Chapter 5 Chapter Two

When I got home, Dad was drinking with four workers in the living room while watching the live horse racing on TV.On Sunday, the scene of my house was no different from that of other people's houses. Dad runs a small labor shop and employs a few workers.Gongwudian sounds very foreign, but it is actually just self-employed people who pick up jobs and repair houses everywhere. Having said that, my dad, who has a cheerful personality, especially likes to call a group of people to drink at home during the daytime on rest days.Because what he likes most is that others call him "boss".

Dad likes to pretend to be rich, but in reality he is very stingy.For example, he would give me 50 yen or 100 yen pocket money while drinking, but then he would definitely ask me carefully what I spent it on.If I buy something that he thinks shouldn't be bought, he will start nagging: "To spend money on this kind of thing, Shi Jinzi has no idea how hard it is to make money!" So, if I let him know that I bought an unknown creature, he will definitely nagging endlessly.So I hid the bottle of goblin creature in my clothes, and walked through the booze-smelling din without looking away.

At that time, my house was a very old wooden one-story house, except for the kitchen, there were only three rooms: the living room with the TV set, the parents’ bedroom, and a four-and-a-half-fold small room facing the yard.In this room, there are desks for me and my brother who is three years younger than me. However, this is not only the territory of our siblings. My grandma, who has been bedridden due to cerebral hemorrhage since I was in elementary school, also sleeps here. in the corner of the room. I walked into the room lightly, my grandma was sleeping, and my younger brother who loves to play, the possibility of being at home during the day on Sunday is basically zero.I was afraid of waking up grandma, so I tiptoed slowly to my desk.The desk is the only corner in this home that belongs only to me.

My desk is not the "multi-functional desk" that is often advertised on TV, but a small board made of redundant wooden boards by my father.The light in the room is not good, I wanted to turn on the desk lamp, but I was worried that it would disturb my grandma's sleep, so I had no choice but to give up. I gently placed the bottle containing the goblin creature on the desk, and the poached creature was still floating in the water. After looking at it for a while, I took out the draft book from the desk drawer.This notebook was not purchased with money, but was made by collecting the blank advertising paper on the back, cutting it in half, and threading it with rope.I like drawing since I was a child. This is what my mother made for me in order to save paper.

I licked the lead of the pencil and wrote "how to raise fairies" on it. "This is very important." When the fairy creature was handed over to me, the man said a few things to keep in mind.He repeated each one three times, made me repeat it again, and finally said that it must be written on paper as soon as I got home. "First of all, the water in the bottle must be changed every three days. No matter what time it is, make sure the water is clean. Then put half a teaspoon of sugar in it. This is its food. Don't forget it." "Is sugar its meal?"

"That's right. However, don't feed it fruit sugar and chocolate! You can only use granulated sugar... Also, brown sugar and rock sugar are not acceptable. The most common kind of white granulated sugar is required!" The man's tone seemed to be teaching kindergarten children. "Also, don't put it in direct sunlight. It's not too hot near the stove or under the kotatsu..." The man raised a lot of precautions.But what he said is actually within the scope of common sense. In other words, it is no problem to raise it in an ordinary family. "The most important point is not to keep it in a bottle that is too big. This size bottle is the most suitable. If you plan to change the bottle, you must find a bottle that is about the same size as this one."

"why?" "Because it's going to get bigger." When he answered like this, the smile that had been hanging on the man's face disappeared.His expression became extremely serious. "This creature will change its size according to the living environment. If it grows too big, it won't be easy for you to keep!" It makes sense to say so, but how big can it grow?Instead, I was a little curious. "You'd better not have the idea of ​​trying it! If it grows too big, it will be troublesome to find a place to raise it, and it will eat more sugar... It's not good at all." The man returned to his smiling face, "As long as you abide by these regulations If you raise it, it won’t die. When you grow up and become a mother or a grandma, it will always be alive.”

No matter how naive, I would never believe this sentence.No matter how you look at it, such a small creature will not live so long. While recalling the man's words, I wrote them on the draft pad with neat characters, like a scientist doing a difficult experiment. Suddenly, there was a short cry in the room.The sudden sound startled me, it was my sleeping grandma who woke up. "Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Grandma's groans seemed to come from underground. I leaned over and saw my grandma still had her eyes closed, moaning with her mouth wide open, and she didn't seem to be in particularly pain.I immediately understood that it was probably the same thing as usual, so I ran to the kitchen to call my mother.Grandma couldn't move, talk, or even eat by herself.

