I have a life simulator.

"By the way, brother, the showers in the hospital are the card-operated type. You put the card in, and the water starts flowing, but the number on the card gradually decreases. It's really unpleasant to watch your money go down, which is why I showered so quickly today."

"I spent the day reading. There are many books and magazines in the hospital. It's much easier to turn pages with my left hand than to eat with my left hand."

"The books I'm reading are 'Fairy Tales' and 'The Little Prince.' Since I've read many of the stories in the first book before, I read it very quickly. I started reading the second book in the afternoon."

What does my brother do all day?

The first text message contained this content, and Liang quickly replied:

“Working in a client’s home, Ying might have actually met him before. He’s the old man with the big beard who used to visit our home often when you were a child.”

Upon receiving Ryo's reply, Hotaru quickly typed in a text message. However, because she could only use her left hand, her typing speed was considerably slower than when she had prepared the message beforehand. She even made a typo, which almost brought Hotaru to tears.

"I don't remember. When will my brother be back?"

"I'll be back after I finish my work, probably in seven or eight days? I just want Ying to focus on her treatment. When I come back, I want to see a healthy Ying."

"A long time."

This must be the longest they've been apart since birth; Ryo and Hotaru are both used to each other's company.

"It's really only a week."

Liang tried to keep his voice as soft as possible as he comforted his sister.

He certainly didn't want to tell Hotaru that he had gotten himself into a lot of trouble because of a series of bullying incidents at school. However, Ryo was also very clear that he wouldn't be locked up for too long. On the one hand, he was actually more inclined to be on the side of the victim in this incident. On the other hand, he also used the few remaining connections he had at home to contact a senior who was capable of helping him get out of trouble.

The matter is actually not complicated. If it weren't for the ever-increasing cost of her younger sister's hospitalization, Liang would never have paid attention to the bullying she had been suffering from at school.

For most students, school bullying is a terrifying and undesirable experience. The horror of school bullying lies in the unlimited kicking someone when they're down. As soon as the first person takes the initiative, the victim is branded with a mark of humiliation. It's as if bees are signaling to their companions with their scent, and others will swarm in to commit secondary violence because they know that the person has already been bullied.

They might think, "We've already been bullied by others, so what's one more time?"

In fact, he had been a rather unsociable person since his first year of junior high school.

The targets of school bullying can be students with excellent grades, students with the worst grades, boys, or girls, but ultimately they are all students who do not fit in.

Because of not fitting in with others, one will be isolated, isolation makes one appear weak, and weakness makes one vulnerable to being bullied.

Thinking back, it all started when he rejected a conversation with the leader of the bullies in his class. He declined her suggestion to go to the arcade after school because he disliked her pungent perfume and menacing red lips. She seemed quite angry because of the laughter of her friends. It was because of this seemingly inexplicable reason that he began to be bullied from that day on.

However, the usual passive-aggressive behavior has no effect on Liang; he has no interest in socializing.

As for the more common tactics:

They might deliberately kick over your lunchbox, making you eat it while you're on the floor, or force you to eat it in the toilet...

I'm a little sorry, but because I want to save money, Liang never eats lunch, let alone a bento box.

There was a dead rat in the table. Actually, the basement was full of rats and cockroaches. Not to mention Liang, even Ying wouldn't be scared by such things.

He only doodled on his textbooks twice. After Liang got first place in the class once, his textbooks and notebooks were borrowed and copied by other students. The delinquents didn't dare to go against the class's wishes, so they reluctantly shifted their focus to Liang's desk.

Words like "go to hell" and "orphan" are probably considered relatively mild. However, Ryo always wrote down some of the more offensive words in a notebook with great relish, knowing that these curse words would likely come in handy when her father returned someday.

When all these tactics fail, the last and most direct form of bullying comes down to:

violence.

Liang knew he wasn't Superman, and of course he couldn't possibly take on four or five people at once, but he adopted a rather clever approach:

If you catch someone, retaliate, even if it means biting them with your teeth, you'll take a piece of their flesh.

This strategy was quite successful. From then on, every morning, although Liang would be cornered in the toilet and beaten up first, one of the other men would also get a couple of hits in return. After this happened a few times, that man couldn't take it anymore.

After all, bullying someone who has already been bullied at school only makes them feel more at ease, because they don't think it's their fault. On the one hand, it's because of the sense of security that comes from placing individual behavior within group behavior, since everyone else is doing it; on the other hand, it's because they can comfort themselves that they didn't start it, the whole thing has nothing to do with them, and they're just joining in the fun and going with the flow.

But why is it that the people I bullied with got away with it, while I get retaliated against like this?

With this in mind, the first person withdrew from the bullying.

The next morning, when Liang fixed her gaze on another person, the other person actually shuddered first. From that day on, Liang was never blocked in the toilet again.

Their tactics began to shift towards surprise.

Liang didn't want to escalate the situation because he was well aware of his family's circumstances; he and Ying couldn't afford any further trouble.

While accepting it, Liang also resisted it, and thus devised this plan for himself.

Although being doused with a bucket of cold water in winter is unpleasant, and being hit by a soccer ball while walking on the street is also terrible, you can grit your teeth and bear it.

Victims of school bullying often suffer more severe psychological trauma than physical harm, but this doesn't quite apply to Liang.

He certainly hated the bullies, but he was more concerned with how to protect himself.

