Parfüm - Kapitel 2
Han Feizi said: If a person does not die, then coffins will not be sold.
Mu Yan was dressed in pure white.
Two more coffins were sold.
I remember, in a society thousands of years later, there was a psychological test.
A mother and her two daughters were involved in a tragedy. Their mother died, and the two sisters attended the funeral. At the funeral, the younger sister met a very handsome man and fell instantly in love with him. Upon returning home, the younger sister killed her older sister.
Then, at her sister's funeral, the younger sister finally got to see the man she had always wanted.
As for Zhang Erhu, he believed that a coffin could not be bought until the person died.
The Snail Girl
The moonlight tonight is faintly tinged with red.
As the night wind blew through the streets, Liu Feng clutched the bundle in her arms tightly, her hand trembling as she reached out to knock on the door.
The door creaked open automatically, and Liu Feng trembled as she mustered her courage and stepped inside.
Is anyone there?
There was no answer to the question.
Just when Liu Feng thought no one was around, a voice came from behind her.
"Do you need to buy a coffin?"
Liu Feng couldn't hear her own heartbeat for a while, until the flickering candlelight lit up the room.
"Hmm." Looking at the man dressed in clean white at the table, Liu Feng couldn't imagine that this was a coffin shop filled with a heavy atmosphere of death. "Um, I heard that the coffins here are very well made."
Mu Yan propped his head up, his calm eyes seemingly unfocused.
The atmosphere was somber; the invisible oppression she felt from the moment she entered made Liu Feng clench her hands.
"Moreover, they said that the coffin could be made according to one's own ideas... any kind of coffin would do."
Mu Yan remained in the same position, unable to regain any focus.
That quiet expression meant he was waiting for the other person to finish speaking.
Liu Feng seemed to have made a great decision, and opened the bundle she had been tightly holding in her arms onto the table. Inside was a black and brown cat, about the size of a three-month-old baby.
"I want to buy him a coffin that fits him."
Yes, there are no typos here.
Yes, it's "he", not "it".
Liu Feng came from a good family; she was born into a wealthy household and was quite beautiful. Her life was smooth sailing. Even in the traditional feudal arrangement of marriage, her parents doted on her and gave her the freedom to choose.
Of course, this is not a tragic love story between a talented man and a beautiful woman.
My husband is a well-off, good-looking scholar. He is stubborn and has spent a lot of money and energy on the imperial examinations but still fails. However, he still insists on doing his own thing and burying himself in his studies.
Liu Feng stroked her husband's cat named 'Sheng Sheng', feeling sorry for her husband. But then she remembered that she had fallen for him because of his unwavering stubbornness.
On the Qixi Festival of the year she got married, the two went on a trip. Liu Feng accidentally fell into the water and became seriously ill. Afraid of worrying her parents, she didn't dare to tell them. Coincidentally, her maid took leave to go back to her hometown to visit relatives, and the family's daily life was temporarily disrupted.
Liu Feng wasn't the pampered young lady type. As soon as she felt a little better, she got up and cooked some nourishing food to send to her husband.
She had expected the study to be a mess after not seeing it for half a month, but to her surprise, the study was as tidy as before, or even better.
Sheng Sheng comfortably lay on the desk for a nap, while her husband was concentrating on reviewing the Book of Poetry.
Liu Feng smiled with relief as she put down the food. A man who was willing to set aside his dignity to clean the house and do housework when she was seriously ill was also a manifestation of love.
Her spirits lifted, and she recovered quickly. She simply sent a message to her maid to return on time.
In response to her husband's love, she treated him even better. Not only did she come up with new and creative dishes for every meal, but she also happily dismissed the maid and insisted on washing her husband's clothes herself.
A serious illness seemed to rekindle the passion she had when she was in love.
She originally thought that the rest of her life would end in the mundane routine of her husband's classical Chinese poetry and her daily companionship.
But something was strange: her study was always so neat and clean, as if someone had cleaned it before she stepped in.
She coaxed her husband, saying that she would take care of these things from now on, and that the maid would be back soon, so she wouldn't have to work so hard cleaning every day.
Her husband's only response was a faint "Mmm".
Liu Feng was a little angry at her husband's lukewarm attitude. She pouted and snatched the book from his hand, an action that seemed to have angered him.
Liu Feng knew that these books were her husband's lifeblood, and she would never normally make things difficult for them. But today, she wanted her husband to have eyes only for her. After all, they hadn't consummated their marriage in a very long time.
