Not long after the coming-of-age ceremony came the college entrance examination. Because the parents were all extremely nervous, even the Swamp Monster that lurked in the parents’ group was infected by the atmosphere and became nervous as well. When Jiang Xiaoya was little, her grades were very poor, but because her mother couldn’t read, she had never been beaten; later, in middle and high school, she had to rely on her spirit body, and Jiang Xiaoya’s grades advanced by leaps and bounds.
In the eyes of the Swamp Monster, the base’s guard squad was like it was made of paper paste. Up to now, no human spirit body had been able to approach it. So human spirit body training, in its eyes, was probably more like a childish role-playing game among humans. However, that didn’t prevent it from being infected by the atmosphere and cracking many walnuts for Jiang Xiaoya to nourish her brain.
At long last, the exams were over, and everyone let out a sigh of relief.
In the graduation photo, the little dog jumped the highest. She hooked Little Chan’s head, the two equally youthful faces pressed close together intimately.
Little Chan asked, “Xiaoya, will you go to Haisha City?”
After the Federation was established, the central city was designated as the seaside Haisha City.
Little Chan wanted to attend a university in Haisha City. Then she would stay in Haisha City to find a job and bring all her family to live in the safer Haisha City. Most of Jiang Xiaoya’s classmates wanted to go there. Because coastal cities were safer than inland ones, and the Federation’s center was also more developed and prosperous.
Jiang Xiaoya had never thought of going that far. And going to Haisha City required a letter of recommendation.
Jiang Xiaoya was called out by the teacher and received a letter of recommendation. The signature at the end was Deng Feng. Who was Deng Feng? Deng Fei’s father? She scratched her head, wanting to refuse. But she went back and asked Deng Fei. It was his little uncle. Yet Deng Fei had never mentioned Jiang Xiaoya to his little uncle.
However, it was said that the little uncle had been looking for a little girl before.
Deng Fei immediately thought of this and felt that he had suffered heartbreak. Because the little white bear suddenly felt that the Jiang Xiaoya he had secretly loved for many years might be his cousin!
Jiang Xiaoya suddenly remembered the uncle who had come into the swamp to look for her when she was little.
She hesitated for a moment, but still accepted that letter of recommendation.
Jiang Xiaoya was a very home-loving little dog. She had originally planned to find a university near Tiandong City. She really didn’t want to go far away to study alone. And besides, what about Jiang Ze? It wouldn’t take care of itself. The next molting period might be coming soon. Being too far from home always made her feel uneasy. Ah Hua was also old now, an elderly grandmother of more than ten years. If she couldn’t see her, she wouldn’t really want to eat grass.
However, after graduating from senior year, she still had an entire vacation to think it over.
What puzzled Jiang Xiaoya was that, since Uncle Deng Feng knew her, why had he not contacted her for so many years?
Jiang Xiaoya returned to her home in the swamp. When she brought back and organized all the luggage she had brought from school, she turned up a big box. Inside were all kinds of children’s backpacks and gifts. She flipped through and found some greeting cards with the signatures—Deng Feng. From a long time ago, every year on her birthday and on the New Year, there had been gifts.
Yet for all these years, she had never known about this. Of course she was somewhat angry—at the very least, she should have known. The little dog was still in her rebellious phase, and immediately woke up from love, turning into a teenage child who wanted to quarrel with her mother.
She thought they were probably going to have a big fight over this. She was going to go to war with Jiang Ze!
But when she huffed and puffed as she moved the things in front of Jiang Ze, the gigantic being fell silent.
The youth put away the toys inside one by one.
It said very calmly: Xiaoya, because… because it had only picked her up.
It looked at her very seriously.
The youth was not Jiang Xiaoya’s legitimate mother in name. Although it tried hard to be a good mother, it always seemed a little clumsy—just like when Jiang Xiaoya was little and it almost fed the child coffee and nearly made her foolish.
And now it truly believed that it was a very failed parent.
—Otherwise, why would she not want to continue being its child, and instead give rise to other kinds of feelings?
This sense of loss lingered around it all the time.
It was afraid that a human would come forward and say she was Jiang Xiaoya’s biological mother, and could completely outdo it. After all, humans all believed that blood was thicker than water, didn’t they?
The youth did not say any of this out loud. It only squatted in front of the box and said, “The things Mom makes aren’t as good as these.”
