-1-
The windows on the twelfth floor are very high, and you can touch the misty clean clouds by lifting your hand through the clear floor-to-ceiling windows.
The great light of the sky lifts the rippling cloud veil and shoots straight into the verdant green of the window sill, penetrating the plain curtains and sprinkling mottled light and shadow on the cold wooden floor. Occasionally a few pieces of halo reflected in the crystal clear fish tank dancing with the wind, like a blooming eager calla lily.
I fluttered my red fins, bypassed the annoying and tangled water plants, crossed the scavengers tightly covering the inner wall, drove away the layers of sticky moss under the pebbles, and chased after the luxuriant calla lilies.
The sunlight splashed as much as it could into my pink and deep eyelids, and I was disoriented by the brief sting. I shook my splotchy tailfin and darted under the hard shield of my old turtle friend, creating a ripple of red.
I've lost track of how long I've been in this place. People often say that fish only have a seven-second memory, but I don't know, what we choose to forget are bitter memories.
-2-
At that time, I was wandering in the flower and bird market. In the redundant aquarium, just turn around a gap, and the same kind of passionate embrace. I was suffocating in the green, black, fetid waters, looking at the heavy scale floating on the horizontal surface and my companion's bony, helpless eyes, ready to die and rot here.
Until the senile old man stumbled and wandered in. The wind puckered his weedy silver hair, and the strands twisted and knotted merrily around his temples. His face was as pale as paper, making the dark brown age spots more and more conspicuous, high cheekbones, sparse eyebrows under the folds covering the corners of the eyes, the pair of tired and cloudy eyes decorated with heavy bags under the eyes, in the grooves as if telling a weather-beaten story of the old days.
Without realizing it, we have been looking at each other for a long time.
I looked at him no longer clear and slightly yellow eyes, chapped rough lips exposed in the few remaining yellow teeth, shaved not clean and the emergence of silver stubble on the chin, as well as blooming in the cheeks of the spring flowers seem to blossom.
He stretched out a pair of sinewy hands from the depths of his bloated sleeves, the backs of which were cracked and rough as pine bark, with a thick layer of yellow calluses on the inside and outside. He used his short, thick fingers as if they wouldn't bend and dipped them in spittle to slowly count the pile of green and flowery tickets, and then handed them to the boss with a smile, hobbling toward me.
Then I was taken back by him and lived in a house that was warm in winter and cool in summer, and ate cheap but delicious fish food.
-3-
For a long time after that, the old man who saved me from the dire straits of the world would always stagger to the balcony in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows at dawn, unveiling the hidden veil and letting the first rays of sunshine in the morning to wrap around the weakening body.
His frown and the corners of his mouth, curled up into a ball from the cold, were bathed in the warmth of the aperture and stretched out. Following the maximum stretch of lazy arms in circles, neck backward, steeply rushed to the half-void half-covered window head shouted, shocked the turtle underwater old friend four feet to the sky back into the shell, the sound of the thick voice also immediately faded in the boundless skies.
He turned around, his face gradually returned to calm, walked straight to me, shivering towards the fish tank to throw colorful fish food, the feed in the air through a few extremely beautiful parabolic sigh after sinking to the bottom of the water, splashing a transparent water.
He shuffled his slippers and lay back on the old wicker chair, with a broken leg on the bridge of his nose, looking at the thick, yellowed album, the wrinkles on his face quickly gathered at the corners of his mouth, and he let out a long series of melodious, dry and cheerful laughs.
The page of old photos with the corners up, telling the story of this old man's great past. He quietly held the album, from noon to see the sunset, see the tears, eyes red, voice murmur melted in the increasingly bleak sunset.
He slowly got up, stood in front of the old wooden table, and looked at the dark portrait in front of him in silence, on the portrait of his late partner's smile nightmare like flowers.
-4-
Abruptly, the obscure living room was filled with the ringing of a long-lost phone. The old man gave a jolt through his body and perked up towards the telephone, even his footsteps hummed lightly.
"Hey, Dad, how's your health these days? We won't be going back for New Year's this year, I have to work overtime, and Xiaohui has to go on a business trip, and neither can spare the time."
I eagerly poked my head out of the water and watched as the old man's just raised eyebrows instantly collapsed, and the little flickering sparks in his eyes were completely annihilated.
I still remember last year's New Year's Eve, the old man picked up a table of dishes, wearing a big red sweater full of spring waiting for his son to return. I still can't forget that he received his son's overtime phone call after the expression of frustration, so I think the mouth of the fish food is so tasteless, that piece of bright red sweater is also like a sudden fade, the style is no longer.
The old man was stunned for a long time, shouting into the microphone:
"Oh, it's all right, it's good to be busy. You also need to take care of your health, my eldest grandson is also quite good, right."
"No, no, I'm not missing anything. I'm fine, day after day either playing cards or square dancing, busy na!"
"In the future, don't give me so much money, I'm an old man who can't afford to spend so much. You ah, save a little more money to my eldest grandson to buy some nutritious food, he is the time to grow body ......"
The old man clutched the phone and talked incessantly, burying the secret of the reunion that could not be spoken in his heart. He is no longer broad spine more and more hunchbacked, the temples of the strands of black silk suddenly turned white, back in the dim lamp pulled a long, long as if to float to the son of the city, for them to do a real sense of the New Year's Eve dinner.
I turned my head and couldn't bear to look any further. The window is all a depressed light, the occasional few bloom in the night sky fireworks bright and dark reflected in the glass, sent a touch of winter warmth.
The old man at the entrance, still to the long "toot" of the busy voice chatter ......
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