The essence of bullying is the strong taking advantage of the weak, so just make yourself stronger.

If it weren't for Hotaru's situation, Ryo should be able to handle this mess on his own in another month or two.

However, after Hotaru fell ill and was hospitalized, Ryo gradually abandoned his previous plans.

Liang once heard a joke:

What should I do if I am scammed out of 10,000 yen by a telecom fraud?

The answer is to transfer another five million yen to the other party, which will greatly speed up the police investigation.

Liang used to be afraid of making a big deal out of things, but now he realizes that sometimes making a big deal out of things might be better.

As a result, he is currently being held in temporary detention here because of the considerable force of his retaliation.

However, the bullies were in a much worse situation than him. Being caught bullying a classmate in public during the school's 70th anniversary open day was quite a big news story these days.

Although he expects to be expelled from school after this incident, he will also receive a considerable amount of compensation and hush money.

After stretching, Liang realized that her sister had actually called her.

The other person should have been in the hospital room. Did they call him from under the covers?

"Hey, brother."

After the call was connected, Ying's voice was not as weak as she had imagined.

"I'm here. Why are you calling? You'll disturb other people."

"It's okay, I sneaked into the bathroom by myself."

Ying was probably quite impressed with her own flash of inspiration, her tone carrying a hint of pride.

"Is the IV drip finished?"

"Yes, but it's still inconvenient to move my right hand."

The environment was very quiet for both parties on the call. Liang could almost hear the faint chirping of insects and the soft breathing of Ying on the other end.

"It's so quiet over there, brother."

Hotaru seemed to have sensed the surroundings as well; she clutched a flip phone, the same model as Ryo's, in her small hand.

“It’s so quiet.”

"I can see the stars from here."

As Ryo listened to Hotaru talk, he imagined her peering out the bathroom window. Hotaru had always loved looking out the window since she was little.

Look at the stars in the sky, the people on the ground, and the wild cats jumping around on the eaves.

"Does brother still remember the origin of our names?"

"Ok?"

Hotaru suddenly asked this question, and Ryo was a little taken aback. He paused for a moment before answering:

"I remember it was a Tang Dynasty poem from ancient China, I think it was by Du Mu."

"Yes, it's Du Mu's 'Autumn Evening'."

"I heard that my mother had already decided on our names based on this poem from the beginning."

"The silver candlelight shines coldly on the painting screen in autumn, and a light silk fan flutters against the fireflies. The night sky is as cool as water, and I lie down to watch the Altair and Vega stars."

"But I don't think I've ever seen fireflies before; there aren't any in the city."

Ying said indignantly, her tone full of childishness:

"The fans in the house are always used to swat mosquitoes and flies."

"Pfft."

Ryo couldn't help but chuckle when his sister's words made him laugh.

"I wonder if the stars I saw were the Altair and Vega stars from the poem."

"That will be more obvious around Qixi Festival, right?"

"Too."

Ying nodded, then asked in confusion:

"The purpose of the stars shining is so that everyone can one day find their own star."

"This is the sentence I saw today."

"But in the legend, the stars Altair and Vega are meant to be together, and belong only to each other."

"Don't you think the two statements contradict each other, brother?"

Liang had no idea where Ying had learned so many strange and unusual questions, and he couldn't answer them for the time being.

I think neither statement is wrong.

Not hearing Liang's reply, Ying answered herself, her face appearing even paler in the moonlight, yet her smile remained beautiful:

"Stars have their own stars, and people will meet their own people; they are each other's stars."

"Go back and rest well, you might catch a cold."

After a moment of silence, Liang replied in this way.

He had a feeling that his sister knew something, and she was behaving strangely tonight.

"Okay, I'm going back now."

Hearing Ryo's urging, Hotaru returned to her usual lively self.

"Good night."

"Good night."

-------------------------------------

"Excuse me."

Liang bowed to the well-dressed old man in front of him to express his gratitude. He knew very well that without the other party's mediation, not only would he not receive compensation, but he might also have been implicated.

He was oversimplifying things; things in the world don't always go according to his expectations.

"It's alright. After all, you're Qiu's family, so I should take care of you out of both courtesy and reason."

"I just never expected that your family would turn out like this after Qiu left."

The old man sighed and said that although he knew that the Kitagawa family had changed in the past few years due to the sudden death of their eldest daughter, he did not expect that only Ryo and Hotaru were left.

"How about you consider working for our theater troupe? Maybe you have a talent for it."

"Just like autumn."

With a sense of urgency, the old man turned his gaze to Liang. Thinking that the boy in front of him was the younger brother of that talented theatrical actor, his breathing became somewhat heavy.

I heard the name I least wanted to hear.

"No need, I can manage on my own now."

He smiled and declined.

"Really? That's a real shame."

The old man briefly came to his senses, then chuckled self-deprecatingly. Indeed, actors like Qiu are hard to find.

Considering that at that time, the Kitagawa family relied almost entirely on the eldest daughter to earn money, and the parents favored each other, the other two children were hardly ever paid attention to.

"Thank you! We are very grateful for your attention to the Kitagawa family. If you would like to cooperate, please call the number on the business card."

The last time I saw Liang was when she and her younger sister were handing out business cards behind their older sister, greeting customers in a humble manner.

"Then I'll go first."

"Well, walk slowly."