Chapter 2
The Tsushima family has good genes. Even my father is a rare handsome man. Perhaps some of the ladies in the family married him for his looks.
Shuji Tsushima has slightly curly black hair and phoenix-colored eyes. Although he is still young, he is very cute and one can vaguely glimpse his handsome future.
——Like me, we are a family after all, and we look quite similar.
I have long, slightly curly black hair, which is of course because my father thinks that women should look like this. I also have red eyes, but they are a little darker than Tsushima Shuji's.
Maybe my father prefers eyes like Tsushima Shuji's.
Whether it was to comfort myself that I didn't have enough brains or enough talent, or my father was just happy that Tsushima Shuji's eyes were more like his... I explained it to myself this way.
Tsushima Shuji is a child who is adorable enough in the eyes of adults. He can act coquettishly, know when to stop, and make adults laugh loudly while slapping their knees...
And these are things I can't do. Not only me, but more than half of my brothers and sisters in the family can't do it either.
Older children are fine, as adults have higher expectations of them and they cannot make adults slap their knees and laugh. Younger children are not very tactful and can easily make mistakes and annoy the petty-minded adults.
I was different. I really didn't know what to do in front of adults. I was afraid that my actions would look like the clown that my father asked me to perform at home, which would be embarrassing and would not make my family laugh.
So I just became a good kid. At least, I still have this "selling point"
Everyone in the family is paying attention to my father's every move. He is the "protagonist" on the stage and the spotlight is on him.
Tsushima Shuji and all the younger ones in the family, and even our mother, were there to complement his items, and my father would sometimes pull us out to show off to guests, like a businessman showing off his capital.
Every time this happened, Tsushima Shuji would always show his lively and lovely side and make some cute jokes, while I and the other children would just stand aside, look at him and say nothing.
This is my selling point, and it is also the selling point of others.
Shuji Tsushima also makes mistakes. He accidentally breaks an antique brought by a customer.
My father must have liked that antique very much. It was said that it could be sold for a lot of money, so his face fell.
This is not Xiuzhi's fault. I heard that he had a high fever last night and it was not better this morning. It seems that he didn't eat much at noon.
Because his father was eating with him at the time, he should have been affected by it, right? In this case, he was still pulled over by his father. He wanted to use the same trick again, but he didn't expect that his method that always worked well would go wrong.
Perhaps my father's eyes were too familiar, and I couldn't help but recall that day when my father looked at me in the same way.
For a moment, I was completely overwhelmed by the huge fear and couldn't move. I burst into tears before Tsushima Shuji.
The guest stared at me in surprise. He seemed to have not expected that his father's child could be such a crybaby or cowardly child.
This made the father's face fall to the ground.
I couldn't stop crying for a while. Even if I tried to stop myself, bit my tongue with my teeth, and tried to hold my breath... it was useless.
I cried so hard that I was out of breath. I realized that I had screwed up again with my father.
My father threw Tsushima Shuji and me into the confinement room, which was a place that the children in the family avoided most. They would rather be beaten and scolded by their mother and servants than be locked up there.
Even so, almost everyone in the family will be locked up at one time or another.
And this was my third time in prison, so I think I might be the person in the family who is most familiar with the solitary confinement cell.
This was the first time that Tsushima Shuji was imprisoned here. His face was pale and he seemed to be sweating all over.
As a senior, I felt I had to help him, and besides, he still had a fever.
No one is not afraid of the confinement room, even my father is afraid of it - it is the nightmare of everyone in the family.
The same is true for me. If you are locked up here, you will usually be locked up for three days. This is the old rule of the family. During these three days, the servants will give you two meals a day, stuffing them in through the small window, but they will not say a word to you.
No one talks to you, and the only window in the confinement room only allows you to see a tree with several vines hanging down from it, as if someone had been hanged there.
On deserted nights, this tree is a real nightmare for the children at home.
In the confinement room, the wind always carries the sobbing and crying of my family members... Logically, I should be the one who is most afraid of this place. This is indeed the case, but I personally think that my father's eyes glaring at me are more frightening.
When I was locked up here for the first time, my mind gradually calmed down. At that time, I just felt like a leaf floating on the water. Although the slightest movement would make me sway, I was fearless because I was floating on the water.
