Invade the World

   Chapter 437 Escape from the house

   "What, nothing!"

   The little girl was so surprised that she jumped up and almost fell off the sand.

   But why? She didn't hear any sound at all. When she pushed the door and came in, there must be a sound of shoving the key into the lock of the room and turning it? But she didn't hear anything just now, and her mother floated in directly through the door like a ghost.

   Don't underestimate the level of alertness of children. Most of the children have done things like watching TV while their parents are not at home, refusing to do their homework, right? Children always have secrets that they want to hide from adults. If they didn't have the corresponding vigilance, they would have been caught long ago.

   In short, after hearing her mother's questioning voice, Zhu Qingyue's subconscious reaction was naturally to put down the microphone and look behind her to see her mother walking over with a plastic bag.

"…mom-"

  Zhu Qingyue just wanted to open her mouth to say something, but the woman didn't look sideways and walked past her.

   didn't even look at her.

  *

   After that, several days passed.

During this period of time, my mother's daily routine has also undergone tremendous changes. Except when she has to go out to buy living materials for the mother and daughter, she hardly stays at home; and even if she leaves the house, she usually feels very uncomfortable. Come back soon.

   If Zhu Qingyue still wanted to seize the opportunity, she needed to plug in the phone line within this short period of time, and then contact her father—it might not be possible to contact her, and then restore the scene to its original state to ensure that nothing was revealed.

  ...Although she didn't know what would happen if she was exposed, she thought it was better not to touch this mold.

   In short, the secret phone call that day didn't seem to be exposed. Maybe mother, she didn't care about her child's little actions at all.

   The little girl felt lost, but at the same time she couldn't help but feel relieved.

   But she soon realized that even if she did nothing, it still didn't mean that nothing would change in her life.

  Different from the children who just entered the school, now Zhu Qingyue is looking forward to the school day when she leaves this home.

Even if she didn't have friends in elementary school, she could at least get in touch with other people with lively characters. In addition, her grades have always been very good, and she is obedient and obedient, so she is easily praised and praised by teachers... This is a recent period of time, The only psychological comfort she could get.

   But on that day, after finally getting through the weekend with the silent mother, the little girl was about to go out with her schoolbag on her back, and at this moment—

   "Qingyue."

   Mom's voice came from behind her.

   "Huh? What's wrong?" Zhu Qingyue hooked her shoelaces to tie her heels, turned her head cautiously and asked, "I'm going to school..."

   "You don't have to go to school today."

   "Eh, why? The teacher called?"

   Up until this time, the little girl had not fully understood what she meant.

   "No, I called the school."

   Mom replied. Her face was obviously thinner than before, and the flesh on both sides of her cheeks was obviously deflated.

   The woman's eyes are the same as her daughter's, a beautiful color like black jade, from which she clearly feels the blood relationship between the two.

   Such a pair of eyes, when they are happy or delighted, when they are bright, can be charming; but when they look at others coldly, they will give off a chill.

   "I told your teacher that you are sick and have a serious illness, and you may not be able to come for a while, but I don't want to go through the formalities for suspension for the time being. I don't know if you can accommodate. The other party agreed."

  Zhu Qingyue was stunned.

   The small schoolbag in his hand slipped to the floor.

   It took a long time before she stammered.

   "...why, why? Why does mom want to..."

   "No reason." Mom interrupted coldly, she heard her daughter's trembling voice, and then changed to a relatively peaceful tone.

   "From today, you don't have to go to school. Are you not happy?"

  …

   — not happy, of course I am not happy!

   That night, when Zhu Qingyue tossed and turned in bed, she was still replaying the conversation that happened with her mother near the door this morning.

   For the whole day after that, she did not speak to her mother again.

  The little girl was angry at first, she was sulking by herself, and she never wanted to talk to her again!

   But she soon realized that this anger was pointless. In the end, the purpose of children's poking and rolling is to make parents pay attention to themselves and hope that adults can fulfill their wishes, but if the adults choose to ignore it from the beginning...

   Whether at the physical level or at the psychological level, children are absolutely vulnerable and have no willful capital.

   But she is not willful or unreasonable, it is obviously her mother who did the bad things, she is not sick at all! It's my mom who doesn't let me go to school!

