Fatal Error
The moment I realized the injury, I actually felt a strong sense of unreality.
Maybe it was because I had just seen how my mother Zhang Can handled things, and I was infected by her calmness and optimism, so I didn't panic too much at the moment. I quickly calmed down and took a detailed look at her whole body.
It was strange that although I was crying loudly, I didn't feel any actual pain.
The dark red color that covered my entire body seemed to have burned silently and horribly for only a moment, and then solidified into a color, but left no further traces or feelings. The burns on my father and mother also only stayed on the horrifying surface, without the lethality that they should have.
Has the power of the sentry box come to give me protection, marking me and 'I' as prey? Could the strange injuries at the moment be a compromise between some fatal force and the sentry box?
The problem is, I can feel that I was crying at this time simply because the baby cannot leave the mother and is venting the habitual anxiety. During this process, my emotions were always a calm black hole, without any joy, anger, sorrow or happiness, and I was showing the proper reaction step by step and in a very programmed manner.
I had a very uncomfortable feeling. My mind was telling me that I was not really like a baby, but more like a clumsy mirror, rigidly following some rules that I only half understood, playing the role of a creature called Lanlan.
What's worse is that, on the other side of the mirror, the other me, held by my father Xu Feng, is still sleeping motionlessly. I don't look like a normal living thing, and the silence is a bit creepy.
For a moment, I even suspected that the Xu Ranxing in my father's arms was actually a dead baby.
If we remove the swaddling clothes that are wrapped too tightly, will we find a small pile of dry bones that have been burned to ashes underneath?
I shuddered at my sudden assumption and thought, so what about 'me'? What is this 'me' that only my mother Zhang Can can see and touch?
Is this strange connection between Dongzai and I also the result of some kind of abnormal incubation and birth?
An unacceptable but unavoidable possibility is that this 'I' is my younger sister Xu Ping.
At this moment, she was a hollow stone, an indifferent and riddled wall, without any filling called human, nor normal flesh and blood and tears.
And I am watching and experiencing her life from her perspective, from the very beginning.
There was no way to verify it at this time. The baby couldn't speak or ask questions, and my parents probably didn't know what was going on. I didn't know why I had such a terrible and cruel guess, but my intuition was screaming that the guess was right.
But if, if this is what Ping Ping really looks like...
A feeling of helplessness and fear flowed through my body. I just felt cold and was swallowed by a kind of confusion that I didn't even understand.
"Lanlan is still asleep?" At this time, mother Zhang Can asked in a low voice.
"Well, it's still stable." Father Xu Feng wrapped the baby's swaddling clothes tighter, with a heavy and bitter feeling of relief, "It's much better than before."
He hesitated for a moment and discussed quietly, "But we can't let Lanlan sleep all the time."
Zhang Can shook his head: "Before we find the reason, we can't let Lan Lan see or think too much. What happened last time can't happen again."
She smiled and said, "Don't always think the worst. Maybe I'm really crazy. Have you ever thought that you shouldn't believe in my delusions so unilaterally?"
Xu Feng's eyes quickly turned red. He looked at where Zhang Can was holding his hands, took a deep breath, and suppressed his tears: "Ah Can, I believe what you said. We still have Lan Lan, right there. Just because I can't see it now doesn't mean I will never see it, right?"
"Besides, the last fire..."
"That's what I want to say." Zhang Can lowered his eyes, sighed, and said calmly, "Compared to our previous observations and speculations, the so-called Lan Lan would lose control and often suffer sudden injuries. I think there is a better and more reasonable explanation."
"That is, I was sick and had delusions. I often hurt Lan Lan unconsciously and caused those injuries. I also secretly set fire to Lan Lan and even imagined another Lan Lan to take the responsibility. Everything was just a lie I made up to evade responsibility after I became ill."
"A-chan!"
"——Listen to me. No matter which possibility it is, we should still consider it, right?" Zhang Can said softly, without embarrassment, "I hope you are prepared. Maybe you will have to stay with an incurable patient for the rest of your life, always accompany me to play ridiculous lies, and constantly clean up the mess for me, such as hurting people and arson."
"If I weren't crazy—"
"Then we will take good care of both Lanlans and bring them up." Xu Feng answered immediately, choking with laughter, "Don't worry, they are all our children, they are all the same. I won't... I won't be partial to either child and make any of them sad."
"…You, what are you thinking about?"
