Chapter 5 — Midnight Doorbell

"If our house prices are pulled down in the future, will you compensate us for all the losses? As a human being, you can't be that selfish." The building manager sent me a private message, his tone extremely impatient: "Ms. Vuong, don't make such a big deal out of it. The higher ups have already asked..." I didn't answer anyone. My husband came home from work, saw the trending search news, and almost couldn't hold his phone steady. He sat on the sofa and hesitated for a long time, but finally couldn't help but advise: "Wife, if you feel uncomfortable, we can rent this house and move to another place to live for a while." "You do this, if the house is really sold at a low price, won't we lose a lot..." I patted his hand, smiled and said: "Don't worry, you can just wait to see a funny show." At eight o'clock in the evening on the day of the auction, more than a hundred dollars. Thousands of people flooded into the live broadcast room. I sat in front of the camera, filming the house from the living room to the bedroom, like I was seriously filming a video introducing the house to everyone. After the introduction inside, I stopped and opened a video projected on the screen. In the video are scenes of the old woman appearing in front of the video doorbell over the past three months. Three months, more than a hundred times at night and early morning. The next scene is her blocking my door, scolding me for being slow. Her whole family came with the bill to blackmail me. The conversations in the resident group where everyone attacked me together. Attacking and insulting comments below the preschool's account. Finally, I looked straight into the lens, summarizing what I had experienced in three months. The netizens who were watching the fun just now completely changed their attitude. "Oh my god, this old lady did it on purpose, right? Who rings the bell every day in the middle of the night and early in the morning?" "That's right, isn't this bullying women?" "How come it's been three months and I still can't remember my house number? Are you pretending to have senile dementia?" "This man is so despicable, he can't control his mother." but also learn how to blackmail.” Before the live broadcast ended, someone had already investigated the name, workplace and phone number of the old woman's son. There are also his colleagues and classmates. Previous incidents include stealing instant noodles from classmates, then stuffing rocks into the noodle bag after eating. Or embezzling money to organize collective activities, tricking colleagues into going to a deserted mountain in the suburbs to have a picnic and eat instant noodles, all of which were dug up again. Each story, one by one, each story is more special than the last. When I turned off the live stream, the number of online viewers exceeded five hundred thousand. The next morning when she woke up, the old woman's son was completely famous. Someone posted a screenshot to the residents group. Below his company's official account appeared thousands of comments, asking the company to fire "this type of scum employee". The media blogger in Court No. 3, who claimed to have one hundred thousand followers and once shared his live stream link, deleted his account overnight. The aunt who had a profile picture of a peony didn't say anything anymore. After the live broadcast that night, the development of the incident was beyond everyone's expectations. The next day, the old woman's son's company published an internal notice, saying that he "due to personal behavior that seriously damaged the company's image, he was fired." He continuously sent more than ten messages in the residents' group, initially begging me to delete the live broadcast, then saying he was willing to directly apologize and compensate. Finally, her voice was as soft as water: "Sister Vuong, I know I was wrong, please respect your mother's love

I'm old..."I didn't reply to a single message. The group's attitude soon changed. The neighbors who had previously spoken up to help him all remained silent. Only the building manager was still quite enthusiastic, calling me three times in a row. He smiled approvingly on the other end of the line: "Miss Vuong, you see this matter has become so big, the leaders on my side are also under great pressure. How about we negotiate a little..." I directly interrupted him. "No need to negotiate. I will resolve all the unfair treatment I have suffered during this process according to official procedures." I arranged all the documents and handed them over to the police station. The police officer on duty looked at them for a while, then looked up at me: "We have to verify these documents. You just go ahead and wait for the announcement." After a week, the old woman, her son and daughter-in-law were all called to give statements. As a result, after the family of three walked out, the neighbors started making noise demanding a divorce. The security guard secretly told me a lot of stories in the residential area. It turned out that when the whole family gave statements at the police station, during an argument they accidentally revealed everything. At first, the son refused to admit that he had instigated it. urged the old woman to do those things.