Me! Cleaner!

Chapter 43 Family Portrait and Protagonist (2 in 1)

She must be persuaded. Although Anna's condition has stabilized, after all, she has just been discharged from the hospital not long ago, and her body will not be well if she cries so much.

After stroking his little brother's little head, which seemed a bit silly when he said smart things, but understood everything when he said he was stupid, Leon put down the newspaper in his hand, stood up, left the second bedroom, and walked toward Anna's room.

This old house in Veterans Lane was not the original home of the four Lyon brothers and sisters, but an old house allocated by the military after forcibly deducting part of their pension. They were almost five times as old as Lyon.

The old house was old and dilapidated, and the lighting was average. It didn't even have a toilet. Apart from the small living room connected to the kitchen, there were only one master bedroom and one secondary bedroom.

The smaller second bedroom has always been occupied by Leon. As for the so-called Anna's room, it is actually the master bedroom she shares with her two younger siblings.

"squeak"

Accompanied by the jerky scream of the old door hinge, Leon pushed the door open and walked into the master bedroom. The first thing he saw was his sobbing sister lying on the quilt.

Like the second bedroom where Leon lives, this small master bedroom also has only a single bed. William and Melanie could barely sleep in it when they were young. When the two troublemakers grew up, they It seems a bit crowded.

So Leon picked up some boards and bricks from outside, added a section to the side of the original old bed, and put a mattress and his parents' old clothes on it, hoping that his younger siblings could sleep more comfortably. However, due to material issues, the construction was That part is a little unstable, and the bed board can easily shake.

At this time, Anna was lying on this part of the bed. With every muffled sob she made, the newly built half of the bed swayed twice, and her **** also swayed. With the sound of sobs, The twists and turns looked really funny, which made Leon burst into laughter.

"Brother! You're still laughing!"

After hearing Leon's sullen laughter, Anna, who was lying on the bed, suddenly became even more angry. She rarely showed her temper. She kicked her two white feet in the air angrily twice, and then she couldn't help complaining:

"It's all your fault! When they were making trouble before, you always stopped me from beating me! Now they have started stuffing horse dung into people's mouths! You can still laugh!"

"Forehead…"

Not embarrassed to explain what he was laughing at, Leon had to take the initiative to look away, looking at the furnishings in the room, and speaking in an authentic way:

"I just think that spanking alone may not be enough. You still have to let them know why they are being spanked. Otherwise, don't let them think that being spanked is okay.

If you don't believe it, look at William. He has already summed up experience in how many times he will be spanked by you after making any trouble, so he still has to be reasonable to prove it. "

"But they have to be beaten first before they will listen to you!"

Anna, who has always been gentle in front of Leon and almost never expresses opinions, is extremely strong in educating her younger siblings.

After wiping her tears with the back of her hand, she stopped sobbing and turned around, pouting and arguing unconvincingly:

"You usually don't take care of them very much, so you don't even know how annoying they are!

It’s not that Melanie doesn’t understand right from wrong, it’s that she thinks she can get past it by being cunning! William is even more worrying. Although he doesn't take the initiative to cause trouble, his ideas are always very strange, just like...just like..."

After sitting there for a long time, unable to think of words that could describe her brother's peculiar brain circuitry, the sickly girl was so angry that she slammed the bed board and summed it up directly:

"You have to take care of it anyway! If you don't care anymore, it will be too late when you get older!"

"Yeah, yeah, take care of it! You must take care of it! I won't stop you next time!"

After echoing twice, Leon walked over and sat down by the bed. While reaching out and caressing his sister's back, he comforted her softly:

"But you might as well think on the bright side. Although the two of them are indeed naughty, they never take the initiative to bully others. The past few times were not entirely their problem... Well... let me think about it."

After recalling several situations he remembered, Leon said with a slightly complicated expression:

"They caused trouble this time because someone said you would never come back; last time they were playing games in a hurry, and a child called William a wild boy; and last time they were trying to stop the fat guy named Jack from bullying others;

The time before that was when I went to work as a stevedore at the dock and was kicked out because I was too weak. Someone was gossiping in the alley. The time before that was when you coughed too loudly at night and disturbed the neighbors while they were resting, so you were said to be a consumption person... "

The more they recalled why their brothers and sisters were causing trouble, the more uncomfortable Leon and Anna's expressions became.

