Kemira paused, "Of course not," she suddenly became a little angry: "I don't think anyone will believe what is depicted in nineteenth-century movies anymore - my father is not the boss of the Green Gang, his subordinates neither dance their fingers to spell codes, nor do they drink liquor mixed with chicken blood - those who make mistakes will only be fired, not beheaded!" ”

"Of course not," said Steff, who had not paid any attention to the young woman's discoloration, "but Mr. Keshengguo is a councilman, right, there are a dozen agencies willing to help him with some troubles." Maybe the police and the FBI – does your boyfriend have a permanent job? What about taxes? Is he a fond of participating in the kind of parade where he strips naked and throws red paint on his body? Did he ever cut the wires in a chicken farm or open cages in his lab and zoo? Or is it something else that is more out of the ordinary? The police might not have paid attention to that mischievous boy before, but if a councillor, an ex-officio member of all committees of the council, has the right to introduce bills to the city council, individually or jointly, and has the right to attend all the important meetings of the city council, the venerable gentleman has shown him extraordinary concern, I mean, the negative kind, and he will find that he is full of holes, and each hole can keep him in prison for a month, and in that time, He is likely to be treated as a girl or a punching bag by the other prisoners, or a sudden illness or something, and he will not die, but he will suffer more to live than to die. He noticed that Kemira's face was pale, and fear began to build up in her eyes: "You understand, right? That's why you came to me, a good old man who had just arrived in your land. You wish I could run to Mr. Kai Shengguo and say that I am in love with you, and in pure and normal love, engaged in half a year, and married in a year. Is that right? That's why you're coming to me today, so that Kai Shengguo's attention will be diverted from your little boyfriend to me. Stryff spread out his hands, and he used his little finger instead of bread to wipe and blur the lines of the charcoal, so that the edges of his fingers became black, and there was a scar on the side of his left hand: "That lucky little fish will be able to escape from the great net of Kaishengguo - even if you find out that he is not in that terrible net in the end, you can escape your father's surveillance and control under my cover." But the annoying thing is that I'm going to get stuck right under Mr. Kay's nose, and there's no doubt that when you and your little boyfriend are naked in a newspaper for the whale to live, he'll pour out most of his anger on the outsider who dares to join forces with his daughter to deceive him and cause great harm. ”

A rosy flush spread across Kemira's neck, half irritation, half embarrassment, and Streiff was absolutely right, she had been really worried about it for more than a year - Stryff had done almost all of the acts that Stryff had done, and he had been arrested by the police many times, but it was clear that the number of times he had been forcibly detained before his disappearance had increased dramatically, and that he had been humiliated and beaten each time.

"Do you hate your father?" Stryff asked quietly.

Kemira looked up, and she looked at him in surprise, as if he had suddenly turned into a panda.

"Have you ever hated it? Because he did more than just your love – he controlled you since you were a baby, he could have thrown you to your mother, given her a sum of money, and left her to fend for herself and you, so that you might still be like many girls raised by single mothers - with your own ideals, your own love, your own life. But his morality does not allow him to do this, he married your mother, but he didn't want her, he just wanted you, let you have his surname, give you a Chinese name, a Chinese woman became your adoptive mother, you grew up like a real Chinese girl under her education, your bones, blood and muscles were full of sandalwood and ink, and for a time you considered yourself a pure Chinese and were proud and happy for that. But all of a sudden, he wants you to marry an outsider because you have an outsider's face, and maybe skin and eyes...... Did he just find out about it today? Didn't he ever notice that you had moss-green eyes, flaxen hair, and white skin? ”

"Nope." In that demagogic voice, Stryff continued, "He knows everything, and he knows everything about you, from body to heart. But why should he care? He has his standards, and everything has to be done according to his standards, otherwise it will be wrong or even sinful. ”

"Father is a stubborn man." Kemira said her voice was very dry.

"You hate his stubbornness," said Steve, "and without his stubbornness you would be much happier." ”

Kemira stood up.

"I'm sorry," she said, her eyes widened, "to make such a request of you—" Her voice was suddenly choked, and she tried several times, but could only utter a few faint syllables, and the red golden sunlight shone on her from the window, and her eyes shimmered brightly.

Before tears fell, Kemira left the classroom, and Striff didn't hold back.

Did she say goodbye? Perhaps, Streiff didn't bother with this, he lifted the mink-smooth head, and his long, pale fingers carefully pinched the edge of the cork—like grasping the neck of a viper, and he lifted it up to the light outside the window. It had a painting of Kemira, which she tried to take away quietly as she left, but the leather paper was nailed to the cork board with small round nails, and she could not take the common cork.

He heard a small sneeze.

Striff immediately put down what he was holding, stood up, and walked over to the desk that looked like a stainless steel autopsy table and looked in—the black calfskin chair had been bought from a thrift auction, and the high back could be lowered and placed as flat as the seat cushion, and a footstool of the same material was included, and the three were added together to make it a very comfortable and discreet little bed. Sasha. Stryff curled up inside, wrapped in a warm, soft blanket, a crimson hibiscus tree flower stuck between his lips and nose, making him sneeze softly.

The child's eyes twitched, his eyes opened, and Striff saw a beautiful purple color.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up quietly, in a pleasant room." Stryff said that he walked around the table and leaned down to Sasha, he checked the child's temperature, and found that the low-grade fever caused by the tooth change had not subsided, and then he checked Sasha's teeth, neat, small, white baby teeth, one of the front incisors had been lost, and the side incisors and first molars next to him also showed signs of loosening, he stopped, thought for a moment, trying not to think about the teeth that had fallen in the snow and black mud— The first sa was dragged out and slaughtered by the routs before she could change her teeth, no more difficult than a fawn, and the pot hung under the beams of the roof, and the bottom of the pot was burned with beautiful frames and the feet of the armchairs, and they fished her out and ate her, which was both fragrant and sweet.

