Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen

Back in the dining room, Yaeko immediately came over to ask him about the situation. "What did Chunmei say?" "She said she didn't need her to take care of her for three days in a row. She seemed strange, but she was finally fooled by me." "I seem to hear you talking about cosmetics or something." "Well, it's about the old lady." Akio told Yaeko what Harumi said. "She still does such bad things? I really don't know." The word bad thing made Akio feel bad, but he knew that now was not the time to complain. "Go and call Naomi," he said.

"I told you all about this..." "I can't spoil him everywhere anymore, do you know what we are going to do next? I want him to understand that he can't do it without the determination to fight to the death. He thinks that his parents can do anything for him when he gets angry. It’s so wrong, it’s true, you have taken your parents for nothing. In short, you go and ask him to come, if you don’t want to go, then I will go. " Seeing that he was about to get up, Yaeko stood up first. "Wait, well, I'll call him. But I beg you, don't be too strict with him. Because even if you don't teach him, he is already very scared."

"It's right to be afraid, go and call." Yaeko responded and walked out the door. Akio wanted to drink very much, and he drank until he was completely drunk. Only then did he realize that he was still holding the supermarket shopping bag he had received from Chunmei.He sighed, left the dining room, opened the sliding door of the back room, and found Zheng Hui sitting in a dim room with his back to him. He really wanted to call her mother, but Zhaofu knew that even if he called, the other party would not respond.Now Zhenghui doesn't know who she is anymore. Although Chunmei said that when she called her "Xiaohui", she would often answer, but Akio was reluctant to call her that.

"There's a sandwich." Hearing what he said, Zheng Hui suddenly turned around and smiled at him.Perhaps this expression could be called a girlish smile, but seeing this scene, Akio felt only a little bit of gloom. Zhenghui crawled to Akio, grabbed the shopping bag, and crawled to the alcove again.Then remove the sandwiches from the bag and start arranging them one by one. Akio noticed that she was putting on those gloves again, and he couldn't understand the attraction of these things at all.All he knew was that if he tried to take them off Zheng Hui's hands, the other party would go crazy and furious.

He left the room, closed the door, and while walking in the dark corridor, he remembered what he had said to Yaeko just now. What do you think your parents are—— After realizing that this sentence should actually be said to himself, he lowered his head dejectedly. When Akio first moved here, he was still thankful that living with his mother was the right decision.Yaeko seems to be getting used to her new life, and Masae seems to be able to keep her pace without interruption.However, all these were just superficial phenomena, and the dull air began to float clearly in this home. The first visible change was at dinner one day, when Akio, who was sitting at the table as usual, became suspicious because Masae did not show up.

"Mom seems to want to eat in her own room." Facing Akio's question, Yaeko's answer was very concise. When he asked the reason again, the other party shook his head and said he didn't know. Since then, Zheng Hui never had a meal with her family again.Not only that, the meals are also prepared separately.By then Yaeko had started working odd jobs, and Masae made her own dinner while she was away. "Go and tell mom to stop washing the frying pan. If you wash it so vigorously, the oil-soaked bottom of the pan will be wasted again." Such situations of being scolded by Yaeko became more and more frequent.

Although Akio really wanted to ask them why they shared the stove, he never asked, because he could probably imagine the reason.Yaeko and Masae's food preferences and tastes are completely different, and they must have had a dispute over this, until what happened later. Akio regarded disputes between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law as a common occurrence in this world and turned a blind eye to it, because the atmosphere at home made him feel bored. Later, he often went to pubs for entertainment.At that time, he met a woman, and the relationship between the two gradually developed.It was a woman who worked part-time in Shinjuku.

At this time, Yaeko came to discuss with Naomi because he was being bullied.He thought it was an unpleasant and time-wasting question, didn't think it was a big deal, so he scolded Naomi, and the increase in family troubles made him anxious. Because of his indifference to his family during that time, he fell headfirst into the arms of that woman.Once every two weeks turned into once a week, and ended up going to that store every less than three days, and sometimes staying overnight in that woman's room. Yaeko finally noticed something. "Where is that woman?" she demanded one evening.

"what are you talking about?" "Stop pretending, where do you go every night? Tell me the truth." "I just went drinking with acquaintances, don't think about it." After that, they had quarrels every night. Of course, Akio didn't admit the existence of the woman until the end, and Yaeko didn't seem to have any evidence.But her suspicion didn't dissipate because of this, on the contrary, she became more convinced of it.Akio knew that even though he had broken up with that woman for several years, his wife would still peep at his cell phone from time to time.

