Chapter 4 Chapter Four

The man gave the woman next door a large sum of money, and he moved away with the girl.Together they lived in the small town for three years, and now they are on the train again.The man gave most of the contents of the house to the traumatized mother, but he brought her red shoes anyway. On the train, they sat facing each other, and the slow bumps made her float in front of his eyes like a small and mischievous cloud.He looked at her, he hadn't been facing her like this for a long time, looking at her.And she was thirteen years old now, and he had seen the bag of sanitary napkins by her bedside, so he knew that she had menstruation and was a big girl.And she looks more and more like her dead mother.She has a full forehead and cheeks, but a pointed chin, which is a very charming look.The eyes are long and big, the pupils are extraordinarily bright, and her lips are slightly thick, especially the upper lip, like two petals cuddling together, charming and moving.She likes to part her hair in half, tie it up, and put it on top of her head, like an eighteenth-century French princess—this is what she learned from TV, and she already knows how to make herself more attractive.And pulling up her hair just exposed her collarbone.Her collarbone is very protruding. If she shrugs her body, the position of her collarbone will form two concave oblong bowls, which are as white as lotus petals.She was still thin, with slender hands and feet, especially the fingers. He guessed that she might have inherited her mother's artistic talent, and she was born with a pair of hands for painting.His eyes fell on her feet again.Her feet are naturally very slender, revealing her destined good figure, such a person will never gain weight in her life.She no longer wears her mother's red shoes, but she still likes red shoes, and he also buys them for her when he sees them.So she already has many pairs of red shoes, small square ones, tied with slender red ribbons, embroidered with cosmos, hollowed out with plum blossoms, and inlaid with tiny diamonds.She likes summer very much. She can wear red shoes barefoot, and she can take them off at any time, and put her little feet in the sun to dry.

He looked at her, looking at her calmly.He tried hard not to reveal his obsession with her, but it was getting harder and harder.He finally asked her: Why pull out other people's teeth? If he wants to kiss me, I say, let me pull out your teeth and I will let you kiss me.He is willing.After she finished speaking, she pursed her lips and smiled at him, calm and innocent. He said, do you know what I do?I am a killer. The girl nodded, not surprised at all: I know you are a killer, I touched your gun.It's great. They're talking about it for the first time.Men never mentioned their careers to girls before.In fact, he never left the town once in the past three years, and he refused all those who came to him to pay him to kill someone.He didn't think he needed so much money at first, but he was more worried that the life of fugitive would bring danger to the girl.He just wants to take good care of the girl like a treasure.

During the three years he spent with the girl, he gained an unprecedented tranquility.The house he bought had a small garden, and he planted some flowers and vegetables in it.Every morning, after the girl went to school, he put on boots and simple coarse clothes, rolled up his sleeves and was busy in the garden.Then prepare lunch for the girls.It never occurred to him that he could cook, and he used to just hurry across the street to buy himself a warm baked sweet potato or a greasy grilled sausage.Sometimes, when he had just received a sum of money, he would treat himself to an exceptional meal at the most exclusive restaurant.At that time, he was sitting alone at the dining table covered with a gorgeous tablecloth, and in front of him was a large table of exquisite meals.At such moments, he would suffer from a kind of unbearable loneliness, and it was only at that moment that he suddenly felt that he wanted someone to share it with him.But in the past three years, he actually allowed himself to study a fish in the kitchen calmly and patiently.Such a change sometimes makes him feel terrified when he thinks about it. If it wasn't for the girl's magic power to grab him deeply and make him fall deeply, then what would it be.

He didn't know why, at this seemingly peaceful moment when they were sitting on the train, he suddenly told her his identity.He speculated that it might be because he had gradually felt that the girl had restrained him too much, and the girl's power was rapidly expanding at an unpredictable speed.And he felt that he was going to be unable to control her. In fact, he had never controlled her. He had been compromising and pampering her.So he suddenly felt that maybe in the girl's heart, he was just a very dirty image of a middle-aged man, which made him very annoyed.So he decides to tell her who he is.

But the girl is so cold and calm.He began to suspect that she had been remembering four years old.This made him a little uneasy.He asked in a moment of bewilderment: What else do you know? The girl didn't even look at him, she kicked off her shoes, took both legs exposed in the skirt to the seat, and said with a smile: You came to the orphanage to pick me up, and you still keep my mother's red shoes, you Is it my mother's lover?Or maybe you are my father at all.The girl probably thought this was a very interesting thing, she shrugged slyly. The man froze for a moment.From the sloppy expression on the girl's face, he could deduce that she really didn't remember the past.So he shook his head painfully:

I'm not.Not your father, nor your mother's lover. The girl felt that the man was a little uneasy, but she still didn't even look at him, just smiled slightly: You don't have to panic, I don't care at all. The man looked at the girl, who had already turned her face out of the window.Her indifference and carelessness always stab men again and again.The man suddenly wanted to yell at her, I killed your mother, look at me!you look at me!He would rather the girl hate him and come to beat him to kill him than to treat him with such a careless attitude, which is the most indifferent neglect and the most ruthless negation.

