Chapter 3 third quarter

Since that day, the criminal police have not come again.Probably there was no special suspicion in the first place, but he was just a little concerned about the rumor. We gradually stopped hearing that rumor, and the townspeople lost interest in things that had nothing to do with them.Compared with what kind of misfortune happened to other people's family, everyone cares more about what will happen to their own tomorrow. However, although the heat of the rumor has cooled, its content has not been forgotten, but fewer people have said it.When rumors are no longer the topic of everyone, this ominous story no longer feels like a pure imagination, but becomes a fact, deeply imprinted in everyone's memory.The patients who left my father's clinic never came to see a doctor again.I didn't have many friends, but I became more and more isolated in school.The so-called rumors will not last long, but this conclusion does not seem to apply to negative rumors.After all, years later, even after my house was torn down, there were still rumors going around in that town that there was an old woman in that house who was murdered.

My parents continued to weather the storm with determination.No matter how few patients there are, my father continues to work as a dentist as before, and invites friends to go fishing on holidays.In addition, he also asked mothers who had a bad relationship with neighbors to actively participate in neighborhood assemblies and parent-teacher meetings.Although my mother lacks interest, she is originally a resolute personality. After listening to her father's words "always locked at home, people will look at you with strange eyes", on the contrary, she can dress up more than usual and wear her favorite clothes. clothes to go out.I later heard from others that seeing such a mother, there are quite a few people who secretly call her "shameless" behind her back.

The parents seem to want to announce to the world: everything is the same as before, nothing has changed.But as soon as you walk into the house, you will find that the truth is not the same thing.It seems to me that parents are almost like different people. Father looks very strange.One day, when I came back from school, I heard a noise in the kitchen.I thought, weird!That day, my mother should have gone to a relative's house. I walked through the corridor in fear, and heard two coughs.I was relieved to hear this voice.It was my father, yes, my father had a slight cold at the time. When I got to the kitchen, I found my father squatting in front of the counter, opening the cabinet door below, and staring inside.Next to my father were bottles of soy sauce and Japanese sake that should have been in the cabinet.

I looked around and found that the drawers and sliding doors of several sideboards and storage cabinets were also open, and the seasonings and ingredients I bought showed signs of being moved. My father was so attentive that he didn't seem to notice my entry, and continued to look for things under the counter.When my father took out the vinegar bottle, he finally noticed that someone was there.He turned around in surprise. "What are you doing, it turned out to be you." Father's voice was high-pitched.His face was extremely rosy, and it seemed that it wasn't just because of his lowered head.

Since I had nothing else to say, I had to say: "I'm back." "When were you there?" "I just got home." "That's it." At that time, my father was probably thinking about how to smooth things over, but he realized that he was holding the mirin bottle in an unusual way, so he hurriedly put the bottle on the ground and pretended to smile bitterly. "The so-called gentleman stays away from the kitchen, which means that men are not allowed to enter the kitchen. This is taught by the dead grandfather. I have been practicing this principle, so that when I want to find something, I don't know where to put it."

"What are you looking for?" "No, it's not a big deal, that's it." Father made a gesture of pouring wine. "Whiskey. I remember I was given a bottle, but I couldn't find it." "You want whiskey now?" It seemed to be around four o'clock. "I don't want to drink it, but I want to give it away." My father began to put the soy sauce and wine bottles back to their original places. "That's strange, where did your mother receive it?" "Just ask mom if you can?" "Well, ah..., that's right..." My father replied vaguely, while continuing to clean up the aftermath.

When I realized that I shouldn't be there and turned to leave, my father called my name. "Hexing, don't tell your mother about this!" "what……?" "Your mother's personality is like that. Once it is given by others, she will not give it away even if she is killed, right? To put it bluntly, she is a cheapskate. Like that bottle of whiskey. She obviously doesn't drink it, but she will definitely give it away if I want to." I would object. I was too lazy to be read by her, so I looked for her when she was not around. So...you know, right?" It wasn't like my father's usual tone, it felt like he was making excuses.Usually, he would directly order me "Don't tell your mother!" instead of explaining the reason to me.

"Well, I see." I replied. Father nodded in satisfaction and continued to pack up the rest of the things.But he doesn't seem to remember what should be put where.I thought to myself that even if I didn't say it, my mother would find out, but I kept my mouth shut. In the evening, when my mother came home, my father had already gone back to the clinic.I watched TV in the living room while I noticed if my mother noticed something was wrong in the kitchen. At dinner, the answer was revealed. "What did you do in the kitchen?" My mother asked my father nonchalantly while eating.

