Monument of Life and Death

  Chapter 1 Xiaolan

  She woke up.

  Orange light poured in from the skylight, covering everything in the attic.

  Can't tell whether the light of the morning or the evening is shining on her face, so she woke up.

  The sense of familiarity flooded into her mind like a tide. She should remember this place.

  It’s just that, who I am and where is this place, the answers to these questions seem to be covered with a veil, and it is not clear.

  I don’t want to see clearly.

  She stood up and patted the dust on her body.

  Only the lonely bed frame and the bed board in the attic, shrouded in light, and reflected in her memories are soft and warm.

  Sunlight came in from the small balcony, and the beam of light was filled with impurities. She wanted to take such beautiful and realistic deep breaths a few more times, pushing her hands and telling her that she couldn’t.

  She lowered her head and looked at the stairs leading to the exit.

  Empty and empty.

   is empty everywhere.

  Like the rest of the house, the living room is not inhabited or even inhabited. The dust in the air envelops a mysterious sense of peace of mind.

  She had no nostalgia, and went straight to the door, twisted the lock to open the door, and another cloud of dust rose.

  There is a breath of life in the corridor. She walked down the steps one after another, birds chirping and kitchen utensils, people downstairs greeted high and low, and her footsteps.

  It looked like it was early morning, she thought.

  I heard the voice of the city waking up, all of this is so real.

   "Boom".

  A door was closed.

  She stopped and stared at the woman under several steps.

  The woman closed the door, carrying a small basket in her hand, and when she turned her head and was about to go down the stairs, she noticed her above.

   "Oh! This kid...this kid stood here early in the morning, eh, you are..."

  She seems to know me, she thought.

  She walked down a few steps and met the woman's slightly surprised look.

  The woman looked at her suspiciously.

  "Aren’t you the little girl from Xiao Liao’s family? Why did you come back by yourself after moving away for so long? How about your parents?"

   "Hello Auntie." She went down the stairs and stood beside the woman, lowering her head slightly.

  Is my last name Liao, she thought.

  The woman's gaze has eased, and her limbs are no longer stiff.

   "Hello! The little girl has changed a lot. I remember your name is Xiaolan. Didn't you move out four years ago? Did you move back with your parents?"

  Xiaolan, my name is Liao Xiaolan.

  Mom and Dad...

   "I am also looking for my parents." She looked down at her dirty shoes and shook her hand. "Auntie, have you seen them?"

   Doubt and distrust crawled into the woman's eyes again. In front of him was a gray-headed girl saying inexplicable things. The woman frowned, waved her hand and quickly disappeared at the end of the stairs.

  She wanted to follow up and ask, but finally gave up.

  At least I know who I am, she thought, it’s weird, everything here is weird, I feel familiar, but I don’t feel the same.

  Walking down the steps, she pushed open the heavy door and went to the sun.

  The mottled spots of light sprinkled among the trees in the morning, the smell of dew that has been immersed in the whole night, the sound of the world waking up from a deep sleep, and the realism within reach beating her heart.

  I also just woke up from my sleep, thinking so, she walked slowly along the path in front of her.

  The eyes of passers-by looking at her were somewhat strange, and she probably understood the reason for this strangeness.

  She knew she was looking for. Although she didn't know where the destination was, she knew she was moving forward.

  She walked out of the unattended door of the old community, along the seemingly familiar road, passing through several not-so-wide streets, and stopped as if she had found the end point.

  In front of me was a desolate old site, a dilapidated brick wall, and two unlocked iron doors crumbling, as if it would break away from the grassy courtyard wall and fall to the ground in the next second.

  Several floors of small buildings that look mottled are empty and dilapidated, and on the walls there is a big "demolition" written in red letters.

This is her own school, she is pretty sure of this, but the bleak picture in front of her can't evoke her sense of sight. She doesn't know where the problem is, just thinking that there are enough things that she doesn't know anyway, and it's not bad. One piece.

  She looked around. There were no pedestrians passing by. Is this old house so desolate that it has been forgotten by the city? The whole building radiates an aura that people should not be near.

  She thought for a while, got in through the gap between the broken iron doors, and decided to find something by herself.

In the small square in front of the building, weeds grew from the messy floor tiles, and they grew tall and sturdy and healthy. The circle of willow trees surrounding the square also grew savagely, and weeds when the wind blows. Floating with willow trees.

  She looked at the sky behind with the flourishing plants and ruined buildings as the background. Unlike the sunny days when she came, the sky is now gloomy, like a weather that will rain heavily.

  She stepped on the broken bricks and walked into the main entrance of the building, preparing to find out the secrets of herself or the building.

  On the right is a small room with a small window leading to the outside. This is the communication room. She thought, I still know this.

The front is the stairs upstairs. The red-painted wooden handrails and steel bars are also mottled and covered with dust. She walked up the stairs and looked out from the small window at the corner of the half-floor stairs. The scene is the same as the front door, turning her head to the other half of the stairs, she went up to the second floor.

