Manman looked at his back aggrievedly, then choked back his mouth, and an earth-shattering cry broke out.
She can't speak with her mouth, but she can cry with her mouth. It sounds like a double cry superimposed, and the magic sound pierces her ears. Kou Tong's mother hurriedly dropped the shovel, ran out of the kitchen, picked up Manman, and patted her back gently.
The little girl just looked through her shoulders and looked at Huang Jinchen, who was standing at the door of the bedroom with her arms folded in front of her chest.
There was no expression on the man's face, and he stood in a position that seemed to isolate him from everyone. He looked at Manman unconcernedly, as if she was not a little girl who was making him cry, but a little sparrow hopping around.
Manman looked at him, but her body shrank into Kou Tong's mother's arms. She was like a small portable hard drive, capable of storing everything she had seen, but she was especially sensitive to the indifference of others.
Even Yao Shuo was startled, opened the door, and frowned at Huang Jinchen: "How do you know like a child?"
Huang Jinchen glanced at him, turned around without saying a word, closed the door and returned to the room. Manman couldn't see him, so the cry slowly subsided, and finally stopped twitching.
There is only such a little girl in a room of adults, who treats her like a baby, even He Xiaozhi squeezed out a rather ugly smile and pressed it on Manman's soft hair.
Huang Jinchen took out the gun he was carrying with him from under the bed, picked up the glasses cloth in the glasses case that Kou Tong had put on the table, and wiped it absentmindedly.
There were voices in the living room from the wooden door, many people were talking, it was very lively, probably Kou Tong said a joke, and there was a very lively laughter from there - Dr. Kou can always mobilize others very easily. Emotions, in the direction he wants.
This home, which was like a sanatorium for the mentally ill just now, seemed to become warm and happy in an instant.
Huang Jinchen's attention couldn't help but be attracted by the sound, as if she was a little girl standing in the snow and ice on Christmas Eve, looking at the fireplace and the turkey in someone else's house.
It's a pity that he doesn't sell matches and works hard.
He remembered that a long, long time ago, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, he was ordered to hunt down a man.
That day, he was lying on a tall building, looking at the target person's house through the scope. That year, the Mid-Autumn Festival tiger was fierce, and the temperature was still high. The family opened the window and watched TV together in the living room. Fruits and moon cakes were placed on the table.
There was a little boy at home, the size of Man Man, who had to break each piece of moon cake to see what was inside. He's sitting on the lap of his soon-to-be-headshot father, with a stumbling dachshund running around.
In fact, there was no moon that day, it was a cloudy day, but they were still very happy together as a family.
Huang Jinchen smoked three cigarettes on the top floor and kept looking through a blood-stained scope, like a malicious voyeur.
In fact, for a moment, he also really wanted to open a door and walk into someone's house, no matter who was in there, as long as he reserved a place and a room for him to eat together at night, facing the always-on TV The news network, which is not the end of the show, complained. Because of the night series and the ball game, they finally went back to the house to watch online videos in pique.
There is air-conditioning in summer and heating in winter. When it comes to festivals, we will hold some simple but interesting commemorative activities together. In order to meet the occasion, we frown and eat those things that we obviously do not like to eat, such as moon cakes, such as rice dumplings, or sticky rice cakes. Indigestible dumplings.
But before he had time to wake up from the grassy dream, a cold order came from the earphone to let him do it.
So he had to lift the cold gun that had been with him for many years, and the moment the little boy jumped off his father's lap, ran after the puppy, and turned his back on him, he pulled the trigger without looking at himself. As a result, he closed the scope and turned to leave.
"…even better is the goose jumping off the plate, with the knife and fork on its back, and wobbly walking on the floor, all the way to the poor little girl."
"At this time, the match went out again, and there was only a thick, cold wall in front of her."
Growing up, there was probably only one thick and cold wall in his world.
When he was very young, when he was sent to a secret base for training, there was no door he could open in this huge country. Every day was cold equipment and harsh training, and he became Getting better and better and less human.