"Kitchen? What do you do?" My father pretended to be stupid and continued to pour beer. "You went into the kitchen, right?" "Me? No." "Really? How strange." Mother turned her gaze to me.I lowered my head and just moved my mouth and chopsticks silently, afraid of being asked by my mother. "But the kitchen doesn't look right." Mother said to Father again. "It's like the location of the seasoning, it's not the same as usual." "It's just your illusion. It should be because you didn't go into the kitchen very much before." Father said while drinking beer.The father seemed to be mocking the mother. When Xiao Fu was around, he hardly did any housework.

"But like salt and pepper have gone to positions that are absolutely impossible to appear, do you think it is possible?" "God knows, I don't know." "Let's be honest!" The mother stared straight at the father, and the father seemed to deliberately not meet the mother's eyes. "Honestly say what?" "Are you checking? Checking for that thing?" "Which one?" "What the criminal police said a while ago." "What did he say? He said something so inexplicable that I wasn't paying attention at all."

"How dare you say..." The mother was impatient with his father's attitude towards the left and right, and began to get a little angry. She thought her mother was going to have a seizure, but she endured it.I realized that it was because I was on the sidelines.This made me even more restless, so I tried my best to prepare food and planned to leave the scene as soon as possible. After eating, I got off the table and left the restaurant, went to the living room next door and turned on the TV.However, my eyes were not facing the screen, but my ears were pressed against the wall.I understand that this way I can hear conversations in the next room.In the past, when the people from the tax bureau came, Xiao Fu did this. "Don't you just make it clear? If you doubt it, say you doubt it." It was the mother's voice. Father responded with a few words, but his voice was muffled and he couldn't hear clearly. "You're looking for poison like arsenic, aren't you? After hearing what the detective said, you think I might actually do that, don't you?" I heard my father spit "boring", and I couldn't hear the words after that, but it felt like it was negating what my mother said. "You don't need to pretend, I can tell by looking at your face. If you tell the truth clearly, I will be at ease. I said husband, that's not what you said to your relatives. You said that my mother's sudden death is very unusual. Are you suspicious of me?" My mother's voice could probably be heard even if my ears were not pressed against the wall. "I didn't say that." Father raised his voice slightly. "You are lying." "I'm not lying." "Then why are you checking the kitchen? Isn't it weird?" "Didn't I tell you that I didn't check? You're very wordy!" "If it wasn't for you, who would have done it? There are signs of turning over everywhere." "I don't know, maybe He Xing is looking for some snacks." The sudden run out of my name startled me. "Then should we ask Kazuko? How could we open the door under the counter in order to find some snacks?" "All in all, I don't know. Stop saying those inexplicable things!" "Wait a minute, don't run away!" said the mother.Father seemed to want to leave. "I don't have time to talk nonsense with you, it's a waste of time." "I didn't do it! Besides, I can't poison Mom's food at all. Didn't you say that just now? I haven't been in the kitchen for a while, and the only ones who can do this are those who take care of Mom's meals." It's just people." I don't know if it was because of the overexcitement, but my mother's words diverged in an inexplicable place.Father's reaction was a little slow. "It's so stupid, how could she do such a thing." "Her? This name really has a profound meaning." "What's wrong with me calling Miss Xiaofu 'she'?" "You don't need to deliberately add a young lady. You obviously call her Fuhui in private, right?" "What do you mean?" "What's the point. Do you think I don't know anything?" I couldn't hear my father's voice, but it shouldn't be that I couldn't hear, but that my father was silent. Unexpectedly, the mother would find out the relationship between the father and Xiaofu.And obviously found out, but didn't say a word, which surprised me. The father muttered something, as if he didn't acknowledge the matter with Xiaofu. "Don't play tricks on you, I don't care anyway. On the contrary, your money must be credited to me on time. As long as you abide by this, I won't talk to you anymore." "Money, money, money, you greedy woman, do you want to be ashamed?" "You're the one who should be shameless. To be fooled around by that kind of woman." When there was a sound, the sound of things being overturned was suddenly heard, and the sound of tableware hitting was also heard at the same time.The figure of my father kicking down the dining table appeared in front of my eyes. "It's because you hate Mom that you had to ask Xiaofu to help, didn't you? He treats us so well, you can still say that kind of thing!" "It's not that she didn't pay her." "I didn't pay the money! You didn't do anything, you just hoped that Mom would leave soon. I know everything you said about Mom to your natal family!" "So you say I killed it? Then you show the evidence! Then ask