The landlord has multiple personalities and wants everyone to pay him.

Pushing open that familiar big iron gate and passing through the small courtyard, Ye Shu felt a chill... It was so damn cold.

In this freezing cold, who's in the mood to pretend to be a literary youth and indulge in sentimentalities?

The lights were still on in the house. Grandma hadn't gone to sleep yet. She was sitting on the old sofa in the living room, covered with a thin blanket, looking towards the door.

As soon as she saw Ye Shu come in, the old lady's eyes lit up, and she happily stood up, holding onto the sofa armrest.

"Grandma, sit down."

Ye Shu quickly took two steps over.

Grandma didn't listen. She still stood up, holding onto the sofa armrest, took Ye Shu's hand, and looked up at her grandson's face carefully. Her first words were:

"Xiao Shu is back... She looks thinner, did she not eat well while she was out?"

Ye Shu thought to herself, "The old lady is indeed getting old and her eyesight is failing. How could I have lost weight? I can't fit into several clothes in my closet anymore. The down jacket I'm wearing was a gift from Sister Zhi Qiu before I came back. It seems to have been taken directly from her shop. She said I should wear new clothes home."

Despite thinking this, Ye Shu still felt her eyes well up with tears.

He knew that his grandmother usually went to bed early and would go to sleep after watching the evening news. But today, she stayed up until almost 10 o'clock to wait for him.

"You haven't lost weight, Mom. I've been eating so well outside, I've even gained weight, look."

As he spoke, he deliberately stuck out his belly and patted it with his hand.

But Grandma didn't notice his deliberately bulging belly; instead, she reached out and touched his down jacket.

"Is this too thin? It's cold here, don't catch a cold if you're not dressed warmly enough."

"It's not cold at all, milk."

Ye Shu quickly advised:

"You should go back to your room and go to sleep; it's so late."

"well."

Ye Shu helped her grandmother back to the inner room to rest, but before she did, her grandmother remembered something else:

"Your dad prepared food for you a long time ago, just in case you get sick on the way. Go and eat something."

"Okay, Grandma, you should go to sleep now."

Ye Shu watched the old lady lie down before turning off the light and closing the door.

Back in the living room, Dad had already broken up the food on the coffee table: a small plate of braised beef, a dish of peanuts, two large steamed buns, and a bowl of millet porridge.

The food was simple, but it was all filling.

Ye Shu took off his backpack and down jacket; he was already covered in sweat.

The stove in the house is connected to the kang (a heated brick bed), and there is also a fire wall. No matter how cold it is outside, as long as it is lit, the temperature inside the house can reach more than 20 degrees Celsius. Sometimes we have to open the door a crack to adjust the temperature, otherwise we will suffer from heatstroke.

I felt much more at ease once I got home, and then I realized I was hungry. My last meal was the one I had with those two guys on the train that morning.

The old man sat next to him without saying a word.

The TV was on, playing a classic war drama that had been replayed countless times. The volume was turned down to the lowest setting so as not to disturb Grandma's rest in the inner room.

Ye Shu ate quietly amidst the soft sounds of gunfire. This silence wasn't awkward; instead, it gave him a feeling of complete relaxation after a long journey.

After eating one steamed bun, Ye Shu reached for a second one. Only then did her father speak, his eyes still glued to the television, as if engaging in casual conversation:

"Your uncle and your second uncle will be back in a couple of days. Tomorrow, let's go to town and buy some things for the New Year. There will be a lot of people, so we need to buy more food and supplies."

"Uncle Da" and "Uncle Er" are the terms used in Ye Shu's hometown, referring to his father's eldest and second eldest brothers, who are also his uncles.

Ye Shu's grandmother had four children in total. Her aunt was the eldest, and her father was the youngest.

Because his uncles worked away from home all year round, Ye Shu only saw them during the Spring Festival or when there were important events in the family, so he didn't have a deep impression of them.

When Grandma was sick last time, Ye Shu asked why the two uncles hadn't come back. His father said they lived too far away, so he didn't tell them to avoid them making a wasted trip.

Ye Shu's grandfather is not tall, but short, stocky, and doesn't talk much. The deep lines on his forehead could pinch a person's fingers off. He seems to be a small foreman on the construction site now.

Second Uncle was different. In the words of the older generation, he was a bit unreliable, loved to drink, spoke in a rambling and incoherent way, and the only thing he didn't wear was a traditional Chinese jacket.

Ye Shu's impression of him was somewhat like Fan Debiao from the TV series "Ma Dashuai". Ye Shu still remembers the humiliating memory of when her second uncle tricked her into "picking up a piece of candy" with a bag of candy brought back from out of town when she was a child.

In previous years, when Grandma was still in good health, my eldest and second eldest uncles would take her to live with them for a while every now and then, always saying they would "take Mom to change her environment".

Grandma had visited a few times before, but she never felt comfortable staying there and missed home.

In recent years, my grandmother has gotten older and her health can no longer withstand such stress, so she has been staying in her hometown, where she is cared for by my most reliable father.

Although the eldest and second eldest uncles don't come back often, they never stop sending money and things home. They send money home every few days, and they also send back health products, clothes, and local specialties that they bought online, though they don't know if they're genuine or not.

In their words, "The third brother will do the work, and we'll pay for it; we can't let the third brother suffer a loss."

As for why Ye Shu's father is the third son, Ye Shu doesn't understand either. Shouldn't he be the fourth son?

But it seems that because my aunt is a girl, even though she is the eldest, she is still ranked starting from my uncle.

I don't understand, but I respect it.

Perhaps because of his own family situation, Ye Shu found it hard to understand whenever he saw brothers arguing on TV about supporting their elderly parents.

Isn't it only natural to support your own mother and take care of her in her old age? Does it really have to come to the point of tearing each other apart?

Although their family wasn't wealthy, and every family has its own difficulties, they never argued when it came to taking care of their grandmother.

That's not a very accurate way of putting it, but it did become a hot topic. I remember one year my second uncle came to pick up my grandmother, but she refused to go, which made him so angry that he ran away.

The two old men each had a son, both a few years older than Ye Shu, who had long since started their own families and careers.

Ye Shu's generation, including Xiao Tao, is exactly one child in each family, all of whom are only children. But perhaps because of how they usually get along, of the four of them, Xiao Tao is the closest to him, and the others are not that close.

"Okay, I'll go with you tomorrow."

Ye Shu swallowed what was in his mouth and replied.

Just thinking about how many more people will suddenly be in this little house in a couple of days makes me feel excited.

He actually quite likes this kind of lively atmosphere, of course, only with his own family.

He prefers to be alone with strangers.

family……

Ye Shu suddenly remembered something and regretted it so much that she wanted to slap her head.

forget!

He quickly pulled out his phone from his pocket and sent a message to Zhi Qiu:

[Sister Zhi Qiu, I'm home. You should get some rest.]

After posting, I also took a picture of the half-eaten food on the coffee table to prove that I had indeed arrived home.

As expected, Sister Zhi Qiu was still awake, because after he sent the message, the status changed to "The other party is typing..."

[Okay, it's good that you got home safely. Little Shu, you should get some rest too. You must be tired after a long day of travel. Goodnight.]

【Okay, goodnight, Sister Zhi Qiu】