Not too many out of four

Li Jia's birthday gift to Kudo Shinichi was the first edition of Sherlock Holmes.

The first edition book she found by chance in an old bookstore is much more expensive than the current Sherlock Holmes collections on the market, but the owner of the bookstore is a kind person, since she is a middle school student and she wants to buy it as a birthday present for her brother It was a lot cheaper for her.

Unwrapping the gift package reveals the blue-green cover. The thick first-edition book looks extremely heavy in the hands. Kudo Shinichi's eyes lit up for a moment, so excited that he couldn't put it down and restrained himself from showing his unsteady and childish side in front of Li Jia.

"Because I don't know what gift my brother wants, I just bought it when I saw it in the bookstore that day," Li Jia clasped her hands in front of her, and whispered embarrassedly: "Is it too perfunctory? Obviously there are already a lot of reasoning at home. Novel."

She also didn't understand the significance of the first edition of the book. She simply felt that she had collected many Sherlock Holmes collections at home but there was no version with the blue-green cover in the bookstore, so she hesitated for a long time before buying this book.

"No, no, this is the best gift I've received this year." Kudo Shinichi said hastily. He originally wanted to restrain himself from pretending to be mature and reliable in front of his sister, but at this time, he really wanted to say yes. Better.

Li Jia smiled slightly, and said in relief: "That's really great."

She was also worried that if she gave her brother a gift for the first time, she would give him a gift that he didn't like or felt superfluous.

"But it's too early for my brother to say that the book is the best gift I received this year?" Li Jia said softly, "My brother hasn't received Miss Lan's gift yet."

Anyone with a discerning eye can see Kudo Shin's love for Mao Lilan. As long as it is a gift from someone who likes it, no matter what it is, it will be the favorite birthday gift.

He couldn't help blushing, and said stiffly: "Whispering, doesn't Lan give those things every year?"

After so many years as a childhood sweetheart, could he still guess what Lan prepared for her birthday?

"Meow?" The little orange cat wagged its tail and leaned over to take a look. The tip of its pink nose twitched and sniffed, being stimulated by the smell of book ink, it sneezed several times: "Meow, meow."

Kudo Shinichi held the book nervously and moved it away. This is the first edition of the book which is dirty and damaged and it is difficult to find a second edition.

He watched the little orange cat shake its head, lick its paws and began to wash its face, and couldn't help but ask, "Brother Zhongye, will they always tie ribbons behind their collars?"

The navy blue ribbons are tied into bowknots, and the collars are ostentatiously adorned with collars and swaying as they jump and run, like a pair of ears piled behind a cat's head.

"Isn't it good-looking?" Li Jia patted the orange cat dumpling's head with downcast eyes, and touched the cat's comfortable ears and neck with her fingers familiarly: "Compared to hanging on the tail, the position of the collar will not hinder the movement?"

And she has entrusted Dr. Ali to help make a collar in the form of a bow tie. The dark cross bow tie pressed against the fluffy and soft fur of the cat looks like a little gentleman, isn't it cute?

Kudo Shinichi looked around at the cats in the house, whose actions were not affected at all, and had to admit that Li Jia was right. If you ignore their personalities and match them with such a big and ostentatious bow, they are really cute.

The orange cat cub tilted his head and lifted his hind legs to kick his ears and the side of his face. The positioning collar on his neck was kicked around by his hind legs. The place where the bowknot fell in front of him was as cute as a wrapped gift. .

"Mi?" It looked down and licked its mouth: "Mimimi?"

The bow turned to the chest is really cute, but it is a bit of a hindrance to the cat’s actions. It simply raised its hind legs and tried to turn the bow back behind it. Unfortunately, the rear ribbon was stubborn when it fell in front of the body. Sticking to the fluffy hair on the neck, the positioning collar has been turned around, and the bow is still in its original position.

"Zhongye, if you push again, you will scratch your ears." Li Jia gently squeezed the hind paws, and said softly, "If you can't turn around, you can ask my sister to help."

The orange kitten cried weakly, and lay down obediently: "Mimi..."

Fingers pinch the ribbon tied to the collar, and easily turn it to the back of the cat's neck along the arc of the ring, and rearrange the bow: "This is all right, if you feel uncomfortable in the middle, you must call sister, if you get hurt because of patience, sister It will be sad."

"Mi!" The orange cat cub raised his head against Li Jia's palm and said in a low voice.

For the sake of the cats at home, Li Jia is almost going to become a regular customer of Dr. Ali. Although the kind old man also said that he only needs to pay for simple small things, but because of the high frequency and high frequency, Li Jia still insists. The deal counts.

After all, Dr. Ali usually invests a lot of savings for his hobby research. If she comes to take advantage of Dr. Ali's time again, he will have to suspend his beloved research because he cannot make ends meet.

Li Jia wrapped her fingers around the slender and soft cat's tail, and touched the cat's exposed soft belly: "Brother, isn't he ready to go out?"