the police to arrest me?" "It's so loud!" the father scolded angrily.After the sound of a paper door being opened and closed roughly, there was a sound of heavy footsteps passing through the corridor. After that, I heard a "bang" sound with my ears close to the wall, as if something hit the wall, and then there was a sound of something smashing under the wall. If you think about it from the perspective of the living room, the father seems to be suspicious of the mother, because the appearance of the father in the kitchen is unusual.Besides, I knew my father read about drugs in the study.Once, I went to the study room to borrow an encyclopedia, and accidentally found that book stuffed in the corner of the bookcase.I was attracted by the word "poison", and I took it out to have a look, and found that there was a bookmark in the book, and that page was about arsenic poisoning. Arsenous acid is a tasteless and odorless white powder that is not easily soluble in cold water but readily soluble in warm water.Poisoning symptoms can be divided into acute and chronic. If you drink a large amount of poison, you will have acute poisoning symptoms. If you drink a small amount of poison, you will become subacute poisoning.The main symptoms of subacute poisoning are gastrointestinal discomfort, nephritis, proteinuria, hematuria, fat swelling, sensory disturbance, muscle atrophy, neuritis, insomnia, general weakness. The content of the book is as above, and the symptom ends with "can lead to death" as a summary. I remembered the scene when my grandmother's body was found.At this time, what appeared in her eyes was her thin and aging body like a chicken bone, and her complexion that could hardly feel life.Before her death, her grandmother said that she felt uncomfortable all over her body, which should be caused by gastrointestinal discomfort, and her liver and kidney functions must be abnormal.In addition, there are obvious sensory and motor nerve disorders, and it goes without saying that the whole body is weak and weak. Thinking about it this way, the inference of being fed arsenic seems to be becoming more and more true.In addition, it is also written in the book that there are many cases of doctors misdiagnosing other diseases. Since my father read this page, of course he has doubts about my grandmother's death. Even I think that the rumor may not be pure malicious slander. After all, it is a fact that my mother hopes that my grandmother will die. It might have been my mother's fault, but why wasn't I particularly frightened?Although I knew that murder was a crime, I couldn't appreciate the seriousness of the actual crime.Maybe it was because I had no familial love for my grandmother, and always thought the old woman sleeping in that room was a dirty, ugly creature.Besides, I don't think there's anything special about death, it's just a change from living things to mere matter.As my uncle said, death is like a broken toy that cannot be moved again. I like this metaphor very much.Then, I remembered the scene of picking up ashes in the crematorium. The dead themselves know nothing.... Would the grandmother feel remorse if the mother had been a murderer?My answer is - no!Because the grandmother didn't know that she was being fed poison, and she didn't know that the abnormality in her body was caused by the poison.She died without knowing it, so until her last breath she didn't know why she died.No, she shouldn't even know if she will die, because it is the living who confirm whether she is dead. I haven't believed in an afterlife or soul since then, and I don't believe in the existence of souls today, so I don't understand the concept of a murdered person feeling resentful.Of course, I know many people who loved the dead deeply, and their hatred and grief exist.Just thinking of everyone's expressions of not being very sad at the funeral, one can imagine that their hatred and sadness were only modest. In contrast, what I was more interested in at the time was, what is the murder?What kind of mood did the mother have when she poisoned the grandmother?And what about the joy when the strategy succeeds? From time to time I would sneak into my father's study and read about poisons like arsenic.The number of poisons introduced in the book is really surprising.Among them, it also describes how to use poison to kill people in ancient and modern times, such as the criminal case of Martha Marek using thallium, the famous case of Fanningka using opium to poison others, and the case of being fed potassium cyanate but not dying. The strange monk Rasputin, and the more recent ones in the poisoning incidents in Japan. Among them, what impressed me the most was the crime case of the Duchess of Brambillier.Although she was married, she fell in love with Sando Croa, a friend of her husband's, in what is now known as an extramarital affair.Her father, Dubre, was furious over the incident and sent Sando Croa to prison.After he was released from prison, his wife teamed up with him to kill his father with poison.It is said that during Dubray's recuperation in the country, in order to relax his father's defenses, his wife tried her best to be filial to her father before letting him drink the poisonous soup. When she found out that her two elder brothers suspected that her father's death was related to her, she