Ming Zhou has lived alone for many years and has a small social circle, so he doesn't have many friends. Although there is a guest room inside, it is rarely opened, and the corner is full of storage boxes, leaving no place for him to stay.
Xiao Jinang opened the door and took a look. He found that there was a thin layer of dust on the storage box. He raised his hand to wave away the choking dust in the air and asked curiously, "Are there clothes in the box?"
Ming Zhou stood at the door and did not go in, as if there was an invisible barrier blocking him from the outside. Hearing this, he said without any emotion: "It's not clothes, it's the remains of a dead person."
After he finished speaking, he suddenly realized that this was too direct and might scare Xiao Jinang. He paused and changed his words, "It's my mother's relic..."
He spoke the word "mother" very softly, speaking quickly and skipping over it, as if he was reluctant to mention it. It was as if some words were born with thorns, and if you touched them, you would be stabbed and bleed.
Not sure if it was an illusion, Xiao Jinang felt that Ming Zhou was in a strange mood. He thought for a moment, then closed the guest room: "Then don't touch your mother's belongings. I'll sleep on the sofa."
Xiao Jinang was not unhappy at all, he simply felt that it was too hard for Mingzhou to clean the room. Since he was only staying for one night, there was no need to make it so troublesome.
Ming Zhou naturally wouldn't let him sleep on the sofa: "It's okay, these are all old things that should have been thrown away long ago. I can't see them, so I just piled them up here. Go take a shower first, I'll clean them up quickly."
After he finished speaking, he fumbled to find a new set of pajamas from the closet, and handed a towel to Xiao Jinang. Xiao Jinang was quite curious about this. In a sense, his body was made of energy. Every time he entered the energy ball, it would automatically cleanse itself, so he didn't need to take a shower.
Xiao Jinang took the clothes and towel into his arms and said to Ming Zhou, "It's okay, I'll just sleep on the sofa. I used to sleep on the floor, so sleeping on the sofa is already very good."
There was no bed in the energy ball, so he just found a place to lie down and had never had a proper sleep.
However, Ming Zhou couldn't help but imagine too much when he heard what he said. For example, Xiao Jinang was so poor that he couldn't even afford a bed and could only sleep in a cheap basement. Or, even more outrageous, the other party might sleep under a bridge, otherwise how could he have never slept in a bed.
Ming Zhou couldn't help but ask, "Do you really have no family at all? Where are your parents?"
Xiao Jinang wondered how a diamond could have parents, since he was a product of technology. He scratched his head and said, "I don't have any family, and I have never met my parents."
Their way of continuation is different from that of humans. They do not rely on blood but on cold mechanical energy.
Ming Zhou was actually a man of few words except when he was working. He didn't like to ask about other people's painful past. He just said that he wanted to know more about Xiao Jinang. He didn't say anything after hearing that. He just said, "Go take a shower first, don't catch a cold."
Xiao Jinang: "Okay, then call me if you have anything."
A few seconds later, the air was filled with the sound of Xiao Jinang closing the bathroom door with his backhand, and then everything became completely quiet.
Ming Zhou stood there, as if he was stunned for a moment before coming to his senses, then slowly turned around, felt the door frame and walked into the closed and dark bedroom. It was obvious that he rarely set foot here, and everything seemed confused and unfamiliar to him.
This room has not been opened for a long time. Apart from the smell of dust, there is also the unique scent of mothballs. After years of sedimentation, it is as decayed as an old man who is about to die.
Ming Zhou's eyes were already blind to light, but ever since he stepped into the room, he felt as if a darker and blacker shadow was rapidly spreading in the corner, swallowing people up like a quagmire, strangling their throats and blocking all air.
Ming Zhou lowered his head and took a breath. He suddenly found it difficult to breathe. His palms were cold and sticky, and his fingertips trembled uncontrollably. That was the reaction of a person in extreme fear. He fumbled to find the storage box piled up in the corner, and used some strength to pick it up, wanting to leave the room as soon as possible. However, he became more and more panicked and tripped over the bed. He fell to the ground unexpectedly, and the things in the storage box also poured out like water, spilling everywhere.
The box was full of women's things, including high heels, lipstick, necklaces, dresses, and a tangled, dusty black wig that fell right next to Ming Zhou.
Ming Zhou fell to the cold floor and instinctively tried to stand up, but his fingertips suddenly touched something furry in the dark, like a woman's hair. His heart suddenly shrank, as if it was poisoned, and he threw the thing away in panic, widened his eyes and backed away desperately, shrinking into the innermost corner of the wall.
Time flies. More than 20 years have passed. The shell of the lipstick has long been rusted and cracked, the dress has been moldy, and the black wig lies quietly on the floor, with dry and tangled hair, just like its owner, it has lost its vitality.
Some people have died, but the memory is like a thorn in the bone, forever rooted in another person's life. You thought you had forgotten it, but when you opened the dusty box one day, you found that the shadow had never gone away.