I didn't think much of it before, but now I see that although they are very naughty, almost every time they cause trouble, there is a reason. So instead of saying that they are "naughty", it is better to say that they are also trying to maintain this in their own way. A fragile little home.

If I, as the elder brother (sister), could have been more powerful and blocked more malice from life for them, the two little ones might not have to be so "naughty" and they could be two children happily. A lively and innocent ordinary child...

"Don't think about it yet."

After looking at the tears flashing in his sister's eyes, Leon quickly changed the subject and found that the situation was getting worse the more he tried to persuade her. He reached out and picked up a yellowed old photo album from the bedside shelf, and put his arms around Anna's thin shoulders to comfort her. road:

"Brother now has a public job in the police department. When he becomes a full-time official at the end of the year, he can also let William and the others go to school for free, so they no longer have to fight with the kids in the alley. So let these past things go! From now on our family It will definitely get better and better...

By the way, the last time we looked at the photo album together was more than two years ago when I had a high fever. It just so happens that it’s not too late today. If you don’t feel uncomfortable, can you look through it with me again? "

"Um…"

Following Leon's strength, she tilted her body and leaned gently on his shoulder. Anna, with reddish eyes, took the photo album, caressed the damaged cardboard shell nostalgically, then opened the album and started flipping through it gently. .

"This is when my mother was young."

Opening the first page of the album, pointing to a faded group photo, a beauty in military uniform with eyebrows somewhat similar to Lyon's and a face filled with heroic spirit, Anna explained softly:

"My mother told me... when I was young, this is a photo of her when she was admitted to the Mechanics College and was assigned to the artillery adjustment class, and then this is my father..."

Ana's soft fingertips moved up and she clicked on a tall, handsome, black-haired man with a gentle smile in the corner of the back row.

"Father and mother were classmates. After graduation, they were recruited into the same army. They gradually became familiar with each other. Then there was...you, and then there was me the next year..."

As Anna flipped through the photo album gently and slowly, she watched the strange man and woman, from acquaintance to falling in love, and finally each wearing a formal dress and wedding dress, embracing each other passionately with tears of happiness in a small church. , Leon's mood also became better.

Different from the cold and cruel reality, those happy moments frozen in the album appear so warm. Even if they fade severely due to time, it does not affect the brightness and dazzlingness of the smiles at all.

By the way...was Anna such a lively child when she was little?

The enviable happiness in the photo album continued. Looking at the little blond girl with an extremely bright smile in the photo, Leon couldn't help but reached out and gently touched little Anna's bright blond hair.

In his memory, apart from the soft eyes and gentle smile on Anna's face and nodding towards him, all that was left of Anna was the cough covering her lips when she was sick, and the frowning from time to time. Leon had never seen his sister before. She had smiled so happily...then what took away her smile?

Seeing that Melanie and Melanie had not yet appeared, but they had already flipped through most of the photo album, the self-evident answer naturally came to mind.

"Well...I suddenly remembered that I still have some unfinished work!" Because he clearly knew what a cruel ending the extremely beautiful family in the photo album would face in the end, Leon's body couldn't help but stiffen slightly. Annoyed as to why he had come up with such a stupid idea to look at the photo album, he said to Anna apologetically:

"How about we see here first? You are tired today, so you should rest early!"

"Um…"

The thin girl responded softly, as if she didn't notice anything unusual about Leon, she closed the photo album in her hand, smiled lightly and tapped the tip of her chin.

However, after Leon left as if fleeing, she did not get up. Instead, she reopened the heavy old photo album and slowly turned to the last page.

On the back cover of the already yellowed album, where the most important photo should have been, there was a torn old photo stuck.

The person who tore the photo seemed to be very hard, and even rubbed the pieces very hard, causing many cracks in the photo to stand up. Even though it seemed to have been carefully processed, it still could not be completely flattened, and even the face of the portrait was not complete. .

In this strange photo, the couple who have appeared many times in the front of the album, but have been dead for six years now, still smile happily towards the camera and stand hugging each other under the sign with "Family Portrait" written in curly fonts. .

However, in front of them, there were not two boys, two girls, and four brothers and sisters, but only a child of about eight or nine years old. The child was holding the hands of his father and mother one by one, looking extremely exposed to the camera. Happy smile.

He stretched out his fingers and touched the face of the child in the photo, flattening the raised part of the crack, revealing the bright blond hair of the same color as his mother. He looked at the smile on the girl's face that was very strange to him. Ana couldn't help but bite her lip hard.

