Chapter 2
After I drank the ice water melted by the snowflakes and the clean steamed bun at my feet, I looked up in the direction the man left, but he was no longer there.
The cold air was filled with the scent left by the man. I smelled his scent and followed it, and finally found the man in a scrap yard at the corner.
The man was chatting with an elderly man who was about the same age as the crazy woman's father.
"I'll give you the trash I pick up. Just give me a meal and a place to stay. I don't want anything else," he admitted solemnly. "I'll leave and look for a job as soon as the weather warms up, but I think I need a transition period."
The old man in front of him scratched his gray hair, looked around at the garbage in the field with a troubled look on his face, and finally agreed to his request reluctantly.
Then the old man waved to the man and led him to a homemade hut on the east side.
The hut was made of yellow mud. After years of wind and sun, the dark yellow walls were no longer smooth. They were convex in some places and concave in some places. The walls looked bumpy, like a muddy road. I'm afraid it will collapse soon.
Of course, the down-and-out man didn't feel that the old man treated him harshly. It was a good intention for others to take him in, not to mention that the main house the old man lived in was not very bright and beautiful.
I heard all these thoughts while hiding in the corner.
Just a moment ago, I crouched in this mud corner and saw the old man pull out a stove from the junk pile. It was as old as the whole room, and I was afraid it would fall apart in a few fires. The old man was ashamed to put such a piece of junk in front of the man, but his current life was not satisfactory either, and they couldn't help but show sympathy in their eyes.
"Just make do with it," the old man poured out a lot of wood and a few pieces of black charcoal from the sack and piled them all up against the mud wall. "It's so cold, you have to warm yourself by the fire, otherwise you'll get frostbite, and it will itch unbearably next spring."
The man was worried that the old man would save the stove for him to use, so he quickly declined. However, the old man told him to stop because he had an unused stove at home.
The old man would then tease him, saying that if the house only had a stove, there was no way he would give it to him. Perhaps only men would go to the old man's house to keep warm when their hands and feet were numb, but no old man would carry the stove to help him fix it. The old man smiled, his wrinkles all over his face, and said that he was not so kind as to freeze himself to death, but was willing to sacrifice himself for others.
The man chuckled in response, hearing the teasing in the old man's words. While the old man was lighting the fire, he struck up a conversation, "How long have you been here? Where's your wife?"
The two had only just met, so asking about such trivial matters was somewhat inappropriate. But the man seemed to have no other topics to talk about, so he started by asking about lighting the stove, which seemed a bit disrespectful. After all, the old man in front of him had already lived for most of his life, and it seemed a bit sad to see such a small survival skill being used to criticize him.
At the old man's age, he is the only busy person from the time he moved into the scrap yard until now. Looking around at the surrounding environment, one would feel a little curious no matter how he looked at it.
Unexpectedly, talking about this topic seemed to touch a chord in the old man's heart. He sighed heavily, then put down the charcoal and matches in his hand, looked up, and recalled: "I can't remember how long I have been here. The only thing I remember is that I came to collect garbage after the child's mother died."
The topic sounded a bit heavy, and the room was silent for a moment.
The old man said that his wife had cancer, but what really killed her was not the cancer, but her depressed mood.
It is quite difficult to ask a sick person to maintain a good attitude, but the old man’s wife is not sad because of the illness. After all, the cancer was discovered relatively early, and if it is treated actively, there will definitely be a great success rate.
What made her heartbroken was that her little daughter suddenly disappeared for no reason, and calling the police was in vain. It was as if her little daughter had evaporated from the face of the earth.
The departure of his wife and the disappearance of his little daughter completely shattered this once happy family. The man seemed to have lost decades of age in an instant, no longer possessing the spirit of his youth, with a turbid and unbearable look in his eyes.
Since they were talking about the youngest daughter, the man opposite the old man had a question: "Doesn't the eldest daughter take care of you?"
As if he had known he would be asked this question, the old man smiled as expected. "If I had only a little daughter who got lost, I would have died long ago. But my wife and I have an older daughter, who married off early. I'm here for her."