Sasha should live longer, very long, he will be cautious.

Stryff pulled open the bottom drawer, where there was a portable syringe box, and he took out the syringe, the needle was as thin as a hair's hair, and he sprinkled it with sand. Stleiff did the injection. Stryff didn't trust other doctors, so he didn't have his own personal doctor, and Sasha certainly couldn't have one - he wiped it with a cotton ball and held the eye of the needle, waited a few seconds, and when it was turned over, there was only a little bit of pink on it, which even a nurse with more than ten years of experience might not be able to do so well, and now he remembered the scene when he injected Catherine, and it was from that day that he was sure that Sasha could be reborn in Catherine's body.

"Is it Kemira?" Sasha asked in a daze, "Gardenia." ”

"That's right, Marc Jacobs, the gardenia at the core," Striff said, "it's her." ”

He left the blanket on Sasha, and he picked up the child and brought it to the put together desk.

Sasha sat on his lap, Stryf caught his feet through the blanket like a pair of rabbits, and his other hand passed under Sasha's ribs and pressed against the desk.

Sasha was in a much better spirit than he had been a few minutes earlier, and he looked through the students' work, and then Catherine's drawings caught his idea.

In Sasha's Palace of Memories there was also a large library, "The Psychology of Painting", "Painting and the Spiritual World", "The Secrets Revealed by Pictures", "Painting of the Heart", etc., which were quite popular in the market, and were said to be able to understand the human psyche from the study of graphics and drawings, which he stored in a corner, but this did not prevent him from taking out and comparing them when necessary—although from the point of view of Dr. Hopkins in the past, these authors were the same as Dr. Killton of the Baltimore Violent Psychiatric Hospital—' Authoritative and professional', 'omnipotent', is the lack of a formal medical diploma...... "I can't say they're wrong, it's probably the only thing these bluffing fellows find in a tome that they think they can figure out—but the problem is, if you're willing to get to the bottom of it, you'll end up with shit in it," Sasha remembers his father saying in the usual contemptuous tone, "It stinks." ”

- Well, let's take a look at the contents, "The picture is large, aggressive, the picture is small, reserved and shy, drawn in the center of the paper, full of security, painted on top, very optimistic, painted on the edges...... Oh, that's too bad, you're extremely lacking in self-confidence; The more powerful the brush, the more confident it is, and the staccato and crooked brush indicates that the writer is supple and timid...... The thick trunk symbolizes vigorous vitality, and the small trunk represents a lack of support in the journey of life, and if the fruit falls, it is terrible, you are forced to leave your home, and in a very unpleasant situation...... Look at how much fruit has been dropped, which will tell you how old you are – it's over? Sorry no, not yet, we can also look at the scars on the tree, how many scars you have means how many tragic pasts you have...... This represents unemployment, this represents divorce, and there are also parents who have died and children who have gone to jail...... Does it count if a puppy is crushed to death by a car? And, of course, maybe smudged nail polish and expired milk. ”

"A bunch of tricksters." Streiff held up the picture: "And I went through my little secret—if these kinds of books can be sold in the tens of thousands of copies (which is incredible), wouldn't anyone among those who read them become wary of this?" When someone pulls out a pen and paper and asks you to draw a tree, a house, and a person – I never thought anyone would happily tear open their chest and pull out their entrails for someone to see...... Okay, let's take a look at this first, it's got a lot of stuff in it – the first is the tree, have you ever seen that way? There is hardly a single straight line, which extends from the lower left corner of the paper to the center of the picture, the roots are exposed, the branches droop and sway in the wind, then there are staccato lines, starting from the bottom of the tree and extending to the other end, and finally a very small piece, if you look closely, is this a house? Yes, it's a house, a very small house, without doors or windows.

So, if we are willing to follow the instructions in those books, we are willing to analyze it: the tree at the edge of the picture represents insecurity, the exposed roots indicate that the writer is not mature enough, the drooping branches are a metaphor for her still stuck in the past life, the lack of fruit symbolizes that she is not demanding of herself and has no goals, the staccato lines indicate that she lacks self-confidence, and the house that is too small represents her lack of longing for her family and reluctance to communicate with others. ”

Stryff gave a mocking smile that would have made many people furious.

"But is it true?" He gently rubbed Sasha's cheek with the tip of his little finger: "Kemira only has half of the blood in her veins that belongs to Chinese, but her education is purer than that of many Chinese." Sasha, as her name suggests, uses an obvious but hard trick to see, she applies some of what she has learned to the picture, and her true thoughts are hidden. So we see sloping trees, drooping branches—but I think she should have drawn a willow tree, and the willow tree is a well-known plant that is easy to reproduce and can survive tenaciously in many places; There are also tree roots, which in the East represent a completely positive image, and they don't mind depicting it, and they make many of the roots into common utensils, because it symbolizes solidity and reliability...... As for the lines that cannot be connected, the vain and feeble, they should express water, abundant water, perhaps a wide river, because the house will become small because it is on the opposite side of the river - Chinese paintings hate to describe everything in detail, so the doors and windows are probably omitted rather than absent...... There were no boats or bridges on the river, and her home was isolated, but safe and close to water, which was a good sign – and lo and behold, if we weren't careful enough, or didn't know enough about her and what was behind her, it would have been easy to get caught. ”

At this point, he paused.

“…… Which home is it? He muttered thoughtfully.

(To be continued)