Chapter 23 Chapter 23 Wife's Imagination

Near dusk, I got off the 603 bus with the things I bought from the supermarket and walked along the road. A few hundred meters further forward is the Huayuan community where I just moved into.I slowed down, moved my left and right legs step by step, and counted the floor tiles on the sidewalk with my head down.My shadow dragged ahead, stepping on the shadow with every step.My speed was ridiculously slow, which can be seen from the surprised eyes of people on the side of the road. They passed me like a gust of wind. Some people who were very curious and didn’t know how to hide their emotions looked at me with wide eyes. A few girls who had just finished school got together and pointed at me.These girls' eyes are covered with wide hair, and a snow-white face is on top of the wide school uniform, which reminds me of the protagonists in Japanese ghost movies.

When I passed the barber shop at the gate of the community, I saw myself through the glass door: leaning forward, holding a big bag of things in one hand, moving forward desperately.No wonder other people think it's weird, even I think it's abnormal when I see this look. Before I knew it, I walked to the gate of the community.I stood in front of the gate, and there seemed to be something invisible on the gate preventing me from entering.I stood there for a long time, and everyone passing by me looked back at me. The security guard came out of the small glass room a few times, as if he wanted to ask me something, and then went back.

The longer I stood, the more I felt that I couldn't go in, so I turned around and walked along the way I came from. I have walked back and forth many times, my hands have been lost by the heavy plastic bags, and people's eyes stay on me for longer and longer. I walked back and forth heavily, the road from the station to the gate of the community The edge may have been flattened by me a lot. When I walked to the community again, I suddenly felt heavy on my shoulders, as if something was pressing on me.Looking up, I saw the window of my house.It used to draw the curtains tightly, but now it is completely open, and Shen Xiang's upper body appears in the window, wearing green pajamas, with hair hanging on both sides of his face, revealing a very narrow face, which looks abnormally pale.

I couldn't help shivering. I quickened my pace and walked forward, forced a smile, put two plastic bags together in one hand, and waved to Shen Xiang.Shen Xiang didn't say a word, and as I walked, her body was also turning, like a weathervane, always turning her narrow and pale face towards me. The twilight was already thick, making Shen Xiang's face even whiter.The windows of other places have already been lit, only the windows of my house are still soaked in darkness.Thinking that I was about to enter the house, I felt like I was losing all my strength.However, I was powerless to escape, as if there was an invisible rope around my neck, suffocating, but I was obedient.

After entering the gate of the community and walking out of Shen Xiang's sight, the feeling of grinding on his body disappeared.I relaxed a little, slowed down my pace, lowered my head, and dragged forward. Walking to the edge of the flower bed, I suddenly felt that I had no strength left to go on, so I put down the plastic bag, sat on the stone chair by myself, took out a cigarette from my pocket and smoked violently.Cigarette butts were burning brightly and dimly, and people came into the community from outside one after another. Someone was yelling at their children and husband. Listening to this voice, I felt strong jealousy.

The feeling of grinding the top of the grinding plate came again, I slowly raised my head, and at the kitchen window, a face appeared in the darkness, I couldn’t see the face clearly, and the rest of the body merged with the darkness, but I knew that It's Shen Xiang.I looked down at myself - I was sitting under a willow tree, the thick branches hung down on my head and body, covering most of my body, the bad thing was that I was smoking, and the cigarette butt was a dark place in the dark Eye-catching red dot.I hastily stubbed out the cigarette butt, and picked up the plastic bag on the ground—the plastic bag is white, which is another eye-catching feature, not to mention that Shen Xiang can count the time, she must be able to figure out that I have stayed here for a long time after entering the community.

I shuddered again. There was no light in the living room. I turned on the light carefully, but I didn't see Shen Xiang.Walking into the kitchen, she was still standing in front of the window with her back facing me, her jet-black hair straight as if she had been permed.The green pajama pants were a little short, exposing her white ankles. I took a deep breath, brewed my emotions for a while, walked up to her quickly, raised the plastic bag in my hand, and said briskly: "Look what I bought?" She didn't respond, her cheeks were covered by her hair, leaving only a narrow one in the middle, and she was still gazing at something downstairs.