"Going out? Where am I going?" Kudo Shinichi flipped through the first edition of the book, obsessed with it, and answered casually.

She stopped stroking the cat's belly, turned around strangely and said, "Didn't my brother make an appointment with Miss Lan and Miss Yuanzi to go to KTV today?"

Sonoko Suzuki sent her a text message asking if she would like to go to the newly opened KTV in Kudo-cho, and they prepared a birthday party for Shinichi Kudo.

However, thinking of the birthday party that Ms. Lan and the others had prepared, all the participants were classmates from her brother's class, so she politely declined their invitation, with the excuse that she wanted to take care of the cats at home.

"Have an appointment with Lan and the others to go to KTV?" Kudo Shinichi asked in surprise, "No one told me about it."

He waited for Lan's birthday gift for a whole day, and he was a little depressed at first. Fortunately, when he came back, Li Jia gave him the first edition of Sherlock Holmes, and the gift from his parents also arrived a few days ago, so it was not a failure.

Li Jia tilted her head in doubt, and picked up the orange kitten: "But..."

She did receive a text message from Miss Yuanzi and an invitation from Miss Lan at the same time.

And it was what they told her three days ago. She thought that Kudo Shinichi didn't plan to go home for dinner today, but she didn't expect that she would get the same reply as usual when she asked in the morning.

"Could it be that you want to surprise your brother?" She murmured in a low voice.

The next moment the phone in his pocket vibrated a few times, Li Jia took it out and looked, and couldn't help raising the corners of his mouth: "Brother, Miss Lan is already waiting for you downstairs."

Kudo Shinichi was stunned for a moment, but did not respond: "What?"

"Do you still want to sit in a daze?" She tilted her head with a smile, and joked in a low voice: "Isn't it a gentleman's demeanor to keep girls waiting?"

He glanced at Li Jia and then at the first edition of the book, and complained awkwardly: "Shouldn't this kind of thing be said earlier? This is the time when people rush out."

He muttered and complained, but in fact he acted slowly and even went to the room to change clothes on purpose.

Before going out, he couldn't help but ask, "Li Jia, aren't you going?"

Li Jia shook her head slightly, and apologized softly: "Brother, just have fun."

She can't adapt to that kind of crowded party.

In short, give it a birthday present, as long as my brother likes it.

Kudo Shinichi's birthday party is indeed better celebrated with friends from school, and it is difficult for middle school students and high school students to have a common language. If she goes to the embarrassment, it will be bad for Ms. Lan and Ms. Sonoko to take care of her.

Obviously the protagonist of the birthday party is my brother.

……

After packing up the dishes and the kitchen, Li Jia went back to the bedroom and opened her schoolbag to prepare for her homework.

Although Teiko Middle School is a basketball giant, its teachers are not bad. The school attaches great importance to clubs and cultural homework. It took Li Jia a lot of time to catch up with her study progress and homework when she transferred to Tokyo from Aichi Prefecture.

Now that I am in the third grade, I need to consider the issue of high school entrance, and I dare not leave behind my cultural homework.

The orange cat dumpling jumped onto Lijia's table lightly, the dark green ribbon bow on the back of the neck dangled, and the cobalt blue cat eyes looked at Lijia calmly, "Meow."

It squatted at the corner of the desk, with a reserved and dignified posture and a ribbon on the back of its neck, like a gentleman cat.

"Mr. Nakaya will also supervise my homework today?" Li Jia scratched the side of his neck and said with a smile.

The slender tail swung up and rested on Li Jia's wrist and patted her with the tip of the tail. The orange cat dumpling barked like a large wild animal: "Meow ow ow."

Among the cats at home, "Mr. Chuya" who cares most about her studies, every day after dinner, Li Jia will jump on the desk and watch her do her homework quietly. She will not yell or play with her, but just look at her.

Once Li Jia stops writing for more than 10 minutes, "Mr. Nakaya" will raise his claws to press her wrist, and call out in a low voice: "Meow?"

It seems to be asking her what problem she encountered and why she didn't continue to write.

Although she knows that the cat can't really understand her homework, she probably just thinks the sound of paper and pen rubbing while doing homework is very attractive to the cat, but the orange cat dumpling is willing to come to accompany her on time every day, and Li Jia is still very happy.

With cats to accompany me to do my homework, I feel that even my thinking will turn a little faster.

"Huh? This is..." Li Jia opened the textbook and found that there was an extra letter inside.

A letter that was put in her textbook at some unknown time. The outside of the pure white envelope was clean and unsigned, and the recipient's name was not written on it. "Who gave me the letter?"

Tangerine Cat Tuanzi took two steps forward, lowered his head and leaned over to sniff the envelope.

Li Jia blinked quietly, and waited for the cat in front of him to retract his head before jokingly saying, "Did Mr. Chuya find anything?"

There was no special fragrance left on the letter, and only the wax seal on the seal was special when it was turned left and right. It didn't look like something that ordinary middle school students would use.

"...Meow." The orange cat dumpling shook his beard, and stepped on the wax seal on the envelope with his flesh pad.

