Love, please don't bloom

Chapter 10

The old man was deaf and oblivious to everything around him.

However, he would mutter something from time to time, seemingly to himself, but his words were actually aimed at the old lady's earlier remarks. I suspect he could hear her occasionally.

They occasionally clashed head-on, arguing fiercely.

For a few days, the old man ran out of money to buy medicine. He took medicine every day.

While the old lady was out of the house, he called me over and asked me to help him take a pair of silver bracelets to the supply and marketing cooperative to sell.

Unexpectedly, the old lady had already sensed his suspicious behavior and had been lying in ambush in the outer room, listening to everything.

She stood in front of him, hands on her hips, and yelled, "That's a family heirloom! You want to sell it? Dream on!"

Love, please don't bloom (2)

The old man retorted, "Don't bray like a donkey! I've had enough of living. I can at least trade my life for a ghost, right?"

The old woman continued screaming, "A piece of trash like you should have died long ago!..."

The old man said viciously, "Die, die, everyone has to die..."

Judging from his physical condition, the old man will definitely not outlive the old woman.

The old lady was so angry that her eyes rolled back and she fell heavily to the ground!

She had a heart attack.

I panicked and didn't know what to do. All I knew was that I couldn't touch her at that moment.

The old man turned his face to look at the old woman, completely unconcerned, even revealing a gloating smile...

As you guessed, this old man is Huang Along.

The old lady is fragrant rice.

These silver bracelets were a token of love that the old lady gave to the old man on the night her father beat her out of the house with a rolling pin and she ran to his house to cry.

At the time, one of them was 17 years old and the other was 18 years old.

The girl who was apprenticing at her sister-in-law's house was from Bailong Village, and she was telling their story...

So I asked the village chief if I could stay at this family's house.

At the end of that romance novel, I wrote:

When love reaches its peak and affection deepens, the flower of love will bloom...

Once the flowers bloom, they will wither.

Before the flowers bloom, it is out of love that men and women give everything to each other.

After the flowers bloom, driven by love, men and women demand everything from each other...

People in love often believe that their love is unconditional.

In fact, everyone wants to get a lot more from love.

Their fantasies are often contradictory, such as the tenderness that men desire and the generosity that women desire. As a result, men and women turn from being loving partners into enemies, and from being a loving couple into a pair of resentful spouses...

I, with my deep affection but tragic fate, kneel down and pray:

Love, please don't bloom.

Love, please don't bloom.

Love, please don't bloom...

Around the time I was almost thirty, I went home to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

There were two people in that supply and marketing cooperative. The other one was the manager, surnamed Huo, who managed me.

Manager Huo's family is from Bailong Village.

Normally, I'm the one watching the counter at the supply and marketing cooperative, while he stays home with his wife and children, rarely coming over.

That time, he said to me, "Go home and stay for a while longer, I'll stay here and hold things up."

So I went back.

I spent a long Lunar New Year at home from the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month to the sixteenth day of the first lunar month.

When I returned, the old lady had died.

Life is so fragile, like a machine. It's running perfectly fine before you leave, but when you come back ten minutes later, it has stopped.

Before I left his house, I bought a bag of pastries for the old lady and 100 painkillers for the old man.

That night, the old lady had another argument with the old man, and she was in a terrible mood.

I helped her feed the pigs.

It was a very tall sow, extremely ugly, with rows of teats almost touching the ground. Its two large ears blocked its eyes, and when it heard someone, it would definitely stop abruptly, freeze, and stare at the person's feet.

At night, the old man slept at the head of the kang (heated brick bed), and the old woman slept at the foot of the kang.

The old couple had been rolling around on this heated kang (a traditional heated brick bed) for decades. Now, they've cooled down, one sleeping at the head of the kang and the other at the foot, leaving the space between them empty and bathed in silent moonlight.

I slept in the middle of the empty space.

In the middle of the night, Huang Along went out to relieve himself, leaning against the wall, when his dog started barking wildly.

It was a black dog with two tufts of white hair above its eyes, commonly known as a "four-eyed dog".

It's something I've never understood: my own dog biting a family member. Maybe it's because he's never left the house?

While the old man was away, the old woman suddenly turned around and whispered to me, "Xiao Zhou, I suspect that old thing isn't human."

"Auntie, how can you say such a thing?"

“I suspect he was shot during the war…” Her voice lowered even further, “Maybe a ghost lived with me his whole life!”

I shuddered: "Calm down."

"Think about it, he hasn't been heard from for ten years, and I left Jilin for Heilongjiang. Suddenly he appears with a smile. What a coincidence!"

"The old man was good to you; he's been looking for you."

"Also, didn't you hear the dog barking at him the moment it saw him?"

"What's wrong with the dog barking?"

"Some unclean things are invisible to humans, but dogs can see them!..."

I was getting annoyed. I thought the old lady's suspicions were malicious.

I was sleepy, so I closed my eyes and said, "Auntie, you and Uncle have been through so much together over the years, please don't say things like that. If Uncle hears it, he will be very sad."

Before she could say anything more, the old man had already returned.

He has a habit of coughing as soon as he enters the room.

Upon hearing the cough, the old lady stopped speaking and immediately turned away.

She seemed unwilling to even glance at him.

Two days before the old lady passed away, a kind-hearted woman from the same village looked after her at her home. That woman's name was Guiqing.

For those two days, the old lady was dizzy and couldn't get up from the kang (a heated brick bed).

Guiqing told me about the old lady's life before and after her death.

That night, Guiqing noticed the old lady wriggling in the quilt.

Gui Qing was half asleep and half awake when she saw the old lady wake up. She sat up immediately and asked, "Auntie, is there something you need?"

"I need to pee."

Guiqing then brought a bedpan to the old lady.

The old lady finished urinating and lay down again.

That old man seems to never sleep; he's still sitting there facing the wall.

He can't hear these sounds, and even if he did, he wouldn't care.

In the half-asleep moonlight, the old lady said to Guiqing, "Guiqing, I just had a dream."

Love, please don't bloom (3)

What dream?

"I dreamt that a group of beggars were chasing me, intercepting me, and trying to drive me into a dark room..."

Do you know all those people?

"I don't know him." She thought for a moment, then said, "I do know one."

Who is it?

"Yu Ergui".

"Auntie, what kind of dream can't you have? Go to sleep."

The old lady went to sleep.

As a result, before dawn, she died beside Guiqing.

Guiqing ran home and told her husband that the old lady of the Huang family had died. Her husband immediately got up to report the news and called all the able-bodied men in the village...

After the old lady was cremated, her ashes were put into a coffin, which was to be buried in a cemetery three miles east of the village.

Eight strong men from the village carried the coffin. Strangely, the coffin wouldn't budge.

Two more daring young men joined the effort, but the coffin still wouldn't budge. Everyone was puzzled.

By this time, the sun was already high in the sky, and Guiqing saw someone walking towards her from a distance.

This is for the two nobles.

He walked into the old lady's yard and said with a half-smile, "Come on, let me lend a hand."

After he joined the coffin bearers, the coffin floated away.

land……

Later, Guiqing told an older man in the village about the dream the old lady had a few hours before she died. The older man told her: the beggars were the people carrying the coffin, and the dark house was the coffin.

I don't believe it.