Chapter 29: Witch's Hair
It seems like I always find that there are many things I have forgotten after I set off.
Forgot to take away the tied-up trash, forgot to drink the last sip of milk for breakfast, forgot to check how many eggs were left in the refrigerator...
It was the same this time. After we left, she realized she had forgotten to rub Tom again, forgot she had left a pen on the bedside table, and forgot she wanted to ride her bike down the mountain road with a view of the sea...
But it won't be long before these forgotten forgettings will be forgotten.
So what will she remember?
Perhaps it's the same thing you remember from a movie: small details or unforgettable feelings, like being enveloped by a swimming pool.
What a pity, why did we only stay in the swimming pool for such a short time?
Is owning a private swimming pool as difficult as owning a private island?
Fortunately, as the distance between us grows, this feeling of regret becomes less and less, and is replaced by another emotion.
I really want to go home quickly. What is Xiaolan doing?
Draw comics, do handicrafts or watch movies?
With his head full of imagination, Xia Cun dragged the heavy suitcase out the door. When he opened the door, he saw Xia Lan vacuuming the living room. She and the suitcase were standing outside the door in a daze.
Of course, Xia Lan calculated the time before starting to clean. She had to let the child see her hardworking side, even if it was just for show. Then she saw a cute idiot.
"Why, you don't recognize me?"
Xia Lan had her hair cut. Before, her black hair was long and thick, making her look like a witch brewing magic potions in the middle of the night. But now, it was cut very short, lying like layers of waves against her scalp. The curves were light and free, highlighting her features and making her look more capable than before, as if she had lost her lazy look and become a more efficient person.
Xia Cun stayed for a while, then walked straight into the room and hugged her.
Xia Lan was taller than she was. She rested her cheek against her shoulder, not saying a word. Xia Lan steadied the vacuum cleaner with one hand and casually ruffled her hair with the other. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"Confirm."
"What? You really don't know me?"
"Well, that's not like you."
It seems that the magic has failed and the witch has lost her job. Xia Cun thought about it and looked up at her, "Why did you cut your hair?"
"I always feel dizzy every day, and the other day when I went out for breakfast, the little boy at the next table grabbed my hair."
"Did you hit him?"
"Of course, I pulled him up and threw him into the river."
Xia Lan was always talking nonsense. As she spoke, her big eyes under the frame of her glasses suddenly opened wider and she shouted towards the door: "Holmes! Come back!"
Xia Cun turned his head and saw a furry tail passing by outside the door.
"No, I'll go catch the dog."
"Do you have a dog?"
"This is not the time to talk about this!" Xia Lan ran out the door and chased downstairs.
They lived on the second floor of an old residential building with no elevator. Xia Cun followed them downstairs and saw Xia Lan holding a puppy under a sycamore tree. Then he saw her pick up the dog and go back downstairs.
"Who is it?"
Xia Cun asked in a tone as if Xia Lan had raised another child after she left.
"Let me introduce you to Holmes, Doraemon's beloved daughter."
It turned out to be the dog of Xia Lan's editor Duo Meng. Duo Meng had to go back to his hometown for something the day before yesterday, so he simply entrusted the dog to Xia Lan to raise, but Xia Cun thought that Duo Meng had entrusted the dog to the wrong person.
Holmes, whose Chinese name is Sherlock Holmes, is a four-month-old Wire Fox Terrier.
Because of its young age, its rectangular face still had a bit of the roundness of a puppy, but its body and legs had been elongated. Its eyes were surrounded by symmetrical latte-colored fur, and its back had a few irregular black-brown patches. Its tail was held high, with only the tip being white. When it walked, its tail trembled slightly, like a gray-brown candle with a white light.
Xia Cun sat on the carpet and played with it, pinching its tail and paws. Holmes tilted his head back, his bright black eyes fixed on her, his ears half-folded, twitching when he blinked, looking both well-behaved and alert.
