"Master Xiao, you're back!"
Hearing the greeting, Xiao Yu put down his phone and looked up. Fan Baixing had returned from visiting graves.
Beside him was a pessimistic man who radiated dejection.
"Master Xiao, this is an old classmate and colleague of mine. We've always been pretty close. I ran into him while visiting graves just now, so I invited him over, thinking we could have a meal together later and catch up."
"Hello, Master Xiao."
The man greeted Xiao Yu.
"You're a guest. Come in and have a seat."
The man nodded. He seemed rather taciturn, and after sitting down inside the shop, he simply hung his head without saying a word.
He neither played with his phone nor made conversation, as though he were lonely, with a heart full of troubles and no one to tell.
Fan Baixing sighed, carried a stool to the entrance, and sat down beside Xiao Yu.
He glanced at his old classmate inside the shop and lowered his voice. "Master Xiao, he wasn't always like this. When he was in college, his father died of cancer.
"Not long after graduation, his mother was passing a kindergarten on her way home from work when she encountered a madman taking revenge on society. She was stabbed to death trying to save a child she didn't know.
"Then, over the past couple of years, his grandparents passed away one after the other.
"Whenever he helped an elderly person up, he got scammed. Whenever he saved someone, he got framed. Helping people earned him enemies, and lending money earned him resentment.
"He once caught a thief and returned the stolen property to its owner, only to get cursed at, beaten, and framed and taken to the police station. He spent half a month in jail.
"Even worse,