Check out the 16-9 book bar and see the correct version!

Then, as if she had made up her mind, she used her nails to scrape off the stuck photos piece by piece, then found a matchbox and a small bucket in the house, and threw all the pieces into the iron bucket.

After turning her head reluctantly, Anna struck a match with a click, lit a ball of cotton wool and threw it into the bucket. The last photo of her parents and herself was burned directly into black ash at the bottom of the bucket. !

…

Hmm... I seem to have forgotten to do something yesterday.

Not knowing what happened after he left last night, as a social worker without a holiday, Leon climbed out of his little bed as soon as his genius dawned.

After taking out the papyrus used as a memo and looking at it, he found with some helplessness that yesterday, because he was worried about reminding Anna of sad things, he ran away from the picture in the middle of seeing it, leaving the matter of asking her to confirm his birthday. to the back of the head.

Now...she and William should not be awake yet, right? Then let’s wait until we get back in the evening and ask again!

Looking at the still dark master bedroom, Leon shook his head and gave up the intention of asking now. Instead, he held a stack of old newspapers, gently opened the door and left the house, walking on the way to work under the stars.

Um? What about the coffee stall?

When he reached the same location as the previous few days, Leon was a little surprised to find that the current temperature was very suitable for opening a coffee stall, but the profiteer with the same name as Charles Department Store did not come to open his stall today.

After wandering around two nearby streets without seeing any trace of Old Charles, Leon finally gave up on the half-price coffee he had agreed to, walked to another stall across the street with a slumped face, and ordered a cup of the lowest price. Cheap coffee.

What I have to say is that although Old Char’s coffee stall demands money and is stingy in returning items, the “consumption experience” is indeed first-class. Other coffee stalls really can’t compare. This small shop Although the food at the stall was plentiful, it really didn't have the same flavor as what was served at the old Charles stall.

Sighing rather regretfully, and after drinking down the scalding coffee in three gulps, Leon was about to get up and leave when he caught a glimpse of a somewhat familiar face at the next table.

That man...seems like he's also a regular customer of Old Charles?

After identifying the face and confirming that he was correct, Leon hesitated briefly, and then walked over quickly.

"Hello, excuse me."

After pointing towards the other side of the street, before Leon could ask his question, the regular customer raised his eyebrows in surprise and actually spoke first:

"Ouch! Is this the son-in-law chosen by Immortal Charles?"

? ? ?

What? I only drank coffee from him a few times and paid for it, so why am I still his son-in-law?

Looking at Lyon, who was confused by what he called him, the regular customer, who was probably in his fifties, laughed twice, briefly explained the origin of the title, and then asked with a smile:

"You are talking to me because you want to ask why Old Charles didn't come out of the stall today, right? I really know this!"

After beckoning Leon to sit down, the regular customer in his fifties continued:

"I met him last night. It seemed that his wife was doing business with others, but she accidentally fell into a trap set by others. She seemed to have lost a lot of money. She was so angry that she jumped on the spot.

Although his wife was lucky enough to be rescued by a kind-hearted young man passing by, and nothing serious happened, she would probably have to be taken care of for more than half a month.

Old Charles told me that he wanted to take care of his wife and seek justice from those people, and he would definitely not be able to go out in the next few days. "

“…”

Doing business... Being tricked... Losing a lot of money... I was so angry that I was beaten on the spot... I was also saved by a kind-hearted young man passing by... Why does this sound familiar?

After hearing what happened to the other "Mrs. Charles", Leon couldn't help but scratch the back of his head awkwardly, feeling that the coincidences in this world were a bit too outrageous.

To be fair, if the incident of going to the water power company to steal information can be regarded as a "passing by", then what happened to the two Mrs. Charles is really not bad at all.

As for whether the two Mrs. Charles are one and the same, and whether the old Charles buying coffee on the street is the Charles from Charles Department Store...

How is this possible!

After thinking about the possibility of such a strange coincidence, Leon couldn't help but curl up the corners of his mouth and laughed at himself fiercely in his heart.

I met an uncle selling coffee at a street stall. It turned out that he happened to be one of the top three rich men in the royal capital. And when he went on a field mission yesterday, he happened to save the life of the rich man’s wife. As a result, I heard someone say this morning that the rich man seemed to be still alive. He intends to choose himself as his son-in-law and inherit the department stores he opened all over the royal capital...

What a nonsense! I really thought you were the protagonist!

(End of chapter)