Only saw my father three days ago, but I decided to go back and see. Dark clouds billowed across the sky.The light rain that fell from time to time was blown by the strong wind, making the shirt warm and wet.July is coming to an end, but the rainy weather has not cleared for a long time. With the awareness that it’s okay to get wet, on the way from the station to stroll for less than ten minutes, the matter of inviting everyone to dinner last winter, for some reason, suddenly vividly appeared before my eyes.It was just December, and I made an appointment to eat crabs in Namba in the name of eating tail teeth early.Oya is actually an excuse, my real purpose is to introduce Chie to my parents and younger brother.If I declare in advance, there will be a lot of chaos, so I suddenly brought her out that day.

Back then, everything was fine.All that night was shrouded in the last glory of the eve of destruction, and it must linger in my memory forever. The mother dyed her hair light chestnut and wore a top black pearl pendant.With a happy face, concentration, and dexterity, he helped his father pick out the crab meat and put it on his plate. The father, too, said that the wine toasted by his son would be particularly easy to get drunk, but there was a rather smug smile on his face. I know that my parents like Chie immediately.Seeing the younger brother who was so serious that night, quietly trying to deepen Chie's impression of him, also made me secretly laugh.

In the midst of the boisterous feasting, at that time, I had no doubts about the future in which I would marry Chie, have children, my parents would always be healthy, and I would expect my grandchildren to come and play at home. Everything seems to have happened last week, even the hot smell from the pot still seems to be wafting from the tip of the nose. Afterwards, waves of misfortunes followed, no matter which one, no one present at that time should have expected it. First, Chie's disappearance happened less than two months later.She suddenly stopped coming to the store and moved out of the house.

Before I could get over the first wave of that shock, my father was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer this spring.Ironically, this forced me out of the state where I was only thinking about Chie. After learning that surgery was not possible, my father resolutely refused chemotherapy and radiation therapy.The doctor also said that even if he is forced to do those treatments, it is doubtful how effective it will be. Faced with the fact that our father will die in the near future, we can only accept that there is no other way.Therefore, including the father himself, the whole family has been psychologically prepared, and it is an unshakable development that the father is one step ahead of the mother.

However, one day two months ago, my mother died suddenly in a car accident... I've never thought deeply about gods or fate before, but now it seems that something malevolent and unknown is laying dank traps around me. Suddenly, big raindrops hit his face again. However, the front door can already be seen.Between the gate and the porch is a small, dark courtyard, where the nandina, which has never grown up since I was a child, is swaying in the wind. No one answered even if I pressed the intercom or knocked on the entrance door, so I had to take out the spare key. As soon as you walk into the house, it is deserted and empty like an empty house that has been abandoned for a long time.I've been here many times without my parents, but I've never felt so empty.The air in the house has completely deteriorated.

I couldn't get enough energy to go into the house immediately, and when I looked around, a living sorrow filled my chest. The small vase on the shoe cabinet has been covered with gray dust.When my mother was alive, this small glass bottle was always filled with seasonal flowers, and the smell of waxing wafted from the clean corridor.Even though no one was there at the time, it was still possible to feel that the room itself was breathing. I randomly put on a pair of slippers from the few pairs of slippers scattered at the opening of my shoes, and when I walked through the corridor, I took a look at the kitchen and bathroom.My tired, unshaven face from this morning is reflected in the gray mirror, and I can't help but reach out and touch my cheek.

I searched the house while groping for the beard with my fingertips. Where will father go? On Sunday, he will go to visit the elderly in the nursing home where his grandmother lives, but today is not Sunday. Since his father was left alone, he said that the number of walks he took on a whim had increased, but would he go out on a day like this?Maybe he was unwell and went to the hospital. Now that my mother is gone, I know I should move back in with my ailing father.The reason why I didn't do this is because my father didn't want it to happen, and on the other hand, because the shop I opened two years ago was in a so-called bicycle operation state-it would collapse as long as the door was not open for a day, so I had no time to spare.