He said it was not that his children were unfilial and unwilling to take care of him when he was old, but that his eldest daughter was now unable to take care of herself.
His eldest daughter fell in love freely, and the two got married after dating for a year.
Love is something that only half out of ten people can maintain for a long time. In addition, the parents-in-law were not very satisfied with their daughter-in-law, so the man's enthusiasm quickly cooled down. But it was not as bad as imagined. At most, the couple was not as affectionate as before, and their relationship gradually became distant.
Fortunately, the man still behaves like a man. He doesn't have an affair and still takes care of his family. At most, his temper is not as good as before.
For this reason, the eldest daughter once went home and complained gently to her father after her mother passed away.
The mother passed away suddenly after the eldest daughter got engaged, only three days after the youngest daughter's disappearance. The eldest daughter, pregnant out of wedlock, had hoped to stay with her mother for a while if she recovered. However, life was unpredictable, and the man, upon hearing about her troubles, showed no sign of helping.
In her opinion, since she is engaged, she should be considered as a married woman. Moreover, this is the person she loves and she is pregnant. Even if she is angry and aggrieved, it seems that the conditions do not allow it.
A woman never forgets the one who raised her. She should have made a scene, but her current situation put her in a dilemma. She could naturally feel that she was becoming increasingly invisible in her husband's family. If she really made a scene, the man might get angry and cancel the wedding banquet with her.
She couldn't afford a divorce. Her idea was simple: she couldn't afford a divorce even for the sake of her children.
So her elderly father had to suffer. When she compromised, her father had to suffer as well.
As her father, the old man naturally understood the pain in his child's heart. He also knew one thing: if he wanted his daughter to live well there, her family had to do better.
So in order to support himself and to provide some financial support to his daughter, he started looking for work. He had done a lot of work, mostly manual labor, but now that his health was deteriorating, there were not many jobs that could allow him to work hard, so he started picking up trash.
"Even though she chose her own path," the old man said with a bitter and stiff smile, "she is still my eldest daughter!"
Without any hesitation, the man immediately expressed his opinion to the old man in front of him: "You are a good father."
"Haha..." The old man laughed casually. "What's the good or bad thing, father? If you have a child, shouldn't you treat her well? It's something you should do anyway, there's no need to discuss whether it's good or bad. As for you, I still don't understand you."
Suddenly, the old man skillfully aimed the camera at the man, and I couldn't help but move closer to the closed door and listen carefully.
I heard the man say his name was Li Ying'an. He was abused by his father as a child, so his memory was not very good, and he could hardly remember where he lived. His mother had also suffered in that family, and this time he and his mother had escaped, successfully getting a ride from a kind-hearted person to stay with his grandparents.
Although he had a poor memory and had not attended school for many years, he said that he did not want to worry his grandparents. Moreover, he was an adult and had grown up safely to his twenties. It was time for him to support himself, so he left his grandparents' home without hesitation.
This statement was full of loopholes, but the old man didn't notice it, and he hadn't seen the farce on the street at noon. Instead, he felt more sorry for the young man. He insisted on providing him with food and shelter, and giving him another 20 yuan a day so that he could save enough to rent a house in the future and learn a skill.
Parents can't bear to see their children suffer.
The voices inside the house gradually faded, and I deliberately moved to the side. The snow was falling faster and faster, and there was no wind, so the air wasn't cold yet. Or perhaps it was because I was close to the house, but I felt a little warm.
I lowered my head, licked my snow-covered feet, and scraped off the fine snow around me.
Sitting on the damp earth, I reflected on everything I'd witnessed in the past four years. In the past, the goddess Wuqing would tell us stories about fairies descending to earth, about people clinging to the mortal world, as if to make it seem so beautiful. But in these four years, I've seen so much warmth and coldness. The beauty and evil of human nature never accumulate into illness; they're all fleeting.
A good person is a good person. If he does a bad thing, he will feel guilty and die in depression. But a bad person is rotten to the core. He will not put down his butcher knife and become a Buddha on the spot. He can only make a comeback after self-repair.