Xia Cun looked into its dark eyes for a moment, then looked up and asked Xia Lan, who was sitting cross-legged on the sofa picking out takeout, "Can you walk it?"
"Of course. Don't underestimate it because it's cute. If you don't take it for a walk, it can tear down your house. Have you discovered anything?"
Xia Cun turned his head without thinking and said to the floor lamp next to the sofa: "The strawberry bear is gone."
"Bingo! This guy did it the night he first arrived. Poor Strawberry Bear—let's just eat bibimbap..." Xia Lan jumped from one topic to another, then back again, saying without further discussion, "Okay, Xia Zuncheng, from today on, walking the dog is up to you."
“…”
Xia Cun asked her: "When will Doraemon come back?"
As if they were in a hurry to get rid of Holmes.
"I don't know, maybe in a week." Xia Lan threw away her phone and lay down on the sofa. She reached out a hand and touched Holmes' back. She added, "It feels like your hair, fluffy but very resilient."
"Do you get bored when I'm not around?"
Xia Cun suddenly asked this, staring at Xia Lan with his eyes, just like Holmes had stared at her just now.
"Of course." Xia Lan blurted out, but before Xia Cun could be happy about this answer, her voice continued, "I would be bored when you were here too. After all, boredom is the norm in life."
Xia Cun was stunned because she had heard these words from Shinji Mizuno not long ago.
"So what do you think is fun?"
"Such a familiar question. You must have asked me before."
"I don't remember."
"I don't really remember... If it's interesting, it's those shining moments."
Xia Lan likes to use words like "moment" and "instant", as if she feels that nothing will last long.
The midday sun shone on the sofa, and Xia Lan's hair was shiny.
It's still a little strange. Does cutting your hair make you different? What would happen if you cut Jiang Song's hair?
"Have you found the scissors?" Xia Cun remembered that Xia Lan had sent her a message asking her where the scissors were.
"No, we all have new scissors anyway." Xia Lan said indifferently.
This attitude is somewhat similar to Jiang Song's. Or perhaps it could be said the other way around: Jiang Song is sometimes very similar to Xiao Lan. He is always lazy and careless, as if he doesn't care about anything.
"I'll find it."
Although looking for it in a house like this is like looking for a needle in a haystack, she will definitely find it.
"What were you looking for the scissors that day?"
"I don't remember."
Xia Lan's memory isn't very good either.
Xia Cun didn't ask about the scissors again because Xia Lan seemed to have run out of energy and even stopped touching Holmes' hand.
It wasn't until the takeaway arrived and the two of them sat on the floor eating bibimbap that Xia Lan finally remembered to check on her niece's situation. She asked, "How's it going? Do you feel like you've descended from a cloud into the wilderness?"
"What does that feel like?"
Xia Lan pondered for a moment and described it this way: "It's like having a colorful dream and waking up to find the world before you is desolate and empty."
Dreaming in color?
She always has colorful dreams. Actually, dreaming is also very tiring, but she doesn’t feel tired during holidays. Although it is boring, she feels relaxed and free.
"No."
"Okay." Xia Lan didn't mean to ask any more questions, and instead commented on the increasingly smaller portions of food at this bibimbap restaurant.
Holmes was anxious for some reason and kept circling around their legs. Finally, he tried to stand up, but his front paws landed on the edge of the coffee table and he cried out.
Xia Cun turned her head to look at it, and a feeling of being remembered by her came over her. She turned back and asked Xia Lan: "Did you forget to feed it?"
“…”
Xia Lan silently put down her chopsticks, stood up, found some dog food, poured some into the dog bowl, and then said to Holmes, who was eating with a grunt, "Don't tell Doraemon."
Holmes said nothing.
This is Xia Lan, an unreliable breeder.
Although I have been involved in "breeding" work since I was 20 years old, I have not made much progress in the past eight years.
But she is only 28 years old.
Well, I'm about to turn 29.