   After tossing and turning, the little girl soon heard the voice of a phone call coming from downstairs.

   It seems that today is the same as in the past, my mother's life is as always, sitting on the sofa next to the telephone is a night, and that telephone is probably not connected to the line...

  The little girl wrapped her head with a quilt.

   She thought a little angrily: She has made up her mind that even if she holds back her urine tonight, or even urinates on the bed, she won't take half a step out of this bedroom door.

   After a few hours, the night became darker. Zhu Qingyue was in a daze, half asleep and half awake, when she heard a knock on the door of her bedroom.

"Um…?"

   The little girl was so sleepy she couldn't open her eyes.

what happened again?

   There are only two people at home, her and her mother, so it is only possible that her mother came in in the middle of the night.

Mother…

   The little girl was lying on the bed and didn't move, when she heard soft footsteps behind her. Mom pushed open the bedroom door and walked over to her bed.

   "Qingyue..."

  The woman's fingers slowly stroked her cheek.

  Dry fingertips, when they slid across his face, gave a rough touch.

   "Mom is the only one left...don't leave me, Qingyue."

   whispered in a low voice, lingering in his ears, like a dark bedside story that will never end.

  The woman repeated the small words, babbling in a spirit, but the little girl was still young and could not feel the strangeness.

  Zhu Qingyue was too tired to move, did not open her eyes, and soon fell asleep again.

  Just like that, Mom sat by her pillow all night.

  *

   Mom hasn't let her out for a long time.

   Zhu Qingyue has not been out since she asked for school leave for her daughter without authorization.

   After all, she is still a child, lives in a high-rise apartment building, and has no playmates of the same age. In the past, she did not go out much except for school. Now that she can’t go to school, then…

   But this is not the reason why she can only stay at home all the time.

  The life of a bird in a cage is depressing and boring. The originally spacious home has a feeling of crampedness that makes people unable to breathe.

   "Mom, why won't you let me out?"

   When the little girl finally couldn't help asking that question, her mother's answer was unusually calm.

   "There are a lot of bad people out there, and there will be a lot of danger."

  ...It's very similar to what a worried adult would say, but other adults won't be like you, just lock your daughter at home!

   After waking up in the morning, the little girl still felt sleepy. The bed was a mess, and the sleeping image was still terrible; when I looked in the mirror, I turned into a bird's nest head again.

   She is not as refreshed as she usually wakes up because she didn't sleep well last night.

  The little girl opened the curtains again, letting the bright sunlight and fresh air pour in together, but her mood was very different from the past.

   Can't go on like this!

  Zhu Qingyue recalled her mother's behavior recently and felt horrified.

   There is a curse word "neuropathy", which means that this person is not mentally normal, but the little girl knows that this should actually be called mental illness, and it is to be sent to a lunatic asylum.

   Mom, is this the case with her?

  Zhu Qingyue decided to make another call.

   I didn't fight at home this time, I felt like my mother would find out again.

  This time, the little girl is going to sneak out of the house and go to the public phone booth outside to call her father. Although it was easy to find out that she had left the house, at that time, even if her mother found out, she would not be able to stop it.

   Just do it.

   On the first day, Zhu Qingyue stole a few coins from the small purse that her mother usually used to buy food and hid it under the pillow;

   The next day, she took advantage of the short time when her mother went out to buy vegetables, and walked out of the door to determine an escape plan.

   On the third day, the sun was setting and the night was dark. When it was time to go to bed again, Zhu Qingyue, who had always been raised as a good girl, did the most daring thing in her life: instead of going to bed, she tucked a pillow into the quilt to imitate the outline of a human figure, while she quietly Push open the bedroom door and slip into the hallway.

   The little girl tiptoed down the stairs, carefully crawled along the blind spots that the person sitting on the sofa couldn't see, and occasionally squatted in the corner without making a sound.

   This is the route she carefully selected, and she has also recorded it in the diary and drawn it, and tried it more than once.

   There were no lights in the living room, and the dim interior light provided the best cover for her movements.

   It is also a loss that her family is big enough, so she has a place to hide.

  During this process, the little girl was holding the coin tightly in her hand, her palm sweating, holding her breath, not daring to make a sound, feeling like a super agent in a movie.

