Avez-vous besoin d'acheter un cercueil

Chapitre 77

After that, the Terada family gradually became abnormal.

Ali has a mental illness. When Ah Zhong was still alive, his easygoing and carefree personality prevented it from causing any problems.

After Ah-chung died, Ali stopped taking care of the children. Bingwei initially thought it was due to exhaustion from the funeral and helped take care of them for two or three days, but that wasn't the real problem.

Ali did nothing all day.

Hyou felt confused and couldn't communicate with his wife. Hyou was not good at being considerate or caring for people, and he was already bad at communicating with others, so it was even more difficult for him to understand his wife's feelings or convey his own feelings to her.

Clumsy and aloof, Hyoue had never considered the meaning of married life, nor did he know how to handle the issue. Not only did he lack relatives to discuss things with, but after Tadashi's death, he had no friends or family willing to empathize with him. Furthermore, he held the belief that family scandals should not be aired in public, so he kept the problem hidden. Hyoue said:

"But I still think the child is very cute. At first, I found him annoying, but I couldn't ignore him."

"Heibe said, head bowed."

They weren't financially well-off enough to hire a wet nurse, and they were also afraid of gossip. Moreover, being a conscientious person, Hei felt it was his duty to handle this personally.

He worked hard for about six months. When he didn't have time to handle something, he rigorously instructed his craftsmen to take charge, which improved the quality of their work. He was inherently averse to half-hearted work.

However, such a busy life is very physically demanding, and it's impossible to do this job while carrying a child.

Alibaba has not yet recovered.

Fortunately, she didn't wander outside unnecessarily; she simply kept herself locked in the living room—now the prayer room. However, no matter what happened, she kept saying she wanted to die, wanted to die.

It's probably depression.

Depression is difficult to treat, but it is not incurable. However, recovery requires the understanding and help of patient family and friends.

I was also a patient with depression.

My symptoms are relatively mild. However, I know several patients and their families who are living in constant pain. But it's not just their families who are suffering; I think the patients themselves are probably the ones who suffer the most, which is why they need understanding and supportive family and friends.

Unfortunately, Ali seems to lack an environment that can understand and help her.

Hei wanted money, so he borrowed money to buy machinery and started making metal boxes. Hei said at the time that he thought that as long as he had money, he could solve this problem. But I don't quite believe his story, because at that time he seemed less like he wanted money and more like he was possessed by the boxes.

He inexplicably wanted to work, whether he was awake or asleep—he was preoccupied with the box.

Is it okay to treat that corner like that? If we build it according to the blueprint, will the strength be an issue?

He said that's when he started to find the kids and Ali unusually annoying.

It's not that I hate children, it's just that I always want to work—

Heibei said.

Apart from cooking, Bingwei no longer took care of the two people.

Jun Gong grew up in an environment where he was never bathed, received no care, and was almost completely neglected.

He became a child who would only stay quietly in the living room with his mother. This wasn't a cause for concern for Bingwei; in fact, it was quite convenient for him. It allowed him to completely immerse himself in his work.

Perhaps influenced by Hyōe's taciturn nature, Jun was also a child who never spoke; his toys were boxes and blueprints made by his father. Hyōe worked with undivided concentration, and the craftsmen were influenced by this, burying themselves in their work as well. The craftsmen were even unaware that Hyōe's wife and children were in the inner room.

When Jun was five years old—since Heibei was completely indifferent to the social situation, it was really hard to tell from his words exactly when it was, probably around Showa 12 or 13—something happened, and Ali began to recover.

This is not necessarily a good thing.

For Hyōe, Ali, who was gradually regaining his human emotions, was simply a more difficult person to deal with than before.

Perhaps because he had lived an abnormal life for too long, Heibe was even more devoid of emotion than Ali at this moment.

Ali started going out and also began taking care of Jun Gong. But this didn't seem to be a simple problem. This wasn't surprising; to her, Jun Gong was a newborn baby. She skipped over that period of loss and tried to face Jun Gong with the same attitude she had then, but Jun Gong was already a child over five years old. To her, Jun Gong had become an incomprehensible being.

Completely unable to communicate with his child, Ali vented his frustration on Heibei. His own child had become a monster devoid of any emotion, joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness. "You're the one who raised him like this," Ali berated Heibei. Everything was terrible.

But even though he remained silent, Hei still started elementary school. At least his mother didn't develop depression at the time, which was a small consolation amidst the misfortune.

The world situation became unstable, there was a shortage of jobs, war broke out, and Hei was conscripted into the army. When he went to war, there was no one to shout "Banzai" three times, and no one even came to see him off; it was a very lonely departure.

Hei faced a life-or-death situation on the battlefield.

To be honest, every soldier faced a life-or-death situation. I don't know how serious the life-or-death situation that Hyōe encountered was, but Hyōe said that he gradually regained his humanity during his military career.

"On the battlefield, I was constantly thinking about my father, wife, and children. Every day, I only thought about my family, whom I had almost never spoken to, whom I neither disliked nor loved. I really didn't understand what interpersonal bonds were. What we thought of each other was completely unimportant. The boring bonds of living together for a long time or blood ties suddenly became important. I thought then, if I could go back alive, I must live a more family-like life—"

Despite what Hei said, his wish was ultimately not fulfilled.

When Heibei returned to the box house after being discharged from the army, he was greeted by an empty box.

Fortunately, it wasn't hit by an air raid, and the box house was intact. But there was no one inside.

All the crates in the factory had been vandalized. In the living room, the center of the tatami mat was stained black, and a lone metal crate sat atop the stain.

