Chapter 7 Chapter Seven: The Man in Black

When Mom and Dad fished me out from the children fighting outside the house, I was already covered in dust, still clutching the stick, ready to fight again.Helpless at my naughtiness, they took me into the house, washed my hands and face, and ordered me to try on a new dress. "No." I stroked my hair, still wanting to rush out to fight. Mom pulled me back and forced me to dress, and I writhed in her hands—I wasn't interested in the new clothes, the battle outside was all that mattered.Dad looked at me in surprise, clapped his hands and laughed loudly: "Are you a man or a woman?"

I was about to tell him that I was the most powerful female warrior when suddenly a cold drop fell from the top of my head and landed on the back of my hand. "It's raining!" I yelled. My mother slapped my hand: "Put on your clothes quickly, what's the rain?" Looking out the window, the sun is shining brightly outside the house, and there is no trace of rain. Another drop of water fell from overhead. I looked up and saw only the dry ceiling with no water marks on it. But still drops of water kept falling on the back of my hand, I looked around, and finally I found that those drops of water did not come from the ceiling, nor did they come from anything above my head, they just fell out of nowhere, flashing in the sun The colorful light seems to hide an invisible source of water in the transparent air.

"Look!" I pointed to the mid-air where the water fell to ask them to look, but they only focused on my clothes and ignored me at all. Under their stares, I looked up at the mysterious mid-air alone, and I still couldn't figure out where the water came from. They seemed to be automatically generated in the air-I added the water drops on the back of my hand , A salty breath came from the tip of my tongue, so I nodded deeply, thinking it must be sea water. I was five years old that year, and I had never seen the sea. The first impression of the sea in my mind was the drops of water falling from mid-air.

Since then, I have encountered water droplets falling from mid-air many times, and without exception, they appear around me so mysteriously with the smell of salty sea water.I told everyone about it, but no one believed it. I'm sure there's something mysterious going on in my life, but I can't figure out what it is. One night, our family went for a walk together.The night was very dark, a little moonlight leaked from the clouds, and four thin black shadows were printed on the ground. The two big ones were my parents, and the young ones were me and my brother.I jumped and walked ahead, stepping on those shadows with my feet.

1, 2, 3, 4, I counted the shadows and stepped on them. A drop of water fell. There were no trees or anything else around, and it wasn't raining, and the drop fell on my hand for no reason. I tasted it, and it was salty, and it was that weird water again. I wiped my hand on my pants, ignored it, and continued to step on the shadow. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... Uh?There is an extra shadow?Is it wrong? I lowered my head and counted seriously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5—yes, there are indeed 5. The extra shadow is slender and elegant, with long hair flying in disorder, and Our shadows stood side by side, very close together.

I turned around immediately. Behind me, my father and mother were holding my younger brother and looking at the clouds in the sky. Apart from the three of them, there were some pedestrians walking in a farther place, but there was no one else around us. So who is that black shadow? I couldn't figure it out, so I looked down at the ground again, where the moonlight and the shadows were shaking together, 1, 2, 3, 4—the extra shadows had disappeared, if I wasn't so stubborn, I would think I was looking at flowers squinted. But I really read it right. On the way for a walk, I kept silently looking at my feet, expecting that shadow to reappear, but it never reappeared.

It will be Spring Festival soon. During the Spring Festival, we decided not to go to anyone’s house, just the four of us celebrated the New Year together. Dad cooked a table of dishes. At 7 o’clock, it was completely dark. We set off a bunch of firecrackers and started to eat with chopsticks .My brother and I each got a red envelope, and when I was opening the red envelope, I suddenly felt someone staring at me. staring at us. I peeked around and found that at the window, there was a person with half a snow-white face, a pair of dark eyes, looking at us for a moment, and his long hair flying in the wind.

I was about to ask my parents to watch it, when I suddenly remembered that our family lived on the fourth floor. So what happened to that person? This situation made me stunned suddenly, and I quickly put down the things in my hand and ran to the window. The moment I stood up, that person had disappeared. When I opened the window, there was no one outside the window. The New Year’s street was empty and lonely, and red firecracker fragments were flying in the wind, as if that person had also become fragments and disappeared. up. I was a little scared, so I quickly closed the window. My family was calling me to eat, and I slowly returned to the table, looking back all the way, but saw nothing.

This New Year's Eve dinner was uneasy. Although a little uneasy, the Chinese New Year is still a happy thing. Dad adjusted the camera and took a happy family portrait. The photo was developed two days later, and my mother sent me a small one. I treasured it in a small box and took it out every day before going to bed. One night, as usual, I glanced at the photos and was ready to fall asleep. A gust of wind blows. The wind was violent and weird, and it blew directly at the photo in my hand. I couldn't hold it steady, and the photo fell with the wind and fell under the bed.This made me feel even more weird. The route of the photo landing was very wrong. Even if it was blown by the wind, it should not be floated in such a corner. It seemed that there was an invisible hand holding it.

And all the doors and windows have been closed, where does the wind come from? I looked around with some fear, jumped out of bed, and looked under the bed. It was dark there, and I vaguely saw the photo in front of me. I reached out and moved my fingers forward, and suddenly touched something unexpected. The thing was cold, soft, and slender, and it shrank back suddenly the moment I touched it. But this brief contact still allowed me to recognize that it was a hand. I screamed. As a result of the screaming, Mom and Dad were woken up. They picked up the photo from under the bed, but found nothing abnormal. I curled up in my mother's arms all night, not daring to move.

