Me! Cleaner!.

Chapter 43 Family Portrait and Protagonist (Two in One)

Of course we have to persuade her. Although Anna's condition has stabilized, she has just been discharged from the hospital not long ago. It would be bad if she hurt herself by crying.

After touching his brother's little head, which seemed a little silly when he said smart things and understood everything when he said stupid, Leon put down the newspaper in his hand, got up and left the second bedroom, and walked towards Anna's room.

This old house located in Veteran Lane was not the original home of Leon and his four siblings, but an old house that was allocated to them after the military forcibly withheld part of their pension. It was almost five times older than Leon.

The old house is old and dilapidated, with average lighting and not even a toilet. Apart from a small living room connected to the kitchen, there is only a master bedroom and a second bedroom.

The smaller second bedroom has always been occupied by Leon. As for the so-called Anna's room, it is actually the master bedroom shared by her and her two younger siblings.

"squeak"

With the old door hinge making a hoarse sound, Leon pushed the door open and walked into the master bedroom. The first thing he saw was his sister sobbing on the quilt.

Like the second bedroom where Leon lived, this small master bedroom also had only a single bed. It was barely enough for William and Melanie to sleep in when they were young, but when the two troublemakers grew up a little, it became a bit crowded.

So Leon picked up some wooden boards and bricks from outside, added a section to the side of the original old bed, and padded it with a mattress and his parents' old clothes, hoping that his younger brothers and sisters could sleep more comfortably. However, due to material problems, the built part was a little unstable and the bed board shook easily.

Anna was lying on this part of the bed at this time. With every muffled sob she let out, the newly built half of the bed swayed a few times, and her buttocks also swayed, twisting and turning with the sobs, which looked quite funny and made Leon chuckle.

"Brother! You're still laughing!"

After hearing Leon's muffled laughter, Anna, who was lying on the bed, suddenly became even angrier. She rarely showed her temper. Her two white and tender feet kicked the air twice in anger, and then she couldn't help but complain:

"It's all your fault! When they were making trouble before, you always stopped me from beating them! Now they've started stuffing horse manure into other people's mouths! And you can still laugh!"

"Forehead……"

Leon was too embarrassed to explain what he was laughing at, so he had to look away. He looked at the furnishings in the room and said something else:
“I just think spanking alone may not be enough, they still need to know why they are being spanked, otherwise, they should not think that it is okay to be spanked for misbehaving.

If you don't believe me, look at William. He has already summed up his experience of how many spanks you will get for making trouble, so it proves that you still have to be reasonable."

"But they will only listen to your reason after they have been beaten first!"

Anna is always gentle in front of Leon and almost never expresses her opinions, but she is extremely strong when it comes to educating her younger siblings.

After wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, she stopped sobbing, turned around, pouted her lips and argued unconvincedly:

"You don't usually spend enough time with them, so you don't know how annoying they are!

Melanie didn't know right from wrong, she just thought she could get away with it by being cunning! William was even more worrying. Although he didn't take the initiative to make trouble, his ideas were always weird, just like... just like..."

After thinking for a long time and failing to come up with words to describe her brother's strange train of thought, the sickly girl angrily pounded the bed and concluded:
"You have to take care of it anyway! If you don't, it will be too late when they grow up!"

"Yes, yes, I will take care of it! I must take care of it! If it happens again next time, I will definitely not stop you!"

After echoing twice, Leon walked over and sat down beside the bed. He gently stroked his sister's back and said softly:

"But you might as well think about it on the bright side. Although the two of them are indeed a bit naughty, they never actively bully others. The previous few times were not entirely their fault... um... let me think about it."

After recalling the several situations he remembered, Leon said with a slightly complicated expression:

"This time they caused trouble because someone said you couldn't come back; last time they were playing a game and a kid got angry and called William a wild child; and the time before that they were trying to stop that fat kid named Jack from bullying others;
The time before that was when I was working as a loader at the docks. I was driven away because I was too weak, and people in the alley gossiped about me. The time before that was when you coughed too loudly at night and disturbed your neighbors, and you were said to be a tuberculosis patient..."

The more they thought about why their younger siblings were mischievous, the more miserable Leon and Anna looked.