I bit the bullet and continued to say cheerfully: "Come and have a look." I took her hand and pulled her to the dining table.She didn't resist, and followed directly, standing there blankly.I took out everything in the plastic bag: "Look, Mengniu's large-grained yogurt is specially bought for you—mango, don't you like mango? I bought a lot..." I babbled, not for a moment Pausing - saying these are safe, there will be no accidents, my locked mouthpiece is fully released, I try to make them elastic - not only that, but I am also afraid of pausing and falling into a terrible silence .

"Alas..." Shen Xiang sighed without warning, and I felt a chill behind my back, as if something weak and powerless was climbing up my spine.My movements paused for a moment, and then I continued to take things out, and was about to chatter again, when Shen Xiang held down my hand. I had to look up at her. Her dark eyes stared at me, but I stared at the trace of blood on the white of her eyes.She stared at me for a long time, and I stared at her eyeballs for a moment, not daring to look at her face. "Why don't you come back right away after get off work?" She asked quietly.

I don't know when, Shen Xiang's voice changed into this kind of ghostly tone, which was so soft that it didn't seem to be a voice from a real entity. "Where, didn't I go to the supermarket to buy something?" My face couldn't help but twitched. "When I got off work, I waited for you at the window. I saw you carrying your things to the gate of the community and then turned around and walked back. You walked back and forth a dozen times, and then I couldn't help it until I walked to the window to show my face. ."she says.Her voice has no cadence, as if it has no emotion, which makes me uncomfortable for a while.I can't help but hate her a little--knowing what will happen if you continue to ask, why does she have to ask?Even if it is not for me, for her own sake, she should be wise to keep silent.She should know that I have tried my best, I am just an ordinary person, and I need to release my emotions occasionally—these words were churning in my heart, I swallowed them down, smiled, and said softly: "Oh, I'm just thinking about things, you know, I like going back and forth when I'm thinking about things."

