Lush willows are planted along the coast, the breeze blows, and the slender willows sway gently. The whole river bank is like a light green curtain.
The town is always clear in Wan Li, with soft clouds hanging in the sky, and the blue sky is clean and bright as a gem. The warm sunshine just shines on the people in the town, dyeing them warm yellow, and always accompanying them to walk and laugh in the narrow but clean streets.
People in the small town drive quietly on the regular daily tracks, eat and chat in the neatly arranged gray buildings, and laugh and play in the breeze and flowers.
The whole town is like a quiet tree. In the bright sunshine, green branches and white flowers are in full bloom, and the body is stretched freely with an elegant and indifferent attitude.
One day, a dusty girl came to town. She came here like a bunch of dandelions.
The girl's eyes are cornflower blue. Her eyes are like two bright cornflower petals, and the delicate patterns and pure colors bloom unscrupulously in a girl's eyes.
Grandpa Han Jiu from Zhenkou was the first person to notice this girl. Standing on the sparkling river bank, he saw a girl wearing a red polka-dot headscarf on the bank and walked straight to the town. So he touched the thick white beard on his chin and said kindly to the approaching girl, "Little girl, are you here alone?" Are you looking for relatives? "
The girl looked up and glanced at her white-haired grandfather. Her blue eyes gave off a hard light of stubbornness and vigilance, and her grandfather felt a stubborn hostility.
Then the girl silently bypassed grandpa's thin body, tied her headscarf and continued to walk into the town. Grandpa Leng looked at the distant girl with a little surprise. The thin figure was nothing but trembling in the red sunset.
At night, the town is already very quiet. After a day's work, people are preparing dinner in the house. Every household lights up with orange lights, and the smell of food wafts from the windows of every gray building. The girl was walking alone in the orange street, carrying a soft and collapsed purple cotton bag behind her, and two thick braids emerged from the red headscarf and hung listlessly on the girl's chest.
Aunt Ji, who runs a dessert shop, is the second person to talk to the girl.
At that time, she opened the window with a watering can, and was about to water the magnolia and corydalis tetraphylla placed on the window when the girl just walked under her window.
Aunt Ji is a warm-hearted aunt, so she put down the kettle and transferred her body to outer space. She asked the strange girl below loudly, "Little girl, are you a foreigner?" Just arrived today? "
The girl raised her face and glanced at Aunt Ji's window. Aunt Ji's chubby face is particularly kind in the warm yellow glow in the room, and her voice is like fluffy cotton candy.
The girl paused and hesitated for a while, but after a while, she lowered her head and walked on silently, leaving her confused and lonely aunt and the warm yellow light behind her.
The girl walks slowly and quickly because she doesn't know where she should go.
It's getting dark and the girl is hungry. What she needs is a restaurant and a hotel.
Shen Shen, the owner of Jixiang Hotel, also saw the needs of girls. When she walked wearily past the neon sign in front of the hotel, the boss Shen Shen was sitting next to him peeling apples, while his golden retriever was sticking out his tongue and looking at her.
"ah? Little girl from outside? Do you want to stay in a hotel? Our shop provides brunch and lunch, and the room is very clean. This is the best hotel in this town. "
A boss with heavy eyebrows said that when he took a bite of an apple, the crisp sound was like eating bamboo in spring.
He looked at the girl with the eyes of a businessman, neither enthusiastic nor indifferent, and achieved an impartial point and a safe point between the two.
The girl didn't stop. She glanced at a man and a dog beside the colorful neon lights and the quiet hotel behind them. Her footsteps told her that this was not the place where she wanted to stop. Their journey with their master gave them the judgment logic of their master. This is not a place to stop, and there is no smell of stopping.
The girl picked up her backpack again, and it was getting dark. She only wore a thin light gray cloth, a dark gray wool shawl with holes, and a pair of dark gray cloth trousers, whose legs were stuck in stockings. The white socks are covered with gray mud spots, which are dirty and stick to the girl's legs.
In the gloomy sky, the figure of the girl walking alone gradually blurred, like a small mud spot between heaven and earth, stubbornly moving forward, not knowing where to go.
The little boy saw the girl on the promenade in the town park. Because he was naughty in the park, he didn't hurry home until dark. When he passed the promenade, he saw a beautiful sister who had never seen before sitting in a daze on the promenade. He stopped, put his head on the edge of the corridor and asked the girl curiously, "Aren't you going home for dinner?" If you are late, you will really be beaten. "
The girl looked at the little boy with her eyes wide open, and her innocence softened her heart. She reached out and touched the boy's fluffy yellow curly hair and shook her head gently. The little boy wanted to say something to her, but his mother's distant and clear cry had reached the little boy's ears. He had to say goodbye to the girl and then took a step forward.
