Brother! This is the adoption certificate. I don't want your sister-in-law!

In the kitchen, Su Xiao was struggling with a piece of beef.

The beef was just bought from the supermarket; it was frozen solid, like a brick.

Su Xiao was slicing the beef with a cleaver when suddenly the frozen beef slipped.

The blade veered off course and grazed the tip of his left index finger.

A sharp pain shot up from her fingertips, and Su Xiao hissed instinctively.

Looking down, I saw a cut on my finger, with beads of blood seeping out.

He didn't pay much attention, rinsed it with water, and prepared to continue cutting.

Just then, a hand suddenly reached out from the side and snatched the cleaver in front of him, along with the beef on the cutting board.

Su Xiao was stunned for a moment, then turned his head and saw that Su Wan Ning was standing next to him at some point.

She maintained her indifferent expression, not even glancing at him.

"You can cut your hand even while chopping vegetables."

Her voice was as cold as ice.

Su Xiao opened her mouth, wanting to say, "It's nothing, just a small cut."

Before she could finish speaking, Su Wanning spoke again.

"So stupid."

After saying that, she pursed her lips, took a smaller cleaver from the knife rack, placed the frozen beef on the cutting board, and began to cut it.

Her movements weren't particularly skilled, but they were much more steady than Su Xiao's.

The blade slowly presses down along the beef, and slices of meat fall down neatly, one by one, with uniform thickness.

The only sounds in the kitchen were the clatter of the cleaver against the cutting board and the bubbling of the boiling water.

She didn't look back at Su Xiao even once throughout the entire process.

Su Xiao stood there, looked at her still bleeding fingers, then at Su Wan Ning's back, and suddenly grinned.

"Wan Ning, are you worried about me?"

"Knock!"

The cleaver slammed heavily onto the cutting board, making a sound twice as loud as before.

Su Wan Ning's shoulders stiffened for a moment, then she turned her head without turning around, her voice even colder than before: "Shut up, or you'll have to cut yourself."

Su Xiao wisely shut her mouth, held up her injured finger, and left the kitchen to find a band-aid in the living room.

In the kitchen, Su Wan Ning arranged the sliced ​​beef into a plate, picked up the greens next to her and began to pick them, removing the yellowed leaves one by one.

Halfway through choosing, she turned her head and glanced towards the living room. Her gaze lingered for a second on Su Xiao's fingers holding the band-aid before quickly looking away.

She put the selected vegetables under the tap to rinse them, the rushing water drowning out her very soft whisper.

"...What are you showing off for?"

After dinner was prepared, four dishes were placed on the table.

The beef was stir-fried by Su Wan Ning. She added a little too much soy sauce, so the color was a bit dark, but it smelled quite good.

The greens were stir-fried by Su Xiao, but they were overcooked and the leaves were a little wilted, but it wasn't a complete disaster.

The egg drop soup was made by two people working together.

Su Xiao cracked the eggs, and Su Wan Ning poured water into the pot.

Su Xiao sprinkled salt, and Su Wan Ning turned off the heat.

With clear division of labor and excellent teamwork.

The two sat facing each other eating, the only sounds in the living room being the clinking of bowls and chopsticks and the background music of the weather forecast on the TV.

Su Xiao ate a few bites of food, secretly observing Su Wan Ning's expression.

Su Wan Ning ate with her head down, picking up food very slowly.

When eating beef, I unconsciously chew a little faster, and when eating vegetables, I frown slightly, then swallow it nonchalantly.

After finishing her meal, Su Xiao stood up and began clearing away the dishes.

Su Wanning remained seated at the dining table.

Her gaze fell on his left hand, which was wrapped in a bandage. The finger was slightly raised because he was holding a bowl, and he dared not exert any force.

The band-aid was flesh-colored, wrapped a little crookedly, and the edges were already curled up slightly.

He can't even wrap a band-aid properly...

Su Wan Ning stared at the protruding edge of the band-aid for two seconds, then suddenly frowned.