"Are you thinking of me?" she asked. "No!" I replied quickly. click.An imperceptible sound sounded in the room, as if an egg had been cracked somewhere.I looked at her with trepidation—a streak of blood about an inch long appeared on her chin. Still, no matter how hard I try, I can't avoid this.I looked at her in despair—what kind of answer do you need?Yesterday, it was the same thing, she asked the same question, when I answered "yes", bloodshot appeared on her face - today I gave the opposite answer, still the same, no matter how I answer, the result all the same. "Another one," she said. "What on earth should I say so this doesn't happen?" I couldn't help asking. click. This time it was the nose, and a thin streak of blood appeared. "Another one." She looked at me sadly, tears slowly streaming from her eyes.She brought her tearful eyes closer to me and stared at me, the bloodshot eyes were particularly shocking.She raised her hand slowly, and I looked at her in fear—I knew what was going to happen next, but I couldn't leave, I could only stay where I was, and let her insert her palms into her temples and pick up her dark hair Lifting it up, as if the hooks lifted the mosquito net, her cheeks on both sides were exposed. I sighed. click. There was another streak of blood in the center of her forehead. I didn't dare to make any sound anymore, and let her take my hand and walk on her face.I can feel her delicate skin with my fingers, but more scars - scars overlapped on her snow-white face, just like someone once used a knife to cut countless small lines on her face.The cheeks are the most scarred, and the center of the face is also there, but not so obvious.Anyway, such a face looked scary, and she kept staring at me, and I didn't even dare to show fear. "Count up how many times you have said, and most of them are for you." She said resentfully. "I know you are good to me." I smiled wryly. She gave a rare smile and put her head on my chest.I stood holding her for a long time, my hands, legs and feet were sore, and I didn't dare to move.Until she took the initiative to straighten up and said with a smile, "I'm hungry." "I'm going to cook." I breathed a sigh of relief, picked up my things and walked into the kitchen. Shen Xiang didn't follow, she doesn't like to go into the kitchen, this is the only space I can breathe.As I was chopping vegetables, I couldn't help thinking: How could my life have come to this point? I can't say anything that hurts Shen Xiang, otherwise there will be bloodstains on her face - it's not an ordinary scar, looking closer, it can be seen that it is a small crack, the skin is turned to the two sides, revealing the bright red inside The meat comes.No blood flowed down, but because the naked red inside turned out, it looked like a bloodstain. Before this happened for the first time, Shen Xiang was normal.Now she looks like a ghost. Before that, she was lively and cheerful, and she didn't feel abnormal at all. The situation started when she changed jobs.Several years after graduation, Shen Xiang has been working in an advertising company. After we got married, we planned to have a child, but the advertising company continued to stay up late and work overtime and couldn't adapt to this plan, so Shen Xiang applied for the civil service examination.Six months later she was admitted as a clerk in the city hall. On the first morning at work, Shen Xiang was very excited, but in the afternoon, when I came back from get off work, I found her listlessly sitting on the sofa in the living room. "You don't seem to be in a good mood?" I smiled and patted her head. Her expression was very gloomy, she lowered her head in thought for a while, then turned to look at me: "Shitou, tell me, am I an open-mouthed person?" "Of course not, what's wrong?" She pursed her lips, tears rolling in her eyes: "I don't know what's wrong, I really didn't say anything special, but Sister Zhang was angry with me, they all said I offended Sister Zhang." "What did you say?" I asked nervously.Sister Zhang is the chief of their propaganda department. In the government department, it is not a good thing to offend the leader. "I don't know," Shen Xiang said tearfully, "I asked others, and everyone had a different answer. Anyway, all I know is that I offended her!" We didn't make dinner that day, and neither of us was in the mood. This situation made us very nervous. Each of us grabbed a steamed bun, opened a box of fresh milk, and analyzed why Sister Zhang was angry with her while eating.Shen Xiang recalled over and over every word he said during the day. I listed those words on paper, analyzed left and right, and proposed various possibilities. Until late at night, I still didn't find the answer.Down!load?Beautiful girl! The next day, Shen Xiang was a little apprehensive before going to work. I encouraged her vigorously, and she went out worried. After returning from get off work, Shen Xiang burst into tears again.She sat on the sofa with red eyes and wrote something, and there were more than a dozen sheets of paper full of words scattered on the coffee table in front of her.I noticed that she hadn't changed into slippers and house clothes, and the way her hair was disheveled told me something was wrong. "What's the matter?" I asked. She pointed at the papers on the table with her fingers, but kept writing with her head down without saying a word. I picked up a few pieces of paper and scanned them, and there were conversations written on them, records of conversations between Shen Xiang and different people.I understood what was going on at a glance - just like yesterday, Shen Xiang must have accidentally offended someone again, and she was recalling every word she said to everyone in order to analyze the reasons for it.Seeing her frantically writing, a chill rose from my heart, I held down her pen and said, "Stop writing." "No," she said with tears, "I just want to see, just want to see, why did I offend everyone in just two days?" This statement surprised me secretly.I understand Shen Xiang's feelings very well. She attaches great importance to this job. In today's turbulent employment environment, there are too many undergraduates like Shen Xiang. The ambitions and desires that ordinary girls have are not