Now there is only one girl left in the empty park. There is a small white street lamp beside the promenade. The lampshade is very dirty, and there are many black and gray stains attached to it, but the white light inside is fully reflected as far as possible.
There are some flying insects flying in circles near the light, flapping their short and thin wings quickly and making meaningless whirls, but they look happy. This light is their warm faith.
The girl sat opposite the street lamp, with her back against the pillars of the promenade, looking at the dust and flying insects under those lights. It's quiet everywhere, not even the sound of the wind.
The girl's blue eyes show a deep melancholy in the dark night, like the dark blue night sky.
The next morning, when Aunt Jane, the cleaner, came to clean the park, she found the girl curled up in a ball and lying on the promenade.
She went over in surprise, pushed the girl and asked anxiously, "Oh, little girl, why are you sleeping here?" Did you sleep here all night? Aren't you cold? God, you can't sleep here! It's cold here at night. Why not find a hotel? "
The girl woke up with aunt Jane's rambling greetings. She saw Aunt Jane's gray wrinkled face and yellow-brown eyes, and her pale lips were still opening and closing quickly.
The girl kept silent about her concern and was ready to pack up and leave. But Aunt Jane grabbed the girl's hand and told her not to go yet.
The girl couldn't leave, so she was dragged to the cleaning room in the park by Aunt Jane. While trying to figure out the true meaning of Aunt Jane, she quickly held a cup of hot tea and handed it to the girl's mouth: "Come, drink hot tea to warm up. Ouch, it's cold here at night. Little girl, how can you stand wearing so little? " Oh, that's pathetic. If you have no place to live, come to my house. I live alone anyway. You can be my companion. "
The girl silently finished her tea, which was a little sweet. She broke it, handed the cup back to Aunt Jane, and then turned and ran away. Aunt Jane is still talking, but the girl can't hear her.
The mayor's office is a simple white building behind a row of neat and lush buttonwood trees. The balcony on the second floor is white smooth tiles with some green tiles, which looks fresh, natural and simple.
The girl crossed the buttonwood tree and came to this two-story building. She stood with her head held high and looked up. The whole building is still quiet. It was early in the morning, and it was not time for work.
She just stood in front of the building and looked at an empty building for a long time. In the bright white light in the morning, her eyes are as clear and blue as cornflower, like endless blue sea water.
The mayor was stopped by a girl on the stairs.
When the mayor walked to the second floor, the girl suddenly jumped out of the shadow in the corner, and the mayor leaned back in fear.
The girl didn't speak, just looked at the mayor stupefied. The mayor doesn't know the girl's intentions. She is a strange girl, not a girl in this town. No one in this town has blue eyes.
The mayor asked the girl, "Who are you? You're not from here, are you? Why are you hiding here? " The girl sighed lightly and said the first sentence after arriving in this town: "I will wait for you here."
"Wait for me? What can I do for you? "
"I want to find my father."
"What about your father? Who is your father? "
The girl took off the purple cloth bag on her back, laid it flat on the ground and slowly opened it.
The mayor saw only a few singlets, a pamphlet, a candle, a piece of dry bread, some strange pills and a newspaper.
The girl picked up the newspaper, unfolded it, pointed to a section and stood on tiptoe to show it to the mayor.
The mayor squinted at the newspaper and smelled a sour taste. He frowned, glanced at the contents of the girl's sign quickly, then put down the newspaper and looked at the short and thin girl in front of him. Her blue eyes are full of sad tears.
"Is he ... is he your father?" The mayor was obviously a little surprised.
The girl nodded. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I still looked at the mayor with childish resentment and doubts in my eyes.
"I'm sorry about this ... your father ... well, actually ..." The mayor didn't know how to tell the girl the ins and outs of things, and his tongue and mind seemed to be tied, so he couldn't figure out why.
The girl still looked at the mayor nervously, but in fact she didn't expect the mayor to give any reason. In fact, any reason is unnecessary.
"Do you have any other relatives besides Dad?" The mayor tentatively asked, this girl seems to have come here all the way from Wan Li alone, but she is just a child.
The girl shook her head.
"Did you come alone?"
The girl nodded.
"How old are you this year?"
"Twelve." The girl folded the newspaper again and put it back in the bag. Then she put the bag back and tied it on her back. She wiped a tear with the back of her hand. When she stood facing the mayor again, her blue eyes were calm and indifferent again.