Later, he received one mission after another, and began to become invincible in his endless hunting career. He lived behind a scope, which made his world infinitely large and infinitely small.
As far as he can see, it is always just a dilapidated roof, or an empty old house, a gun, and other people's lives and other people's traffic.
But now, when he finally had such a door, and after opening it, he heard the conversations and joys and sorrows he had imagined, but found that it was difficult to touch him any more.
They were crying and laughing outside, and there was still only one wall in front of him.
When the little girl opened her thin hands and asked him for a hug, Huang Jinchen even became angry for a moment.
A weak person is not qualified to live, even if she is only a child.
What do you have to be wronged, what do you have to be wronged? He thought, there are so many unfortunate people in this world, and every second, there are countless people who can no longer hear the next second of the clock. With such trivial pain, why do you hysterically ask others to give it to you? a hug
Twenty minutes later, Kou Tong pushed open the door and came in. He silently moved a chair across from Huang Jinchen and sat down.
The two of them ignored each other, Kou Tong was looking at Huang Jinchen, Huang Jinchen was wiping his gun, and after an unknown time, Huang Jinchen lowered his head and asked, "Did Dr. Kou suddenly think I'm handsome? Interested?"
Kou Tong laughed, took out a box of cigarettes from his pocket, picked up one, handed the other to Huang Jinchen, and leaned over to light it for him.
The living habits of these two goods are very bad. The more common thing is that they are very unscrupulous, and they are both addicted to smoking.
The faint smell of tobacco spread along the flames, Kou Tong's shadow overlapped on Huang Jinchen's gun, and the muzzle of the gun, by coincidence, was pressed against his lower abdomen, but he lit Huang Jinchen's cigarette without any scruples, and again. Sit back to your original seat.
Huang Jinchen suddenly raised his head to look at him, his eyes were sharp, and he squinted: "Doctor Kou, why do you smell like gunpowder?"
Kou Tong said, "Huh?"
Huang Jinchen's expression became serious, looked Kou Tong up and down, paused for a moment, and then said, "What do you call General Zhong... Call him an instructor?"
Kou Tong smiled, "Ah", crossed Erlang's legs, and leaned on the back of the chair in a very relaxed posture: "If you noticed, in our battle against Utopia, General Zhong temporarily lost Control of the base, at that time, my authority was the highest."
Huang Jinchen waited for him to speak.
Kou Tong's voice stopped for a moment, as if he didn't know how to speak. He lowered his eyes and thought for a long time before asking abruptly: "You actually wanted to ask me about the 'Seed Project', right?"
Huang Jinchen, who was lazily leaning against the head of the bed, sat up abruptly. His whole body was like a bow taut, as if he was about to come out with a sharp arrow, and the back of his hand holding the gun burst into blue veins.
He lowered his voice and asked hurriedly, "What did you say?"
Kou Tong hesitated for a moment, twisted the ash in the ashtray on the table, and walked around the house twice: "Today is not a good time, our mood is not stable, we may discuss this issue tomorrow."
"You..." Huang Jinchen seemed to want to say something, but after a while, he held back strangely. He softened his back again and leaned back, "It makes sense, we can go out and talk about it sometime."
Kou Tong glanced at him with admiration. For a sniper, the most important thing is always to have excellent psychological quality and patience. Then he leaned over and picked up his pillow, turned and left the bedroom, leaving a sentence: "You Have a good rest, I will go to the study to sort out the notes."
Kou Tong spent the night in the study that night, and his bedroom had been given to Huang Jinchen, so he simply settled with a pile of tattered and yellowed documents.
He put the two chairs together, but it was still not long enough, so he could only connect the table horizontally. Although it was uneven, it was barely enough for a person to lie down.
At three o'clock in the middle of the night, Kou Tong sorted out the original messy notes. As soon as he lay down, there was a light knock on the door of the study, and he had to get up in the sound of "ping ping pong pong" tables and chairs colliding. , picked up his messy hair, opened the door, and looked at it, only to find that his mother was standing at the door.