After the dreary life lasted for some time, one day, Zhenghui didn't leave the room from morning till night.When Akio, who felt strange, went to investigate, he found her sitting in the corridor, looking out the window. Akio asked her what she was doing, but the other party's answer was beyond his expectations. "It seems that there are guests at home, so I won't go out." "Guest? No." "They're here, listen, they're talking." Only Yaeko and Naomi were talking. Akio felt displeased, he thought Zheng Hui was making fun of him. "I don't know what happened between you, but please don't worry about her anymore, okay? I'm already very tired."

However, Zhenghui still had a dazed expression. "I don't know those guests, do I?" "Forget it, you can do whatever you like." Akio said and left the room. He didn't have any doubts at that time, thinking that Masae just regarded Yaeko as an outsider because he was angry with Yaeko.In fact, she later got along with Yaeko and Naomi as usual, of course not in a harmonious and happy way, but just as usual. However, things did not end so simply. One night, Akio was lying in bed and was just about to fall asleep dimly, but was woken up by Yaeko because there seemed to be some movement downstairs.He rubbed his sleepy eyes and looked down, only to find that Zhenghui was dragging the low dining table in the Japanese-style room into the dining room. "What are you doing?" "Look, this should be in that room, right?" "Why? Didn't we agree to put it in the Japanese-style room?" "But you have to put it where you eat." "What are you talking about, don't we have a dining table?" "dining table?" Akio opened the door and showed her that when they were preparing to live together, they converted the Japanese-style room next to the kitchen into a dining room, and this dining table was bought at that time. "Ah." Zheng Hui opened his mouth and stood still. "Okay, go to sleep, I'll put it back where it was." Zhenghui went back to her room silently. Akio's explanation for this was that his mother was in a daze, but when he thought about it and told Yaeko, his wife's opinion was different from him. "Mom is starting to have dementia." She said coldly. "No way." Akio replied. "You usually work outside, maybe you don't know much about it, she really started to go crazy. After cooking, she left it there, as if she forgot to eat it. When I asked her if she wanted to eat the porridge in the pot, she said to me I haven’t done that stuff myself, but it’s not like this every day.” Akio was speechless, he never thought that after his father, even his mother would become like that, he felt a sudden blackness in front of his eyes. "What are you going to do? I have something to say first. I didn't move in to take care of others. " "I understand." This was the only answer Akio could try his best to give, but he couldn't come up with any kind of solution. Zhenghui's dementia rapidly worsened.It's a disease that varies from patient to patient, and hers were characterized primarily by memory loss.She would forget what she had just said, what she had done, and what her family looked like, to the point where she couldn't even tell who she was.Although Chunmei took her to the hospital, there was no hope of a cure. Yaeko suggested sending her to a nursing home, maybe she thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get rid of her mother-in-law, but Harumi strongly opposed it. "Mom is the most at ease when she lives at home, and she is obsessed with the house before the renovation, thinking that she is still living in that old house with Dad. Because she believes in this, she can calm down. Going to other places will definitely make people feel sad. She is in pain and I will never allow that to happen." Even though Yaeko countered, she still had to take care of the elderly on her own side in the end, and Chunmei replied that she would find a way. "I won't bother brother and sister-in-law. I'll take care of mom, so please let her stay here, okay?" The younger sister talked about this, and Zhaofu couldn't argue anymore, so they decided to try this arrangement first. At first, Chunmei came to accompany Zhenghui and cook for her during the day, and she left when Akio came home.But it was later discovered that it was better for her to come at night, because Zhenghui often slept during the day and only got up in the evening.After that, Chunmei would come over at a fixed time every night, and she would always bring home-cooked food, because Zhenghui didn't eat Yaeko-yaki. Once, Chunmei said the following words. "Mom regards me as her mother. She seems to feel that she is being placed in a stranger's house, and her mother will come to see her at night." Akio couldn't immediately believe this statement, but Zheng Hui actually showed the symptoms of a child's psychological regression.He flipped through several related books, all of which contained the same advice. Elderly people with dementia have a world created by themselves. They must not try to destroy that world. They can only maintain it while getting in touch with the elderly—— In Zhenghui's consciousness, this is a strange house.Akio and others who live there have also become strangers to her.