God, she's a child. The mayor's hands were twisted together. He is still a young mayor. He only got the position last year. In this case, he is a little at a loss. Although the other party is only a girl of 12 years old, perhaps it is because she is only a simple girl of 12 years old that he feels dirty.
"Ok, I'll take you to see dad."
At about ten o'clock in the morning, people in the town saw the mayor crossing the street with a girl in gray clothes and trousers. The warm yellow light of the sun gently shines on the white streets and green willows. People will smile at the mayor when they pass by, but people also find that the mayor who always smiles in good faith has always maintained a sad face today, even when he is warmly greeted, he is quite reluctant.
People want to know the relationship between the mayor and the girl. The townspeople who saw the girl yesterday began to comment from the commanding heights, saying that she was eccentric, her eyes were cold, she never communicated with others, and she just kept walking by herself.
People saw the mayor take the girl to the hillside on the west side of the town, and everyone was even more unknown so.
That hillside is where villagers bury the bodies or ashes of the dead. There are many weeds here, only tombstones and graves.
Why did the mayor take an out-of-town girl there? Does this girl have any relatives buried there? Is she a distant relative of the mayor?
What surprised the townspeople even more was that after climbing the hillside, the mayor came down soon, but the girl was gone.
People are more skeptical. The mayor is obviously a sympathetic mayor. After he came down, he immediately informed the townspeople to put down their work and immediately held an emergency meeting in the town general office.
The mayor sighed in front of a room full of indecisive townspeople, and then said, "That girl was the daughter of that stranger a month ago."
The crowd was quiet for a while, waiting for the memory to float up from the water like a floating ball, revealing its face and outline, and then everyone became restless and began to make noise in twos and threes.
The mayor slapped the table for silence. He said gloomily, "The girl said that she had no other relatives except her father. I guess she saw what happened to her father here in the newspaper, so she came alone. She is only a twelve-year-old child, and I don't know what she will do next. Anyway, no matter what I ask, she won't talk. She is still in front of her father's grave, and I rushed down to tell everyone about it and discuss what to do. "
The crowd buzzed and people whispered to each other. The owner of Jixiang Hotel said loudly, "What can we do? The child has to go to her local orphanage, otherwise what can we do? "
Some people nodded in agreement, while others said, "Otherwise, we can do it in an orphanage in our town if she wants."
A boss with heavy eyebrows and big eyes sneered: "Of course people don't want to. This town is where her father died, and we are all murderers. "
The words of a heavy boss aroused public anger, and everyone accused him of being unreasonable and only knowing nonsense.
Aunt Ji is sitting next to her boss. She gave him a push and said, "Her father didn't do well himself, and it's not a good person to come to town to steal chickens and dogs." We brought him to justice, but how could he be a murderer! Don't open your mouth, heaven. "
People have echoed.
"Good good, this thing is the stranger was wrong first, we punish him is no problem. The point is that since his children have come, they won't forgive us so easily. For children, a father is a father, and there are no thieves. To say the least, in fact, that foreigner is guilty of death. "
Grandpa Leng banged on the corner of his stool with his pipe, and his long beard on his chin trembled. Grandma pineapple, who was sitting next to him, gave him a white look and curled her lips and said, "Who wants that goblin to forgive me? What, are we still afraid of her? Why did she set fire to our whole town to avenge her father? A thief is a thief. We should hit him. Who knew that guy was so useless that he died after hitting him twice? What thief is such a poor constitution? "
The mayor stood aside and looked around for a while, looking anxious, but speechless. He really doesn't know what to say. The townspeople are right. It is wrong for the girl's father to steal in a small town. He should be punished. The townspeople really didn't expect to kill him at once. The whole thing was just a simple accident, and no one should be blamed.
Looking at the noisy and eloquent crowd, the mayor always feels that this correct logic is unreasonable, but he can't figure out what it is, so he can only stand on the edge of the crowd and be at a loss.
Aunt Jane, the cleaner, is also standing next to the mayor. She remembers that when cleaning up the pool of blood a month ago, she couldn't clean it with a mop. Dark red blood clung to the blue road like countless tentacles, as if she was tightly entangled in something and refused to leave. No matter how hard she tried, it didn't help.
She remembered the girl she saw this morning, with blue stubborn eyes, silent lips, messy hair, tattered clothes, alert expression when drinking water, and thin figure turning and running. It suddenly occurred to Aunt Jane that it was a pity that the blood was gone now, otherwise the girl would still have a look.
But what is there to see?