"Young man, I haven't seen you before. Are you here to find someone?"
An old man's voice sounded in Xiao Xiao's ears.
Xiao Xiao turned to look at the old man without any surprise.
He heard the footsteps of someone approaching.
Besides, the old man's footsteps were not gentle at all.
"Um."
Xiao Xiao nodded, he was looking for "someone", "Old man, do you live on the sixth floor?"
"No, I live on the fifth floor."
The old man shook his head, "I just saw you standing here for a while and then came up to take a look."
He looked up to the left, with a hint of disgust on his face, "Young man, are you here to see your friend?"
"You'd better talk to your friend and ask him to find another place to live."
"Even if it's cheap, the environment here is too bad."
…
"Old man, don't you care about this?"
Xiao Xiao didn't believe that no one found the neighborhood committee.
I just went to the neighborhood committee, but it still looked like this, so...
He seems to be a very difficult guy to communicate with.
…
"Control? How?"
The old man sighed, "Do you know who lives there?"
"who?"
Xiao Xiao asked cooperatively.
"A psycho."
The old man lowered his voice a bit.
"Neuropathy?"
Xiao Xiao repeated softly, "A mental patient?"
"Yes, that's pretty much what it means."
The old man's expression was quite complicated, "I watched that child grow up."
"What a sin."
"Um?"
Xiao Xiao responded in time.
The old man looked a little dazed, as if he was lost in memories, "Xiao Yang and his family moved here twenty years ago."
"Xiao Feng was only nine years old at that time."
"Xiao Feng is Xiao Yang's son, and he lives alone in that house now."
The old man pointed to the door on the left side of the sixth floor.
"Xiao Feng's parents, Xiao Yang, disappeared when Xiao Feng was in his senior year of high school."
"disappeared?"
Xiao Xiao was a little surprised.
"Well, the police have been looking for him for a long time but can't find him."
"In fact, we have all secretly guessed that after so many years, they may not be able to bear taking care of a mentally ill son."
"You can't blame them."
"That kid Xiaofeng is really too permeable sometimes."
"We can occasionally hear hysterical shouting and the sound of smashing things coming from their house."
"That kid is driving his parents crazy too."
The old man's words were full of emotion and sympathy.
"They have persisted for so long, and it is not easy to leave until the children are adults."
…
The old man paused and continued: "We didn't know the child's situation when they first moved here."
"I just feel that the child seems a little depressed at such a young age."
"I thought it was due to the influence of his parents."
"Because Xiao Yang and his wife always have a somewhat obscure expression."
"It wasn't until later that we encountered the child talking to himself many times that we understood the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Xiao Yang were always frowning."
"Later the neighbors got acquainted with each other, and everyone gradually learned about the situation of Xiao Yang's family."
"That child Xiaofeng was bullied and ostracized in school because of his abnormal behavior, and he was injured from time to time."
"Although they are just minor injuries like scratches and bruises."
"They negotiated with the school many times but couldn't find a fundamental solution to the problem. Seeing that the child became more and more silent, they changed the child's school and moved."
"They hope the new environment will bring some positive changes to their children."
"But no."
The old man shook his head, "I have never seen the child Xiaofeng look like before."
"However, from the first time I saw the child until later, I never even saw the child smile happily."
"Of course, I haven't seen that child much in the past few years."
"I don't know if he has changed at all?"
"Isn't he still living here?"
Xiao Xiao wondered, in this case, isn't it incredible that the neighbors on the upper and lower floors haven't seen each other for several years?
"The child has been staying at home almost every day for the past few years, and I have never seen this door open."
The old man sighed and shook his head.
"When his parents disappeared before, this child was very silent."
"If I hadn't accidentally asked him about his parents, why he hadn't seen them for a long time, he probably wouldn't have called the police that his parents were missing."
"Maybe he also knows the reason why Xiao Yang and the others left, right?"
Having said this, the old man couldn't help but show a hint of pity in his eyes, "Except for Xiaofeng, who likes to talk to himself and say some incomprehensible things, everything else is normal."
Otherwise, he wouldn't be here, but would be in a mental hospital.
"A very quiet child, a bit dull."
"How did you get this disease?"
The old man didn't know how many times he asked himself the same question, but he still had no answer.
He knew that Xiao Yang and the others had taken Xiao Feng to see many doctors, but there was still no unified conclusion or effective treatment plan.
Moreover, Xiaofeng doesn’t like hospitals very much.
So later, they stopped going to the hospital.
...
"After the police searched for him for three months and still had no news, Xiaofeng said there was no need to search anymore."
"Since then, the child has shut himself up at home."
"I didn't even go to college."
"Maybe you can't afford the tuition?"
The old man guessed, "If it weren't for the garbage at the door, we would all doubt whether he left or something happened."
"Of course it's wrong for him to litter like this. We also went to look for him."
"Every time I knock on the door, it takes a long time for the door to open."
"Every time we asked for it, we complied with it, but we refused to change despite repeated admonitions."
"Once, a bad-tempered director of our community was about to curse, but he was frightened."
"Scared?"
Xiao Xiao was puzzled, "What did he do?"
"this-"
The old man frowned in confusion, "The director said Xiaofeng's eyes were too scary."
"It doesn't look like a human being at all."
"It doesn't look like a human's eyes?"
Xiao Xiao frowned slightly.
"Maybe the child has been alone for a long time and is a little gloomy, right?"
The old man guessed uncertainly, "However, the director, a grown man, was frightened by a young man. We all laughed at him for a long time."
"After that incident, the neighborhood committee stopped caring about Xiaofeng's littering."
"Although the smell is a bit unpleasant, Xiaofeng will clean it up after a while."
"Although it won't be clean for long, new garbage will soon be piled up."
"If the other two households have opinions, the neighborhood committee will let them communicate on their own."
"But I will tell them beforehand that Xiaofeng is a mental patient."
"Some people will move out soon."
“But there are also people who move in here because the rent is cheap.”
"The tenants change one after another, so the house will never be empty."