Chapter 108: Your Existence, My Deep Blood Debt (6) “We…
"Okay." Tu Wanqing casually agreed to George's request and hung up the phone. She barely had the energy to speak, and George's tone just now didn't sound like he was discussing anything with her.
She put down her phone and sat on the bed in a daze. The scenes in her dream were still vivid in her mind: the sighing old woman, the little boy playing marbles, the woman chopping people's legs... She couldn't remember where she had seen them in her dream, but after waking up, she remembered: she had seen them in her dreams two days ago.
In the dream the day before yesterday, the old woman pounced on her with twisted limbs; in the dream last night, the woman was cutting vegetables in her kitchen and asked her if she wanted to know what she was cutting... So now she knew, she was chopping a human leg.
As for the little boy, Tu Wanqing had never seen his face before, but she had seen his outline appear behind the curtains and heard the sound of him running and jumping coming from the attic.
She didn't know why they came to her, or rather, she had a guess, but her heart was avoiding that guess.
The Bai Ma trio floated beside the bed and looked at the absent-minded Tu Wanqing indifferently. After a few minutes, they finally waited for the expected progress.
"Ah!!!" Tu Wanqing suddenly grabbed the phone and threw it out like crazy. The phone hit the wall and fell to the ground, and the screen shattered into countless patterns.
Her eyes were wide open, staring at her phone as if she had seen a ghost - she received a strange call from her assistant during breakfast, and was so scared that she threw the phone downstairs and didn't have the courage to pick it up.
Now the cell phone appeared on her bed.
The horrifying images from her dream flashed through Tu Wanqing's mind like a revolving lantern. Her heartbeat quickened, causing her breathing to become rapid. Then, she noticed another terrifying detail: before falling asleep, she had opened the curtains wide out of fear, but now they were completely closed...
"No..." She stared at the curtains, her body involuntarily shrinking.
Bai Ma and the other two caught her gaze, picked up the sound transmission talisman, and told A Zhui, "We can proceed to the next step."
"Got it!" Ah Zhui said in a cheerful voice.
A few seconds later, Tu Wanqing heard cheerful footsteps coming from the attic again, this time mixed with some children's laughter.
Then came the sound of glass marbles, some jumping and some rolling, and every sound tickled Tu Wanqing's nerves.
Tu Wanqing didn't know how to react, so she could only desperately cover her ears, deceiving herself to block out the terrifying sound. If you only saw her helpless expression, she was actually quite pitiful, but those who knew what she had done would only mercilessly complain: "Are you afraid now? When you caused so many families to freeze to death without heating in the winter, why didn't you consider that one day you would be killed?" Li Qi said.
At the same time, Ah Zhui had floated down from the attic. She squatted outside the master bedroom door and threw a marble into the room.
"Tap, tap, tap--" The marbles bounced and made cheerful sounds until they fell into the carpet.
Tu Wanqing looked at the marbles blankly.
then……
Wow——
Marbles rolled in in large numbers.
Tu Wanqing was stunned for another two seconds, then suddenly jumped up as if a switch had been pressed. Without even bothering to put on her shoes, she rushed out of the house almost frantically: "What are you doing! What are you doing!"
"Hehe..." The children's laughter passed by the attic above her head again. Tu Wanqing suddenly looked up, and with a desperate mood, she gritted her teeth and rushed towards the stairs leading to the attic.
With a creak, the attic door opened, and the voice-controlled lights came on. The warm yellow glow looked like a corridor in a dream.
"Come out... come out!" Tu Wanqing screamed in despair. A Zhui and the others would be happy to do something to scare her, but the experience provided by Si Ling told them: sometimes nothing happening is the most terrifying.
Sure enough, Tu Wanqing was driven crazy by the silence in the attic. She angrily smashed and hit things in the attic. Although there were not many things in the attic, it still looked a mess as the table lamp and vase were broken.
A Zhui and Bai Ma looked at each other. While A Zhui was casting a spell on the windowsill, Bai Ma cast an evil spell on Tu Wanqing at the right time.
Then the wooden box that Si Ling had moved up in advance appeared behind the curtain. Driven by an inexplicable force, Tu Wanqing looked at the curtain for some unknown reason.
From her angle, she couldn't actually see the wooden box, but her intuition told her that there was something important there. She held her breath unconsciously and walked towards the window. The horrific scene in her dream flashed through her mind again, but it didn't stop her.
Soon, she reached the curtains. When she reached out to grab the curtains, she hesitated for a moment, but finally mustered up the courage and pulled it open.
"Wow." The sound of the curtain slide disappeared in a flash, and a wooden box quietly came into Tu Wanqing's sight.
The wooden box looked very old, with the paint on it mottled, revealing the gray wood color. There was a brass buckle on the box that could be padlocked, but it was not locked and was just a loose buckle.
Tu Wanqing took a deep breath, reached out and opened the lid in a daze, and several books appeared in the box.
Tu Wanqing first picked up the one on top, which was an ordinary lined notebook with a light-colored kraft paper cover and three large red regular script characters "Notepad" printed on it. In China, people born in the 1970s to the 1990s have probably seen this kind of notebook.