My shop is the coffee shop "Shaggy Head" located at the foot of Mt. Bakao.There is a 1,000-square-meter dog farm, and the dog and the owner adopt a membership system.It takes three hours to go back and forth from home.Thinking of the preparations before and after the opening of the store and cleaning up afterwards, this journey is quite strenuous for me. So for now, I have to come back to see my father as often as possible when I can get away from work. There was a period of time when three generations lived together in this house. Although it was old, the only advantage was that it had more rooms.

Walking into the living room, the incense table that was still there three days ago has been put away, and only the photos and the white wooden tablet are left on the small cabinet. The mother in the photo is very young, looking directly at the camera with a slightly stiff smile.I didn't put my palms together to worship, but just stood there and stared at my mother for a while.He was clearly in a calm mood, but tears welled up in his eyes like a conditioned reflex. Knowing that his father was not there, he searched even the second floor out of inertia.Not just the stairs, but the corridors and floors on the second floor were shaking everywhere.

In the end, I knocked on the door anyway and opened the sliding door of my father's study room—actually, it was just a room with four and a half stacks of bookshelves. On the low table was an ashtray with cigarette butts. About ten years ago, my father tried very hard to quit smoking, and now it seems that he has started smoking again.Is it because there is no longer a reason not to smoke? Stacked on the table are books and newspaper clippings related to activities to protect children around the world.My father has been donating money to various conservation groups since he was young and poor.He regularly subscribes to institutional publications, and he is also enthusiastic about collecting reports and materials on impoverished and abused children.

