Love, please don't bloom

Chapter 12

The appearance of this parrot is a bit strange.

That weekend, I went to the Capital International Airport to see someone off—who turned out to be someone I didn't know.

The boss had invited me to dinner, so I rushed to the pizza shop on Anli Road in the Asian Games Village, only to find another person there. I didn't recognize him. He was about 30 years old, wearing a black casual outfit, with small eyes that gleamed with an eerie light.

During the meal, General Manager Nian kept talking to me about company matters and never introduced me, as if I didn't exist. He didn't say anything either, just quietly sipped a glass of sago almond ice cream.

Mr. Nian and I run a business together; he owns 51% of the shares, and I own 49%. He also has other projects and is based in Hong Kong most of the time, rarely coming back. The Beijing company is entirely managed by me.

After we finished eating, Mr. Nian asked me, "Did you drive?"

"It's open."

"Could you please take this friend to his/her home?"

Where did he go?

"The airport." After saying that, Mr. Nian turned to the person and asked, "What time is your flight?"

The person said, "4:30."

The manager glanced at his watch and said, "It's getting late."

The man smiled at me sheepishly. I smiled back and said, "Let's go then."

Throughout the journey, he sat in the back, gazing out the window without uttering a word. Once we were on the airport expressway, I turned on the CD player, and Whitney Hughesman began to sing.

He had a large suitcase and three heavy bags. At the airport, I acted like a porter, escorting him all the way to the security checkpoint. The plane was about to take off, and there were no passengers left at the security checkpoint.

Suddenly, I saw a familiar face. Although he disappeared in a flash at the escalator entrance, I was sure it was him.

His name is Wang Xin. We used to work in the same government agency; I was a section chief, and he was the bureau chief's secretary. At one meeting, I got into a heated argument with the bureau chief over the distribution of a poverty alleviation fund. Wang Xin immediately spoke up and attacked me. Young and hot-blooded, I retorted, "What do you know besides parroting others?"

He stared blankly at the bureau chief, then stared blankly at me, and got stuck.

Soon after, I resigned to start my own business and lost contact with that person. What remains in my memory is his blank stare.

The person I was delivering had to go through security, and he said to me, "It's too much trouble for you."

I turned my gaze away from the escalator entrance, smiled at him, and said, "We're all friends, don't be so polite." Actually, I didn't even know his name.

He walked into the security checkpoint, and I turned and left.

I hadn't gone far when I heard arguing coming from the security checkpoint. I turned around and saw that the person seemed to be in some kind of trouble.

I had no choice but to walk back.

It turned out that the staff found a parrot in one of his bags. According to regulations, small animals are not allowed on airplanes.

I heard him say, "I'm a magician, here in Beijing to perform, and tonight I'm flying to Guangzhou for another show..."

My heart skipped a beat, and I suddenly had a strange feeling—he wasn't a magician.

The staff member said, "If you want to take it away, you must go through the freight procedures."

He clearly didn't want to go through all that trouble. He turned around, saw me immediately, and came over right away: "Never mind, you can take this parrot back."

I was stunned: "How can this be?"

"It's alright," he said, handing the parrot to me. "It's very easy to take care of."

This is a beautiful parrot with a blue head, blue belly, red beak, red breast, green neck, green back, and green tail. It somewhat resembles the small rainbow parrot, which is native to the Malay Peninsula and South America, but the small rainbow parrot is only 20 centimeters long, while this one is much larger, somewhat like a chicken. Its eyes are red.

It was staring at me.

I looked up and saw that the person had already walked quite a distance. He stopped there, looking back at me directly. When he saw me looking over, he immediately lowered his head and walked forward, turned a corner, and disappeared.

gaze

I never keep pets, but somehow a parrot ended up in my house.

Actually, I adopted it.

The day I got home, I made a spacious metal cage with a wooden board at the bottom, lined with a layer of fine sand to collect the droppings. Inside the cage were perches and two small flower bowls for rice and water.

There is an iron chain on the perch, and the chain has a spring lock, similar to the one on a travel bag, to lock its feet and prevent it from flying away.

We also prepared some corn, rice, peanuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, rapeseed, and various fruits.

It ate very little, seemed sick, and stood motionless on its perch in the cage, its neck hunched, staring at me coldly. Its posture was anything but graceful, like an owl. Its short, thick red beak looked like a hook, particularly hard. Its red eyes were surrounded by black circles.

I couldn't tell if it was male or female, but my intuition told me that it was a man, just like me.

I stood in front of it and whistled to tease it, but it stared at me without reacting at all.

Its dark gray feet gripped the perch tightly, very firmly. It had four toes, two pointing forward and two pointing backward.

I reached out and touched its left feather, and it sensitively shifted to its right. I touched its right feather, and it sensitively shifted to its left. Then, it just stared at me fixedly.

I carefully touched its mouth again, thinking it would peck me, but its mouth remained tightly closed. It just shook its head impatiently, as if it didn't like me doing that.

