That's right, the daughter that the swamp monster just said.

"Wait..."I thought of all sorts of answers, but I didn't expect it to be like this, "Are you a monster?

"Of course she's human," Swamp said, "and I've been there for her since she was born, watching her grow little by little, and she's like a daughter to me." ”

"Do you know her mother?" was the only possibility I could think of, after all, it was impossible for a little girl to know the monsters in the mountains for some reason.

"If we know each other well, then I don't know her mother, and if we don't know each other, I am too familiar with her mother. "Although I am a youkai, I am no different from a normal swamp except that I can move with the water, and countless lives begin and end with me every year." The child's mother, Ling, first came to me to end her life. ”

“... Why?"

In order to subsidize her own brother, Ling's parents married her away without her consent, but fortunately, her in-laws were kind and gentle, and her husband was also considerate, which somewhat made up for her anxiety about marrying far away. Fuyu Mountain is not a rich mountain, and at that time, it was not like now, when many people came to travel, and Ling's husband could only often go to the other side of the mountain to buy and sell small things in exchange for daily necessities. ”

It sounds exactly like me when I was destitute.

"The days have passed like this for two or three years, the only regret is that Ling has never had children, the in-laws are anxious to hold their grandson more and more eagerly, and the parents have shown some dissatisfaction with Ling, but her husband's thoughtfulness has not changed from beginning to end, and she no longer asks for anything. The swamp monster sighed softly when he said this, "Unexpectedly, her husband fell from the mountain on a rainy day. ”

"He's a miserable man. ”

Not only that, soon her in-laws fell ill one after another because of excessive grief, her husband's relatives and her parents were unwilling to help her, she had been relying on her husband's family to live, and suddenly she lost her backbone, but she still tried all kinds of ways to maintain the family's livelihood and never gave up, who knew that a sentence when her in-laws died soon after, but a sentence completely crushed her. ”

"What?"

"If it weren't for the extra mouth of you in the family, my son wouldn't have to go over the mountains to earn a living, but even if he was so good to you, you didn't leave him a son and a half daughter. "That's what she told me later." ”

“...... That's not what she wanted. I said, "She didn't do anything wrong." ”

"Who says it's not," the swamp slowly sank into the water, revealing only one head on the water, "but at that time she didn't know what was wrong, the day her in-laws died was also a rainy day, according to Ling's own words, she came to me by ghost, and it was too late to find herself in the quagmire, but she was not afraid at all, and calmly watched herself sink deeper and deeper, until she couldn't breathe and didn't regret it." ”

"That woman named Ling, you saved her, right?"

"Originally, I didn't want to do this, too many lives have ended in me, I have long been numb, and people who do not value life are not worth saving," the swamp had no expression, and could feel it laughing from the ripples on the water, "However, I heard a voice in her body, it was the voice of a child, over and over again, faint but persistent, she kept asking me for help, saying to save my mother." ”

"Ling didn't know she was pregnant?"

"She must not have known it then," said Marsh, "and I didn't know why when I heard that voice, I was saddened for the loss of my life for the first time, and by the time I reacted, Ling had already been dragged ashore by me, but it was too late, and Ling was not breathing." ”

“... And then?"

"Later, I did something that was not allowed under any circumstances, the swamp is the place where life ends and is born, and as a youkai of the swamp, I shouldn't interfere with other lives, but I didn't hold back, and used the power of the swamp to awaken the life that was still sleeping in the swamp and waiting to be reborn, and injected it into Ryoshi's body. ”

"I guess there's a side effect," I said, "after all, it's against nature." ”

"That's inevitable," said the swamp, "Ling began to be able to see me after she woke up, although she saved her life, but because of the injection of other lives, her habits have changed a lot, on the surface she can't see anything, in fact she can only live by drinking the water here and eating the fish here raw, not only that, but her memory is missing, almost staying at the moment when she walks into the swamp, and the rest is only sporadic fragments." ”

"What about you?" I asked, "doesn't it affect you at all?"

"Nature is fair, I prolong human life without authorization, nature will definitely not sit idly by, Ling's child, is nature's punishment for me. "This child shares life with me, but my life is long enough, and it won't be good to give her some, and the cruel thing is that nature connects my heart with her, and her joys and sorrows, all her moods, directly affect my state." ”

"It's really like your daughter. ”

"Well, it may feel like your human father's feelings for his daughter, I want her to grow up healthy, I want her to be happy, I want her to give her the best of everything. The surface of the swamp began to bubble again, "Ling gave birth to a child from me, she can see me like Ling, but she doesn't have to depend on me to survive, she named the child Zhu, mother and daughter lived with me for two whole years, I want to do everything I can to make Zhu's life as close to human life as possible, and all this lasts until she is one and a half years old." ”

I touched the surface of the swamp with my hand, and it turned out to be warm.

"It may be the reason for being away from the crowd, Zhu develops slower than ordinary children, and it also makes me ignore a lot of problems, until one day I see another child of the same age and find out the seriousness of the problem, Zhu can't walk, can't speak, rarely speaks, doesn't even babble, most of the time, she just clapps her little hands and looks at the world with a smile. "I told Ling that she had to leave me with her daughter and return to human social life." ”

"Will Ling agree?" I said, "It's been so long since the child adapts quickly, and it's going to be hard for her." ”

"Of course she didn't agree at first," said Marsh, "but as the child grew up, she also discovered that Zhu's behavior was very different from that of humans, presumably due to motherhood, and Ling finally took the first step for her daughter." ”

"It's hard, it's unbearable to imagine. I said.

"This process did go wrong, Ling has been away from human beings for too long, and he doesn't know what has changed in society, unexpectedly, a loyal and honest man under the floating jade mountain accepted the mother and daughter, tolerated all their anachronistic practices, and therefore endured a lot of white eyes, this man treats Zhu as his own, two years later, except for Ling who needs to come to the swamp from time to time to absorb nutrients, the mother and daughter are no different from normal people. ”

"According to you, Zhu should remember you, right?"

"It should be like this, but I can't do it, having a human father who can accompany her is the happiness of a child. ”