When I was young, my brother and I were scolded by him for stealing newspaper clippings.Thinking about it carefully, that was the only time in my life that I was scolded by my father. I planned to wait in the downstairs kitchen for a while, and when I was about to close the sliding door, I suddenly found that the paper door of the closet on the right side of the room was a few centimeters apart. That bothered me for no reason. Half of the closet, which was originally less than two meters wide, was blocked by the bookshelf and could only be opened to one side, so there should be only things that are not used at all in it. In this small room, which seemed to be my father's sanctuary, I was hesitant to pry into the privacy while the owner was away, but I still went to the front of the closet and opened the paper door. It was originally filled with dusty cardboard boxes, big and small, but it seems to have been randomly turned over, and now it has shifted. Only a cardboard box placed on the outer side of the upper floor was open. It is likely that the father pulled the box out from the depths and flipped the contents of the box. What exactly does he want to get out?I was suddenly curious and put my hand into the box. But what came out were all ordinary old clothes, and once the old clothes were pulled out, they swelled immediately, and it took a lot of work to put them back into the box as they were. I had no choice but to move the box to the tatami and tidy it up.Then an old handbag emerged from the bottom of the trunk, the white summer bag a married woman would wear. At first, of course, I thought it was something old from my mother. However, after picking it up and looking at it for a long time, for some reason, an inexplicable uneasiness suddenly enveloped my heart.It's not my mother's stuff, the thought flashed through me, and I didn't even know where it came from. Haven't seen it before - but it looks familiar.The wonderful twisted feeling emerges faintly from the old yellowed leather and the rusty metal buckle.I almost trembled at it somehow. I wanted to put the handbag back in the box immediately, and close the lid firmly, with a guilty conscience of unknown origin.But I wiped my sweaty brow with the back of my hand, and gently opened the clasp with my fingertips, which were indeed trembling. There was only a small washi paper package in the handbag, and "Misako" was written in thin ink on the fluffy paper. I opened the paper bag carefully, and what appeared was a bunch of black hair cut about five or six centimeters long.I got goosebumps with horror.It's just... yes, like hair loss. The mother's name was indeed Misako, and the funeral had just been completed last month.But this black lock of hair without half a gray hair could not have been cut at the funeral.If this is really my mother's hair, it means that it was cut many years ago when my mother was still very young.Who did this kind of thing with what intention?Why was such a thing prepared long before the mother actually died? I feel strangely ominous. If my mother had died of illness, maybe I wouldn't be in such a mess. Looking back now, my mother was indeed a bit weird in the last month.Sometimes even though she agreed aloud, she didn't understand the conversation at all, and sometimes she burst into tears while watching a news report of a brutal crime. At one point I saw her on the way from the station.Turning around inadvertently, it seems that the mother who just came back from shopping is coming from behind.I will never forget my mother's timid and empty shell at that time. She was clearly only in her early fifties, but her face was as gray as an old woman's. I felt that I seemed to see something I shouldn't see, and I couldn't help turning my eyes away.For some reason, I always felt that was the real expression that my mother would never show in front of me or my father. When my mother found me, she seemed to be in a panic for a moment, but she immediately returned to her usual smile, oh, Xiaoliang!she said cheerfully. However, when I was about to take over the supermarket plastic bag she was carrying with both hands, I noticed that my mother was dragging her feet in her father's big sandals, and the tips of her outstretched socks had touched the ground and were blackened. It was all because of my father's illness, which made my mother uneasy. At that time, I believed so, and didn't think about it any more.And, in fact, it may be true. Two months ago, my parents went to visit my grandma hand in hand, and when they were waiting side by side at the traffic lights at the zebra crossing on the return trip, it was said that my mother suddenly stepped on the road lightly alone. "Ah, hello! When I yelled, your mother had disappeared. There was no one to be found. I really didn't understand what was going on at the time. There was no sound of collisions, brakes, or people around me. I didn't hear anything. I just stood there, watching the people scrambling around the big truck like I was watching a silent movie." My father said so, half to himself, as we sat in the kitchen chairs the night of the funeral.My father and I understood each other that the father who said these words was about to die himself. The younger brother, who was in a trance with tears in his eyes, was drunk and fell asleep. But his father neither shed tears nor lamented the misfortune of his own body and fate when his wife died in a car accident and his imminent death.What he sees is not sadness or fear, but something paler and dry, defined only by emptiness, elusive. We couldn't find anything to say to each other, so we just sat there relatively silent.I felt as if I was vaguely aware of that emptiness, which had eaten into my father's heart long before I could remember.I think of my father sitting hunched over the low table in this study every time, staring at the newspaper clipping book full of various photos, page after page, fascinated.Children suffering from AIDS with sarcoma on their faces, children who are so skinny that you can almost see the shape of bones, small naked corpses that have been tossed and thrown away... Now, as a son, I probably shouldn't say such things, but my father, indeed He's a bit of an oddball. I stared at the bundle of black hair in my hand for a long time before wrapping it again in washi paper, otherwise I don't know what else to do. However, when I put that paper bag back in my handbag and clicked the clasp, it was like opening a surprise box, and a certain memory popped into my head. Suddenly, I remembered something that I had somehow forgotten, but had forgotten for many years.As vividly as if I had never forgotten... That was when I was about four years old, so it was over twenty years ago. Often I suffered from pneumonia or something like that, and was hospitalized for a long time. When I was finally discharged and returned home, I felt as if my mother had been taken over by someone else. If I hadn't seen