Chapter 24 second quarter

The snow that fell last weekend is still on the side of the road. The students after school surpassed me one by one.With gauze on the inner side of my left thigh, I fought back tears and walked in the alley. Since I explained that I fell and scratched my skin, as if to punish my carelessness, the aunt in the health room who was much younger than my mother treated me roughly. Fortunately, the wound was not big and the blood flow was not much, and no one suspected that he had fallen.Depending on the situation, the unscratched area of ​​the three-second glue is smaller than I thought. "Don't fall down on the way home."

At the class meeting before school, Iwatsuki-sensei gave me instructions.Then, he explained to the class the origin of the gauze on my legs, and every student laughed.Not a smirk this time. At the end of this spring, S started attacking me. At that time, S did not come to school for a while because his mother died of illness.It's been a long time since he returned to school, and his classmates didn't comfort him. Everyone hated him. S didn't talk much at first, even if he talked to him, he would only respond a few times without comment.Since the first grade, everyone has subconsciously avoided him.After that, it became "he hates us" and soon became "we hate him".This is really a consensus formed unconsciously. I don't know who proposed it first, or maybe no one proposed it at all.

Knowing that S lost his mother, I feel very pitiful for S.I still clearly remember the feeling that when my father died, I seemed to die with him.So, I mustered up the courage to approach S and start a conversation.I want to comfort him and cheer him up. "I don't have a father either, I understand how you feel." The way S looked at me at that time, I probably will never forget it for the rest of my life.Those pupils were like muddy water accumulated at the bottom of a rusty oil drum, dark and cloudy. From the next day, S started attacking me.In fact, I still can't quite understand S's thoughts so far, and because of this, my fear is even deeper.Is it because I think I understand S's sadness?Or should I, with my mother still alive, say that to S, who has lost her mother?

When I came to the empty intersection, the cold wind that swept across hit the tip of my nose.There was a sudden sharp pain behind the eyes, and warm liquid flowed from both sides of the nose.I lowered my head, and the asphalt road stained by melted snow looked crooked.I stared at the twisted ground as I walked.In a little more than two years, there is still such a long time before graduating from elementary school. When is S going to attack me?Why is he attacking me?How much do I have to wait until the situation deteriorates before I can tell the adults again?The images of grasshoppers, praying mantises, and scarabs with their legs twisted came to mind in the shadows in the back of my mind.

There was a faint sound of short breaths all around. The voice approached me very fast.Impressively looking up, a huge black monster brushed past my neck.I shrank my neck and looked back. A crow gradually went away, and the figure became smaller and smaller.It sounded like the flapping of a crow's wings just now.I turned my head forward again, but I was so scared that I almost stopped breathing. who? Behind the walls of an old house next to a small clearing, a strange woman was staring at me.About the same age as my mother, with a thin face and long, messy hair.As if frightened, her eyes were wide open, like two deep holes.Since she was standing behind a wall, she couldn't see anything below her shoulders, but she could tell that the white shirt on her was not very clean.

I gritted my teeth and stood where I was, when the woman suddenly narrowed her eyes.On closer inspection, her gaze was not on my face, but on the place slightly above my head, an empty place. "You encountered... very miserable things?" Her voice seemed to be washed away by breath, very hoarse. "Are you scared and sad?" There is something wrong with this person, I intuitively thought. "You'd better not go straight home." She kept her gaze above my head and said curtly, like a mantra. "Come to my house... I will help you." After finishing speaking, the woman turned around immediately.Across the moss-covered wall, her thin shoulders could be seen shaking up and down with her long hair, and she disappeared without a trace after she moved to the sliding door of the entrance.

help me?She wants to help me? The woman's hoarse voice lingered in my ears and refused to dissipate.really?What can she do for me?Who is she?I decided to leave, but when I came back to my senses, I walked towards the entrance where the woman disappeared, and gently opened the sliding door.There was a strange smell like mixed oil and kitchen scraps in the house. "The crow... will come and dig through the trash in my house." Stepping into the inner room, the woman was already sitting sideways on the tatami. "That's why I went to catch crows just now." I don't know if it's because the eyeballs are too big, or because there is too little flesh on her face, but her eyes are obviously sunken, but they seem to pop out at any moment.She was wearing a long skirt, and her slender arms were vaguely outlined in a slightly dirty white shirt, like a scarecrow.Her body was also the same as that of a scarecrow, so thin that one could not help but suspect that the clothes were empty.

She neither asked me to sit down nor asked me to stand, but asked: "Do you need my help?" As if to drive away the hesitation, I simply nodded. "I hope you can help me if you can." If you can.Although I don't know how she can help me. A black shadow flashed outside the window, as if the crow had just returned.The woman looked over there, moved her lips and said something, and then faced me. "Can you keep a secret?" Secret, what secret? "Can you promise?" She asked again, and I replied "yes" for the time being.After the woman heard it, she slowly turned back like a stick insect, and reached out to open the sliding door of the closet.

"Don't tell anyone." "You can't tell your parents, and of course you can't tell your friends." The woman took out a dark green flat cloth bag from the closet, which contained a canvas.It was probably white originally, but it seems to be very old, and the whole sheet is yellowed.There seems to be some pattern on it, but I can't see it from the wrong angle. "Are you...are you afraid of someone?" The woman raised her head, her gaze resting blankly above my head. "How do you know?" "I can see it." The woman answered directly without changing her empty expression.

"That's what the you above you said." What do I mean by i above me?Can you see what I'm talking about? The woman suddenly grabbed my skirt with one hand.Before I could scream, I was pulled over, and the woman instantly raised the canvas in the other hand and swung it down hard... I thought I would be beaten, but I didn't.The canvas swung over my head, not my head.The sound of the wind that followed echoed in my ears like the flapping of a crow's wings. "...It's very simple, right?" The woman puts the canvas face down on the tatami, and then gently covers it with a dark green cloth.

"That's all right." How should I describe it?At that time, I felt as if the surface of the lake was suddenly still, just like when the windows were tightly closed on a windy day.In short, in an instant, something disappeared from my heart. "You won't be scared anymore." After the woman whispered, she smiled for the first time, and then she lowered her face and muttered.With that look, I almost forgot that I was in the room, and even forgot that she asked me to come in. I quietly turned back to the porch and put on my shoes.