Chapter 3 third quarter

That was last year. At the end of July, Chun also brought the bellworm back from primary school.Because the summer vacation is approaching, the bellworm raised in the class was taken home by the students voluntarily to take care of it. I thought I would return to school after the summer vacation, but after listening carefully, it seems that this is not the case.The bell worms were adopted by his son, and there are a dozen of them in total.Two-thirds of the bollworms housed in a plastic breeding box with a net cover are male, and they will all come into estrus loudly as soon as they are placed in a dark place.

Since the teacher told him not to let the soil dry out, Haruya used the sprayer Kyoko bought for him to add water to the breeding box twice a day.Every time the water is sprayed, the soil and dead leaves spread on the bottom of the box will emit a rancid smell.It's the smell of the woods. Chun also placed the insect breeding box in the corner of the living room.Every night, I was forced to listen to bell bugs in the tiny two-storey house I bought with a thirty-five-year loan.As long as one screams first, the other will follow immediately, so another one rubs its wings, and the room is full of screams unconsciously, vividly depicting the scene of the deep mountain in the evening in my mind. S's broken head.My coat was stained red with his blood.Hands covered in dirt.Two long tentacles dangling under a fallen tree trunk.Those ornamental eyes staring straight at my crime.

"Why did you bring the bellworm back?" It's just three days into August, and after dinner, I can't help complaining at the dinner table.As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew something was wrong.In the terrarium in the corner of the living room, the irritating, trembling tinnitus-like chorus sounded again. At first, Chun Ye had a smug smile, but before he could say a word, his face froze, and the corners of his lips hesitated, before they were fully raised, they stopped.The son has always shown this look since before.Once he realized that something was wrong with his father, he would definitely show such an expression.

I deliberately squeezed out a smile and asked again: "It wasn't pushed on you, was it?" Haru also twitched her small chin and nodded.There was a slight sound of tableware clashing in the kitchen, and Kyoko was washing the dishes. "Can't you bring it back?" "No? How to say?" "because……" Because dad didn't put on that face?A face that wants to throw something and yell, doesn't it? "Dad doesn't hate insects. Last summer, didn't we catch unicorns, stag beetles, and scarabs with you?" "Well, I caught it."

Haruya looked up at me and smiled happily.Probably recalling the strength of the unicorn fairy when it was caught, and the luster of the scarab.The son slid off the chair, hurried to the corner of the room, and picked up the terrarium.The shouts from inside the box stopped for an instant.Then, Haru returned to the dining table with the terrarium in his arms. "Tell you, the teacher said that only male bellworms can sing. Like this one with huge wings, it is male, and a stick protruding from the back of its buttock is female." Haruya put the terrarium on the dining table and continued explaining.

"The male does not make a sound with his mouth, but quickly flaps the wings on his back." Inside the transparent plastic box, the bellworms stared at me with their black eyes open.None chirped, none rubbed their wings, but I still heard the sound.I moved a little closer to the terrarium, and— "..." there's noise. My eyes immediately turned to Haruya, who was still introducing Suzuchi.So, I turned my gaze back to the breeding box.The bellworms looked at me, one of them moved its front foot slightly, and said something again.It swayed its long tentacles, wriggled nimbly and spoke like a thin beard.It continued to whisper to me with a voice like countless small bubbles bubbling out of mud.The volume gradually became louder, constantly invading from my ears, inward, inward, and drilled into my brain.

There was a loud noise nearby. "what happened to you……" Kyoko asked. Holding the wet rag to her chest, she stared at me wide-eyed.I found my right hand was pressed against the table, and the bottom of my fist was throbbing with pain. Haru was right next to me, looking at me with the same expression as his wife, stiff as if he had been abandoned in a strange place.Probably because of surprise, most likely because of sadness, he couldn't even speak. "The terrarium is not allowed on the dining table." Finally, I regained the ability to speak. "put it back."

Chun also silently followed suit.It can be seen that the small body is surrounded by an atmosphere of fear, and he is on full alert to bear my next sentence.But I didn't say a word, just turned to face the table, relaxed the tense facial muscles, and looked into the empty place.The sound of water came from the kitchen again, and the sound of the tableware colliding was even harsher than before. After a while, the bell insects whined loudly behind them again. Chun also took care of the bellworm diligently. He seems to have read a children's picture book, asking apricots to cut eggplants, cucumbers, and apples into small pieces and put them in the terrarium, and occasionally feed them toast.In addition, he also pays attention to whether the feed has deteriorated and rotted, and replaces it from time to time.

I didn't say anything to interfere, and every night when I got home from get off work, I just watched him take care of the bellworm from a distance. Bellworms chirp frequently.And as soon as the barking stops, it will definitely speak.They will murmur with the sound of boiling turbid soup.Even if you observe the breeding box carefully, you can't see which one is speaking human words.It seems to be this one, and it seems to be that one.Maybe there was more than one. Just kill them all.One night, I made up my mind. One night, about two weeks after the bellworms had settled in, I sneaked out of bed.

Taking care not to wake up Kyoko and Haruya, I quietly walked out of the dormitory and downstairs, walked into the bathroom, opened the sliding door under the washstand, took out the insecticide spray and sneaked into the living room.As if diving in a high-frequency sound wave, I approached the insect terrarium, gently lifted the covered transparent part like an observation window, and brought the insecticide nozzle in my right hand close to the opening.The side of the jar hit the corner of the terrarium with a soft click.In an instant, the rustling bellworms all fell silent.The bellworms in the depths of the darkness looked up at me together, shaking the beard-like things around their mouths.As soon as I gritted my teeth, I put my finger on the button of the insecticide, and when I was about to press it, I suddenly heard "Dad".