*
It was already evening, and the tree that looked like a hanged man looked so disgusting in the soft light of the evening, just like a snarling demon that would swallow up the confinement room and us.
Tsushima Shuji looked very unwell. His smooth face was flushed due to the high fever, his eyes were dull, and he could hardly stand.
He and I had hardly spoken to each other before. To be honest, I had never been alone with him under the same roof before. This was the first time, and also the first time he was put in a solitary cell.
He found a corner to sit down, hugged his knees and hid his head. I sat down next to him. Don't get me wrong, I didn't do it to comfort him. A child whose father had always liked and a child whose father had just liked didn't fight in a place like a confinement room. It was just because I was not feeling well now.
In fact, my resistance to the confinement room was much greater than I had imagined. On the way I was carried here by the servants, I was in a heart-pounding process similar to falling from a high altitude - maybe I will be afraid of heights in the future.
In a place like a solitary cell, it is much better to have someone by your side, even if that person won't say a word to you or is about to die.
Tsushima Shuji ignored me. He had no strength left. Even the cold-blooded animals that had just died were more energetic than him. At least cold-blooded animals could still twitch their muscles.
Time passed quickly, and after the servant brought dinner, there was a long silence. He did not move, perhaps he fell asleep.
I brought his portion to him - it was easy to recognize, after all, he was his father's favorite child, and someone had taken the initiative to prepare two pills for him, and his portion was much richer than mine.
A breeze blew in, the softest evening breeze, but it made him shiver and wake up.
He was suffering physically, but I was suffering purely from hearing and mental pain. The wind was howling again.
I ate my unsatisfying dinner in silence. His eyes swept from the dinner to me. This guy was a little scary when he had no expression on his face.
However, no matter how scary someone is, in my heart, he is not as scary as my father.
He weakly swallowed the medicine first, and then ate his rice slowly.
After finishing my portion, I wasn't hungry anymore. I even felt full. I was bored anyway, so I just stared at him while he ate.
Maybe it's a habit I've developed since I was a kid, but when I stare at someone I usually choose a way that doesn't attract too much attention.
Maybe because he was still sick and in a bad mood, he actually pointed out my little actions.
“Don’t stare at me”
Tsushima Shuji has a pretty nice voice. Is this one of the reasons why my father likes him?
Tsushima Shuji would not talk like this at home. Maybe he was confused and spoke in a bad tone, or maybe he was just that kind of person and was just pretending...
Whatever the reason, I ignored him and continued to look at him in a way that I thought was obscure and made Tsushima Shuji uncomfortable.
He didn't finish his food. He only ate half of it and then lost interest. Maybe he felt that there was really no food to eat here.
After taking the medicine, he looked much better. At least the redness on his face faded away - of course, it could be due to the cold.
When he had finished, I would get up and carry his plate and mine to the small window. If I didn't do this, the servants who brought the food would be unhappy, and when they were unhappy they would bang on the door loudly, which was very noisy and scary.
After I came back, I still sat next to him. For me, this allowed me to hear his breathing, which made me realize that there was still someone here, which greatly increased my sense of security.
He didn't drive me away, which made me feel a little relieved. After all, Tsushima Shuji is two years older than me and much taller than me. If he had driven me away, I would definitely not have been able to resist.
After he finished eating, he went back to sleep with his knees hugged. I knew the patient needed more rest, especially since he had a high fever.
But the wind was blowing very hard, and the vines on the tree were dancing in the wind like a demon with bared fangs and claws. This scared me, and the sound of the wind was also whistling sharply.
Fortunately, there was still Shuji Tsushima in the confinement room.
He might be asleep, or maybe not, but I hoped he was, so I could slowly and unnoticed move closer to him.
I hope to be closer to something warm, even if it's Shuji Tsushima who I'm jealous of. Any living creature with warmth can comfort me.
I finally moved to a place next to him where I could feel his temperature. Although he had taken medicine, he was still running a fever, so it was convenient for me to calm him down.
Neither he nor I spoke, and even the whistling wind stopped. I was very happy and hugged myself in the same way he did. This posture also made me feel more secure.
——Tsushima Shuji is still quite useful at times like this.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