She flipped open the book, revealing an account book filled with densely packed records of household expenses. Tu Wanqing didn't understand what this meant, so she flipped through it in confusion, and soon noticed a change.
——In that era, although material resources were far less abundant than they are today, it can be seen from the first few pages of this account book that this family would still buy meat every two or three days.
Later, the frequency of buying meat became once every seven or eight days, and then once every half a month, and then once a month.
In addition, there is milk expense at the beginning of the account book, which is recorded as "Xiaojian milk". Tu Wanqing guessed that Xiaojian should be the little boy, and giving him a box of milk every day is a relatively luxurious expense for this family.
When the frequency of buying meat became once every two weeks, this expense disappeared.
Tu Wanqing knew the reason for all this, and she felt a rare pang of guilt. She silently put the notebook aside and picked up the next one to read.
This is an album filled with photos that reflect the passage of time, mostly family portraits. Judging from the scenes, most of them are from a photo studio. This family probably doesn't have a camera, so they go to a photo studio every year to take a family portrait.
The family portrait originally was of a middle-aged couple and their young son. Later, there was a photo of the two of them. The young son was wearing a black suit, and next to him was a beautiful girl in a wedding dress. Both of them looked very happy in the photo.
After this photo, the family portrait is a family of four.
Later, a baby appeared in the photo, and after two more photos, the man of the middle-aged couple disappeared, most likely because he died first due to illness or accident.
There are several more photos after this one, and in the last one, the man of the young couple disappears, leaving only the mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, and the boy. The boy looks to be only seven or eight years old at this time, and there are no more photos after that.
Tu Wanqing closed the photo album and put it aside, then picked up the last notebook in the wooden box.
This notebook has a hard cover, and three gold words are embossed on the dark red cover: Diary.
In fact, from a practical point of view, the writing experience of hard cover books is not good, but in the early years, it was still considered a very exquisite thing.
Tu Wanqing opened the diary. The beautiful handwriting inside was obviously written by a woman. The diary started from the time when the two people were introduced to each other by a colleague at work. Sometimes she wrote every day, and sometimes she only wrote one article every ten days or half a month. The content was very casual, but basically all the major events were recorded.
Falling in love, starting a family, getting pregnant and having children, trivial quarrels would occasionally occur, and there had been some minor frictions between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law, but none of this affected the satisfaction she expressed between the lines.
Generally speaking, this is an ordinary but happy family.
The misfortune occurred in the second half of the diary. In the spring of 2002, the woman wrote: I suddenly lost my job. Qiangzi comforted me that everything will be fine in the end, and I also believe that everything will be fine.
But things did not get better. In the summer, she wrote again: The factory suddenly closed down, and Qiangzi lost his job.
After this, the happiness in the diary quickly diminished, and the couple quarreled more and more frequently.
It was not until April 2003 that a rare long diary entry appeared in the notebook, recording an incident that made the woman very sad: Xiaojian, a second-grade primary school student, was caught stealing in a supermarket. The couple was so angry that they beat the child. Later they learned that it was because the school needed white sneakers for a sports meeting. Xiaojian knew that the family’s financial situation meant he could not ask his parents for help, so he wanted to go to the supermarket to steal.
The diary also mentioned how the incident was resolved: the child's grandmother sold a silver bracelet she had worn for many years and bought shoes for the child. She also told the couple in a very happy tone that the bracelet was old and they didn't want to wear it anymore, so it would be better to buy shoes for the child, and the extra money could be used to supplement the household expenses.
The woman wrote at the end: Qiangzi said he was useless, I comforted him, but I also felt useless.
Later, the diary's tone darkens, reflecting the family's financial vulnerability. With the arrival of winter, the diary becomes filled with complaints about the cold and longing for spring. Later, even this anticipation of spring disappears, as the woman's husband falls ill and the family can no longer afford his medical treatment. Even the chaotic, chaotic words in the diary reveal the woman's devastation.
On the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, the third to last entry in the diary entry was horrifying:
"Qiangzi said there's no cure for this disease, so it's better to let him die peacefully."
"We haven't seen meat at home for half a year. He said he wanted the children to have some meat."
"I thought he was crazy at first, but then he wavered and I thought I was crazy too."
The 30th day of the twelfth lunar month, the second to last diary entry:
"After sending Qiangzi away, I sold my gold wedding ring to buy New Year's goods."
"I bought some vegetables and some candy, as well as the chocolate pie and potato chips that Xiaojian loves."
"Rat poison is really cheap, much cheaper than being alive."
The first day of January, the last diary entry:
"Mom started crying as soon as she took a bite of the dumplings, but Xiaojian said they were delicious."
"They all had severe stomach aches during the night, but luckily it was over quickly."
"Call the funeral home, I'll have some dumplings, and then our family can be reunited."
"Mom always says she doesn't understand why it turned out like this, and I don't understand it either."
"We live our lives conscientiously and work diligently, so why does this happen?"
"Forget it, it's all over."
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