The youth was always not as attentive as a real mother. Deng Feng’s current wife was a very meticulous mother; the sweaters she knitted were beautiful and delicate, unlike the youth’s rough stitches.
The aggressive little dog instantly fell silent. The bristles she had raised slowly softened because of its gaze, turning her into a droopy-eared rabbit.
She did not know why it thought of itself as a failed parent. In Jiang Xiaoya’s eyes, Big Big Monster Mom was the best mother in the world. By its side, she was the happiest little dog princess.
She ran over and said, “Daya, I like them. I love you the most in the whole world, I like you the most.”
“You are the best, best mom. And also the best older brother.”
She rubbed her face against it, comforting it.
The youth hugged her, a little helplessly. Only, the monster’s mood was like a damp sponge.
Jiang Xiaoya gained an unprecedentedly long vacation.
They had a lot of time alone together. This was very difficult to endure. Because when she was in school, time and distance could still conceal some problems; now time and distance were infinitely drawn closer. Living together under the same roof day after day, wanting to pretend to ignore those changes became extremely difficult.
However, Jiang Xiaoya often ran out to play. It saw that there was also a boy beside the little dog’s best friend—probably that Deng Fei. The three of them often went out together to eat.
As soon as summer vacation began, Jiang Xiaoya did handicrafts and folded a large pile of paper cranes.
It had never seen cranes. It thought that this kind of sharp-beaked origami was very cute. It asked her whether she could give it one.
Jiang Xiaoya immediately said that she was going to give them to someone else, and couldn’t give it one.
It didn’t care at all!
The Swamp Monster thought, that damn child really had transferred her affections—good thing it hadn’t had an open and honest talk with her. Besides, just like the balsam flowers from years ago, her liking came quickly and went just as fast; it was time to breathe a sigh of relief.
It slowly went to sweep the floor, feeling that its mood was like a sponge that had been wrung dry and become light.
But even wrung dry, it was still damp.
Summer was hateful, the water plants were greasy, the whole world was hateful.
However, after a few days passed, during the time when the summer grass was especially lush, the Swamp Monster saw a beautiful paper-crane wind chime hanging on the window of its room.
Below the wind chime was a sentence:
All of my love, to my Daya.
Oh.
The Swamp Monster’s dangerous vertical pupils slowly rounded. It squatted beneath the wind chime for a long time, reaching out to make it jingle as it played with it.
It thought summer was cute.
The water plants were cute.
Everything was cute.
───♡───
Jiang Xiaoya was extremely depressed. Because the Swamp Monster didn’t know where it had dug out a pre-apocalypse Yi Lin magazine, which said that foreign children had to be kicked out at eighteen to make a living on their own. As a result, every afternoon it would sweep her out of the house and drive her into the forest to wander around.
She felt that it was actually Jiang Ze who found her clinging around it too annoying and had found an excuse to send her away.
In fact, she had guessed it exactly right. After kicking the child out and closing the door, only at that instant did the enormous being relax. It needed this small space that cut her off in order to catch its breath. Because every inadvertent closeness left it at a loss. It was a somewhat clumsy parent who had absolutely no idea how to face her.
Jiang Xiaoya was working hard to make it realize that she was a youthful and beautiful young girl. She succeeded.
Jiang Xiaoya was working hard to make her image appear in its heart. Her paper cranes succeeded.
So there were no more goodnight kisses, and when she forgot to bring a towel while bathing, no one would deliver one anymore. She shouted for Jiang Ze to save her.
But Jiang Ze said that she was a youthful young girl, and it was a male elder, so it couldn’t help her deliver a towel.
The little dog held a grudge, and after coming out, shouted that she was going to take revenge on it.
But having been a parent for so long, it would always subconsciously underestimate the child, and it didn’t take her revenge seriously.
At night, they watched television together.
She deliberately bumped her head on the doorframe, then ran over saying that her head hurt.
Fine. It knew she was pretending, but not checking always made it uneasy. After all, when Jiang Xiaoya was little, her head had once been caught in a door, and for a time it had thought Jiang Xiaoya would turn into a little fool. The body was always one step faster than the mind—it leaned over instinctively, brushed aside the stray hair on her forehead, wanting to look at her head.
However, at the moment it bent down and lowered its head, a soft kiss carrying the fresh scent of soap, like an unexpected raindrop, landed with a pop on its cold cheek.
