The aunt snorted and said to me, now that everyone is dead, why do you still ask these questions? I told the aunt that if it was really caused by us, we also hope to give Zhang Ma some compensation. The aunt refused.

She yelled, "compensate?" If you want to compensate, you can't just compensate her, you have to compensate all of us neighbors.

I glanced at Hu Zongren, who also frowned at me. We all know that aunties at this age like to make trouble most of all. More than half of the people joining in the fun are people of this age. And I

He and Hu Zongren couldn't really make any compensation. Anyway, it was a blank check, so it didn't matter.

So I said to the aunt, this is not impossible, but you have to tell me about Zhang Ma's situation first. You are all living well. Just based on what you say, I have to believe you? At this time, a

The man came over and said, it's not that you really killed this person, it's just that you burned paper in front of our building, which made us neighbors feel very uncomfortable, as if we were living on the ashes rack in the cemetery.

There are still people coming to worship every day, which is like talking nonsense. I turned around and asked him, did Zhang Ma also have any opinions on our burning paper? No one said anything. So I asked, what about Zhang Ma now?

Are there any other family members at home? Which floor and number does she live in? Are her family members present? Still no one said anything. It took a while before someone came up and said, Zhang Ma lives in 402, and her children are all here.

Without him, there is only an old man left in the house.

I looked up at the fourth floor of this building. I just saw people on the two balconies on this side, and those people are surrounding us now, so I guess 402 should be on the other side.

In a house, Zhang Ma’s family is not present. The neighbors asked twice before but did not answer. They must have felt that it is inconvenient for outsiders to discuss other people’s family affairs, especially the dead old man. I thought to myself and

Hu Zongren continued to confront these neighbors here, and probably couldn't find any new information, so I walked to Hu Zongren and said to him, let's withdraw first and talk about it on the way.

Hu Zongren nodded and began to collect the money and paper he had just thrown on the ground. I also told everyone, please don't worry, we will really not burn paper here in the future. We will tell everyone the trouble caused to uncles and aunts.

Apologized, we will clean up now, everyone please calm down, it was a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding! After saying that, I bowed to everyone, thinking that apologizing is not a big deal, it is just a touch of upper lips.

Lower lip? Then I helped Hu Zongren to take all the paper ashes left behind to the garbage dump and throw them away, and then I pulled Hu Zongren towards the way we came.

Hu Zongren asked me, don't you care? I said of course, but now that we are making such a fuss and there are so many people here, how can we continue to investigate? Hu Zongren looked at the time and said, it is already late.

, if we don’t hurry up, we might not be able to finish it today. I said don’t worry, you and I will go out to buy a bottle of water, and then buy a band-aid, we will have another cigarette and then come back slowly, and the crowd will probably disperse by then.

Now that it's open, let's just go directly to 402 and find Zhang Ma's family to understand the situation. Hu Zongren probably didn't think of a better way, so he could only follow me. I bought water because of what I just said.

I'm a little thirsty, the Band-Aid is because of the wound on my brow bone, and smoking is because I'm addicted. I can always find some excuse to spend the extra time, provided that I think this time is unnecessary.

Almost 10 minutes have passed since I came back from shopping outside and smoking cigarettes. As I expected, the crowds of people joining in the fun are usually in a fun mood. Without the person performing for them, they naturally It dispersed. As evening approached, the sky gradually started to get darker. When I walked downstairs, I could even hear the clang of spatulas and iron pots colliding with each other from the kitchen of a household upstairs. Occasionally, I could hear someone coughing due to being choked by cooking fumes. When there was no one around, Hu Zongren and I walked to the corridor first, and I turned around and took out a small handful of grave soil. I sprinkled it from left to right to form a boundary, because after all, we are going to visit the place where the deceased lived. Since it was not very friendly to us before, the band-aid on my eyebrow bone can be my witness, so I still have to be careful. OK, because if we need to escape later, this is our only way.

Then Hu Zongren and I started to go upstairs. The lights in the corridor were the kind of voice-activated lights that would light up when we stamped our feet. However, because it was still bright, the lights were not obvious. This also means that the lights here at night are actually only enough to see. The road was not illuminated. On the way upstairs, Teacher Yang called Hu Zongren. Hu Zongren briefly told him the situation and what we were doing, saying that all your other colleagues had left. , several places are also closed, you'd better find a place to wait for us, we'll go find you when we're done here. After hanging up the phone, Hu Zongren and I almost reached the fourth floor.

