The cart carried two long logs and traveled deep into the forest. Danny sat with his legs bent in the middle of the log, fascinated by the snow-covered winter scene all around him. He wore an extremely wide aviator cap, with the ear cups hanging down long and tucked into the collar. The zipper of the jacket was pulled to the highest level, and the white shirt underneath it was tightly hidden, even the chin was covered, leaving only a pair of eyes to look around curiously.
"You can't go any further." The doctor stopped and said. He knocked on the cart and motioned for Danny to come down. Danny sat still. Coming from the south, he had never seen such snow-capped mountains, and was reluctant to part with it.
"Why?" he asked.
As the doctor unzipped the zipper on both ends of the cart, he explained, "There may be bears further ahead."
"This season?" Danny asked unexpectedly. "Aren't they hibernating?"
"Not necessarily," replied the doctor, "sometimes because of hunger, or accidentally disturbed. I have seen bears in winter more than once."
Danny was immediately excited: "What kind of?"
"Black bear." The doctor gave an approximate size, a little shorter than himself, but much stronger, "The first time was because I had no experience when I first moved in and left the food outside. When the black bear came to dig through the garbage, , I heard the rattle go out and almost had a face-to-face with it - then I learned from the experience and started wearing the bell."
Hearing this, Danny subconsciously dialed the bell on his wrist. The crisp knocking sound spread through the forest. When the doctor wanted to put this bell on him, Danny thought it was some kind of strange cat erotic/erotic game, and he refused outright on the principle of not making the doctor crazier. Later, Danny reluctantly agreed to see the doctor himself putting on the bell first.
"That's the one, the bear expelling bell." The doctor smiled, obviously thinking of Danny's resistance in the morning, "Bears generally don't eat people, and they usually attack people because people influence them to prey, or they feel threatened. Just passing by, if you hear the bell, you will take the initiative to detour, and you will not conflict with others.”
Danny nodded. He tried to imagine encounters with bears—he had never seen a bear, but had seen a stuffed bear head on the wall of one of the patrons' studies. The customer pressed him to the elegant and luxurious desk, and Danny looked at the bear head boredly while imitating the cat's meowing and struggling. He saw the bear's head, filled with glass eyes, staring into the void indifferently. At that time, Danny felt that the bear head was very similar to this guy's seminal vesicles, and they were all empty.
Or the bear described by the doctor is more interesting. Danny retracted his thoughts and urged, "And after that? You said it more than once."
"Once the bear was injured, I smelled blood in the distance and I took a detour. On the way back, I saw a mess of snow, dragged blood, and small patches of brown fur. Now think about it. , that was also very risky," the doctor said. But his voice was quite calm, and he didn't sound afraid.
The doctor patted Danny's leg and motioned him to move away. Danny stepped on the log and changed his position, straddled the cart armrest, and his eyes fell on the path behind the doctor. There were two continuous ruts on the snow, and the doctor's footprints were embedded in the ruts, like a precarious acrobat trapped on a narrow balance beam.
The doctor has untied the telescopic straps tied to the log and push workshop, and is about to start unloading the log. Danny stopped him. He told the doctor to step away, leaned against the cart, and kicked hard. The two logs rolled off the cart one after another, slid forward a few meters along the inertia, and fell into the snow.
This is not something a cat can do. Danny thought. He looked at the doctor, but the doctor didn't seem surprised. The doctor is thoughtful, obviously a lunatic, but he can always rationalize all kinds of ideas. Danny is on the right side, and he can't say the same. The doctor often said that he could promise anything to Danny, but in fact the more the doctor asked him, the more he realized that the doctor was just treating him like a cat. He was just pampering Danny, that's all.
It wasn't enough for Danny. The doctor still wouldn't come up with the two things Danny wanted most.
"Stay a little longer," Danny demanded.
The doctor looked back at him unexpectedly: "Aren't you cold?"
Danny shook his head.
This time, the doctor took the initiative to wrap him in more clothes. Danny kind of wondered if the doctor was at least acknowledging his need for cover, or if he was just keeping the cat warm. He didn't ask, for fear that he would be mad at him again. The doctor's clothes were three or four sizes bigger than him, and Danny had to figure out how to tie the cuffs, necklines and shoelaces.
He jumped out of the cart, feeling the snow boots sink slowly into the snow. This mountain forest is about a mile behind the house. It is not far from the human habitation, but the trees are towering, as if it had never been visited. Danny looked up at a line of blue sky between the towering trees and at the white hillside in the distance. He didn't see a bear. Speaking of which, what is the difference between a bear and a cat for doctors? Would the doctor have saved him if he had been treated as a bear instead of a cat at first
- I'm afraid it has to be investigated why doctors treat people as cats. Danny decided to skip the topic for now.
"Are you hunting?" Danny asked.
"...I don't have a hunter certificate." The doctor seemed to have not expected this question, and was stunned before answering.
Danny was also startled. The doctor's snow mountain hut seemed to be out of the fairy tale territory of the world. It was only now that he remembered that they lived in a civilized society, and even if they were in the mountains, there were millions of laws and regulations that had to be abided by.
"Then, what about the logging certificate?" Danny gestured to the log that was sunk deep into the snow with his eyes.
"Neither," the doctor explained before Danny's expression turned constrictive. "Grandpa has proof that we cut it together while he was still around."
It was the doctor's grandfather. Danny remembered that the doctor was here to take care of Grandpa. On the one hand, Danny is very grateful to this grandfather who had no chance to meet: if he hadn't chosen to settle here, Danny would never have survived when he was abandoned; on the other hand, he also wanted to grab the old man's collar and ask him what happened. Educating future generations - this can't be a family inherited mental illness, right
"Your grandpa," Danny asked, "does he like to hunt? Like to live here?"