enough, and the only hope is to live in peace and ordinary life.The job of a civil servant is very stable and the salary is high, which gave her a long-lost sense of security.But it's really not a good phenomenon to offend everyone just after going to work.I picked up those records and looked at them carefully. After looking at them for a while, I asked Shen Xiang to stop again. "Who is this Su Yan?" I asked pointing to a piece of paper. "Our office is in charge of computers." She said without looking up. "You don't talk to him very much." "Yes, he spends most of his time chatting online and doesn't like to talk." "Stop writing," I pressed her hand again, "Let's analyze it from Su Yan's conversation. He has few words, only 5 or 6 lines, which is easy to analyze." Shen Xiang's eyes lit up, and he showed a rare smile: "Really, why didn't I think of that?" She immediately became lively, pulled me to sit beside her, and kissed me on the cheek. Shen Xiang and Su Yan only spoke three sentences in total.Shen Xiang entered the office in the morning and said to Su Yan: "Morning." Su Yan didn't look up at the computer and said: "Morning." At that time, the other people in the office hadn't come yet, and Shen Xiang said again: "Go online so early?" Su Yan Glancing at her, he said: "Yeah." After a while, everyone came, and someone asked who was the first, and Shen Xiang said, "Su Yan is the first." Su Yan didn't make a sound.In the afternoon, most of the people, Shen Xiang found that he had offended many people, tried hard to save the situation, and took the initiative to clean everyone's desks. When she wiped Su Yan's desk, she said flatteringly: "Su Yan, your desk is really Clean!" Su Yan got up and left. Just these few words, we analyzed for a long time, Shen Xiang felt that he did not say anything wrong, and I also felt that she did not say anything wrong.However, considering from Su Yan's point of view, and in such a special environment as the city government, I think Shen Xiang's "Go online so early" is the culprit. "Why?" Shen Xiang asked puzzled. "First of all, judging from the reaction, when you said good morning to him, he also responded with a greeting. Obviously, the phrase 'morning' did not offend him. And when you said, 'It's so early to surf the Internet', he I glanced at you, this glance probably has other meanings, as for the phrase 'your desk is so clean', it was a compliment, and there was no possibility of him getting angry, so only the second sentence could make him He is angry." I said, "As for why this made him angry, I guess he may have misunderstood your subtext as accusing him of delaying work on the Internet all day. Although your unit is free and everyone is free, this statement You can’t say it publicly, don’t you?” Shen Xiang nodded again and again: "It must be so!" I felt a little hungry, but Shen Xiang was so excited that he didn't have time to eat, and asked me to analyze other people's words. We didn't eat that night. During the crazy analysis, Shen Xiang learned to smoke. He didn't sleep for a while until four o'clock in the morning.When she went out in the morning, her eyes were still bloodshot, but her expression was very excited. She said that she would definitely change this situation. But the reality is that she was defeated again. I'm used to Shen Xiang frantically writing down conversation notes after get off work, and then helping her analyze them one by one.She never tires of it, but I get tired of it very quickly.It's a maddening job, bogged down in conversations, looking for signs of someone's anger in perfectly normal words without knowing what the right answer is.Sometimes I want to tell Shen Xiang that this approach is futile, but seeing her tears, I hold back the words again.Survival was not easy, and Shen Xiang had no choice. I often thought afterwards that Shen Xiang's final appearance was inseparable from my connivance. The conversation between Shen Xiang and her colleagues, in my opinion, is actually not suspicious. Only a mental patient would be angry with these words, but her colleagues are all angry, which makes me feel incomprehensible.If it's just that, then that's fine. What's scary is that in this infinite analysis and speculation, Shen Xiang is also changing step by step.She became sensitive and suspicious. Sometimes, a word I said unintentionally would make her think of many places that I didn't think of at all, and list them on paper for analysis. The first time I discovered Shen Xiang's problem was when Shen Xiang asked me to help her analyze those conversations again.I found that one of the papers contained the conversation between me and Shen Xiang, and I couldn't help being very surprised: "What's going on? Why did you write down the conversation between me and you? I'm not angry with you!" "Really?" Shen Xiang looked at me suspiciously, "But I think you're angry." "I didn't." I couldn't laugh or cry. "If you're not angry, why do you say you're tired?" "I'm really tired." "But you've never said that before." "That's because I didn't feel tired before." "I wasn't tired before, why are you tired now? Are you tired of me?" "Why? It's because of the recent work pressure and sleeping late." "Ah? You finally said that it's because you went to bed late! I made you sleep late, didn't I?" Shen Xiang's words were like one step at a time. Stars stared at me, my head hurt, and I pressed my forehead and said, "I That's not what it means." "Then what do you mean?" she demanded. "I'm just tired, that's all, don't think too much." I said tiredly. "I think too much? You mean I think too much about all of these? But they are indeed angry with me, how can they say that I think too much?" Shen Xiang's tears flowed down . "I didn't say that." I was exhausted. "You didn't say that? Then I was just thinking about it myself?" ... Such nitpicking quarrels flourished day by day, Shen Xiang stopped analyzing the conversations between her and her colleagues, and turned to attack every loophole in my words, most of the time it was her own imagination made out of nothing .This kind of senseless bickering bored me, we fought a lot and even mentioned divorce. If it wasn't for something that happened later, we would have continued to quarrel like this until we broke up.