The witch looks at her moves

Chapter 3 The old days are full of greenery
  White lights, old computers on the table, cabinets full of medicines, scales, eye charts...

In the smell of disinfectant, Su Zhen recognized that this was the infirmary.

The clock on the wall read six forty-five.

He had been unconscious for two and a half hours.

The nurse in the infirmary disappeared somewhere. He was lying alone, unable to exert any strength in his limbs.

Thinking back on what happened in the past few days, he still felt like he was dreaming.

----

Su Zhen was born in the countryside of Nantang in 1992.

The village is located in a remote area with inconvenient transportation, and is a quiet and isolated place.

There is a river behind the house, and there is a canal for irrigating the fields at the door. In it, algae floats, snails move slowly, and there are countless small fish and shrimps. On summer nights, the sky is full of stars, and the sounds of crickets and frogs are endless all night long. They are reminiscing. It's so wonderful here that people forget about the mosquitoes and heat that they once hated.

When I was a child, my sister liked to point to the small ecological circle in the creek and said to Su Zhen in an old-fashioned way: "Brother, look, the fish here are so small, but the fish in the river behind are so big. What does this mean?" It means that people want to go to big places, and only when they go to big places can little people become big people. When my sister grows up, I will take you out of here and go to a big city to see it, okay?"

My sister's name is Su Qingjia, which means beautiful. When she was a child, she was so cute and beautiful that no matter who saw her, they couldn't help but pinch her cheeks.

In his childhood memories, his sister was the all-powerful mountain king. He always followed her, accompanying her up the mountains and down streams, catching fish and crabs. With her around, no one in his hometown dared to bully him.

There are also many ancient monuments in the village that have long been unknown. This is a natural paradise for children.

The siblings would always go there to explore. They found broken earthen pots and rotten copper coins among the ruins, imagining them as rare treasures.

There is a huge banyan tree in the center of the monument. It grows day and night in the deceased family's house. It becomes more and more green in the rain and wind. Its complex root system swallows up the old things around it, and the hanging aerial roots form a curtain. According to the elders in the village, this banyan tree has lived for more than a hundred years and has experienced many vicissitudes of life.

Su Zhen was disappointed when he heard its age. This was the behemoth he remembered most from his childhood. It should be a thousand or ten thousand years old, otherwise it would be hard to brag about in the kindergarten.

At the age of six.

Their mother took them to the town market and found a man in linen to tell their fortunes.

The fortune teller said that my sister had a good fortune and would be able to go to college and become a star in the future, but my brother had bad luck and a rough life.

The fortune teller claims to have read countless people and is a scholar of heaven. The mother was doubtful and asked how to ward off the disaster, but the fortune teller didn't let him spend any money. He only said that the child's life was as thin as paper and could be broken at a blow. His mother alone could not hold him back, and he had to find a powerful godmother for him.

When wanting to recognize her godmother, the first thing my mother thought of was the old banyan tree.

It is a playground for children and an old fairy in the village.

Villagers, especially the elderly, will place shrines, portraits and even lucky cats under the trees. On a sunny day, this landscape is solemn and ancient, full of fairy spirit, but on rainy days, it looks ghostly.

After returning home, my mother waited for the rain, prepared two plates of fruit, a roast goose, burned incense and lit wax, tied a red rope to the old banyan tree, and asked Su Zhen to kowtow three times.

Su Zhen obeyed the instructions.

His mother said that the old banyan tree had deep roots and luxuriant leaves, and its blessings were wide, and it would definitely bless him to grow up safely.

This spring, the old banyan tree no longer sprouted new buds, and this huge "relic of the Qing Dynasty" died.

The incident spread quickly.

Some people say that the old banyan tree has spirituality and prevented the disaster for him. Some people say that this boy was born with an ominous nature, and that he killed old gods. He is probably the reincarnation of some evil spirit. This matter was spread to the kindergarten. Originally, he was with him. The children who were close friends were also ordered to stay away from each other by their parents.

Only Su Qingjia disapproved of the so-called godmother.

At that time, she was already studying in the fifth grade. Under the guidance of her teacher, she sneered at the talk of ghosts and gods. She patted Su Zhen on the shoulder and said, "You don't need gods to care about you. My sister is tough and will protect you."

the following year.

In 2000, the millennium, a flood occurred in the village.