A warm spring breeze brushed the hairs on my back, and I was pulled out of my thoughts, a bit dazed. The warmth of my skin was particularly noticeable under the periodic touch, especially in such a cold environment.
I couldn't help but shiver until I turned my head away warily.
A big black dog with its tongue hanging out was staring at me.
Suddenly, my eyes widened and I screamed in fright.
A frightened cat is extremely sensitive to its surroundings. I am almost the same. I have also been a human for four years, and some of my habits have gradually become similar to those of humans.
For example, now, I didn't follow my instinct to run away, or bark at the big dog, or breathe out. Instead, I stood there in a daze, staring intently at this black dog that didn't seem to be attacking me.
Soon the door opened and the first person to come out was the old man.
"Oh my! It's so cold! Where did this little kitten come from? It's so beautiful."
Putting aside whether I was frightened to death or not, even under normal circumstances, the word "beautiful" would not stir up any ripples of complacency in my heart.
I'm a tabby cat, the only colorful cat in the Empress Wuqing's care. She once said I was a beautiful, hardworking kitten with a most endearing personality. Even the gods in my heart praised me so highly, so the right and wrong of others no longer mattered to me.
Following closely behind was Li Ying'an. He was visibly startled when he saw me, but then a look of joy appeared on his face. "I fed it half a steamed bun before coming to you. I guess it's hungry again."
He squatted towards me, took out the half steamed bun from his pocket, held it in his hand, and shook it as if he was greedy for me.
I wasn't hungry, but I still stared at his steamed bun.
"Look at the size of this cat, it must be several years old." The old man chased the big black dog squatting beside him to the other side, then stood with his hands behind his back, bent over and looked at me. "Cats are really hard to tame. Even if you raise them from a young age, they won't want to come home when they grow up. I raised two little tabby cats before, and they both ran away on their own. No dog would listen to them."
Li Ying'an just smiled at the old man's words and did not respond.
"Chuhu." Li Ying'an still called to me. Seeing that I was always looking around, he turned around and asked the old man, "Are there many wild cats around here? Do they freeze to death easily in winter?"
Seeing that I was afraid of dogs, the old man squatted down and took the big black dog he raised under his arm to prevent it from attacking.
He frowned and looked around, finally nodding. "It's hard for stray animals like these to survive the winter. Dogs are still okay, but cats basically die in droves. You want to keep one, but you can't catch it, so you can only let it run around and hide."
Generally speaking, I would keep an eye on whoever made any movement, so after the old man finished his speech, I naturally shifted my gaze to the man with a pensive look on his face.
I don't know what Li Ying'an was thinking. He lowered his eyes and said nothing. He neither looked at me nor at the old man next to him. He just stared at the bumpy ground.
"Are you planning to keep this tabby cat?" The old man noticed my continued vigilance, and the turbidity in his eyes blossomed into clear waves. "I don't know whether to kiss you or not!"
Hearing this, Li Ying'an cast a kind look at me. He looked at me gently and said softly, "I want to raise one, as a companion in my future life. When I was in the village, I liked these homeless cats and dogs. Now that I'm in the city, I still like them. Mimi, do you want to come with me?"
I looked at his sincere smile and suddenly lost my focus.
I was too nervous before and didn't look at his face carefully.
Now, the man in front of me, Li Ying'an, although not ugly in appearance, is definitely not very handsome.
A pair of thick eyebrows curved gently, untended and frizzy like the black hair on his head. His nose wasn't as prominent as a mountain peak, nor did it lean too far over his face. It sat neatly on his youthful face. His cheeks, tugged at the wings of his nose by the playful curves of his thin lips, lifted his face slightly, a gentle curve like a butterfly spreading its wings and taking flight. Unassuming yet captivating, he captivated the imagination. He wasn't white, his complexion was rather dark, but not quite tanned either. He was an ordinary person in a crowd. Even a single feature stood out, unremarkable, and taken together, they were just so-so.
No. After I looked into those eyes for a long moment, I easily refuted the point I had just made in my mind.
Li Ying'an's appearance still has some fighting qualities——
For example, those eyes that are straight but not scary.
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