Sunny morning.

It's an upscale neighborhood with birch trees growing luxuriantly on the roadside and light spots casting on the ground.

On the front lawn of a villa, a white male tosses baseballs with his eight or nine-year-old son. And his six-year-old son sat on the front steps, looking happy.

"Good catch." The man said, catching the baseball thrown by his son. Everything looks so homely.

The game went on for a moment, and the man stopped and said to his son, who was sitting on the steps, "Okay, Danny, it's your turn." ”

The smile on the eldest son's face disappeared, and he spread his hands: "What? I haven't had enough of it. ”

On the contrary, the youngest son on the steps stood up happily.

"That's enough, 25 times per person, we'll say okay."

"It's not fair." The boy complained.

"That's fair. Hurry up Danny, it's your turn. Then I'm going to go to work for a while. ”

"You know, you're not the only one who has a chance." Danny smugly brushed shoulders with each other.

"Not the only one who has a chance."

"Children......" the father opened his mouth, but finally said nothing. Well......"

He carefully taught his youngest son, Danny, to pick up the ball and let him see it clearly: "Keep an eye on the ball, you will do it this time." You ready? ”

As the words fell, he carefully and slowly threw the ball away.

A fist-sized baseball slices a parabola in midair, and Danny jumps with his hands up before ...... The ball hits the baseball glove and bounces to the side.

The boy who sat back on the steps shrugged at his father.

The man comforted, "Okay. Good try. It's me who didn't serve well, and I don't blame you. ”

He scrambled to pick up the ball Danny had thrown and taught him in a gentler tone. Then the ball is tossed high.

Danny tilted his head high, straightening his arms and waiting for his whereabouts. The boy suddenly rushed in the slope, jumped up and grabbed the falling baseball, and rolled on the lawn. Give a triumphant cheer.

"You nasty!" Danny yelled in anger, ripped off his gloves and threw them at the boy, running back to the villa in anger and slamming the door slammed.

……

"Danny?" The man walked into the house with baseball gloves in his arms and shouted tentatively. Without hearing back, he stepped up the stairs to the second floor. Familiar with the road, he found Danny sitting in the narrow freight elevator on the wall.

"Danny, you shouldn't have said that about your brother with a dirty word."

"But that's the truth." Danny scribbles something on the wall.

"Boy, when I was six years old......"

"Six years and nine months." Danny corrected.

"Okay...... When I was six years and nine months old, catching the ball was also hard for me. ”

"But it's not hard for Walter."

"Walter is ten years old."

"So? He's better than me in everything. ”

"Why, he doesn't play the piano as well as you."

After some gentle persuasion, Danny finally put aside his worries for a while, climbed out of the freight elevator, and trotted back to his room.

The father followed, still trying to make the younger son and the elder brother live in harmony with his words.

"He's got something. You also have strengths. People all have their own strengths. ”

But he soon learned that it was useless. Working at a desk next to the living room, he was soon harassed by his two sons, and the brothers argued more and more loudly until the man couldn't stand it anymore.

"Don't bother me! Give me some space, okay! The man stood up and shouted at the two.

The two boys immediately quieted down.

The man rubbed his forehead and sat down, and said as softly as he could, "There are always times, children, and you all grow up all of a sudden. I want you to be like this today. ”

Ten minutes later.

The two young sons who had quarreled came to the study again and knocked over the water glasses in the middle of the argument. Water was sprinkled on the new drawings he had just designed.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! The younger son repeated like a repeater.

The contradictions in the family are so obvious. Both of them thought that the other shared the affection they deserved, and the father understood that. It's just that he's so busy that it's hard to find time to spend with his sons. There may be only one hour in a day...... Half-hour...... Probably less than half an hour.

But the man rushed to the company for a meeting, so he wouldn't know.

Before leaving, he woke up their sister, a girl who had been hanging out in the hotel all day and was staying upstairs in the bedroom to make up for it, and asked her to take care of her two younger brothers.

The girl behaved impatiently. Reluctantly agreed to fool his father. After he left, he climbed out of bed, stretched out his angry waist and closed the curtains, and fell back into bed.

After a few seconds, I remembered something and grabbed the headphone strap on. Volume amplification.

And then...... Let them go downstairs.

She made the right move.

Ten minutes after my father left, the quarrel broke out again.

The incident started when the bored youngest son Danny threw a baseball at his brother Walter, who was watching a baseball game on the sofa, but smashed Walter in the face with malice. It's not heavy, but it's enough to provoke Walter.

Chasing each other upstairs, Walter finds Danny in the freight elevator.

The freight elevator is so small that only 6-year-old Danny can get into it. The use is to transport some objects to the ground without having to carry them up the stairs.

So for a temporary peace, and at the same time for revenge. Walter got down the rope and put the freight elevator and his brother into the basement.

A perennially dim, cobweb-strewn, dusty basement.

It's also the place where Danny fears the most. All the demons and monsters are hidden here......

At first, as expected, Danny climbed out of the freight elevator and heard strange movements. So he ran frantically to the basement stairs, but accidentally found a game of dusty flying chess placed under the stairs.

Danny picked it up and walked up the steps.

Walter was still slumped on the couch watching TV.

"You're really mean." He vented his frustration with his brother.

It took Danny a long time to come up, so Walter said, "Daddy won't let you play there." ”

The child's temperament is changeable, and he seems to have forgotten his previous dislike for his brother, and walks up to Walter with a box larger than him in both hands: "Look what I found in the basement. ”

Walter glanced at it, "It looks shabby and old." ”

"I like it."

"Yes, of course you do, it's for kids." Walter argued.

Danny knelt on the floor and opened the flair box.

It is a chessboard the size of a table, with slightly rudimentary paintings painted on it. The texture looks like something from the last century.

"Walter, this one is so cool, you should come and see it." Danny extends an invitation to Walter. "Would you like to play with me?"

"Nope."

"I'm not going to cheat."

"You will."

Danny was lying on the floor, staring at the chessboard with his eyes blown up. Suddenly, I saw a twisting mechanism under the chessboard. He reached out and twisted the mechanism twice, and the red button that had been stuck in the chessboard suddenly popped up.

Danny stared at the past, the scratched button giving the urge to press it. (To be continued......)