  From the stairs, extending to both sides was a door. She walked to the nearest one. The door was empty, but the old blackboard hanging in front of the house confirmed that it was indeed a school.

  The classroom was covered with thick dust inside and outside. There were messy and different shades of footprints on the dust. It seemed that this place was not completely unattended, she thought.

The classroom door had no lock, and was concealed. She walked in cautiously and looked around for useful clues, but there seemed to be nothing but the blackboard. She did not hesitate and left this classroom and walked to the next door. .

  The second and third fans seem to be handled cleanly in this way, although they look dirty.

The next door was different. There was no small window on the small door with peeling green paint, and there was no light from the cracks in the door. She opened the door and did not smell the smell of corruption and closure as she imagined, but she was really surprised. a bit.

  This small opaque room turned out to be a toilet.

  The toilet window was closed tightly, the translucent glass blocked the light, and the doors of the four small compartments were tightly closed.

The strange thing is that compared to the previous classrooms, the footprints here are the most messy. There are faint traces in almost every corner. Some footprints are even new. She looked at the shoe prints she stepped on and felt that the latest The footprints may have been left recently.

  There was a burst of excitement in her heart, and she was about to know something.

  After thinking for a few seconds, she decided to start searching from the closed compartment.

  She was on her toes and gently walked towards the first compartment.

   Grasping the rusty handle, she opened the small door closest to her.

  In the small door is an ordinary and worn-out squatting toilet, which obviously looks like it hasn’t been used for a long time, and it has already dried out.

  There are many gibberish left by ballpoint pens or correction fluid on the four walls of the compartment.

   "Old witch..."

   "Curse to see..."

   "I don't want to go to school anymore..."

  She glanced indiscriminately. Most of them were naive children. Below a layer of words were traces of a piece of white paint randomly brushed. Under the white paint, more messages could be seen, but the specific content has been indistinguishable.

  She thought for a while, leaned over and carefully identified whether she could get useful information, worked hard for a few seconds, and then gave up.

  She looked around, there was really nothing in this compartment.

  The second compartment, so, the third, still so.

She was a little disappointed. The clue she expected did not appear, but at the same time she had a glimmer of expectation. The blank space in the first three compartments might be because everything was in the fourth and last compartment. She was standing in the fourth and last compartment. In front of the number, with such complex emotions.

   reached out and put her hand on the handle. The degree of rust on the handle was no different from the first three. She tried to open the door with the same force, but found that the door was first different—it seemed to be closed a little tighter.

  She was looking forward to it, and fearing that her expectation would fail, she increased her strength to try to reveal the secret, but the door was still stubborn. She was a little puzzled, and she pressed her right foot on the number three door and prepared to use her full strength.

   "Kang Dang!"

   "Kang Dang!"

  Two loud noises sounded almost simultaneously.

  She hadn't reacted yet, and the fourth door that had been pulled out had slammed into herself heavily, and she quickly raised her arm to block her.

The wood has decayed for many years, and the connection has long been rusted. She shook her head and shook off the debris from her head. She shook her head and thought that it wouldn’t be painful to hit the door on her body. Knocked off and fell into the third compartment.

  She raised her head and looked into the fourth compartment, but she saw something strange that she didn't expect.

Inside the   compartment is a raised tripod, on which there is something like a camera lying flat, facing the direction of the window.

  Looking along the camera’s shooting route, a perfectly round hole was opened on the side of the compartment by the window, and the camera can directly take pictures of the situation outside the compartment through the small hole.

  She was stunned, and did not realize what she saw for a long time.

  When her thoughts returned to her mind, she understood that someone had been active in this abandoned teaching building, no matter what the purpose was, it was a good thing for her.

  Looking down, it turned out that the footprints in the fourth compartment were densely packed, and the traces of walking took away the dust. The ground was like a dusty mirror. It was wiped indiscriminately and it was not clean.

  She walked to the camera and saw that the surface of the camera was smooth and clean, indicating that its owner had not discarded it.

  The camera is not working, it is just standing here.

  At this time, everything I can see from the small hole is calm and monotonous, a small square of opaque glass, a dirty corner of the window sill, and even the scenery and weather outside the window cannot be seen.

  She was confused and decided to wait here for the owner of the camera. She also had the urge to secretly look at the video recorded by the camera in the past.

  The weather outside the window gradually changed. The dark clouds on the other side just covered the sky a little bit. She walked to the window and looked at the world outside the window through the upper semi-transparent glass.

  The tall and thin weeds on the playground swayed wildly, the wind was blowing, the blue sky was gradually engulfed by thick clouds, and the good morning weather seemed to suddenly disappear from a dream.

Her thoughts were walking, the sky slowly disappeared outside the window, the cumulonimbus cloud came over, the small toilet was darkened, and the street outside the small playground was empty. She realized that the whole street was like this. desolate.

  She heard the rolling wind beating heavily on the window, the deafening sound of the wind resembling the sob of the earth, she understood that a storm was about to begin.

  Yes, the storm is about to begin.

  (End of this chapter)