Inside were four dried-up fingers.

Nobody knows what happened.

Did they go to seek refuge? Or did they die?

He couldn't understand it no matter how hard he tried, and Bingwei found it terrifying.

Several years passed after that. During this time, Hyōe lived a solitary life. He forgot everything about his family and his emotions.

Heibei once again escaped to the work of making the box, put himself inside the box, and closed the lid.

The son, Jun, reappeared before Hyōe in November of the year before last, which was in 1945.

When Hyōe went to war—though I don’t know which year Hyōe went to war—his son Jun-kō, who was not yet ten years old, has now grown into a handsome young man.

"I was so scared that my back started shaking."

Heibei said.

—It's me, your son. Quickly, give me back my finger.

This was the first sentence Jun Gong spoke.

Ali fell ill again after Hyōe went to war, Jun-kō said. But perhaps because Jun-kō was by his side, he did not fall into a prolonged state of depression this time.

That woman is terrible.

These are Jun Gong's thoughts on his mother.

When Ali suffers from a bout of depression, he refuses to eat, but when he's normal, he excessively spoils Jun. Jun says he has no friends and that he hasn't gone to school since Bingwei went to war.

—This is your fault. I was completely speechless before I left this house. Friends? School? That's laughable. But now I'm actually grateful. Thanks to this, I'm spared a bunch of inferior, dim-witted friends who are always talking about sentimentality or reminiscing.

—As a result, the woman hanged herself. In the mountains of Kyushu.

"Why, you ask?" she said. "The boxes were terrifying. The woman was terrified of boxes. So she ran away from here. This place has always been full of boxes, both then and now."

—You two, husband and wife, are also penniless.

There was nothing inside.

They're all idiots.

—Help me make a box, Dad.

It's unclear whether this was Ali's mistake, an accident, or the result of Ali's unusual mental state. We can't determine this from Jun Gong's words alone.

Jun-gong's four fingers—the ring and little fingers of his right hand, and the index and middle fingers of his left hand—were severed by the iron box made by Hyōe.

Ali was in a semi-mad state and neither treated him nor bandaged him.

Bloodstains were everywhere in the living room.

—That woman could only howl and whimper.

It was probably just a coincidence that I was experiencing a bout of depression.

When he regained his senses, Ali went even crazier—Jun Gong said.

The box in the living room remained abandoned there until Heibei returned from his demobilization.

After that, Ali became afraid of boxes. It is unknown what kind of sorrowful gravity or in what form it pressured her mind, but Ali may have longed to condense and replace all her misfortunes into the object of the box in order to maintain her mental balance.

Ali destroyed all the boxes in her house and ran away; she could no longer live in the box house.

Mount Bodhi is built in Kyushu—

It's the mountain Kyogoku-do mentioned. For some reason, Ali fled south.

It was a very difficult journey.

He fled to Mount Inugake in the direction of the Inugami Gate of Mount Bodhi (note), and whether out of helplessness or despair, Ali hanged himself. Junko was protected by the Shugenshi and entrusted to the care of a believer.

Note: This refers to the opposite direction of the Ghost Gate, which is the southwest.

Kubo Shunko's life began from this point.

The woman who cared for him—whose name Bingwei didn't know—was an elderly woman in her sixties. She had been a teacher, was very well-mannered, and a strict person, so her discipline was also very strict. The old woman was also enthusiastic about worship and often took Jun-gong to religious activities.

It should be the shrine of the ancestral demon that Kyogoku-do mentioned.

Jun Gong's originally flawed life was filled in one by one during this period.

However, he was not treated well. Partly because of the war, he was forced into this situation. Also, he faced intense ostracism from those around him; even Jun Gong was isolated there. The boy, who had lost his fingers, his speech, and his emotions, and who called his own mother a monster, gradually grew into a human being despite the persecution he endured in this foreign land.

The war is over.

Jun Gong did not know his true age.

However, by the time the war ended, he was already in middle school.

This means that Jun-gong made up for the past period of obscurity in a very short time. Assuming he was born in Showa 7 (1936) and was thirteen years old at the end of the war, if we trust Hyōe's self-report, Jun-gong almost completely recovered during this period, which is truly astonishing. I think he was always very intelligent.

However, Jun-gong left Chikugami a year after the war ended. Because his foster mother was an old woman who was often ill, she went to live with relatives in Ise, and Jun-gong was taken with her.

Jun Gong was undoubtedly regarded as a nuisance.

Jun-gong was also isolated here. Although he went to school, he spent most of his time within the shrine grounds.

In September of Showa 25 (1946), the woman passed away.

The problem is the inheritance. The woman possesses a considerable sum of money. Undoubtedly, this is also the reason for the kindness shown by her relatives in Ise.

However, their plan backfired. Without consulting anyone, Jun-gong unknowingly became an adopted son on the family register. It must have been the woman who took advantage of the post-war chaos. She actually deeply disliked these greedy relatives from Ise.

Jun Gong inherited the property and came to Tokyo. More than eight years had passed since he left after losing his finger.

Jun's recounting of his life story terrified Bingwei. His son's words mercilessly stirred up Bingwei's twisted, tangled, and barely revealed human emotions that had been instantly suppressed. His son had personally unearthed the box of emotions that had sunk deep within Bingwei's heart.

Jun-gong came every day, and without fail, he poured out his heart to him. His gaze was cruel. Bing-wei remained silent throughout Jun-gong's tales.

—Am I unfortunate, Dad?