"Well, he often shows me his achievements—" The doctor smiled, "Actually, there are many restrictions on hunting here, the types of prey, the season... He hasn't been there a few times in total."
"What about you?" Danny asked casually. Surprisingly, the doctor did not answer. He turned around and saw the doctor's expression a little confused.
"...I don't know," the doctor said.
"what?"
"I don't know if I like hunting or not," the doctor said. "I went there once...before my grandfather was hospitalized. At that time, we also deliberately cut down these two pieces of wood to make a set of croquet balls."
But those two pieces of wood are still here. Danny and the doctor just dumped them in the forest and returned to the earth. The doctor and his grandfather failed to make that set of croquet balls. Danny can guess why.
He remembered the time when the doctor moved here to take care of his grandfather—three and a half years ago, when the plague broke out around the world. Infections, deaths, panics, attacks, Danny didn't dare to read the news that whole year. Everything is like a smoldering wall fire, you think it has been extinguished and no longer burning, but pain and hatred will always sprout sparks at some point.
It was that year that Danny lost his part-time job at the restaurant. That street used to be the most prosperous place in the whole city. It used to be full of neon signs, but more than half of the restaurants and bars closed in that year. The whole society is like a high-rise building in an earthquake. The shock wave is transmitted step by step, the unemployment rate is rising, and there are 500 people with degrees for any open position.
At the time, Danny was not old enough for most job openings and beyond the requirements of most aid programs. He had no degree, no work experience, and no reassuringly athletic physique. Fortunately, he has a pretty face, and when he has no other choice, at least he can choose this line of work.
Danny never complained, he even considered himself lucky enough. But he also understands that people could have been better off without the plague.
They were all silent, so the only sound in the forest was the rustling of pine branches and falling snow.
"Go back," said the doctor.
He grasped the handle of the cart and turned it, the widened rollers crunching against the snow.
Danny trailed behind and waited for the doctor a few meters to start his run. He ran lightly on the snow, quickly caught up with the cart, rolled over and jumped on the cart fence with one hand. The action was done quite handsomely, but his left shoelace was loosened by the violent action, and the boots, which were a lot larger, fell off. Danny tugged at the upper of the boot in an awkward way to keep it from falling into the snow.
The doctor smirked over his head, and Danny rolled his eyes.
He nimbly sat on the handrail of the trailer, between the doctor's hands holding the cart, with the doctor's chest behind him. Danny pretended to be indifferent. He balances on one leg wrapped around the fence, the other tucked in front of his chest, and re-tightens his boots.
Danny was dressed head to toe in old doctor clothes, and the familiar smell of detergent was reassuring. For a while, he wanted to ask the doctor, can cats wear human clothes? But Danny knew that this kind of questioning wasn't enough to wake the doctor, it just added to the embarrassment. He has to work harder.
The two walked silently in the snow for a while, and Danny felt his eyes hurt a little from the reflection of the snow. He closed his eyes and casually complained about snow blindness. The doctor replied with a questioning nasal voice. It was only then that Danny realized that he had just spoken English. His Japanese vocabulary was not enough for the word "snow blindness", Danny struggled for a moment and chose to give up.
"… nothing," he said.
The doctor seems to have misunderstood Danny. He thought for a while, then asked Danny, "Do you like it?"
"what?"
"Hunting," said the doctor, "and logging. I think industrial production is enough for us. Supermarkets, mail order, convenient. But if you like—"
Danny turned around unexpectedly. The doctor laughed nervously: "Of course, not this winter, I mean later..." He pursed his lips, a little embarrassed by this straightforward invitation about the future.
"Sounds interesting, but I haven't tried it." Danny said, unconsciously constructing the scene in his mind of pointing a gun at the deer by the lake, "Oh, not necessarily. If it's a deer, I don't think I can. What about wolves? Can you hunt wolves?"
"Perhaps," the doctor looked unconvinced, "go back and check."
Danny thought about the wolf-fighting scene. Have no idea. Like the bear, he had seen a wolf head stuffed at his client's house, but never a living one. There are wolves in the TV series I watched when I was a child, the werewolf in "True Love Like Blood".
Danny suddenly laughed.
"What?" the doctor asked suspiciously.
Danny laughed even harder, sitting on the railing of the cart, leaning forward and back, looking like he was going to lose his balance in the next second: "Hahaha... In your eyes, I'm still a cat, right? A cat , how to hunt? Or wolf hunting? Hahahaha!"
The doctor let go of one hand and held Danny in his arms for balance.
"Cats are also good hunters. Cats are good hunters." The doctor said seriously, but his tone was also smiling.
Danny leaned against the doctor's arms, looking up at his chin. Humans and human beings often observe each other from a head-on perspective, so aesthetics are generally based on the front, side, and even the back, rather than from top to bottom or bottom to top. These are the so-called death angles that Danny and their merchandise photos must avoid. However, Danny is often held in his arms by doctors like this, and his poor body shape makes Danny even familiar with this angle.
There were some tiny stubble on the doctor's chin before, which was left by shaving the beard with one hand and unable to tighten the skin. Now that he can use his right hand, the doctor's jaw is smooth again. Danny reached out and touched it. His fingers were cold, and the doctor shrank his neck from the cold. Danny laughed. Behind them, Kazuki was shaken by the laughter, and he made a muffled sound on the snow. Danny doesn't care. Danny's hand ran along the doctor's chin, caressed the profile of his face, and tapped twice with his fingertips.
"What?" the doctor asked.
With those words, the movement of the muscles on the doctor's cheeks was transmitted to Danny's fingertips. He tapped twice again and smiled, "Kiss you, thousands of times."
He spoke English, which the doctor did not understand. But Danny didn't need him to understand.
Danny has a plan.