Su Zhen will never forget that flood. The turbid dragon swept the world, the wind roared wildly, and the sand dunes, houses, and trees, which were usually considered solid objects, were torn apart and soaked in the water like tattered paper balls.

My sister was also washed away by the flood.

Floods are meat grinding machines, and those swept away have little chance of surviving.

For a long time after that, he would dream about his sister every night. In the dream, her face was blurry. She held his face and said, "Brother, don't cry. My sister just went to a far away place. She grew up obediently." When I grow up, my sister will come back.

Later, he learned from the TV that this was a natural disaster that could only occur once in a century. Hundreds of children, like him, had their homes destroyed and their lives destroyed. But he would always think of the fortune teller's words and the old banyan tree that no longer sprouted. He felt that he had killed the old banyan tree and his sister.

After that, he lived in fear, always afraid that something would happen to his family again.

But his childhood, as well as his childhood superstitions, seemed to have been washed away by the flood. Over the years, the family has been peaceful as usual, with no disasters.

The times were booming, and his misfortune was completely attributed to natural disasters.

until……

Until half a year ago.

Six months ago, my mother suddenly fell ill and was bedridden. Her father took her to several hospitals for medical treatment, but no specific symptoms could be found. My mother cried out in pain every day and gradually lost weight, and my father's hair was half gray.

Su Zhen would go to the hospital to visit his mother every day after school. The company did not make his condition better, but made him, who was already introverted, even more reticent.

It was also during that time that something strange happened.

At that time, psychic games were all the rage, and Pen Fairy and Die Fairy became a hot topic after school.

Once after school, all the other classmates left, but two female classmates stayed and made an appointment to play the pen fairy game.

The girl spread out a piece of paper filled with numbers, symbols, and dates, held a pen in both hands, and started the psychic ritual.

Su Zhen, who was left on duty, watched for a while.

They communicated with spirits several times, and the atmosphere became tense, but with no results.

It was getting darker and darker. One of the girls claimed that she had something to do at home, so she picked up her schoolbag and left. Seeing that this fruitless psychic pen fairy game was about to end unhappy, the remaining girls noticed Su Zhen.

Su Zhen originally said that he did not believe in these things, but he couldn't help but think of the fortune teller's predictions. He claimed that he did not believe in ghosts and gods, but he had remembered a few words of the alchemist for many years, which was inevitably contradictory.

Seeing his hesitation, the girl knew that something was going on, so she begged for a while. When she heard that Bixian could predict fate, he couldn't help but think of his seriously ill mother, and finally sat down.

"Bixian, Bixian, you are my previous life, and I am your present life. Please show up quickly..."

They closed their eyes, held a pen together, and read this sentence several times.

The pen rested firmly on the paper. Nothing supernatural happened.

"Why doesn't Bixian want to come?" The girl pouted in disappointment.

Su Zhen was also about to go home. Before leaving, he glanced at the scratches on the paper and suddenly frowned: "Why did you pick a red pen?"

He didn't know much about the pen fairy, but he knew that using a red pen was a taboo for inviting the pen fairy.

The girl almost jumped up in fright. She grabbed the pen and scratched two lines on the book. Sure enough, it was a red pen.

"How is it possible? How can it be a red pen? I clearly chose it on purpose. What's going on? When Xiaojia and I were writing together just now, it was clearly a black pen, right? You saw that, right?"

Chills spread from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. The girl's words became more and more garbled and increasingly incoherent. She couldn't stay any longer, packed up her books and stationery, and immediately left this old and cold classroom. Su Zhen looked at the red letter on the paper and felt inexplicable panic.

He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into the trash. Then he took his homework to the hospital where his mother was and didn't think about it anymore.

He thought it was just an accident that Red Pen hired a pen fairy, until seven days later...

Seven days later, he found a note in his Chinese textbook, written in red pen: At 3:20 in the afternoon, pigeons flew into the classroom.

Su Zhen thought it was just a prank and didn't take it to heart.

In the Chinese class, he was awakened by a commotion. When he raised his head, he saw a white shadow flying around the classroom, causing a lot of noise. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a white homing pigeon. Su Zhen woke up immediately and turned around suddenly. Looking at the clock, the time pointed to three-twenty without any bias.

After that, he would receive some notes intermittently. These notes were tucked into the textbooks of different subjects. They could always predict certain things accurately, such as which teacher would take sick leave, what time would it start to rain, and what would be the next exam? The answer to the first multiple-choice question...