Turning around, Chun also stood at the door of the living room in pajamas.In the darkness, only those round eyes shone slightly. "What are u doing?" I gently closed the observation window with my left hand and replied "There are cockroaches". "The cockroach came out and ran to your bellworm." "Runned into the box?" "No, I just ran around here. But Dad was worried that he might run in, so he checked it out. But I didn't see any cockroaches, and the box was full of bellworms." "You spray that on the bellworm?" Haruya's bright eyes stared straight at my insecticide. "No, then your bellworm will die." I got up and walked towards Haruya. "The cockroach has escaped, go back to your room and sleep. Did you come down to use the bathroom?" "Well... I'm going now." I walked along the corridor with Chun Ye, and went upstairs first on the way.Back in the bedroom on the second floor, I put the insecticide on the floor, and when I got into bed, I heard the sound of the toilet flushing downstairs.The chirping of the bellworm sounded again as if crawling through the depths of the dark night, and the ceiling on the other side in the darkness seemed to be pressing down on me inch by inch. Haruya's summer vacation is over. The chirping of the bellworms has become very weak, presumably their season is coming to an end.Bellworms will not survive the winter, and will die in autumn.I was looking forward to this moment with all my heart. After dinner, Haruya looked at the terrarium in the living room more eagerly than usual, which was really interesting.I sat at the dining table, holding a glass of beer that was no longer cold, watching my son out of the corner of my eye.Haru also turned to look at me a few times, as if he wanted to ask something.But maybe he was afraid that I would slam the dining table like last time, so he didn't speak.Kyoko, who was washing dishes in the kitchen, wiped her hands with a rag and stepped into the living room. Haruya couldn't wait to turn her head and call her mother. "Mom, what are these bellworms doing?" Kyoko walked up to Haruya and knelt down, her thin snow-white neck was highlighted by the fluorescent light.I leave the table and move closer behind the two of them. "Now the male and the female look so strange. Look, it's the same here." I looked towards the place where Chunya's little fingers were compared, and there was a female bellworm slowly crawling on the soil. "The female goes to the male." The destination of the female bollworm is a male bollworm.The male and female cling to each other and start rubbing against each other.Chun also stared at them through the plastic wall, just like me back then. "What do you think they are doing?" I asked Chun Ye.Haru also noticed that I seemed to be quite surprised behind my back, my shoulders trembled, and I turned my upper body. "What do you think this male and female are doing?" I repeated the question, and Haruya silently shook his head. "Father is here to tell you." Probably drunkenness forced me to speak, and when I regained my senses, I was explaining Suzuki's behavior to my son with explicit descriptions.The son frowned slightly, as if he was a stranger in front of him.Kyoko also looked at me. Although she didn't speak, I could see the obvious fear on her face. Autumn is coming. As the heat went away, the bollworms in the breeding box died almost at the same time, leaving the last female.It stared at something, and stayed in the corner without moving.Chun also seemed to think that the bellworm died because he didn't take care of it well, so I told him that the bellworm didn't survive winter.And this seemed to kill his son's love for the bellworm in one fell swoop, and Chun also threw the breeding box into the yard without hesitation.The next morning, I went to see it, and the last female bellworm also turned its belly and became stiff. Like the continuous chanting, the unimpressive winter comes and goes. After spring, June arrived, and Kanto experienced record-breaking heavy rain.As soon as the rain stopped, the weather changed drastically, and it was sweltering and sunny for several days in a row. One Sunday morning, when I was in the living room, I inadvertently looked at the small yard, and saw a crow parked on the outer wall.The crow stayed silent, just as still, almost as if spying on our house.I forcefully opened the screen door on purpose, and the crow made an obnoxious cry and flew away with heavy flapping wings.The terrarium was overturned right under the place where the crow had just stopped, and I swayed over there with my sandals on. I squatted down and poked into the box. In the corner of the uneven soil, there was a black unknown object moving.I took a closer look, and surprisingly, it turned out to be a bollworm, a very, very small bollworm, which must have been hatched from the eggs laid by the previous bollworm.I observed for a long time, but I didn't see any other bellworms except this one.It may have been abandoned here, no one managed the soil conditions, so no other eggs remained. "Is this Mr. 〇〇?" Someone calls my name and I look up.Behind the moss-covered wall, two men watched me warily. "I have something to ask you." The older man pulled a black booklet from the inner pocket of his suit jacket.I shook my head, lifted my cheeks a little, and forced a smile. "I'm a little busy today." He winked, and the young man with him took out a photo from his handbag. It was a light summer coat on a silver workbench.The coat was covered in mud and corroded throughout, turning it from a light brown color to almost black, but I knew it was mine. Eleven years ago, when I buried S's body, I buried the thin coat at the bottom of the woods together. "Do you have any impression of this?" The tone was not a question, but a confirmation.I said nothing, and looked away from the photo noncommittally.The older man, calling himself Fukuroya, deftly made his case. "Can you please come with us?" I turned around and looked back, Kyoko and Haru were also standing side by side inside the open window.Both of them looked at this side with puzzled and a little uneasy expressions. At this time, the whisper of the bellworm just now came from the breeding box under his feet. The sound is very small, really very small. "I know……" I whispered to the bellworm.