I feel like in this room, somewhere, someone, is watching me. staring at us. Under the gaze of this mysterious figure, I gradually grew up.We have never escaped from her eyes. Although she has not left any traces for a long time, the feeling of being watched is always lingering, so that I have developed a habit: even if I am alone at home, Always used to look around. Like any child, the most rebellious period inevitably comes, the antagonism with the parents has never been so strong, the fights become a regular occurrence, and one day they fight again, and the father and mother sit in the room annoyed, They are really angry. I regretfully stayed on the balcony, looking at the scenery in the distance. At this moment, a deep sigh came from behind me.It was a woman's voice, but definitely not my mother's.Shocked, I slowly turned around. In the house behind me stood a woman dressed all in black, the room was not lit, and the twilight of the evening blended her black dress with the surrounding twilight, making it seem like a part of the darkness.The face was so white, as if it hadn't seen the sun for a long time, but it was not annoying.She looked at me gently and sadly, as if she wanted to say something to me, opened her mouth, then stopped, tilted her head as if thinking of something, smiled, and suddenly disappeared out of thin air. She disappeared slowly, first her calves, then her waist, then her head, until she completely disappeared, I kept staring blankly, not knowing what to do. "Ah!" I heard my mother scream, and she looked at me in surprise and fear when she saw the woman disappear in the end. I also looked at her in surprise. We are all scared. When I told everything I knew, my father and mother's expressions became very serious. After discussing for a few days, they finally took me and my brother to move out. Maybe leave that place and the woman won't show up again?We all hope so. Indeed, the woman no longer appeared, as if everything about the woman had disappeared as we left the old house, which pleased us. Only I am still uneasy. The feeling of being watched is still there. And more importantly, a terrible thing gradually happened to me. Both my mother and I have seen the woman, but my mother only saw her back, and I saw her front. It should be said that it is not an annoying face, and the melancholy face even has a somewhat bookish look.Years later, as I grew up, my appearance gradually changed.Some people say I look like my mother, others say I look like my father. Only I know who I really look like. I look like that woman! Whenever I face the mirror and see my gradually changing appearance, I will feel a kind of panic. This set of appearance is a complete copy of that woman. I don’t know if I will be like that woman in the end. The house comes and goes suddenly, like a ghost? The woman never appeared again, but I walked around the room by myself, and in the reflection of the glass, I often saw my own face, and seemed to see her again in a trance, and sometimes I couldn't tell whether what I saw was She is still me. I grew up day after day, and I worried about whether I would disappear every day. I often thought, is the woman with this face staying here, is it me or her? As expected, time flies like water.It seems that in just a moment, Mom and Dad are old, and Dad is sick, seriously ill, and dying. One day, in the ward, I was alone with my father.I need to fetch water, but I am worried that my father is alone in the room, and he can't see anything. When I ran to bring the water back to the ward, I just saw a black figure disappear from the air, and my father smiled at the corner of his swollen mouth. The woman came again. I felt extremely uneasy in my heart, and something important must happen. All day I stared at Dad, he was so calm, and by the time I realized he was too calm, he was dead. We had been hoping for peace for him, and when it finally came, it seemed too soon. Looking back at the decades we have spent together, the past is like flowing water, and the figure of the woman in black is looming in the middle. The world is like flowing water, and the ups and downs are like big dreams, but that's all. In 2008, people all over China were attracted by Beijing, and even my mother decided to go to watch the Olympics in person. And I stayed at home—this was an opportunity I had been waiting for a long time, to fulfill a long-cherished wish. "Are you ready?" the man in black uniform asked me in that secluded deserted valley. I nod. "It may be a little uncomfortable." The black uniform said. "I know," I smiled, "I already knew." We start backtracking. I had Bruno Baumann's "A Journey in the Desert of No Return" on my lap, and the page turned— "...it feels strange to me to see the Keriya because I have never stood beside such a river. It has no purpose, and the river never flows into the sea somewhere. The Keriya is about to dry up. The river resists There will be no invasion of the desert. It is hard to believe, however, that the river, which is alive and well in this place, will soon dry up..." I have read this passage countless times. Ever since my father passed away, I have deeply felt that life is like a creya river. Just like a river, even if it dries up in the depths of the desert, it is still choppy at the beginning of the river. Our backtracking is to go back to the time when the river has not dried up, to watch the scenery when we came.According to previous theories, life was irreversible, but now, in 2008, the theory has taken another giant step forward. The aircraft first returned to the year when I was five years old. The black uniform handed me a set of invisibility cloaks. I looked down from mid-air on my family when I was five years old. At that time, my father and mother were very young, and I was just a little kid. See They were so happy together, I was so jealous and excited that I couldn't hold back a tear.That tear fell on my five-year-old hand, and she looked up in my direction suspiciously—there was an invisibility cloak, and she couldn't see me. I just look back at our past like this. In the days when all relatives existed, sometimes I would forget to hide my traces, which aroused the fear and suspicion of the old me, which made me laugh again.I think of my fears growing up, my speculations about the woman in black—until now, I never knew who the woman in black was. I was right. Life is indeed like a river. Every episode of the past still exists and has not disappeared. This makes me very relieved. I read the picture scroll of my life slowly and carefully, it is always so colorful. The last stop of the backtracking was the morning of April 9, 2005, and I will never forget that day.When I was young and frivolous, there were many things I didn't do, and now I just make up for it. The aircraft landed in a certain hospital that day. There was a patient lying in the ward. I hadn’t seen him like this for a long time, but I recognized him right away. "Dad." I said softly. He struggled to open his swollen eyes and carefully identified me. I did something I've always wanted to do but never did - I hugged him tightly and gave him a kiss. I felt my father smile. This was his last smile on his deathbed. I didn’t see it in 2005 because it was stolen by me in 2008. When I walked into the hospital room in 2005, I had just had time to put my invisibility clothes back on. No more regrets, as long as I want, I can go back to see them at any time - or we, all the same. The aircraft headed for Beijing in 2008.