I didn't think so before, but now I see that although they are both very naughty, there is always a reason for each trouble they cause. So rather than saying that they are "naughty", it is better to say that they are also trying to maintain this fragile little home in their own way.

If I, as their older brother (sister), had been a little more capable and had protected them from more malice in life, the two little ones might not have been so "naughty" and could have been two lively and innocent ordinary children happily...

"Don't think about that for now."

After seeing the tears in his sister's eyes, Leon realized that the more he tried to persuade her, the worse the situation became. He quickly changed the subject, reached out and picked up an old yellowed photo album from the shelf beside the bed, and put his arm around Anna's thin shoulders to comfort her:
"I now have a public office in the police department. When I become a regular employee at the end of the year, I can also let William and his friends go to school for free, and they won't have to fight with the kids in the alley anymore. So let's just let these things in the past go! Our family will definitely get better and better in the future...

By the way, the last time we looked at the photo album together was more than two years ago when I had a high fever. It’s not too late today, if you’re not feeling unwell, can you accompany me to look through it again? "

"Um……"

Following Leon's strength, she leaned her body and gently leaned on his shoulder. With red eyes, Anna took the photo album, stroked the damaged cardboard cover with nostalgia, then opened the album and gently flipped through it.

“This was when my mother was young.”

Opening the first page of the album, Anna pointed to a faded group photo of a beautiful woman in military uniform with eyebrows and eyes similar to Leon and a heroic look on her face. She explained softly:
"When I was little, my mother told me... told us that this was a photo of her when she was admitted to the Mechanics College and assigned to the Artillery Adjustment Class. And this is my father..."

Anna raised her soft fingertips and pointed at a tall, handsome, black-haired man with a gentle smile in the corner of the back row.

"Father and mother were classmates. After graduation, they were drafted into the same army. They gradually became familiar with each other, and then... you were born. Then the next year, I was born..."

As Anna slowly flipped through the photo album, watching the strange man and woman, how they got to know each other, fell in love, and finally wore suits and wedding gowns, hugged each other emotionally with tears of happiness in a small church, Leon's mood also became better.

Different from the cold and cruel reality, those happy moments captured in the photo album seem so warm. Even though they have faded severely due to the passage of time, it does not affect the brilliance and brilliance of those smiles at all.

By the way...was Anna such a lively child when she was little?
The enviable happiness in the album continued. Looking at the little blonde girl with a bright smile in the photo, Leon couldn't help but reach out and gently touch little Anna's bright blonde hair.

In his memory, Anna, apart from smiling at him tenderly with soft eyes and nodding, only covered her lips when she was sick and coughed, and frowned tightly from time to time. Leon had never seen his sister smile so happily... So what took away her smile?

Seeing that Melanie and the other two had not appeared yet, but he had already flipped through most of the photo album, the self-evident answer naturally came to his mind.

“Um… I suddenly remembered that I still have some unfinished work!” Knowing clearly how cruel the ending would be for the beautiful family in the photo album, Leon’s body stiffened slightly. He regretted why he had come up with such a stupid idea to look at the photo album, and said to Anna with an apologetic look:

"How about we just stop here? You're tired today, you should rest early!"

"Um……"

The thin girl responded softly, as if she didn't notice anything unusual about Leon. She closed the album in her hand, chuckled and nodded her chin.

However, after Leon fled, she did not get up, but reopened the heavy old photo album and slowly turned to the last page.

On the back cover of the yellowed album, in the position that should have been reserved for the most important photo, there is a torn old photo stuck.

The person who tore the photo seemed to have used a lot of force, and even rubbed the pieces hard, causing many cracks in the photo to warp up. Even though it seemed to have been carefully handled, it still could not be completely flattened, and even the face of the portrait was not very complete.

In this strange photo, the couple who appeared many times in the previous album but have been dead for six years are still smiling happily at the camera and hugging each other under a sign with the cursive words "Family Portrait".

However, in front of them, there were not four siblings, two boys and two girls, but only a child about eight or nine years old. The child was holding his father and mother's hands on the left and right, and showing an extremely happy smile to the camera.

She stretched out her fingers and touched the child's face in the photo, flattening the raised part of the crack, revealing the bright golden hair of the same color as her mother. Looking at the smiling face on the girl's face that even she found very unfamiliar, Anna couldn't help biting her lip hard.