What do you smell like?

Su Xiao turned around with the bowl in her hand, raised her arm, and smelled the sleeve of her T-shirt.

The smell of cooking oil and the raw meat splattered on clothes when cutting meat, all mixed together, does not smell very pleasant.

"Uh...it must have been smoked in the kitchen."

Su Wanning shifted her gaze from him to the television, her tone filled with undisguised disdain.

"It stinks! Go take a shower first. Leave the bowl there and don't touch it. Wash it after you're done, so you don't make the bowl smell bad too."

Su Xiao opened her mouth, wanting to say, "It can't be that bad."

But then he looked down at his clothes.

The collar of the white T-shirt was covered in a layer of gray, and there were soy sauce stains on the sleeves that I don't know when they got there.

Looking at Su Wan Ning, although she had also been busy all day, her clothes were clean and her hair had been tied up again.

No wonder they were disliked.

He chuckled sheepishly, placed the bowls and chopsticks on the stove, and raised his hands in surrender: "Okay, okay, I'll go wash them."

Su Wan Ning ignored him, her eyes fixed on the TV, her fingers pressing the remote to change channels.

Su Xiao turned and walked towards the bathroom, pushing open the bathroom door.

The water heater's flame crackled a few times, water gushed down, and steam slowly spread, blurring the mirror.

Su Xiao stood under the showerhead, the hot water washing over her body, washing away much of the fatigue from the whole day.

He took a relaxing 15-minute shower, scrubbing his hair several times to make sure he didn't smell "terrible" before turning off the tap.

He dried himself off, changed into a clean T-shirt, and opened the bathroom door while drying his hair with a towel.

The TV was still on in the living room. Su Wan Ning was sitting on the sofa, holding the remote control, in the same posture as she had been a dozen minutes ago, as if she hadn't moved at all.

Su Xiao walked towards the kitchen while drying her hair, saying, "I'm done washing..."

He went into the kitchen.

The bowls and chopsticks on the stove were found to be missing.

He paused for a moment, then opened the cabinet door.

The bowls and chopsticks were neatly arranged inside, still damp from being washed.

Plates are stacked on the left, bowls on the right, and chopsticks are placed in the chopstick holder with the ends aligned.

Everything was placed neatly and orderly, even the spacing between the plates was roughly the same.

Su Xiao stood in the kitchen, holding a towel for drying her hair, stunned.

He glanced back towards the living room.

Su Wanning remained seated on the sofa, her posture unchanged, her eyes fixed on the television.

The remote control twirled in my hand, as if a particularly interesting program was playing on TV.

But Su Xiao glanced at the TV screen.

The program "Laundry Detergent GG" is playing above.

A housewife held up a bag of laundry detergent, beaming as she said, "Its stain-removing power is increased by 50%."

He suppressed a laugh and didn't expose her.

"Late Lemon".

"……what."

"Thank you."

Su Wan Ning switched the remote control to her other hand, turned to the side, and only showed him the back of her head and her ponytail.

Her voice came from behind the sofa, cold and harsh, as if she thought he was being unreasonable.

"I didn't wash your dishes; I washed my own. Yours was just something I did on the side..."

Looking at her proud and stubborn younger sister, Su Xiao's heart almost melted.

My younger sister is so wonderful. When she gets married someday, I'll probably cry my eyes out.

Thankfully, I've been reborn now, and I can watch her grow up...

Su Xiao felt a warm feeling in her heart.

With nothing to do in his free time, he naturally thought of the financial crisis that was looming over his family.

Su Xiao wiped her hands, walked to the living room, and sat down on the sofa.

"Late Lemon".

Su Wanning didn't look up; her eyes were fixed on the TV. She only glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

"I'm going out for a walk later."

Su Wanning asked indifferently, "Where to?"

"cybercafe."

Su Wan Ning's expression froze for a moment.

She glanced at him, didn't say anything, and pursed her lips.