I have a lot of affection for this kind of old and dirty corridor. Because I lived in such an environment for a while when I was a child. At that time, I just learned to smoke from a group of bad boys, but I didn’t dare to I brought the cigarettes home, so I hid them in the corridor. The piles of debris piled up by the residents and the newspaper and milk boxes became the best places for me to hide the cigarettes. But then it was probably because there were people as smart as me. Thinking of this, I also hid my cigarettes in the place where I usually hide cigarettes. So when I went to hide the cigarettes, I found a pack of cigarettes placed there. I thought that being discovered so easily meant that this place It wasn't safe, so I stole his cigarette, wrote a huge "Humph!" on a small piece of paper, and put it there.

But I still don’t know who hid the pack of cigarettes there, and I don’t even know the expression on that person’s face when he saw the note.

Facing the house number, we found 402. The iron door of this family was different from what I originally expected. Usually starting in the 1990s, when most people install house doors, they will choose the iron security door with higher security. , the kind with cat eyes. But this family just has a simple left and right pull-type iron fence gate. Inside the iron gate is a wooden door painted yellow. Hu Zongren whispered to me, such a retro door is really It's rare. Even if we don't know who lives here, just judging from the door, if there isn't a pauper living inside, it must be an old man. I nodded and reached out to pull the iron fence. The door, but my movements were very light, just to try to see if I could open the door. Sure enough, the door was not locked at all. I could open it easily even without a key. This means that there is someone in the room at present and the outside is not locked. The iron gate is just for the convenience of getting in and out.

Out of politeness, after all, it was my first visit, and I would definitely mention the sadness of the people in this house later. So I stretched out my palm and slapped the iron fence door a few times, making a sound like the iron pieces colliding with each other.

After slapping it several times, an old voice came from behind the wooden door, "Coming... coming..."

The person who opened the door was a thin but tall man in a maroon furry hat who looked to be about 70 years old. He was wearing a beige knitted sweater with some slits and wormholes on it. I wanted to get one myself.

We were quite casual at home. The uncle didn’t recognize us, so he asked slowly through the iron gate, the wooden door was only half open, who are you, who are you looking for? I quickly identified

Looking at the old man in front of me, I realized that when Hu Zongren and I were making trouble downstairs this afternoon, he was not among them. So I immediately said with a smile, "Hello, uncle, we are street workers, and today we are visiting

, I wanted to express my condolences to you and see if you are doing well. After saying that, I stretched out my foot and kicked Hu Zongren, and Hu Zongren immediately echoed, saying yes, yes, you see it’s already this point, we are about to get off work.

Yes, I know you are at home at this time, so I took the liberty to disturb you.

Through the iron gate, the old man looked at Hu Zongren and me up and down. Although we both tried our best to put on a harmless smile, the old man still asked us slowly, "Are you here to sell something?"

Neither of them bought it. After saying that, he planned to close the shop. I quickly said, uncle, you misunderstood. We are not selling things. We really want to know something about your wife, Zhang’s mother.

Based on what the arrogant aunt downstairs said earlier, and what we saw with our own eyes after we knocked on the door, it was obvious that the old man in front of us must be Zhang’s wife. As expected, when I said this, the old man showed a hint of sadness.

, but he was unwilling to accept our expressions of sympathy. He still didn't open the door, but just asked us if everyone was gone and there was nothing left to talk about. In fact, I could have opened the iron door and barged in. Huh?

Zong Ren, I also believe that he is capable enough to dig out everything about Zhang Ma from this uncle's mouth, but we still dare not do this. The world we originally lived in is already dark enough, and with the addition of someone who breaks into a private house, this is even more difficult.

We don’t want to be together anymore. When the old man said that, I told him, in fact, our street will conduct a census soon. Mother Zhang is already so old, but we also heard that she left early some time ago.

Well, everyone knows that Zhang Ma was a good person during her lifetime, so our leader has asked us to take special care of your family. We need to do some understanding of the situation. It can be regarded as our street doing something for Zhang Ma.
Chapter completed!