said, "I see, but I don't know where those scars came from." ”

"You are already that ......" Seeing that Qi Baobao blushed and nodded, Zhou Xiaomo's heart was sour, but she didn't show it, because this was the biggest secret she buried in the depths of her heart.

How could Qi Baobao not understand that Zhou Xiaomo had misunderstood that she had already done something between men and women on the weekend, for a while, her face turned even redder, and she hurriedly explained, but in order not to let Zhou Xiaomo know that she was worried that she was beaten when she went to the hospital on the weekend, so she lied: "Xiaomo, don't get me wrong, your brother and I are still innocent." That time he fainted due to low blood sugar, and when he was in the hospital, I changed him into a hospital gown, so I saw it by accident. ”

"So?" I heard that she was in the hospital because of low blood sugar over the weekend, Zhou Xiaomo's expression was slightly repeated, and she paused, she said, "Sister Qi, do you know how those scars on his back came from?" ”

Qi Baobao shook her head, driven by curiosity, she couldn't help but ask Zhou Xiaomo: "How did you get here?" ”

Recalling the big and small scars on his back over the weekend, Zhou Xiaomo said sadly: "Our family is very poor, and our parents were laid off when we were very young. When he was still in elementary school, he was very sensible, he said that only by studying hard can the Zhou family's poverty be changed, so he would stay up late every night to study, sometimes he was too sleepy, he would learn the ancient 'head cantilever beam cone thorn strand', he would hide in the bedroom and beat his back with his belt. ”

"You can't imagine that a teenage elementary school student is studying advanced courses such as high school math and high school English every night, and you would not imagine that a fifth-grade elementary school student is proficient in English, French, Japanese, ......."

"When he was in the sixth grade, he participated in the National Primary School Student Essay Competition, the first prize, and in the first year of junior high school, he participated in the Olympiad Mathematics Competition, with a full score, and in the third year of junior high school, he took the first place in the whole health city, which was more than 80 points higher than the second place......

"Since he was a child, he has been called a genius, known as a scholar, and a god, but, who knows, he hides in the bedroom every night and beats himself on the back again and again with his obsolete cowhide belt that my dad used when he was young?"

"But behind the brilliance, there are always countless bitterness, I live next door to him, the walls of our house are not soundproofed, every night listening to the sound of him slapping his back with a belt, I will lie on the desk and cry. Ever since I was a child, my parents loved to tell us inspirational stories about celebrities, but I can safely say that no matter how inspirational celebrity stories are, they are not as inspirational as my brother's. I can safely say that if it weren't for his influence, I wouldn't have even gotten into college. ”

Listening to what Zhou Xiaomo said, Qi Baobao felt that her heart was shocked again, she now finally understood what that young man had the perseverance to squat under the street lamp in the heavy snow to teach himself, she finally understood that the young man who was less than twenty years old dared to fight hard with those people who were in the dark, a person who had beaten his back with a belt since he was a child, what kind of perseverance and courage did he have?

"Since he worked so hard, since his grades are so good, why didn't he finish high school?" Qi Baobao was very puzzled, she asked Zhou Xiaomo, "I heard him say that he was kicked out of school when he was a sophomore in high school." ”

"That's where his maturity comes in." Zhou Xiaomo said faintly, "After my parents were laid off, the family's expenses could only be earned by picking up rags and setting up stalls. ”

"After graduating from junior high school, I went to high school, and I went to high school at the same time as her, how much did it cost? How much do I have to spend on living expenses? Looking at his parents' increasingly arched backs, he was very distressed. On the first day of high school, my brother secretly told me his thoughts for the first time, he said that he was ready to give up his studies, he said that his parents were too hard and tired to provide for the two children's education, and he said that he had to share the pressure of the family. ”

"I scolded him at the time, I said, now the family is a little harder, but we should study hard, as long as we graduate from college and find a job, the family environment will be naturally good. But he said that it costs money to go to high school, and it still costs money to go to college, and the family's income of 20,000 or 30,000 yuan a year can't support it at all, even if you can have scholarships, grants and loans when you go to college, but the pressure on your parents will never be weakened because of this, and he also said that he doesn't want me to be distressed by the constraints of life, and he wants me to live better than those second and third generations in college. ”

"I can't convince him, since he was a child, although he is a younger brother, but I, who am an older sister, have always been taken care of by him and protected by him."