Then, as if she had made up her mind, she scraped off the pieces of the glued photos one by one with her fingernails, then found a matchbox and a small bucket in the house and threw all the pieces into the bucket.

Turning her head away with reluctance, Anna struck a match, lit a ball of cotton wool and threw it into the bucket, burning the last photo of herself and her parents directly into black ash at the bottom of the bucket!

……

Hmm...it seems like I forgot to do something yesterday.

He had no idea what had happened after he left last night. As a social animal without any holidays, Leon climbed out of his bed at daybreak.

After taking out the scrap paper he used as a memo and taking a look, he found out helplessly that he had left halfway through looking at the photos yesterday because he was worried that Anna would be reminded of sad things, and had completely forgotten about asking her to confirm his birthday.

Now...she and William should not be awake yet, right? Then let's ask them when we get back in the evening!

Looking at the still dark master bedroom, Leon shook his head and gave up the idea of ​​asking questions now. Instead, he picked up a stack of old newspapers, pushed the door open quietly and left home, walking on the way to work under the stars.

Hmm? Where's the coffee stand?
When he reached the same location as the previous few days, Leon was somewhat surprised to find that although the current temperature was very suitable for opening a coffee stall, the profiteer with the same name as Charles Department Store did not come to set up the stall today.

After walking around two nearby streets and not seeing any sign of Old Charles, Leon finally gave up on the half-price coffee. He walked to another stall across the street with a depressed face and ordered a cup of the cheapest coffee.

I have to say that although Lao Charles' coffee stall is very chargeable and the products are very stingy, the "consumer experience" is indeed first-class and other coffee stalls really can't compare. Although the products at this stall are large in quantity, they really don't taste like those at Lao Charles' stall.

Leon sighed with regret and drank the hot coffee in two or three gulps. Just as he was about to get up and leave, he caught a glimpse of a familiar face at the next table.

That person...seems to be a regular customer of Old Charles?

After recognizing the face and confirming that he had not made a mistake, Leon hesitated briefly and then walked over quickly.

"Hello, excuse me."

After pointing across the street, before Leon could open his mouth to ask his question, the regular customer raised his eyebrows in realization and actually spoke first:

"Oh! Isn't this the son-in-law chosen by old Charles?"

???

What? I just drank his coffee a few times, and I paid for it, so how can I become his son-in-law?

Looking at Leon who was confused by his name, the familiar customer who was probably in his fifties laughed twice, briefly explained the origin of the name, and then asked with a smile:

"You came to me to ask why Old Charles didn't set up his stall today, right? I actually know this!"

After waving to Leon to sit down, the familiar customer in his fifties continued:

"I ran into him last night. It seemed that his wife was doing business with someone else, but she accidentally fell into a trap set by others. It seemed that she lost a lot of money. She was so angry that she fainted on the spot.

Although his wife was lucky enough to be rescued by a kind young man passing by and nothing serious happened to her, she will probably have to be taken care of for more than half a month.

Old Charles told me that he had to take care of his wife and seek justice from those people, so he definitely couldn’t open the stall these few days.”

"..."

Doing business...being tricked...losing a lot of money...being so angry that I fainted on the spot...and being saved by a kind-hearted young man passing by...why does this sound familiar?
After hearing the story of another "Mrs. Charles", Leon couldn't help but scratch the back of his head awkwardly, feeling that the coincidences in this world were really a bit too outrageous.

Logically speaking, if going to the water power company to steal information can be considered as "passing by", then the experiences of the two Mrs. Charles are really no different at all.

As for whether these two Mrs. Charles could be the same person, and whether the old Charles who was buying coffee on the street was the Charles from Charles Department Store...

How is this possible!
After thinking about the possibility of such a bizarre coincidence, Leon couldn't help but curl up the corners of his mouth and laughed at himself in his heart.

I met a coffee vendor at a street stall. It turned out that he was one of the top three richest people in the capital. Yesterday, when I was on a field mission, I happened to save the life of the rich man's wife. As a result, I heard from others this morning that the rich man seemed to want to choose me as his son-in-law and inherit his department stores all over the capital...

Stop talking nonsense, do you really think you are the protagonist?

(End of this chapter)