She feigned anger, but her husband remained unmoved.
She started to get angry too.
She suddenly stood up, threw down the book, and walked towards the door. As if she stepped on something, a piercing scream startled Liu Feng, causing her to back away.
It turned out that they had stepped on Sheng Sheng's tail.
Liu Feng kicked him in a huff, not turning her head to see her husband's expression as he immediately picked up Sheng Sheng. His face had changed color, as if his dearest person had been injured.
That night, Liu Feng couldn't sleep, and her husband didn't go back to his room to sleep.
Liu Feng was a reasonable woman. She knew that she had been throwing a tantrum last night, so she got up early to get her clothes and planned to wash them before apologizing to her husband.
These past few days of laundry work have given Liu Feng's fair and delicate hands a few more flaws, and Liu Feng looked at her hands with regret.
She suddenly frowned, and brought her palm closer; it was cat fur.
She found it amusing that her husband, at his age, was still playing with the cat like a child.
She went back to her room to change her clothes and get ready. In the corner of the mirror, there seemed to be something. She turned her head and looked at the bedding, somewhat incredulous.
It's cat hair again. She probably didn't let the cat into the bedroom.
She didn't dislike cats and dogs, but she wasn't particularly fond of them either. She could be indifferent to her husband playing with the cat outside the bedroom, but her husband had promised her that he would change his clothes before entering the room, so how could there be cat hair on the bed?
She ran to the study, but her husband was not there.
Although the study looked as tidy as before, she felt something was off this time.
Yes, it's those hairs, the cat's hair.
It's here, and it's there too.
My husband is so engrossed in studying books that he sometimes forgets to eat and sleep. How could he possibly spend so much time cleaning the study every day?
She recalled a story her grandmother told her when she was a child.
The kind-hearted Snail Fairy...
She heard her husband's footsteps outside the door, and panicked, she hid in the cupboard.
Through the narrow gap, she first saw Sheng Sheng's lazy and haughty cat-like gait.
Then, she saw yet another cat.
A cat with an incredibly familiar gaze.
Extremely familiar.
A gentle breeze suddenly swept through the room, and the candlelight dimmed.
Liu Feng held the dark brown cat as if it were a baby, gently stroking its fur.
"In this way, my husband will be mine alone. Whether he is a man or a cat, he can only belong to me."
"Is that so?" Mu Yan said her second and last sentence of the night.
“That foolish cat, how could my husband be with it? My husband is mine, no one can take him away, no one can. Don’t you think so, my husband? You love me, don’t you? My husband’s greatest love is Feng’er, my greatest love is Feng’er, Feng’er loves my husband, my husband loves Feng’er, hehehe…”
Liu Feng uttered incoherent words absentmindedly, her cheeks rubbing back and forth against the cat's corpse.
A small coffin was pushed in front of her, and she grinned broadly.
"My dear husband, you must be tired from the journey. Feng'er will help you to sleep now. Sleep well, Feng'er will stay here and watch over you..."
Liu Feng carefully placed the cat into the coffin, which was neither too big nor too small, but was indeed custom-made.
"Hehe..." A satisfied smile appeared on Liu Feng's face as she closed the coffin lid.
Suddenly, her vision went completely black.
She exclaimed in surprise, finding herself in a cramped space where she could only move her hands with difficulty.
She smelled sawdust and heard her parents crying outside.
No!
She screamed, she desperately pounded on the thing that was trapping her.
Why was she in the coffin?
She didn't die, she didn't die.
But she couldn't make a sound; her waist hurt so much.
She felt her center of gravity lowering, then stopping, and a soft rustling sound rushed towards her.
No--
The afternoon sun was nice. Yesterday at dusk in Xingtai, a criminal was executed by being cut in half at the waist and displayed to the public. The bloodstains on the ground had not yet been cleaned up.
Passersby whispered among themselves.
"What a tragedy... such a beautiful girl, cut in two with just one stroke..."
"Her parents also had a hard life. Who would have thought that the child, who seemed perfectly normal, would actually kill someone?"
"I heard that her husband's cat was thrown alive into a pot of boiling oil."
"Poor husband, he probably won't even know why he died."
Dressed in pure white, Mu Yan entered the Liu residence, where weeping could not be stopped, and presented a receipt.
One coffin, reserved by Liu Feng.
Master Liu found it strange.
He offered no explanation, took the money, and left.
The receipt indicates the time as last night.