"Who put the letter in my schoolbag by mistake?" Li Jia opened the envelope with a utility knife and took out the letter. The moment she opened it, she recognized the writing on it: "It's Akashi-san..."

Although she has not been at the next table for a long time, Li Jia's memory of images allows her to easily remember Akashi Seijuro's handwriting. The order of the outline and the style of handwriting are rare among her peers.

Tangerine Cat Tuanzi lowered his head and sniffed the letter again, and pulled out a photo that Li Jia had missed from the envelope. On it were two young girls standing shoulder to shoulder with bright smiles.

The photo is a little yellowed but not curled. Among them, the girl on the left is [-]% similar to Li Jia. She has a charming and bright smile, which is her confidence and pride that she rarely shows. The girl on the right has rose red hair and looks like Seijuro Akashi It's also somewhat similar.

"This is a photo of my mother." Li Jia stared blankly at the girl in the photo. She was about fifteen or sixteen years old, which was the most youthful period. She vaguely understood the intention of this letter: "So it's like this... "

It was the first time she met Akashi Seijuro's faint familiarity, as if she had seen this person somewhere.

It turned out that it was because of the photo of Aunt Shiori that her mother showed her a long time ago. There was no mother in that photo. It was just a group photo sent by Aunt Shiori and her husband when they got married. Full of happiness and joy.

The long rose-red hair is all coiled behind her head and half covered by the veil. The gentle and beautiful bride's appearance is completely long, and the makeup is slightly different from the photos of her teenage years. In addition, her mother just showed her a glance. Putting away the photo album, she never thought for a moment that the familiarity Akashi Seijuro gave her came from that long-ago photo.

Akashi Seijuro's letter to her was not signed, but it probably wrote something that he could ask for help if necessary.

Only then did she realize that it was not accidental that she met Akashi Seijuro when she went to Teiko Middle School to report on the first day, but because he took care of his mother's best friend's child who came to Tokyo for the first time.

As the vice president of the student union, he personally entertained the transfer student, led her around the school to familiarize himself with the environment, and even asked Momoi Wuyue to help take care of her, all because he first discovered her identity in the transfer student's file.

Li Jia lowered her eyes and murmured in a low voice: "It turns out that my mother was like this when she was young..."

The pride and recklessness is even better than Aunt Yukiko, who is as beautiful as an extremely colorful flower and proclaims her beauty and self-confidence to the world.

"Meow?" The orange cat dumpling leaned over to see her expression, and the cat's paw pressed Li Jia's hand.

"I'm fine," she managed to raise the corner of her mouth, and couldn't help frowning slightly, showing a sad and speechless expression: "I just never saw my mother smile like this before."

Putting aside all ties with everyone, she married to Aichi County alone, determined to spend the rest of her life with the man she loves.

Li Jia looked down at the photo quietly without saying a word.

Cat Ruan Ruan licked her cheek with a rough tongue, and the warm feeling brought her back to her mind. Li Jia unconsciously said slowly: "Mom took a lot of photos of me, but she didn't keep any of her own photos. How many."

It seems that the only way to speak out to the cat at home is to pierce the heart like this.

"Mr. Chuya" might understand what she meant, but it couldn't speak, let alone tell the second person what she said. Only such a secret sense of security could make her say these things.

She never told Kudo Shinichi what happened in Aichi Prefecture, and she didn't ask much about her mother and Aunt Yukiko's past.

It's not that I feel embarrassed and can't speak out.

This was the mother's choice at the beginning, and it was also because the mother stayed in Aichi County and chose to keep her, so there is the current Fujimine Toshika.

She just didn't want to face the sympathetic eyes of her relatives.

It seems that the mother made a wrong choice. She should not have insisted on marrying in Aichi County despite everyone's opposition.

"I always knew that my mother loved me very much," the group photo of the young girl who was as bright as the sun gradually became blurred in her vision, she resisted the urge to blink, and restrained the tears from welling up in her eyes: "But sometimes I also feel..."

"Is it because of me that my mother has such a difficult and unfortunate life?"

Surviving alone in an unfamiliar place, raising her daughter alone, her once confident talent and appearance have nowhere to be displayed, and she was a girl as dazzling and brilliant as Aunt Yukiko back then.

Even with his eyes open all the time, the tears couldn't be kept and fell down.

"If it weren't for me, mom could go back to Tokyo to go to school again, and Aunt Kiko and Aunt Shiori would definitely not leave her alone." Li Jia raised her hand to wipe away her tears, her words choked up intermittently.

She bit her lips tightly, tears fell down her cheeks, and she couldn't wipe them clean.

"...Meow." The soft tongue licked the corners of her eyes, and the cat's whiskers fluttered when it breathed, bringing a little itchiness, and the orange cat tuanzi licked away her tears in a low voice.

Li Jia couldn't bear it anymore, hugged "Mr. Chuya" tightly and cried.

"Please, let me hold you for a while?" Let her cry like this for a while, and she will soon recover.