he can't see our ears

"Sorry, I still don't understand what you want to say." I became more and more impatient, and I didn't come here specially to listen to the legendary story. "Now the focus is on the big brother's business? He didn't throw himself into the sea, he met Accident. Do you want to come with me to meet the eldest brother?"

Old Zhang shook his head.He still didn't answer the question: "Do you know why fewer people are throwing themselves into the sea now?"

I said: "Because the economic conditions have improved, the quality of life has improved."

He smiled and said, "I'm not asking you why fewer people are committing suicide, but why fewer people are throwing themselves into the sea."

"Is it different?"

"It's different," Lao Zhang sighed, "Let me tell you the reason. You said it has something to do with economic conditions, but it does have something to do with it. Now all roads lead to all parts of the country, and people's lives and marriages are not limited to nearby places. Villages and county towns. The descendants of those families are getting more and more scattered, and the blood relationship is getting thinner and thinner. It is said that the closeness to the hometown is timid, but if you have never seen or heard about your hometown in your life, you will not be homesick at all, right? "

"Well, so?" I said.

Lao Zhang said: "For so many years, I have devoted myself to investigating these things. Although I didn't find any good results, I gradually understood one thing...not only will I miss my children, but children will also miss their parents."

Isn't this nonsense... I looked at him and wondered what he meant, did he want to go to the hospital with me?Talking to this person is too much work.

"It's unavoidable, it's unstoppable," he continued.

I thought he was going to make a long speech again, and I was waiting for him, but after he finished speaking, he just looked down at the floor and remained silent for a long time.

After thinking about what he said for a while, I said, "It seems that you don't want to see him, so it's okay. Since you don't want to see him, why call me here? Just to find someone to listen to you?"

Lao Zhang said: "Although you are not my child, you are her child. You should know these things."

I stood up and asked again: "Are you really not going to see him?"

He shook his head: "No. And if what you're telling is the truth, it's useless for me to go, he can't see me. "

Yes.If the eldest brother's symptoms have not disappeared, then he will definitely not recognize his father.

Even if his father took the initiative to recognize him, all he could feel was horror and no warmth.

The purpose of my trip is not to bring this man back, but to inquire about his mental problems and see if it can help the elder brother's symptoms.But judging from the current situation, I can't find out anything of value.

I have no gain, only discomfort.I just want to get out of here quickly.

I simply bid farewell to Lao Zhang and turned to leave.Lao Zhang got up and followed. I said no need to send it off, but he insisted on following.

He said: "It's so late, you can't go back to the county right away. There is a small hotel nearby. The conditions are definitely not as good as in the city, but it's no problem to stay for one night. Shall I take you there?"

"Just tell me where it is."

"I'll take you there," he insisted, "it's not safe at night. You don't know the place well, don't let anything happen."

I thought to myself, what could happen to me as a young man?But I didn't refuse firmly, and let Lao Zhang follow me.

Somehow, I was still confident outside the warehouse of the farm, but when we came outside, standing on the dark path and smelling the faint smell of the ocean not far away, I got goosebumps for no reason.

If a person walks at night in this kind of place, I will indeed be a little scared... Forget it, just be a little bit cowardly.This old man has a weird mind, but I can tell he's not a bad guy.

From my mother's attitude, I can feel that Lao Zhang is not bad.

My mother blamed him, but mainly because his brain was broken and he couldn't live a normal life, but he never criticized his character.Even occasionally when the mother was in a good mood, she would mention their youthful years when they were young. At that time, there was no resentment in her eyes, only nostalgia.

Lao Zhang took me not far, up a slope, and came to a brightly lit area.On this road, there is the only restaurant in the village, although it is closed; there is also the only small hotel, which is open at night.

I walked towards the hotel, Lao Zhang nodded to me as a farewell.

I go through the glass door.There was a little girl at the front desk of the hotel curled up playing with her mobile phone, and now she raised her head to entertain me.

I turned my head and looked outside, and Lao Zhang was still under the streetlight where he was.

He didn't look at me, but looked in the direction of the sea, looking thoughtful.

==============================

After checking in, I simply brushed my teeth, rubbed my face with water, didn't feel like taking a shower, so I just put on my clothes and fell asleep.

Maybe because of the exhaustion of the previous day, it was easy for me to fall asleep.On the contrary, I woke up very early, I woke up naturally before dawn, and it was only after four o'clock when I checked my phone.

I have nothing to do right now, and I don’t have a car to go out, so I just lie down and play with my phone.

I followed a lot of bloggers who discussed the yachting incident before, and I also bookmarked a lot of forum posts. Now I open those pages again to see if there are any new topics.

The popularity of this matter has dropped, and there are fewer and fewer relevant contents on various websites.Today I opened Weibo, but I was immediately attracted by a very low-level local topic.

"Yacht accident victim's clothing found".

I click in to see in detail.It was the news that came out last night. I didn't look at my phone at that time, so I didn't know about it immediately.I don't know the other victims, so it's certainly not possible for the police to tell me this in the first place.

It is said that the victim's clothes were found, but in fact, not all of them were found, only some of the clothes of three of them.

The clothes were not picked up from the sea, but appeared on a beach not open to the public near City A.That area is not a beach, but a reef beach. The clothes seem to be brought up by the tide, and after the ebb tide hangs on the stones, they are left on the beach.

The news is very short, there is no in-depth description, and I don't know what the clothes are like.

Anyway, they are just clothes, not remains.

There are many rumors on the forum that are difficult to distinguish between true and false. Some people claim to know people from relevant departments and can get first-hand information, saying that there are blood stains on the clothes, but the composition of the blood is unknown, and it does not belong to the owner of the clothes.

It's hard to tell if it's true or not, and I don't believe it all.After reading a bunch of news from various sources, I was very sober. It was only after five o'clock, and I couldn't sleep and went back to sleep.

I decided to just get up and go out.This small hotel is really not good, the room smells of damp, and it is very cold, not as comfortable as outside.

The girl at the front desk is gone, and now there is an old man.He is much more talkative than my younger sister, probably because I am obviously a foreigner, and this is not a tourist area. He is really curious about me. When I checked out, he kept asking questions, and I basically put it off.

When I was about to go out, he told me "don't go to the beach".I asked why, this time he didn't talk too much, but just said "very cold".

Actually, I'm planning to go to the beach.I haven't seen the sea in this area yet, and there is no car to go to the station now, so where else can I go.

It is not difficult to find the beach.The roads in this area are undulating. Standing on a relatively high slope, I can directly see which direction the sea is in.It's already dawn, as long as you look in the right direction, you will be there soon.

This is not a scenic spot, and there is no beach for people to play. Of course, I will pay attention to safety and will not walk on the reef beach. I just stand on the embankment and look at it from a distance.

In various literary and artistic works, there are usually two common images of the sea, one is warm and beautiful, and the other is deep and angry.Humans either embrace it, or fight it, and die in its arms.

At this moment, the sea in front of me is neither beautiful nor angry, it spreads a thick dark gray, lying under the thin clouds of the morning light.

I remembered the story Lao Zhang told yesterday.Those young girls, daughters-in-law, maids, pearl divers, daughters in the story... If the story is true, they should all have seen such a sea.

Moreover, most of them have never read other works about the sea, and it is unlikely that they have read literature and painting, let alone modern film and television.

Therefore, they have not seen passionate lovers, nor have they seen angry death.

What they have been looking at is the gray and oppressive sea at this moment. It is stable and mature, silent and breathing slightly.

What does this sea look like?It had no passionate vocabulary to use, nor did it show any signs of rage or crisis.

As for what it feels like to me... I think it is more like a city, where I live, my home, a city that I have lived in for decades, is familiar, and has nothing new.

If I were a primary school student and used this method to describe the sea in my composition, probably few teachers would agree.But that's how I really feel right now.

When my mind was wandering, I suddenly noticed something moving in my peripheral vision.

I cast my eyes in that direction, and vaguely saw a small reef moving far away.It moved a few times and then stopped.

I continued squinting, but it was too far away, and the light was not very good, so I couldn't see clearly.

It is estimated that it is not a reef, some debris is hanging on the reef, and it must be moved by the current.

Just when I was about to turn my head, I caught the tremor again out of the corner of my eye.

I stared at it again, yes, it was not an illusion, there was indeed something moving over there.

It is about the same color as the reef, as if it has its own protective color. It first lays down behind a larger reef, protrudes out once on the left and right, then rises a little, protrudes some parts out of the reef, and then retracts.Then it jumped away from the boulder and moved diagonally behind another stone.

I don't know of any animals that move around here.Then I thought, maybe it's not an animal, but a human?

It must be the kids nearby.Children imitate adults to catch the sea, go to the beach to pick up things, dig small crabs and so on.

The child moved, stopped, and kept his body down, probably digging something.After a while, he poked his head out from behind the reef, his facial features could not be seen from here, only his small head could be seen, it seemed that he was indeed a child.

He probably saw me too.I was standing on the embankment, the road was empty on both sides, and I could see people standing here at a glance.

Probably because he was afraid of being discovered by adults, he quickly retracted his head and changed several positions.I stood taller and could still vaguely see him.

The child moved along the crevices of the reef, using all hands and feet, and crawled very quickly.At first he moved sideways, I thought he was trying to hide from my sight, but after observing for a while I realized that he didn't deliberately avoid me, but was slowly approaching the embankment in a zigzag path.It seemed that he was going to go ashore and go home.

As he got closer and closer, my heart tightened suddenly.Physiology reacted before reason.

I suddenly realized that something was wrong with this kid.

It was not obvious when he was far away, but now that he is getting closer, I can see his own sense of volume more and more clearly.Using the surrounding stones as reference objects, you can compare his body size.

He is the wrong size.

Human eyes are very keen.Even if your reference is trees, sand, rocks, and not artifacts, you can get a rough idea of ​​the size of an item.

The child had the approximate size of a human child, but the head was too small and elongated, and the hands and feet were disproportionately elongated.

Even if it is a thin child, it is only the flesh that loses weight, not the length of the bones.

The light in the morning was too slanted, and there were still thin clouds in the sky, so I still couldn't see the specific appearance of the child clearly. I could only see him moving along the cracks in the rocks, getting closer and closer to the embankment.

For some reason, I suddenly couldn't keep calm, a chill rose from the soles of my feet and invaded my whole body in an instant.

Intellectually, I don't believe that I will see anything strange in broad daylight. It may be a child with a deformed body, or a woman who is too thin, or some animal...an animal I don't know...

But reason didn't convince me.

I turned and walked away quickly, faster and faster, and finally ran.

I heard that people's fear of many things is innate, and there is no need to receive warning and education from others in advance.

For example, some people are extremely afraid of snakes. They may have never seen a real snake or been hurt by a snake, but they are very afraid of snakes. They can’t even see pictures of snakes, and they can’t even accept toy snakes.

There are also people who are afraid of the dark. People in modern metropolises live in the city that never sleeps. Most people live a relatively stable life and have not encountered any terrible things, but people are still afraid of the dark from the bottom of their hearts.

A more rational explanation is that people are afraid of criminals hiding in the dark. This is indeed one of the reasons, but it is not the whole reason. After all, even infants and young children who cannot read and write are afraid or loathe the dark.People have fabricated many myths and lies based on "darkness", all of which are essentially due to fear of darkness and turning to light.

People are also afraid of heights.There is a documentary in which scholars arranged many volunteers to do an experiment. They let babies who had just learned to crawl across a solid, transparent, high-hanging platform, and mothers waited for them on the other side of the platform.Babies have not yet been able to speak, and have never been educated about the "dangerous heights", but when they climb to the transparent place, they all hesitate and stop.At this time, the mothers will smile and encourage the children on the opposite side. Some babies choose to trust their mothers and climb over the transparent platform, and some babies have been reluctant to move.

We instinctively fear certain things even without practice.This is the memory left by the ancestors and the alarm bell hidden in the genes.

The coolness I felt at this time should also be based on this reason.

I don't know what I'm seeing, or even if it's just an illusion.But something in the dark is warning me, urging me: I can't watch it anymore, leave now.

I ran faster and faster without looking back at all.

When I was about to leave the embankment and go up the road, there was a slight "click" sound far behind me.

It was a very, very faint sound, much quieter than my footsteps and my breathing, but I heard it anyway.

What is it like.It seems that something has touched the stone pier of the embankment... like stepping on it with your feet, or picking it up with your hands...

Anyway, I didn't look back.

I ran to the village, the road I came from, and the bus station where the first bus hadn't come yet.