Ming Zhou hugged his knees tightly, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He finally opened his eyes, which he had never shown to anyone before, and saw that his dark pupils were narrow and out of focus, and his eyes were covered with a layer of sickly white film, which blocked all vision, leaving only endless darkness.
Ming Zhou huddled in the corner, looking frantically in the direction opposite him. He was obviously blind and could not see anything, but in a trance he seemed to see a thin boy squatting in the corner, being strangled and shaken by a long-haired woman.
"Eat! Why aren't you eating?! Do you know how hard I worked to give birth to a bastard like you?! Is this how you treat me?!"
The crazy woman grabbed the boy's throat tightly and stuffed the rotten rice into his mouth. Her long red nails were covered with white rice, just like maggots crawling on a bright red rose.
"Your father doesn't want you anymore. I am the only one who wants you. Do you understand?! I work so hard to earn money to feed you, why don't you eat?!"
The woman's face was heavily made up, and her true features could no longer be seen. She didn't care about her tangled hair or the dust on the ground, and she grabbed the rice grains that had rolled down the ground and mechanically stuffed them into the boy's mouth until she couldn't put any more in, and then she fell to the ground panting.
“Cough cough cough… cough cough cough…”
The boy's face turned purple from being pinched, and he burst into a violent low cough, but he did not dare to spit out the food in his mouth. He tried hard to swallow it down along with the mud and sand on the ground.
The rice has turned sour and rotten, just like the person locked up in this room.
The boy saw the woman fell to the ground, and he slowly crawled to her side, holding back his tears and gently patting the dust off her skirt, thinking that he had made her angry: "Mom, don't be angry... I'm eating... I'm eating..."
However, the woman ignored him and started to fix her hair. Then, she faced the mirror and reapplied the broken lipstick on her already bright red lips. She covered her mouth and giggled softly, "Your father will come to pick me up soon. He said that when he earns enough money, he will divorce that yellow-faced woman and come back to marry me to live a good life."
After applying lipstick, she lowered her head and began to tidy up her dirty and old floral dress. Suddenly, she found a hole on the hem of her dress. She was stunned and said to herself, "Why is it torn?"
The woman was a little flustered. She stood up from the ground and muttered to herself frantically, "How could it be torn? My skirt can't be torn... Needle... I need to find a needle... I need to mend my clothes..."
She searched for something in this small, square room, and finally found a sewing box in the drawer. She then hurriedly threaded the needle and began to mend her skirt.
One stitch, two stitches, three stitches...
The woman seemed to remember something and her movements suddenly slowed down.
Four stitches, five stitches, six stitches...
The woman slowly stopped moving, looked up at the boy in front of her who was only slightly taller than her knees, and said in a daze: "I forgot... your father will not come back... he doesn't want you anymore... and he doesn't want me anymore..."
At that moment, the woman was like a rose without thorns, and suddenly became gentle. Perhaps she realized that she could only depend on this bastard, so she half-knelt on the ground, slowly opened her arms, and said to the boy in a rare soft voice: "Come, let mommy hug you..."
The boy stood there, panicking and at a loss. He was afraid of being beaten, but also afraid of making the woman sad, so he walked cautiously in front of the woman, his young face covered with purple bruises.
The woman did not hug him, but gently held his face and looked at it carefully. It seemed that he was crying, but also seemed to be laughing. His lipstick was blurred and faded. Finally, she said in a trembling voice: "Your eyes are so similar to your father's..."
Hot tears fell and smudged the makeup on her face.
The woman hugged the boy tightly, like a fish caught in a fishing net. She closed her eyes in pain, her whole body trembling: "Why are your eyes so similar to his... Why... I shouldn't have given birth to you... I shouldn't have given birth to you..."
She tightly grasped the needle that had been used to sew her skirt and stabbed it hard. Blood soaked the needle and thread. The heavy rain outside the window covered her crying. The mirror on the ground shattered into pieces. Something went dark at this point.
A loud thunder rumbled across the sky, suddenly waking up the daytime.
He could no longer distinguish between hallucination and reality, he only felt that the pain from that year was still there, veins bulged on the back of his hands, he covered his head in pain, and in a trance he felt something hot and burning liquid leaving his body, he didn't know if it was blood or tears.
Why…
Why…
Ming Zhou was suffocating and could not breathe. He stood up in a panic and stumbled out of the bedroom. But it made no difference to him where he went. It was dark inside and outside. This road would never end. Tears fell from his eyes, hitting his arms and the cold floor, but they could not break the nightmare of the past.
Xiao Jinang had just finished taking a shower, put on his clothes and came out of the bathroom, only to see Ming Zhou fumbling around in the living room in a panic, then tripping over the coffee table unexpectedly, his face as pale as paper. At the door of the guest room was a pile of scattered items, skirts, wigs, entangled with each other like a spider web, unable to be separated.
"Doctor Ming!"
Seeing this, Xiao Jinang's face changed slightly, and he immediately went forward to help Ming Zhou up. Just when he was about to ask him if he was injured, he was caught off guard and saw wet tear marks on the other's face, and was stunned.