"Why are you still not sleeping?" Kou Tong asked in a low voice.
"I see that the light in your study is always on, what are you doing important work?" Kou Tong's mother glanced in and brought a small plate of fruit, "If you stay up late, you need to add more water. If you can sleep there, why don't you go? Where is mom?"
Kou Tong stuffed an apple into his mouth, almost spit it out, frowned and looked at her in disbelief, just like when she was going to sleep with him when she was a child, and blurted out: "How can you, you are a woman. of!"
Kou Tong's mother was speechless: "Oh, brother, you are really a pure man."
Kou Tong glanced at her, and she laughed. He gently took out a quilt from the locker, put it on his unusually simple bed, and reached out to press it, but it still felt that it was not soft enough. :"Okay ah?"
"Okay, okay, don't bother, everyone will wake up in a moment." Kou Tong's pillow was piled with a pile of documents that could not be read by others. Although she knew she couldn't read it, she couldn't help but panic a little. He hurriedly stretched out his hand and pushed her out, "Mom, hurry up, you will get wrinkles if you sleep too late."
Kou Tong's mother was pushed out by him, and she scratched his nose with her hand: "White-eyed wolf."
Kou Tong turned around and leaned against the door frame, silently finished a plate of fruit, and then lay back on his makeshift bed, but suddenly he was sleepless, the soft quilt was real, the fruit he ate was real, and the study The Smurfs that have been posted on the wall for a long time are also true.
Ever since he called "Mom" for the first time, Kou Tong suddenly had an illusion, as if he had integrated into this space and could live in it for a long time.
Unconsciously, Kou Tong took out the document bag under the pillow, where he put the notes that had been organized for half a night, as if another person was controlling his body, Kou Tong wondered why he had to do it. What about going out
This space seems to be a place where all wishes come true. All those things that he once revered but dared not hope for, all are here. People live or work hard, aren't they all for the sake of living a better life? What's wrong here, where all hidden, real wishes can be fulfilled
If you don't go out, grow old here, die here, and...
When he came back to his senses, the paper note had almost been torn in half by him, Kou Tong suddenly sat up, the legs of the chair scratched on the ground, making a sour neigh, Kou Tong hurriedly removed from the bookcase. He took out the adhesive strips from the bottom, sat on the ground covered with a towel, and reattached the torn notes.
The late night club makes people lose their vigilance. Kou Tong lowered his eyes. There was only a dim lamp in the study that was temporarily moved to the ground. His eyebrows and eyes were reflected like a relief hanging on the wall. An imperceptible depression.
His rolled-up cuffs revealed a few deep scars, and after looking at it for a long time, it almost gave one an illusion - as if it was not a scar, but a human face, and his face was always distorted in that way. Looking at him not far away, following him like a shadow, not reminding him all the time, those things he wants to forget in every possible way.
Kou Tong glued the note, curled himself up, picked up his two long legs, and clasped his forearm tightly with one hand. He never imagined that one day, he would be so weak that he could not even distinguish between reality and illusion, trapped in this huge predicament created by the machine he designed and participated in the production of.
He sat motionless in the shadows, from the dim starlight, until the horizon rose as pale as a fish's belly, and then the morning light ignited the first shout in the morning, and the whole street was filled with people again, and the night was long. It has passed.
What is real? What is phantom
Kou Tong heard someone tiptoe out outside the door, guessing that it was probably his mother, who was still alive in this space, who was planning to go out to buy breakfast for "the whole family".
He raised his stiff arms and wiped his face, thinking to himself, if only Lao Ji were there.
Then he took the dusty mirror on the bookcase, looked at his pale and tired face for a while, closed his eyes for a long time, and then showed a smile that was exactly the same as usual, and the spring breeze filled his face. Ready for a new appearance.
The author has something to say: Note: The words quoted in quotation marks are from the Chinese translation of Mr. Andersen's "The Little Match Girl".