The man panicked.Because he suddenly found that the girl had grown up, so big, and he had been with her for three years, but he didn't seem to integrate the slightest effort into her life. She was like a congenitally deaf person, and she couldn't accept him information delivered.However, the cruel thing is that he still has to face her every day, and he is no longer the fierce killer he used to be. Because of her, he has become a mediocre man who cooks and takes care of her life. He really wanted to shout out: I killed your mother, you look at me!you look at me!Yet he kept himself under control.The train was still galloping, and large swathes of wind flew in from the window. He sat still and slowly let the resentment and remorse stagnated in his heart dissipate little by little.

The train stops in a city on the way.The girl saw the Ferris wheel hidden behind the trees hanging in the sky, the white skeleton and the small colorful round houses.Neither the orphanage nor the town where she lived in the past few years did not have a Ferris wheel, and she only saw it on TV.So she watched curiously, her researching eyes again.She even saw a hot air balloon slowly rising into the sky, with a few happy little heads on it.She just watched, didn't speak, and didn't make any demands on him.But he already knows how to read the expression on her face, he knows that she has longing for this city, she hopes to blend in, but she won't say that she will always be in such a hateful and careless look.He finally couldn't let her feel any regrets, so he took her off the train, and they arrived in this bustling city.

Overwhelmed with new gadgets.He took her to the amusement park to ride the Ferris wheel, roller coaster and crazy mouse.She's not like those timid girls, she doesn't scream.She let her body be turned back and forth by those roaring large toys.He could see that she liked it, she liked anything exciting. The man decided to stay with the girl in the city. It's an expensive city, full of materialism.Money deals swarm like flies around every corner.The man didn't like it, but the girl did, so he decided to stay.He has not worked for a few years, and his daily life with girls is also a luxury. In addition, as compensation, he gave the woman next door a lot of money. Now he doesn't have much money.He just rented a fairly comfortable house and bought simple furniture.Life continued as they had in the small town, and he chose an all-girls school for the girl, hoping that she would have as little contact with men as possible.He rides a motorcycle to send the girl to school every day, and then turns around to the vegetable market to buy the fresh vegetables of the day.Girls like to eat white soup cooked with live fish, so he often orders a live crucian carp just shipped from the river with the seller.Then he picks up the girls from school.He likes the back and forth between school and school.Because on the motorcycle, the girl will hug his waist.The girl's hands were small, and they were like two little starfishes on his body.The city faces the sea, and they go home along the Sunset Boulevard by the sea.The sea breeze blew his clothes and her hair.He didn't speak a word to her along the way, and sometimes when the weather was hot, he stopped halfway to buy the girl an ice cream with a small face, and then he started the motor and continued on.The girl is still the same as when she was a child, eating very restless.When he got home and undressed, he saw that the undershirt was covered with ice cream syrup.But he felt warm in his heart, as if he had returned to a few years ago, when the girl was a child.

They lived in two houses, one for him and one for the girl.But the two houses are side by side, separated by a large window.Although there were curtains, he chose them to be very thin, almost transparent gauze.He could see the girl through the curtains, and every night after dinner, the girl went back to her room.He also went back to his room.He turned on the TV, sat on the couch, but was restless and kept looking at the window, where he could see the girl changing, drinking, looking in the mirror, dancing to the record.The window was obviously far more attractive to him than the TV, and he had become focused on the window without noticing it.He felt that he was not a person who was greedy for beauty. On the contrary, he once thought that he didn't need women at all.He thinks they are vulgar, lowly animals who dislike the poor and love the rich.His body also has no desire for women, which may be related to the fact that he has killed many women. He sneaked into women's bedrooms and killed women in the bathtub or on the bed.The woman's body may still be naked, but when he left, the woman must have fallen in a pool of blood, and the loss of blood changed the shape of the woman. He felt that when they fell there, their body was like a crumpled rag Same, full of wrinkles.The image of a woman in his mind will always be fixed at that moment.That has nothing to do with beauty, and that has nothing to do with desire.

However, he was willing to watch this girl without missing a single glance.He liked the way she stretched out her arms when changing clothes, revealing the scar on her lower abdomen, like an oyster slowly opening, revealing the dazzling pearl in its middle.But he also likes the way she picks up a big glass to drink water and grabs a lock of her hair to play with. Sneezed, then inadvertently reached out and rubbed his nose.He liked everything about her, which obviously went beyond admiration and infatuation for a woman, she was his little handicraft, she was his priceless treasure. Girls must be aware of men's eyes.But this gaze seemed to be transparent to her, and she didn't mind at all.The door of her room was never closed, and she undressed, applied body lotion, tried on corsets, and painted her nails under his gaze.And that window didn't exist at all, and sometimes the curtains were not closed, and sometimes the window was even opened, and the man could smell the strong perfume mixed with the smell of nail polish.Sometimes when she took a shower, she forgot to bring in a change of clothes and rushed out of the bathroom naked.She is just so indifferent. Every morning the man wakes up, he looks through the big window, the girl is still asleep, he looks at her for a while, then he picks up his cigarette and goes out to the balcony.Sometimes he would pick up his gun and stroke it, but he began to feel that it was heavy and cold.He even disliked it, which has followed his partner for decades.He put it down, staring at the sun slowly revealing his face through the thin morning mist.He felt that he didn't have any more requirements for life, but he just lived peacefully with girls like this, and he was willing to act like a middle-aged man with no special skills and no interest.