It's like a curse of fate——
Xia Lan believed that this was a curse of fate. She could not think of any other explanation that was more scientific and more in line with the laws of the universe.
When she was eight, Xia Qing was twenty. They had lost their mother, and it was her elder sister, Xia Qing, who had brought her up with great difficulty. So fate had made it her responsibility, at the age of twenty, to raise Xia Qing's eight-year-old daughter, who had also lost her mother.
There is a circle of time between her and Xia Qing, and another circle of time between her and Xia Cun.
Perhaps she would also die when Xia Cun turned twenty, but the only logical flaw in this curse was that she didn't inexplicably give birth to another child when Xia Cun turned twelve. Thinking about it this way, she truly was a good aunt.
It's better to end this tit-for-tat thing with her.
Love & Peace!
She yawned excitedly, then pushed up her glasses to help her astigmatism refocus. She saw the suitcase still in the living room and asked casually, "Do you need me to help you pack?"
Xia Cun shook his head.
"Isn't there a gift for me in there?"
“There’s no room at home.”
"Oh, how sad."
It's fake. Xia Cun ate the bibimbap with an expressionless face and pushed his suitcase back to his room.
She lay down on the bed, and in an instant, the dull feeling Xia Lan had mentioned at dinner came back with a fierce force. For a few moments, her mind went blank, as if she were standing in an endless wasteland. She felt empty all around, with only the smell of brown earth and sparse, withered, lifeless weeds. There was also a sense of weightlessness.
"It's probably just a fantasy." Xia Lan's voice echoed in his ears again.
Jiang Song is like a sheep, an apple tree, an angel descending from the sky, a mermaid in the blue sea... like a fantasy.
Is this the feeling of returning from fantasy to reality?
Is it possible for Jiang Song to go from fantasy to reality?
She was so empty, like an empty bag, or a balloon filled with air. If the dream world was in the clouds, then could her density be lower than that of air, allowing her to float up there?
Xia Cun was in a daze and took a nap on the bed. When he woke up, it was already past three in the afternoon.
She looked at her room in a daze for a while, and then realized that she was home. She rubbed her eyes, got out of bed and walked to the window, gently touching the ornaments placed there. Then, she looked up at the beaded curtain.
The bead curtain was flickering, and she thought of something. She finally went to open the suitcase, dug out the glass jar wrapped in soft clothes, and went to the bathroom to wash the shells.
She thought that she would string the shells that her classmate Jiang Song gave her into curtains.
She cleaned the sand from the gaps in the shells and it took a long time before she returned to the empty space in the bedroom and sat there arranging the shells. She wanted to make the most beautiful shell curtains.
It wasn't until sunset that Xia Lan suddenly poked her head in, and she finally looked up at the door. Xia Lan was holding Holmes, making them look like a real mother and daughter. "Xia Zunsheng, go find Little Ripple for dinner," she said.
Xia Cun's back stiffened suddenly, and she couldn't say the words of refusal. This was because Xiao Lan didn't know that Ren Yi was still angry with her, and she didn't know that she hadn't taken the initiative to talk to her yet.
She nodded and agreed a little stiffly.
Ten minutes later, Xia Lan stuffed Holmes's leash and poop bag into her arms and led the puppy downstairs.
The sycamore trees swayed in the summer evening breeze, and the green ivy sparkled behind a window sill. Xia Cun and the dog walked out one after the other, and did not notice that there was someone hiding in the corner of the small building.
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The author has something to say: New volume, new atmosphere! Writing about Xia Lan feels like meeting an online friend (^_^)v
As expected, Xia Cun's growth as a child is inseparable from his own efforts. He is a baby who has been working hard to grow up [spreading his hands]
As expected, there's no ranking this week! But I've never been on the list before anyway (. There's no gap [hands down] But before, the updates couldn't keep up, and now the update volume is totally beyond my imagination, so I'll keep up the good work.
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