She knew it was unwilling to be as close to her as before. So this was her most sinister revenge: an open and aboveboard goodnight kiss.
Jiang Ze turned into a zombie. Turned into the most pitiful person in the world.
Because it didn’t know where to put its gaze, or how to place its hands. It could only helplessly look toward the television.
Calm down. It was just a child’s ordinary goodnight kiss.
Hadn’t the past ten-plus years all been like this?
But it uncontrollably made its body grow larger, the enormous head almost touching the ceiling.
Why grow so big inside the house? It was because this way Jiang Xiaoya couldn’t see the expression hidden under its hair. Or its ears, flushed red and blank.
It wanted to roar and rush out to slaughter water ghosts and destroy the forest, to vent the strange emotions in its heart.
But in reality, it did nothing at all. It was just weak, helpless, and very big as it sat there watching television.
It wanted to set a house rule for Jiang Xiaoya: no kissing Jiang Ze.
The next day, when Jiang Xiaoya opened the door, she discovered that the enormous being was still sitting in the same spot, as if it had watched television for the entire night.
She poked her head out to take a look. What? Current affairs news? What was there to watch all night?
She walked past it as if nothing had happened.
In the afternoon, it said that Jiang Xiaoya was very unfilial. The worst little dog in the world!
Jiang Xiaoya felt very wronged.
Although she was greedy and lazy at home, didn’t do housework, and made trouble everywhere, how did that make her unfilial?
She glanced at the sofa she had just messed up after Jiang Ze had tidied it, and guiltily touched it.
The end-of-the-month big cleaning day was always especially lively. They had to bathe Ah Hua, tidy up the rooms, and also clear out Jiang Xiaoya’s old books from her three years of high school. Jiang Xiaoya said they could be sold to exchange for ice cream. She had many things, messy and assorted, but she could always dig out some childhood confessions to Big Big Monster Mom from the corners. The more it flipped through them, the softer its heart became.
When she was little, Jiang Xiaoya really was a little sweetheart.
It looked at the dead child who was peeking around now.
This one now was just a bad little dog.
When Ah Hua was covered in bubbles from scrubbing, Jiang Xiaoya wanted to seem a bit useful and leaned over to help—but only made things worse, getting bubbles everywhere. The ferocious youth chased her away. Damn child!
She ran off with her head full of bubbles and sat by the lake under drifting cloud shadows, trying to wash the bubbles clean. The lovely bubbles continued to float and linger in the air.
Her eyes, under natural light, were a very beautiful amber color—like the beautiful piece of amber it had picked up from the swamp in some year long ago. Also like that especially sweet kind of honey. The ferocious swamp monster really liked eating that kind of honey.
Only when it realized that its gaze had lingered too long did it understand that this wasn’t appropriate. The youth turned back and continued scrubbing Ah Hua seriously.
She went to pick mushrooms, her shoes getting dirty; then she went to wreak havoc in the flowerbeds. It tried to focus its attention on Ah Hua, but it could always know exactly what she was doing—whether her footsteps were fast or slow, whether she was up to some bad idea.
It was as if strands of silk had grown out of her body, every single one tugging at it.
Among the shade-tolerant little flower seeds brought back back then, some wild roses had been mixed in. Three years later, they had grown almost more luxuriantly than the little flowers, and there were many more thorns in the flowerbeds. It told her to be careful, but the damn child plunged straight in to pull weeds, completely ignoring it. She ended up with her head full of grass again, her socks filthy.
Let her get pricked to death.
It thought viciously.
Perhaps there was a bit of moss on the ground—it heard a startled cry.
The enormous being immediately walked over and saw the little dog forced up a tree by a small snake. It slowly strangled the snake to death and, under her direction, threw it far away. The damn child played with everything, but had been afraid of snakes since she was little. It told her to jump down. She cautiously looked around, and after confirming that there were no snakes at all, immediately pounced toward it.
Damn child! I told you to jump down, not fly down!
Grass scraps were at the tip of her nose, little flowers on the top of her head. They fell into the flowerbed.
The tip of her nose almost brushed against the youth’s cheek.
She hadn’t expected it to be knocked down. She stared at it blankly.
They were so close. Their breaths brushed.
In that instant, an almost dizzying, entrancing illusion arose.
Dusk closed in, and the wild roses were in full bloom.
Did you hear the heartbeat in the midsummer night?