Zhang Can touched his tearful face, feeling a little helpless and amused. "I mean, if I'm not crazy, if all these weird things are true, then we should establish rules and boundaries for Lan Lan as soon as possible, so that these two unfortunate children can understand the world correctly and give them enough constraints."
"You can't raise two naughty kids to bring disaster to the world, right?"
Mother Zhang Can said this with a smile, and it was not a joke. Soon after returning home from the hospital, she really began to seriously prepare a large amount of infant teaching aids, and patiently recited and explained them to the two of us over and over again.
To explain "injury" and "illness", she used a simpler method that is usually used to teach cats and dogs at home not to bite people, which is to make them "fight" with dolls and make them scream in exaggerated pain.
Sometimes they also showed us that flames, water, and sharp objects are dangerous, reminding us not to touch or manipulate them without permission. My father Xu Feng played the role of a terrified rescuer, using a long gray raincoat to pretend to be a white coat.
This kind of children's comedy at home often ends with the doll being successfully rescued and resurrected, which makes everyone happy.
To be honest, although I tried hard, the effect was completely opposite.
'I'm not the extraordinary baby with uncontrolled abilities that they imagine.
I don't know how the baby Xu Ranxing understood the gestures of two adults, but for me, I couldn't tell the difference between a human and a doll, and I didn't know what life and death, destruction and restoration really were.
Sometimes I tear dolls into pieces and paint their exposed contents dark red, not out of curiosity or imitation, but simply because "this can be cured" and "this can be hurt."
Or more accurately, in my parents' rendition, it was allowed to be repeated, not prohibited.
I do everything that is not prohibited. My behavioral logic is like a disordered cancerous tumor, spreading to all boundaries that can flow without distinguishing between good and bad, right and wrong, and importance.
At first, my parents still had hope. They corrected and taught me more patiently about my irregular behavior, and formulated some more detailed and trivial family rules in an attempt to control the scope of my behavior.
But I couldn't understand the instructions at all.
The two adults were quickly exhausted but kept going.
Until one day, my mother Zhang Can prepared some milk powder to feed me.
Logically, just like countless normal feedings before, sucking is an instinctive reaction imprinted in the baby and there will not be any deviation in execution.
But I reached out my hand to her, and for some reason, it was as if the evil magic of the Painted Skin suddenly failed, or as if some disgusting mimicry suddenly forgot to continue maintaining, and I suddenly became something else in front of my mother.
In front of her suddenly pale and defeated face, the 'I' that revealed my true nature was transparent and empty.
It means literally that in the warm afternoon sun, 'I' presents a kind of flowing transparency, so that all the details inside the body can be seen directly.
It turned out that this body contained nothing but a piece of fleshy human skin.
No organs, no vocal cords, no flowing blood, no bones to fold, no actual gender, no muscles or nerves, and apparently not even a single pore; the surface of the skin is absolutely smooth.
It’s strange, with so many anomalies, why did we never notice them in the past?
At this moment, this mindless empty shell was still making the laughter of a baby, babbling, and waving its hands, like a sea anemone waiting to be preyed on, calling for her to come closer.
Zhang Can stood there motionless. After a while, he wiped the corners of his eyes vigorously without shedding tears. He turned and walked towards the kitchen, walking faster and faster.
She took a sharp knife, a lighter, and a wet cloth, and quickly returned to me.
"Xu Feng, don't move, don't come over here." She said calmly to her husband who rushed over in horror, "I don't intend to hurt myself, and I'm not crazy. Trust me."
I still looked at her intently, opening my arms: "Ah...ah..."
For a moment, I thought my mother would kill me, kill the inhuman Pingping.
But she just kept her head down, her shoulders trembling slightly, suppressing all her emotions, and smiled gently at me.
"Don't be afraid, Mom wants to do an experiment." She said this and bent down to kiss my forehead.
Then she took the three things to the swaddling clothes beside her and looked at Xu Ranxing who had just woken up.
The baby's dark eyes were confused, looking at me and the things in the mother's hand. The first thing he saw was the ordinary wet rag.
The next second, the younger me suddenly choked and curled up due to the feeling of suffocation.
Almost at the same time, the feeling of drowning attacked me, and the cyanosis that only occurs when suffocating and lacking oxygen spread all over my body.
"I was wrong. I have always been wrong." I heard Zhang Can say, like laughing and crying, "This is the one who lost control."
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