"He was so smart, in order not to make his parents sad because of his withdrawal from school, he chose to deliberately let his grades decline after he went to high school, and he deliberately made mistakes in the questions he would have done in every exam, and during that time, he often skipped class to go out to work part-time, bar waiter, stall, construction site migrant worker, he did everything. In this way, a genius student slowly fell. ”

"Of course, if it was just because of declining grades and frequent skipping classes, the school would not have expelled him, not long after the start of the second year of high school, he asked a girl from the next class to the laboratory, and he deliberately wanted to do that with that girl...... He calculated very cleverly, and it happened that several big leaders of the school checked that night, and they happened to bump into ......"

"The school did not report this matter for the sake of the girl's reputation and the school's reputation, but found a separate reason to dismiss my brother......"

"How hard should my brother be at that time when a person who had spurred himself with a belt since he was a child in order to be admitted to university had to find ways to get himself out of school? That time, he dragged his old father's broken schoolbag that would be used to bury my grandfather and ran alone to the mountains to bury my grandfather's grave bag, and cried for three days and three nights......"

"He fainted from hunger, fainted from crying, and I found him first, when he fell in front of his grandfather's grave, skinny and bones."

"It's been a long time, but I can still remember what my dad said to him at the hospital, and I was right next to him."

"My dad said, 'Son, you're still going the way of Lao Tzu after all. Since your grandfather's grandfather's generation, our Zhou family has been poor, and the life of life is just one word, suffocation! When I was a child, your grandfather also hoped that I could study and become a talent and get ahead. However, I disappointed the old man. He thinks that you are smart when you are young, and you don't know how much hope you have, especially when you took the first place in the city in the high school entrance examination, and the old man was so happy that he didn't sleep all night. When you were in your first year of high school, his old man left, and when you were in class, he didn't let me tell you, he walked with a smile, saying that he was happy, and he could finally go underground to give an explanation to the ancestors of the Zhou family, and he said that he wanted to tell the ancestors that our Zhou family had finally become a scholar through the efforts of countless generations. Pity! Ay! ’”

"My dad was very distressed when he said this, but he didn't know what to say, and my brother was even more hurt when he heard this, and I wanted to tell my dad that my brother wasn't kicked out of school because he couldn't study......

"At that time, after listening to my father's words, my brother, who was suddenly crying hoarsely in bed, suddenly stopped crying, he clenched his fists, and his bloodshot eyes were full of determination......"

"From that day on, my brother began to go out to look for a job, although he is very capable, although he is no worse than those who have studied in college, but his age is there, his education is there, no company will want him, and after that, he went to work in a brick factory through that girl......"

"Sister Qi, how hard it is to work in a brick factory, maybe you and I have just heard and seen it, and have never experienced it personally, carrying cement, picking sediment, moving bricks to the car, I dare to say, even a man in his twenties and thirties may not be able to do it, but my brother persevered, although the salary is not high, although he has to work more than ten hours a day, although he is so thin that he looks like a man in a month......"

"The scars on his back that were whipped by the belt eventually became indelible marks because of the erosion of cement and sweat......

"In addition to the belt injury, the scar on my brother's back was caused by the fight. People are poor and bullied, and my brother has been grinning with all those who look down on him and bully him since the day he entered school. ”

"The most memorable time was when I was in my third year of high school. At that time, a gangster outside our school pestered me all day after school, asking me to be his girlfriend, and during that time, I didn't dare to go home after school. A few days later, my brother didn't know where he found out about it, and he rushed from the brick factory to the gate of our school with a brick. It was noon when school ended, and the thug with a bunch of boys was waiting for me at the door. My brother rushed up and didn't say a word, and slapped a brick on the thug's vest. ”

"It was just a brick, and the little thug lay on the ground, and his little brothers also pulled out a piece of knife one by one to besiege my brother, I panicked, and rushed up to persuade him to fight, but they even beat me together. In order to protect me, my brother pressed on my body and let those knives slash wildly on his back, as miserable as cutting watermelons. ”

"Later, when the men got tired, my brother gritted his teeth and stood up, grabbed the knife of one of the thugs, and he told me to run away, while he ignored his bloody back, and chased and slashed the thugs who had slashed his back like crazy, and finally beat the thugs until they all ran away."

"Because of the excessive blood loss, the old brother collapsed in a small alley, and when I caught up, he was almost out of breath......"