These predictions were accurate, but mostly insignificant, until he found a note in his geography textbook: At 1305: p.m., Building , Jiatian Street, Nantang Town will catch fire.

Su Zhen read it twice and found that it was clearly his home address. When he turned over the note, it was already four-thirty.

He quickly ran to the office and borrowed the teacher's phone to call the fire alarm.

Su Zhen did not call a false alarm. When the fire brigade arrived, thick smoke was pouring out of the window. It was later discovered that the cause of the fire was an aging circuit board. Logically speaking, this should have been an accident.

This incident completely subverted Su Zhen's worldview.

He found the girl who was playing the Pen Fairy game with him and asked her if she had encountered anything strange.

The girl's name was Chen Ling. She had almost forgotten the impulsive game of Pen Fairy, but Su Zhen's attitude aroused her great interest. After her repeated questioning, Su Zhen simply told her the matter. .

"Are you saying that you will often receive prophecy notes, and the prophecies on the notes will definitely come true?" Chen Ling was surprised.

"Correct!"

Su Zhen said: "Aren't you all curious as to why I went to the office to report the fire alarm that day? Because..."

Su Zhen took out the note and handed it to Chen Ling. Chen Ling took the note doubtfully, read it over and over again, and kept mumbling: "Can such a thing really happen?"

"Did you really not encounter anything strange after that pen fairy game?" Su Zhen confirmed repeatedly.

"No."

Chen Ling shook her head. She was more interested in what Su Zhen encountered. She asked excitedly and nervously: "Are there any other notes? Just... the new kind."

"I am searching."

These slips of paper usually appear randomly in textbooks.

Su Zhen flipped through the pages for a while and pulled out a new piece of paper from the history textbook. He took a deep breath and handed the note to Chen Ling. Chen Ling felt nervous when she saw his solemn expression and took the note. Shi's hands couldn't help but tremble.

Chen Ling read it twice, her hands stopped shaking, but her cheeks turned a discordant red.

The tension was gone, and she crumpled the note into a ball and threw it on the ground, cursing: "Su Zhen, you have done enough! If you make such a joke with me again, I will ignore you."

Su Zhen picked up the note in confusion, unfolded it, and was also stunned:
  "School is over at 6:30 p.m."

Chen Ling no longer believed his words, even if the last English class of the day really ended on time.

After that, until one month before the final exam, Su Zhen never received a similar note again.

He posted this incident online to ask if others had experienced similar experiences, but only received a reply from an ID named Jia Qi Ru Meng saying, "My respect, the poster's story is so fake."

The weather was getting hotter and hotter. After the exam, summer vacation came. He spent half of the summer vacation in the hospital. His mother's condition improved during this hot summer, and she was almost ready to be discharged.

In the last three days of the summer, he started working.

A small note appeared in the gap. The red handwriting on the note looked as if it were printed on it: Do you want to save your mother?
  Just when Su Zhen thought everything was going to be on track, something strange, like a mouse that had been hiding in the darkness for a long time, suddenly crawled out and gnawed at him. On a thirty-eight-degree day, he stared straight at the note. Breaking into a cold sweat.

Save mom...

But my mother's illness is almost gone. The doctor said she will be discharged from the hospital in two days.

Jingle Bell--

The phone rang, and he picked up the phone in panic. His father's tired voice was choked with sobs, and he brought the news that his mother's condition was deteriorating.

"What the hell are you?"

After Su Zhen hung up the phone, he kept mumbling to the note. The note in the history homework seemed to be able to hear him and answered his doubts:
  I am your godmother. If you do things for me, I can help you.

Godmother?

The memory of his childhood was brought back again, and he first thought of the old banyan tree and the three times his mother led him to kowtow. Things mature over time. Could it be that the old banyan tree did not die that spring, but turned into something that was wrapped around him?

"How can I help you?" Su Zhen murmured to himself.

He opened the political textbook stacked underneath and once again saw a line of words that surprised him:
  help me.

"help me?"

When he saw these three words, Su Zhen suddenly felt a sense of suffocation. The air that filled the surroundings turned into water and poured into his nose and mouth, making it difficult for him to breathe.

"How to save you?"

Su Zhen had a premonition that the content on the next note would answer his doubts.

As he expected.

The writing on the next note was brief:
  Return to your hometown and make a contract with me.

(End of this chapter)