sent her men to her elder brothers and successfully poisoned one of them.According to the records in the book, it took about 70 days for her eldest brother to die, and about 90 days for her second brother.It is said that in order to allow the toxicity to take place slowly, she went to a hospital she knew to do experiments before committing the crime, poisoning poor patients. What amazed me, however, was his persistent murderous thoughts and the calm demeanor with which he carried out the killing.In the past, in my vague impression, the desire to kill should be explosive and appear in a short period of time.Perhaps it is because the murder plot described in the TV series did not take much time from the generation of motivation to the actual execution.In addition, in the minds of children, they probably think that most of the cases in real life are the so-called "surge of blood and murder".Therefore, I am afraid of the obsession with the flames of revenge burning for decades, and spending dozens of days in order to kill the other party. What happened to the murder?What kind of mood is it? I think that's when I became really interested in killing people.Whenever I investigate the contents of poison, I imagine the poison being used.If it were me, I would do it, no!That's fine too.It's just that there was no one who made me want to poison him to death.Because of this, I want to know what state of mind the actual killers are in. In that book, there is no portrait of the Duchess of Branbilier.But in my mind, that face overlapped with my mother's. After that, my parents never quarreled in front of me.I interpret this as some form of compromise between the two.In contrast, I am more worried about my status in school.The reason lies in the previous rumors, so that no one wants to approach me and talk to me.Even the teacher felt like he wanted to avoid getting involved with me. Only one person is still the same as before.That person is Kura Mochi.However, he doesn't seem to want anyone else to know that he's involved with me either.He doesn't approach me when there are people around, and he often ignores me even when I talk to him. "I heard Uemura's mother went to the principal's office." Another time, when we came to a nearby embankment on the way home from school, Kuramochi told me about it. I asked him why Uemura fucking went to the principal's office. "I heard that she hoped that the principal would not allow her son to be in the same class as Tajima. His mother said, I don't know if the rumor is true or not, but just thinking of a child from such a family in the class makes me feel creepy." I don't know. Should it be said that Kuramochi is well-informed? For some reason, he is not good at collecting such information, and he is particularly aware of the details of gossip. "What did the principal say?" "It seems to say that he can't do such a thing. That's no wonder. If he accepts everyone's request one by one, there will be no end." All in all, the whole class wanted to transfer.When I think of this, my mood becomes depressed. "Speaking of which, it seems that the police are looking for a doctor." Cang Chi told another gossip. "What doctor?" "It seems to be called Xishan Hospital." I nodded knowingly.Nishiyama is the doctor who confirmed the grandmother's body. "Why did the police go to Xishan Hospital?" "God knows. I should be asking about Granny Tajima's death, right? Didn't they say that the poisoned corpse would change?" About this point, I should be more clear than Kuramo, after all, I read this kind of books all day long. "How did the doctor answer?" "Then I don't know. But there should be no mention of any suspicion of poisoning. If you say that, there should be a lot of police cars parked in front of your house by now." He really can't speak, but Kuramochi is right.Because Dr. Nishiyama couldn't cover up the crime, he probably didn't find the typical symptoms of poisoning. I can't tell if my mother poisoned my grandmother.What's more, where to get the arsenic is also a problem.But on the other hand, there is an image that impressed me deeply, that is, after the grandmother died, the mother threw away seasonings such as salt and sugar.So what is going on?Is that really salt and sugar?Isn't it some other "white powder"? It may seem strange to others, but I don't want to trust my mother emotionally.To be honest, I still didn't know what kind of person my mother was until the end.I also don't understand the psychology of murder.I can't even imagine if that thing called murderous thoughts sprouted in my mother's heart.If she told me she killed people, I'd probably just be like "oh, that", and if she told me she didn't kill people, then I'd be okay with that. As I said, I still didn't know what kind of person my mother was until the end.And that "last" came suddenly when I was just in the sixth grade. One day when I came back from school, my parents were already waiting for me at home.That day was not a day when the clinic was closed, so it made me feel that things were extraordinary.Sitting next to my father was a man I hadn't seen before, until they told me he was a lawyer. My parents wanted to force me to make a choice, to see whether I should choose to follow my father or my mother, because the two of them had already decided to divorce. -------------------------------- Note: