spooky love

I intend to let you be in charge of the Poaceae (Note 24) in the work of this illustrated book of plants, how about it? "

Poaceae...that is, weeds that Ryoichiro likes, such as imperata (Note 25) and wild oats (Note 26), are collecting and identifying.When he answered "I am willing" without any objection, someone hurriedly knocked on the door of the associate professor's room.

"Excuse me, is Mr. Satake in there?"

Hara's voice came from the other side of the door, and Kamikawa looked up at Ryoichiro, tilting his head slightly in doubt.

"We're talking, is there something urgent?"

Before the other party was allowed in, the door opened.Yuan Yuan was pale, flustered, and rushed in with rough hands and feet.

"Ms. Satake, it's bad! Your hometown..."

Yuan didn't finish speaking, so he gave the telegram to Ryoichiro.Ryoichiro read the crumpled paper, his face was visibly losing color bit by bit.

"Satake, what happened?"

Kamikawa also asked worriedly.But it is not the person being asked who answers the question, but Yuan.

"His hometown caught fire, his mother and younger brother passed away, and his father was dying..."

"This is terrible." Uekawa said standing up, leaving behind Ryoichiro who was standing there in a daze, and asked the students to arrange a rickshaw and inquire about the time of the train. Concerned about the sudden incident, he might not have enough money, so he prepared some money for him. money.

"Teacher, please cheer up."

Ryoichiro sat weakly on the sofa in the associate professor's room, and Hara shook his shoulders vigorously.

"Satake, hurry up. If you leave now, you'll still be able to catch the [-]:[-] p.m. train.

Hearing Kamikawa's voice, Ryoichiro finally recovered half of his senses.

"Demata..."

I don't know if the voice is too low to hear, Yuan replied, "What's the matter?"

"I can't go back alone, I have to take Dema with me. His mother seems to have passed away."

"Mr. Dema is helping the classroom, and he is the one who brought the telegram to the university..."

Ryoichiro stood up from the sofa, rushed out of the assistant professor's room, pushed aside the students, and opened the door of the assistant classroom.

De Ma stood by the window and turned around slowly. Although his face was pale, he couldn't see the shock as much as his own in his eyes.

"……Let's go back."

Hearing what he said, Dema nodded slowly.

It was seven o'clock in the afternoon the day after I received the telegram when I returned to the station at my home in the country.Although they rushed to the hospital first, the father had already passed away.

The body was sent to my uncle's home, because the home was burned and there was nowhere to put it.The stepmother, younger brother, and Dema's mother, who has no other relatives, have already been parked in the room about twelve stacks in size.There were a lot of people who came to the vigil that night. I don't know if it was because the family was a brewery with a long history, and my father had a wide circle of people.

Thanking the people who came and sending them away, the same thing repeated over and over again, almost made him numb, and he didn't even have time to feel the sadness.

After the funeral, he was finally alone.It is customary in the country to invite guests to dinner after the deceased is buried. Ryoichiro left the banquet after saying hello, and quietly went to see the burned hometown.The big house is no longer in shape, only the burnt black pillars and the hedges that have turned into black charcoal still remain the faint traces of the past.

After walking around the house, and then stepping into the house, the burnt smell became stronger. There was a sound of "啪啦", he looked down, and saw the blackened rice bowl shattered at his feet.

At sunset, when he returned to his uncle's house, the feast was not over yet.Ryoichiro only thanked his relatives who came from afar, and hid in the westernmost room.This is a six-story room, and his uncle allocated it for him to rest.

Dema was in the room, kneeling upright by the window, looking out.Uncle's house was not that big, and Ryoichiro and Dema shared the same room.

Probably sensing the movement, De Ma turned his head and looked straight at him.Ryoichiro walked wordlessly to a corner of the room as if he wanted to ignore the other party's gaze, and sat cross-legged.On the way home, Ryoichiro didn't say a word. Even when he got to his uncle's house, he remembered that he didn't say anything except the funeral procedure.

He thought: Dema was calm from the beginning to the end.Ever since he left university, he has been holding a big bag in his hand, which contains Ryoichiro's mourning clothes and a little change of clothes, which means that he prepared these things immediately after reading the telegram, and was shocked to the heart, so he just sat on the spot. I am different.

A cool breeze blew in through the open window.Ryoichiro no longer crossed his legs, but sat with his knees hugged. He heard the sound of the farewell banquet mixed with the sound of insects, coming from a distance.The tatami made a rustling sound, and the paper door opened.Ryoichiro felt the sound of footsteps go away, leaving him alone, with a kind of irresistible loneliness.He held his head and curled up.

The paper door opened again, because of the suddenness of the incident, Ryoichiro looked up semi-reflexively, and saw Dema looking down at him, he felt terrified.