Su Xiao leaned back on the sofa, crossed her legs, and said casually, "I'm serious. Do you believe me? Want to come out with me?"

Su Wan Ning's eyelashes trembled slightly.

Her ear tips quietly started to burn, the color spreading from her earlobes all the way to the edge of her earlobes.

She abruptly turned her head away: "Go wherever you want, it's none of my business."

Su Xiao looked at her half-exposed red ear and smiled.

He stood up, picked up his coat from the back of the chair, and went to the entryway to change his shoes.

As she bent down to tie her shoelaces, Su Wan Ning's voice came from behind her.

Come back soon.

"Okay." Su Xiao opened the door, walked out, and gently closed it behind her.

Only after the door closed did Su Wan Ning immediately turn her head away, feeling utterly empty inside.

Did he really go to the internet cafe, or was he just lying to himself?

……

Su Xiao stood at the entrance of an internet cafe.

A faded sign hangs above the entrance: Speedy Internet Cafe.

The sounds of keyboard clattering and intermittent cursing could be heard coming from inside.

Looking at the signboard, Su Xiao felt a pang of emotion.

In his past life, he must have spent countless sleepless nights in this place, rushing here as soon as the school bell rang, saving his breakfast money to buy two hours of internet access.

He was so good at CS that no one in the whole school could beat him, and he could take on four opponents at once in Red Alert. Eventually, even the school's boss knew him.

It wasn't because he was good at playing games, it was because he had failed to pay his internet bill three times.

He pushed open the curtain and went inside.

The interior is still the same as I remember it.

Three rows of computers, about thirty in total, with large CRT monitors neatly arranged, filled the air with a mixture of instant noodles, cigarette smoke, and foot odor.

A few kids who looked like middle school students were squatting in a corner watching others play games, while someone in the back row was shouting "Charge to the B point! Charge to the B point!"

Behind the cashier sat a man in his thirties with messy hair, a cigarette dangling from his lips, frowning as he typed on the keyboard in front of a black-screen computer.

When he looked up and saw Su Xiao, his brows immediately furrowed.

"It's you again, you little brat."

The boss took the cigarette out of his mouth and said in a rather rude tone, "Don't turn on the machine if you don't have any money with you today. You still haven't paid back the three dollars you owed last time."

Su Xiao walked to the cashier: "I didn't come here to use the internet today."

"Then what are you doing here? Not here to run up debts again, are you?"

The boss looked him up and down, his eyes filled with undisguised suspicion.

He knows this kid too well.

This area is known for its troublesome students who skip class every few days to play video games. When they run out of money, they buy things on credit and then forget about them.

"I've come to see if there's any work to be done here," Su Xiao said.

The boss paused for a moment, then burst out laughing—not a polite laugh, but a laugh of amusement: "You? Someone like you knows how to look for work? Go away, go away, don't cause trouble here..."

Before he could finish speaking, another row of computers next to him malfunctioned. A middle-aged man playing Legend of Mir slammed his hand on the monitor: "Boss! It's lagging again! Is this crappy machine even playable?! Fighting a boss is like watching a slideshow!"

"Reboot it! If that doesn't work, get another one!" the boss shouted over there.

"Change what?! All three rows are stuck!"

Another young man playing Counter-Strike took off his headphones, and the character on the screen froze, the latency soaring to over 3,000. "Can your internet cafe even stay in business?!"

The boss put the unlit cigarette on the table, sighed heavily, and looked at the computer case with its cover removed, scratching his head in worry.

"These machines are less than two years old, and they're already this slow. It'll cost at least two thousand yuan to get someone to repair them. This business is really impossible to run..."

Su Xiao pulled up a chair and sat down, then leaned over to take a look at the disassembled main unit.

There was a thick layer of dust inside, the fan was covered with a clump of fluffy dust, and the CPU heatsink was almost completely blocked.

The system tray was crammed with seven or eight rogue software programs that would randomly launch, and a small "GG" popped up in the lower right corner every few seconds.