Mom was preparing dinner in the kitchen, including dinner for the workers at home, so she seemed very busy in the cramped kitchen. "Mom, grandma is calling." I stood at the kitchen door and said to my mother's back. "Maybe the diaper is wet." Mom turned around and smiled as usual. My mother is always like this, no matter how hard the day is, she will never show a little painful expression in front of my brother and me. Except for school visits and classes, she basically doesn't wear makeup, but her hair is always neat and tidy. My friends say my mom is beautiful and I'm proud of her too.

"Probably so." "Xiaoshi, can you take a look at the pot for me?" "okay." After my mother left the kitchen, I followed her instructions and stood watching the pot to prevent the dishes from burning. When Mom changed Grandma's diaper, she never let me and my brother watch.Probably because I feel that grandma is very pitiful, and it is not very good for children. There are all kinds of products for elderly care now, but thirty years ago, there were not so many convenient things.The so-called diapers are also made from previously used and unnecessary fabrics.Since there is no one to help, all the burdens are on the shoulders of the mother alone.

And in my family, there is another person who needs to be taken care of, that is my father. A few years ago, Dad fell from upstairs at work and broke his pelvis.Since then, he has had difficulty moving his right hip, barely moving it. Doctors advised him to use crutches, but he didn't want to, so he wobbled like a tin robot.Nail-knocking and the like can be done, but not waist-high work, or dexterous work with a ladder.That's why he even invited the workers to eat and drink in order to maintain his face as the boss. It suddenly occurred to me that the goblin creature was still on the desk. Although my mother is not as nagging as my father, she doesn't approve of me keeping pets without authorization.I prayed in my heart that the bottle must not attract my mother's attention. Abruptly, I thought of the touch the creature had left on my palm. How to describe it? It was an incredible feeling that I had never experienced before. Rather than saying it was so itchy that people wanted to scratch it, it was better to say it was a deeper feeling, deeply invading the bone marrow.When you take that excitement, warm water oozes from your navel...it's even sweet, it's an incredible feeling. "Hey? Where's the proprietress?" At this moment, Erlang suddenly walked into the kitchen. "I went to take care of grandma." I replied. Erlang nodded, expressing his understanding: "Your mother is really hardworking, she has to take care of everything. But she never complains, which is really amazing." Erlang is a young worker who works under his father and started working after graduating from junior high school.He is twenty-six or seven years old now, but he is already one of the most experienced workers in my family.His real name was Junming, but everyone called him Jiro because he looked like Sakagami Jiro in the popular sketch "No. 55" at that time. Although I have known him since I was sensible, I am not very good at dealing with him.Sometimes he is very tricky and domineering, and sometimes he is so cheerful that people can't figure it out. It can be said that he is a very elusive person. "The boss just asked me to bring some kimchi over." "I'll bring it to you right away, Uncle Erlang, you can go to Dad's side first." "I'm sorry, Xiaoshi." Saying that, Jiro lightly touched my sleeveless arm.The roughness of the carpenter's fingers hurt my skin, but the touch was more unpleasant than the pain.Perhaps Jiro just wanted to express intimacy in this way, but I've reached the age where I would hate this kind of thing. I took out the Korean pickled cucumber from the refrigerator, cut it into several pieces and served it to Dad.Dad, who was half-drunk, was in the right mood at the moment. "Is this kimchi cut by Shi Jinzi? It looks delicious." Dad picked up cucumbers of different sizes with chopsticks and stuffed them into his mouth.An elderly worker from Akita and surnamed Narita also held out his chopsticks and said, "I will definitely be a good wife in the future." "Yeah, it's different from these guys." Dad said, shaking his chin to indicate the picture on the TV.It was being reported on the TV news that another baby's body had been found in a coin-operated safe at a certain station. "Killing children who don't know anything, and then throwing them away, is simply the scum of human beings." During that time, there were so many incidents of babies being abandoned in coin-operated safes that even an elementary school student like me knew the term "coin-operated safe baby."Most of them killed the babies and put them in the storage cabinets, but in my memory, there seemed to be some children who were still alive were thrown directly into the cabinets. I went back to the kitchen with the tray, and my mother was washing her hands.Water splashed from under the faucet and bounced on the tiled sink, making the sound of small steel balls hitting each other. "Xiaoshi brought kimchi for mom! Thank you!" My mother smiled softly at me while washing her hands carefully with soap.As for the bottle on my desk, she didn't say a word.

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