  Mom, as always, sat motionless next to the telephone on the sofa, like a sculpture.

  Only when there was an audible silence in the living room, could the faint gasp be heard among the sound of the clock hands turning, proving that she was still alive.

   nearer, nearer—

  The door to the outside world is within easy reach.

   She squatted beside the shoe cabinet, raised her neck, stretched her arms upward with all her strength, and finally... let her fingertips touch the door handle.

   "Click."

   A sound that is usually inaudible, and is impossible to hear unless you deliberately **** up your ears to listen, but when it rings in your ears at this moment, it is as clear and loud as a big bell.

  Zhu Qingyue couldn't care about this, she took advantage of her petite body and hurriedly got out through the gap of the half-open door.

  Before escaping the house, the little girl turned around and could barely see the back of the woman sitting on the sofa.

   The other person's head seemed to move slightly, as if he was about to get up to check after hearing the sound from the entrance. Zhu Qingyue didn't dare to look anymore, and quickly closed the door.

  *

  A girl who just entered the first grade of elementary school left home alone without an adult accompanying her, and walked into the street late at night...

   Even in ten or twenty years, this is a very dangerous thing, let alone in the 1990s.

But the little girl's heart at this time was completely filled with the surprise of escaping the cage and breaking free from her mother's "claw". , I just thought of a very important question:

   She didn't know where the nearby public phone booth was.

   She decided to ask passers-by.

   "Auntie, where is the nearby phone booth?"

   "Uncle, have you ever seen a phone booth by the roadside?"

   "Sister, where is the nearest phone booth?"

   "Big brother, may I ask..."

   "Grandpa and Grandma, may I ask..."

   She asked very politely, and every passerby she asked was also polite. When they saw this cute little girl, they all smiled and answered questions gently.

   Finally, when asked about the eleventh person, Zhu Qingyue got the answer he wanted.

   She walked towards the yellow telephone booth under the street lights and the shade of trees not far away.

   But what the little girl didn't notice was that all the passers-by she had just met, whether it was aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, grandparents, stopped walking to the original destination, turned around and silently followed behind her.

  Some people follow far away, some people follow close, and they all have similar smiles on their lips.

  There are street lamps at intervals, and the dim yellow halo shrouds the dense shade of trees, intertwined in the air, like a gurgling stream flowing over people's faces. Everyone's pupils hidden in the night are illuminated indefinitely.

  Zhu Qingyue stood on tiptoe, stuffed a coin, and picked up the microphone.

   Driven by a little nervousness and excitement, she heard an unfamiliar female voice across the phone.

   "May I ask who you are..."

   "I'm Zhu Qingyue, please ask Dad to answer the phone."

   "...Zhu Qingyue? Ah, is that Director Zhu's daughter, wait a moment."

   After half a ring, the man's familiar voice rang across the phone, with a bit of hesitation in his doubts.

   "Qingyue...? Why did you call? Where's your mother?"

   "Mom locked me at home, I sneaked out!"

   The little girl answered loudly. After that, her words did not stop for a moment, and she kept complaining about the abnormal situation that had happened to her mother during this period of time, pouring out all the recent dissatisfaction and bitterness.

  The man opposite the microphone was silent for a while, and then said:

   "I see. I'll leave the work here for a while, and I'll come and take a look tomorrow."

   "Really? Great!"

   "...one thing you have to remember, Qingyue, be careful..."

   "Huh? Be careful of what? What did you just say, Dad?"

  Zhu Qingyue put down the microphone with some doubts.

   "Hey, the phone hangs up..."

   She didn't think too much, and was still immersed in the joy of successfully contacting her father. When she turned around to leave, she almost bumped into the person behind her.

"Sorry, I…"

   The little girl thought it was the next passerby who was in a hurry to make a phone call, but when she looked up, she realized that Ren was a little familiar.

   is a certain elder sister who just passed by. She stood in front of the phone booth, grabbed both sides of the door with both hands, raised her chest, and blocked the narrow entrance with her body, so that the little girl could not squeeze out. The other party's face had a gentle smile, and he looked down at Zhu Qingyue, his pupils dark as water.

   (end of this chapter)