"This isn't a hardware problem with your machine."

Su Xiao said, "The system is crammed with a bunch of junk software, and the heat dissipation is blocked. That repair company charged you two thousand? They're ripping you off."

The boss turned to look at him, his expression full of disbelief: "What do you know? You're just a kid who hasn't even grown a beard yet. Go home and do your homework."

"Can I borrow your screwdriver?"

The boss didn't move.

Su Xiao wasn't in a hurry, so she just sat there and watched him.

A few seconds later, someone next to them shouted, "The boss is stuck!"

The boss scratched his hair in frustration.

"Fine, fine, go ahead and mess around with it. But you can't afford to pay for the damage if you break it."

The boss pulled a toolbox out from under the cabinet, which meant the computers here had been lagging quite a bit.

Su Xiao took the toolbox, first cleaned the dust off the fan, then removed the CPU heatsink, brushed it clean, and applied a new layer of thermal paste.

The boss was initially leaning against the side, ready to watch him make a fool of himself, but as he watched, he realized that the kid actually looked quite professional.

Su Xiao connected the computer to the monitor and entered safe mode.

It took about half an hour to go back and forth.

Su Xiao removed the string of malware from the system tray one by one, disabled startup items, cleaned the registry, and also uninstalled a bunch of malicious plugins from Internet Explorer.

"alright."

He pressed Enter, and the computer restarted.

Boot time has been reduced from more than two minutes to less than thirty seconds, the desktop is clean and tidy, and the annoying little GG icon in the lower right corner is gone.

Su Xiao then opened the control panel and adjusted a few network parameters, optimizing the LAN sharing settings. "Try other machines now, they should all be running smoothly."

The boss walked to a nearby machine with some skepticism, turned it on, opened the browser, and it opened instantly.

When I opened CS and entered the server, the graphics were so smooth it was like the screen was coated with oil, and the latency was consistently in the double digits.

He tried all the machines next to him, and they all had the same result.

A chorus of exclamations erupted from the internet cafe: "Holy crap, it's not lagging anymore!"

"Boss, you're amazing!"

"It would have been so much better if it had been fixed sooner!"

The boss stood in front of the main unit, his eyes wide open.

He turned around and looked Su Xiao up and down several times, his expression as if he were meeting her for the first time.

"When...when did you learn this skill?"

You wouldn't believe me even if I told you.

Su Xiao put the screwdriver on the table, stood up and stretched his wrists. "You have thirty-six machines here, and you need to come for maintenance once a week. I'll take care of it. How about it? The price is half the cost of your two thousand yuan repair company. I can also do LAN optimization for you, and rearrange the network speed allocation for all thirty-six machines. I guarantee no one will complain about lag anymore."

"Success! Success!"

The shopkeeper grabbed his hand, his eyes shining. "Young man, how about you come every Saturday afternoon? The price is what you said."

Su Xiao glanced at her fingers, which were clenched so tightly they had turned white, and withdrew them without making a sound. She paused for a moment and said, "The price is negotiable, but I have one condition."

"you say!"

"We're a little short on money lately."

Su Xiao rubbed her fingers together. "Could I get half of my first month's salary in advance?"

Without a word, the shop owner opened the drawer of the cash register, counted out a few bills, counted them again, and placed them on the table: "It's nothing, it's nothing! Take these first! We'll talk about it if you need more!"

Su Xiao took the banknotes, counted them, and found there were six hundred yuan.

There weren't many, but for him now, each one was like a ladder pulled back from the edge of a cliff.

He folded the money neatly and put it into his inner pocket.

He felt a little pleased.

The family now has a source of income.

"Thanks, boss." He zipped up his jacket and headed for the door.

"Hey, you haven't said how much it costs yet!" the boss called out from behind.

Su Xiao pushed open the glass door, the curtain rustled, and the wind outside blew in, chilling him as it entered his coat collar.

"1500. I'll be doing LAN optimization this weekend. You need to free up all 36 machines."