The landlord has multiple personalities and wants everyone to pay him.

Ye Shu felt somewhat helpless after being pushed back to the bedroom by Qin Lili.

Qin Lili said she was going to teach Xiaoxue a lesson. He wasn't stupid; of course he could guess what kind of lesson it was.

He took out his phone and sent a message to Shen Jingwan to let her know he was safe, then lay down on the bed and started scrolling through short videos.

After watching videos for about ten minutes, he had no recollection of what he had watched, because his mind was not on the video at all.

The thought of Qin Lili explaining adult knowledge to Xiaoxue in the living room filled Ye Shu with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it's a bit painful and unbearable, like a flawless piece of white jade that you've carefully treasured for many years, which was originally clean and pure, suddenly had a dot put on it by someone with a pen.

Even knowing that this kind of "pollution" is an inevitable part of growth, I still feel a little uncomfortable.

On the other hand, he had to admit that Qin Lili's actions... although a bit too direct, did hit his sore spot, otherwise he wouldn't have cooperated so readily and gone back to the bedroom.

Ever since he almost lost control with Zhi Qiu last time, he had been looking for an opportunity to talk to Xiao Xue about it.

But Xiaoxue is as innocent as a blank sheet of paper, and her innocence is different from Xiaonuan's.

Although Xiao Nuan is naive, she understands everything and is not that fragile.

Xiaoxue really doesn't understand, and she's also very fragile. This isn't just blank paper anymore; it's like glutinous rice paper—it'll break at the slightest touch.

Her first reaction to the phrase "replenishing energy in the middle of the night" is that she's going out soon, and what if it really happens on her wedding night...?

Ye Shu imagined Xiao Xue cowering in fear, tears welling in her eyes, shouting, "Ye Shu, you're a pervert!" and he shuddered.

Ultimately, it's because he's too shy.

The two of them have evolved from lovers to legally married, but he hasn't relaxed his gentlemanly self-discipline at all.

Countless times, the words were on the tip of his tongue, but the thought of the former of those two mindsets made his fatherly heart ache.

This time, Qin Lili took the initiative to play the bad guy, which can be considered as solving a rather tricky problem for him.

Ye Shu was just a hot-blooded young man in his early twenties, spending all his time with a beautiful woman. To say that he was truly a man of integrity who could remain unmoved by a woman's advances would be pure nonsense.

There's no such thing as a heart of stone; it's just that some people secretly calm down in the middle of the night.

Thinking of this, Ye Shu put down his phone and sighed deeply at the ceiling.

Ultimately, it's because my sense of morality is too damn strong. If I had lowered my standards even just a tiny bit, I probably wouldn't have to sneak around doing handicrafts in the middle of the night.

Pah! What are you thinking!

He suddenly slapped himself, suppressing his burgeoning thoughts.

You mustn't think like that; everything happens for a reason.

If I were truly someone who only thinks with my lower body, how could I have been attracted to their pure and fragile beauty in the first place? Or rather, I would never have met them, never had any interaction with them, and would have been stopped at the very first hurdle by Uncle An and Aunt Shen.

Now, every day when he wakes up and sees them sleeping soundly beside him, Ye Shu always silently thanks God with gratitude in his heart.

If, he meant if.

What if he hadn't seen that rental ad on his phone? What if he had hesitated because he was afraid of being cheated or sold to a small coal mine, or simply because he was lazy, and hadn't made that phone call that changed his life?

I'm afraid he's already spent all of the nine hundred or so yuan in his pocket.

That day, I would either sit on a park bench all night, or go to an internet cafe or fast food restaurant to make do for the night, and the next day I would have to find one of those pigeon coops with a monthly rent of 500 yuan and a toilet in the stairwell.

Find a menial job with a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan and no social insurance or housing fund, work hard during the day, and go back to your small, ten-square-meter cubicle after work to eat a bowl of instant noodles or a piece of bread to tide you over.

and then?

Then I lay alone on my single bed, listening to the deafening shouts of people playing games across the wall—which offered absolutely no soundproofing—feeling as lonely as a speck of dust forgotten by the world, day after day, year after year…

Thinking of this, Ye Shu's eyes suddenly welled up with tears, and she almost couldn't hold back her emotions.

Especially when you realize that your life trajectory almost, just a tiny bit, turned into that dead end with no hope in sight.

Furthermore, because he chose the wrong path, he will never cross paths with them again. He will lack Xia Qing's ardent love, Zhi Qiu's gentle tenderness, Xiao Nuan's complete trust, and Xiao Xue's complete dependence.

Thinking of this, Ye Shu suddenly felt a pang in her heart. Just thinking about these possible outcomes almost gave her a heart attack in bed.

Ye Shu turned over and buried his face in their pillows, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. He couldn't live without them now.

Although they, or Uncle An and Aunt Shen, all said that it was he who pulled Xiaoxue and the others out of their past lives and made them get better day by day.

But wasn't he himself also rescued from that hopeless life by them?

Now, they are the motivation that drives Ye Shu to open his eyes every morning after waking up, and the source of his confidence to face life every day.

He dared not imagine whether he could cope with his past life without them.

Fortunately, God took pity on him and not only let him meet them, but also let him, an ordinary person with no great achievements, be truly loved by them.

Ye Shu buried her face deeper into the pillow, repeating to herself over and over:

"Thank God, thank God."

It seems the old saying is true: do good deeds and keep a moral bottom line in your heart, and God will really reward you.

It seems that my habit of helping old ladies cross the street when I was a child wasn't for nothing. As for whose grandma I was helping, don't ask. Why can't my own grandma be considered an old lady?