this bundle of hair, I'm afraid I would never have remembered it for the rest of my life.It is impossible for my mother to be transferred, so this wonderful memory will definitely be regarded as a childish moment of confusion by me, and it will continue to sleep in the dark bottom of consciousness along with many other memories. From what I heard at the time, it appeared that a fire broke out in the apartment my family was renting during my admission.That's why my parents moved from Tokyo to Komagawa City in Nara, and bought this house in order to bring my grandparents who lived in Maebashi City to live with me. On the day I was discharged from the hospital, my father and I took the Shinkansen and then changed to the Kintetsu Line. When we finally arrived at Komagawa, I felt exhausted as if I had traveled thousands of miles to the end of the world.The house was much newer than it is now, but it was completely unfamiliar to me.As soon as I entered the room, I saw my mother who was saying "Xiao Liang, you are back." She rushed to the entrance of the entrance, and suddenly she was in a fog. No, I thought to myself, this person, Xiaozao’s mother. "Thank you, Xiao Liang. For Xiao Jiu, my mother was not able to visit you." Mother said so and hugged me into her arms, her eyes wet with tears.In her arms, I stiffened uncomfortably. Of course I told my father, my grandparents, and even my mother herself.I asked them, where is my mother?However, the adults all just laughed.I haven't seen each other for several months, and I may have forgotten my mother's face... They are perfunctory me and refuse to take it seriously. When I was first admitted to the hospital, my mother seemed to have visited me once, but I'm not sure, it was almost always my father who came to see me in the hospital.After the move, only my father stayed in the hospital. At that time, he seemed to be temporarily staying in a business hotel that was very close to the workplace and the hospital.However, his job was also resigned when I was discharged from the hospital. I don’t know if I was arguing to see my mother when I was in the hospital, but I vaguely remember my father telling me that our family has moved far away and we have to take care of my grandmother who is not in good health, so it is difficult for her to find time to see me . So it is true that I have not seen my mother for a long time. In addition, instead of going back to the place where I lived before being admitted to the hospital, I came to a strange house in a strange city, and my grandparents who lived separately from us were also present.So now that I think about it, it's not surprising that the young child sees the mother as someone else, even if his senses are out of tune. But what I felt was wrong, like some deep-rooted feeling that transcended rationality.Seeing the grown-ups laugh it off calmly, I also half-passively understood: Maybe, this person is still my mother.But something was wrong, like a crumbling deciduous tooth that was always aching.I really can't open my mouth to call the person who should be my mother "Mom". Mother looks the same as always.If I act like a baby, she will hug me tenderly; when I do something seriously bad, she will also have hysterical attacks.When I refused to call my mother, I immediately began to rely on my mother. There are a few incidents at that time, I still remember fragments. When we went to the bookstore together, my mother found a picture book and bought it for me.It was my favorite before I was hospitalized, the story of the terrible man-eating dragon, and it was destroyed in the fire along with other books and toys.When my mother exclaimed, and picked up the book and smiled at me with nostalgia, this person may be my mother’s mood, which suddenly rose in my heart, which made me very happy, but when I got home and opened the picture book, it should have made me happy. The man-eating dragon, who was too scared to look at it, was not only not scary at all, it was even a bit funny, and I was quite astonished and lost at the moment.I told my mother about it, she patted my head and said, Xiao Liang has been in the hospital for so long and received many, many painful injections, so many things look different from before, what a pity . Another day, my mother licked the sand from my eyes for me.When she reassured me that it was okay, and then pressed her tongue, the eyelids that were originally so painful that they couldn't open were naturally relaxed.To this day, I still remember the soft tongue touch that is neither hot nor cold.Mother hugged my head and gently licked my eyeballs.I stopped crying and felt very relieved, and then suddenly remembered that when I was younger, my mother used to lick the sand from my eyes many times in the same way.After licking, I asked her what it tasted like, and my mother said that Xiaoliang's tears were very salty. What else can I do in days filled with those little things. Unknowingly, the strange feeling he had for his mother turned into a sense of guilt that he had been harboring such a strange feeling...it must be like this.Also, it doesn't take much effort to forget about guilt, especially with young children. A year later, when my younger brother Yohei spoke, I had completely forgotten how I felt about my mother. At that time, my mother's hair was black and shiny, but Chang Ran didn't have a single white hair... I lowered my eyes again to the handbag that I had been holding in my hand. The figure of a woman wearing a sleeveless flowery dress and holding this leather bag vaguely came to mind. I can't judge whether it is my mother before the subcontracting, or a virtual image fabricated by my imagination out of thin air. I don't know whether the fact that my mother was transferred is true or not. Sitting cross-legged on the tatami, I was stunned for a while, and finally pulled myself together and continued to rummage through the cardboard box where I took out the handbag. At the bottom of the box, I don’t know whether it was there or my father took out other things and stuffed it in. In short, I found a brown paper bag that seemed to contain some documents. When I opened it, there were several notebooks inside.Cover designs and thicknesses vary, and there are four copies in total.On the lower right corner of the cover of each book, numbers from one to four are written respectively. I picked up a copy and flipped through it. Every page is densely filled with text and there are almost no blank spaces. It was written with a thick pencil, and there are traces of erasers everywhere.The seemingly scribbled and naive handwriting, I don't know if it is intentional, or it is this kind of handwriting. Anyway, I picked out the one with 1 on the cover and started reading.The words "Lily Heart" written on it are suspected to be the title, and the meaning is unknown. The light at hand was not good, so I went to the window and immediately forgot everything else, absorbed in the article.