Parrots can all talk, but this magician's trained parrot must be even more articulate. Wanting to tease it into saying something, I said, word by word, "Hello."

It remained silent.

I said again, "Goodbye!"

The Terrifying Parrot (2)

It remained silent.

I'm too unfamiliar to it; if I want it to talk, I'll probably have to get to know it better.

That night, I stayed up very late online. Lying in bed, I turned off the light, stretched, and closed my eyes.

Unconsciously, I drifted to a place where strange scenes and figures appeared before my eyes, swaying, twisting, and changing like in a movie, and I couldn't make them out clearly no matter what I did.

I cautiously ventured in, and sure enough, I succeeded. I arrived at a dark street and groped my way forward. I don't know who told me that this was a street that didn't exist, but that it would appear as soon as it got dark.

I'm walking on a street that doesn't even exist!

I looked around and saw a few shops scattered on both sides, but they were all deserted. There were very few pedestrians; they moved slowly, their bodies stiff, their faces indistinct, and their expressions unreadable.

I am a physical being, and my intrusion seems to have violated some taboo. The earth gradually emits a faint blue light, and the sky gradually emits a faint red light, as if the world is about to collapse.

I turned and ran back, only to find that my body was shimmering with a dark light.

Green light...

I opened my eyes abruptly, stunned for a long time, my heart ashen.

Then, I felt something was wrong. I looked around and saw a pair of eyes in the dim moonlight.

I was in my bedroom, and the parrot was in the living room. But I didn't close the door when I went to sleep, so I could see it. It was still standing on the perch in its cage, motionless, staring at me.

It is red, blue, and green.

I suddenly felt a little scared of this parrot.

I feel like I can see that magician's gaze as he looked back at me after he left.

You

I know that to teach a parrot to talk, you first have to build a bond with it, at least to make it less afraid.

I kept trying to get close to it, but its eyes remained cold. I bet it wasn't afraid of me at all; there was just something between us.

What is that?

Asi shared some of his experiences with me:

The best time to teach a parrot to talk is in the early morning, because all birds are most active in the early morning, and at this time the parrot has not yet eaten its fill, so the learning effect is the best.

The environment should be quiet and not noisy, otherwise it will distract the birds and they will not know which sound to imitate.

To begin, choose simple words and pronounce them clearly, without ambiguity. Speak slowly, not hastily.

He also told me that a parrot can learn a phrase in about a week, then reinforce it for a few days before teaching the next phrase. In about six months, a parrot can master many phrases. Some clever parrots can even learn simple songs.

Before leaving for work in the morning, I close all the doors and windows so that I can't hear any noise. Then, I record some commonly used words on a tape recorder and play them repeatedly for the parrot.

However, a month passed, and the parrot kept its secret to itself.

Parrots mimicking speech is a common idiom, so why is this parrot an exception? Birds that mimic human speech are usually those that are good at singing, but this one doesn't utter a single sound.

By the way, I've never heard it bark, so I have no idea what its voice sounds like.

Once I overheard someone say that to make a bird talk, you need to trim the tip of its tongue into a round shape with scissors. But Axi told me that's for mynahs, not parrots.

That day, I was playing mahjong at Axi's house.

He kept two parrots, green budgies. They hopped around in their cage, very happily, which I envied.

As soon as Axi shook the perch, they cried out, "Fun! Fun!" or "Ugh, ugh!"

Asi said that he always shook the perch when he taught them to talk, which was a conditioned reflex.

While we were engrossed in our game, one of them kept shouting from the sidelines, "Play mahjong! Play mahjong!"

The four people's "battle" became more and more intense, and the parrot's emotions also became more and more high, constantly shouting: "Light the cannon! Light the cannon!" Sure enough, I lit the cannon.

Afterwards, I stood in front of it with ill intent and taught it to say, "Ya."

It immediately said, "You bastard."

I got scolded, but then I burst out laughing and said, "God."

Asi said, "That's nothing. Once, even a thief fell for it."

One night a year ago, a thief climbed into Axi's window on the third floor. Axi was sleeping at the time and did not notice anything.

In the quiet of the night, just as the thief tiptoed into the living room, the budgie suddenly spoke: "Who are you?"

The thief was so frightened that he turned and ran, jumping out of the window and breaking his leg.

My parrot, however, remained silent.

When I left, it stared at me intently; when I came back in, it still stared at me intently, as if its eyes hadn't moved once during the long day since I left, waiting for me to return.

If it were constantly chattering, like Axi's two parrots, it wouldn't be frightening. But it remained silent, and I couldn't figure out its personality at all, which made me increasingly uneasy.

Sometimes, I even suspect it's mute.

Such beautiful flowers

I never grow flowers, I don't like them. My house doesn't even have any floral decorations, so it looks bare and somewhat solemn.

After this parrot entered my life, it became the only fancy thing in my house, and the most eye-catching.