Dema knelt down beside him, and raised Ryoichiro's face with the round fan he was holding.After fanning it two or three times, he tapped his fingertips on the tatami to write.

"Are you tired?Please lie down and rest for a while. 』

The fingertips did not stop and continued to write.

"I'll keep fanning you until you fall asleep. 』

He couldn't help holding the white fingertips that were moving on the tatami.

"Aren't you sad?"

Dema stared intently at Ryoichiro.

"Don't you hate me?"

Dema didn't say anything... no, he couldn't say anything, his words were now in Ryoichiro's hands.

"If I hadn't been so stubborn and let you go home immediately when you asked to resign, maybe I wouldn't have let you let mother die alone."

Regret overflows.

"Feel sorry."

He squeezed the other's fingers firmly, and pressed his forehead to the tatami like this.

"Please... please forgive me."

Ryoichiro trembled and hissed.

"forgive me."

He felt that someone was stroking his head, stroking him lightly and tenderly, as if returning to his childhood.He raised his head, and Tokuma pressed the corners of Ryoichiro's eyes with both hands.When he was a child, he searched for his mother but couldn't find it anywhere, so when he cried, Tokuma would definitely press the corner of Ryoichiro's eyes, trying to stop the tears from his eyes.

"I didn't cry."

While speaking, tears fell drop by drop, even he was startled.

"I……"

Even with my eyes closed, tears flowed down my face.Feeling the other person stroking his head again, he was sure that the other person had forgiven him.While breathing a sigh of relief, a certain thought flashed through his mind.

Ryoichiro hugged Dema's thigh and cried, without making a sound, just crying.Ryoichiro felt that now he could finally cry for his family members who died.

He propped his chin with his hands while talking on the quilts laid side by side, and De Ma wrote on the tatami.When asked why Dema didn't use a pencil, Dema's fingers stopped abruptly in the dim light of the oil lamp.He remembered that because he was emotional, he threw the pen into the pool.Although they should have bought some spares, Dema didn't seem to bring them back.

"I'll buy you a new one."

After he said that, he felt a slight smile on his fair face.

Dawn passed and the funeral guests returned.Even when the surroundings were quiet, Ryoichiro couldn't fall asleep, tossing and turning again and again.In the moonlight, he propped his chin with one hand, staring at the man fanning himself with a round fan half asleep.

"Father, mother, and brother are all dead."

Ryoichiro said softly, as if talking to himself.

"Whether it's family or people, they're all surprisingly fragile..."

Dema didn't stop fanning the wind, and listened to him quietly.

"For some reason, I always seem to be the last one left."

Ryoichiro looked at the silent man.

"Among the monsters you can see, is there any one that will live longer if you are possessed by it?"

The fan stopped.

"If there is such a monster, you should catch it and keep it, so that at least you won't die before me."

Ryoichiro kneeled closer to Toma, resting his head on his lap.Dema used his fingers to brush aside Ryoichiro's bangs stuck to his forehead due to sweat.

"Don't die before me."

Ryoichiro repeated, and closed his eyes, kept it like this, and fell asleep unconsciously.

When he woke up, he found that he had fallen asleep as if he was on top of Dema.Even though his lying posture was messed up, Tokuma still gently held Ryoichiro's head in his arms with both hands.

He was so happy that he cried for a while early in the morning, and then repeated in his heart countless times "beloved...my beloved..."

The day after the parents and younger brother finished their first seven days, the uncle told Ryoichiro that he had something to talk about.After lunch, he sat across the low table from his uncle in the living room.Uncle's second daughter, seven-year-old Ritsuko, was playing ball in the yard just now, but his uncle gave Dema some money to buy candy for Ritsuko, and let them go outside.

"Although there was a lot of noise at the funeral, the dust finally settled."

Uncle said with deep emotion, Ryoichiro bowed his head deeply:

"I have really been taken care of by my uncle in many ways."

The uncle twisted the goat under his chin with his fingers and said, "Where, where...

"By the way, what's going on at the university?"

"As usual, I just looked at the flowers and plants with a microscope."

Uncle said hesitantly: "Study, isn't that what it is like."

"By the way, I want to talk to you about the property of the Satake family..."

He had thought before that the other party probably wanted to talk to him about this matter.

"Actually, the remaining money is not considered any property, and there are still a lot of debts. In recent years, the business of the wine shop has not been good, so my brother tried to find a way to open a new daily necessities store, so he borrowed money from others to build it. The storefront, I didn’t expect it to catch fire when it was about to be built.”

The first time he heard that the business at home was not good, he was shocked.Although Ryoichiro has been receiving a salary since entering university, because of