During the holiday break, I went to the hair salon to trim my hair.

While getting my hair cut, a middle-aged woman in pajamas walked in.

She looked around, then sat down and started chatting.

"It's really hard to raise kids these days. A can of milk powder doesn't last a month.

"Lu Yuting is so greedy, selling things at high prices. My daughter-in-law insists on buying from her store, she doesn't care about the money."

The salon owner remained silent, quietly cutting hair.

The woman fidgeted on the bench, coughed twice.

She continued in a secretive tone, "When Lu Yuting was at her parents' house, she was never well-behaved. With her stepfather... oh, who dares to say."

The salon owner interrupted her, "Stop, can you talk about this kind of thing so casually?"

"Casually? My niece lives next to her house. One night, my niece saw Lu Yuting running out barefoot, the couple argued all night.

"The next day, they made up and went out happily to play cards. Clearly, it was the little one who caused trouble first, can't blame the man.

"Sigh, she's been a sly one since she was young."

My head buzzed.

No wonder I always felt something was off.

Seeing my uncle always made me feel disgusted subconsciously, there was a reason for it.

My cousin running away from home wasn't just rebellion.

A dark street unfolded before my eyes, a cold night, a slender girl running barefoot out of the house, wandering the streets...

The woman kept on talking.

"That boy from the Wang family, got involved with her again, not just eloping, he even went to jail for her!"

"What you're saying isn't fair."

The salon owner stopped cutting.

"Wang Chao got into a fight, he injured someone's head, they refused to reconcile, that's why he went to jail. After he went in, Yuting often went to the victim's house to deliver rice and oil. There's an old lady in that house, paralyzed, she's willing to help wash her."

The woman was very dissatisfied.

"That's because she felt guilty. Everyone is from the same hometown, working in a factory in Kunshan, how did they end up fighting? It's not her fault that two men got into a fight!

"The one who got hit is Guan Qihu, my maternal grandmother's grandson, a very good young man."

She gave a thumbs up.

I jumped off the chair, my temples pounding.

I turned and pointed at her, shouting, "Stop talking nonsense! Guan Qihu used to sit next to me, he would hit me all the time, he couldn't even write a punctuation mark in his essays, he's just a stupid bully!"

I was trembling with anger, this was a childhood nightmare buried deep for years.

Today, I heard the name of this demon again, being praised as a "good person."

Back then, in third grade, he would suddenly hit me on the back with his fist, once I even cut my mouth, blood everywhere, thinking I was going to die.

I went to my mom crying, she was staring at mahjong tiles, impatiently saying, "Go away, why does he only hit you, not others? Isn't it because you provoked him?"

I asked the homeroom teacher to change my seat, he said, "Give him another chance, I'll educate him."

As he turned around, I heard him say, "Damn, so many problems."

So, I continued to be beaten by Guan Qihu, never knowing when his fist would come down each day.

I fought back, but he would just sneer, "Doesn't hurt at all. Want a scratch?"

Then he would hit me even harder.

Every night, I would cry under my blanket, not wanting to go to school.

It was my sister who saved me.

After school, she waited at the school gate, as soon as Guan Qihu came out, she chased after him.

Guan Qihu saw he was about to be caught, he lay on the ground and rolled around in fear.

My sister asked him if he dared to continue, he was so scared he wet his pants.

At that time, my sister was the squad leader with three stripes, very imposing.

Later, the teacher changed my seat to a girl.

Later, I improved and always ranked first in the class.

The teacher praised me often, my mom also looked at me differently, seriously nurturing my studies.

From then on, my path of learning was smooth and bright.

But, if it wasn't for my sister, maybe I would have ended up like my classmate Xiao Qing, faking illness to skip school, first for a week, then a month, and eventually dropping out completely...

That was a crucial crossroads in my life.

But because things went so smoothly later on, I had forgotten.

I had forgotten everything, including all that my sister had done for me.