That’s why the dean values you so much. Otherwise, with all the trouble you’ve caused, even if you were recommended by his teacher, he would have chosen to send you to another school… Right, you study so hard, have great grades, and know not to waste opportunities, but you don’t seem to care at all about being expelled. Whenever something happens, you always solve it by fighting. It’s really strange.”

Vivian Carter sorted out her thoughts, feeling even more confused.

Edward Thompson spread his hands. “If you’re bullied, you can’t just take it lying down, right?”

“This…” Vivian Carter really didn’t know how to respond to that.

“When I first came to America, I also thought about enduring it, but after a while, I realized that American culture is different from ours. From what I’ve learned about American history and religious culture, this place is more like the survival of the fittest world Darwin described, without any disguise.

When I chose to endure and show goodwill, those people just thought I was easy to bully and wanted to bully me even more.

Auntie, when you were in school, didn’t you also have classmates who were always bullied? And usually, they were foreign students, right?

Those bullied international students chose to endure and try to please others, but ended up being bullied even worse.

Even if I chose to endure and asked you or the dean for help, those people wouldn’t be scared afterward. Instead, they’d bully me even harder so I wouldn’t dare to report them.

There’s an old Chinese saying—‘If you can’t stay here, there’s always somewhere else you can go.’ Just like you said, the dean could send me to another school. My grades are decent, and with a recommendation letter from the dean, I could go to Stanford or UCLA.

So I choose to believe that fists are justice!”

Besides all this, Edward Thompson still had some things he didn’t say.

For example, he was different from those who gave everything to chase the “American Dream.”

Those people, no matter how badly they were doing, would always pretend to be living well in front of friends and family back home, saying they breathed sweet air every day. Even the news anchor in Ohio insisted only 3,000 fish died—she counted them herself.

But although he valued his studies, he didn’t have to stay here, so when things happened, he basically never backed down—if something needed to be done, he did it!

Just as he expected, after a few fights—where he fought ruthlessly—his reputation spread. Those who enjoyed bullying international students didn’t want to mess with someone as tough as him and chose to steer clear.

At first, Edward Thompson was just explaining, then he became a bit melancholy, and by the end, his attitude was firm and tough… This left Vivian Carter silent.

After knowing him for so long, she only now realized what Edward Thompson thought about all this.

Although at the end she sensed a bit of rebelliousness and a strong “edgy” vibe, what she felt even more was heartache.

She recalled those campus bullying news stories she’d seen before—some of the bullies were truly inhuman!

From what she knew about Edward Thompson, she was sure that every time Edward Thompson fought, he was never the one to start it. Even this time, with such an outrageous reason for the fight, judging by the dean’s reaction, it must have touched a Chinese person’s bottom line.

In other words, for every fight Edward Thompson got into, that was one time he almost got bullied!

Seeing the assistant aunt’s mood shift, Edward Thompson quickly said, “Of course, if I run into a real psycho, I’ll still avoid them.”

Vivian Carter’s sentimental mood was instantly shattered. She couldn’t help but burst out laughing and said, “Yeah, that time you were so scared you just threw your wallet at the guy and left it, lost the two thousand dollars you’d just withdrawn, and ended up cooking for me for two months.”

“I had to pay to avoid disaster, right? That guy really was a psycho! What normal person robs their own schoolmate with a gun outside campus? Didn’t he know to go rob another school? And look, one of the students he robbed knew where he lived, went to ambush him at his house, and in the end, he got shot right at his own front door.” Edward Thompson ranted.

He’d almost forgotten about this, but now that he remembered, it hurt! Two thousand bucks!

Seeing Edward Thompson’s pained expression, Vivian Carter couldn’t stop laughing. “Whether he was a psycho or not, we’ll never know—there wasn’t even time to get him checked out…”

The two of them started talking about last year’s high-profile, but not uncommon in America, case of a campus robber being shot. As for Edward Thompson putting the basketball team in the hospital, that was now in the past.

After dinner, once they’d rested enough, Edward Thompson tidied up the dining table, scraped the leftover scraps from the plates, and neatly loaded them into the dishwasher… He felt the dishwasher was the greatest invention of the 20th century, making the cooking experience two hundred percent better.

It already took two hours to prep and cook, and only twenty minutes to eat. If you had to spend another half hour washing dishes afterward, it really killed your enthusiasm for cooking.

In his previous life, he also thought it was no big deal to just wash a few dishes by hand, but after he impulsively bought a dishwasher, he realized the “truth of fragrance” never goes out of style.

Seeing Edward Thompson finish cleaning up, Vivian Carter shooed him away—she was about to enter her “slouching on the sofa, sage time” with no poise, and couldn’t let a kid see that.

Having been kicked out right after being useful, Edward Thompson returned to his own room in frustration.

With no one else around, he curled up on the sofa again, played for a while with turning the system on and off, still found nothing else to do with it, but was having a blast anyway.

He thought again about playing basketball, still unable to see a clear future, but he was sure of one thing: if he really joined the school team, he’d definitely have less time to study.