If I don't have money to go to college, I can only go to slay the dragon

Chapter 352 Funeral
The snow cleared that morning, and it wasn't just snow, and it wasn't just morning.

In 1990, the North Pole was in the middle of winter. Based on the calendar of the country in the south, this was the third cold day after the winter solstice, and it was the coldest period of the year.

During these three or nine days of severe cold, another child in Wuming Port died.

The small snow mound is on a flat ice field, and the white cold sun hangs on the sky, which cannot provide heat. The only use is the cold light, which can only illuminate the slanted backs of the children standing in front of the snow mound. on the ice.In front of the snow hill, every child was wrapped in warm cotton-padded clothes and bearskin jackets, and stood quietly in front of the snow hill. Occasionally, two or three sobs sounded, which set the main tone of sadness for this morning.

In the clearing of the snow field, the black tombstones and the white snow form a black and white contrast, which is as abrupt as a bird jumping over the sea and peeking at the airy fish. In this place in the North Pole, apart from white, black only means blizzards and tombstones. Although the two are quite different in expressive power, one is a natural phenomenon and the other is a man-made object, but at least today they both represent the same thing-death.

The head nurse, who was temporarily qualified as a pastor, stood in an open space 300 meters east of the port, holding a 75-volume compilation of Bibles, chanting the name of the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and praying for him to clear away the faint clouds in the Arctic sky. Take the stray lamb in the snowdrift.

Renata is not tall, but she is standing at the back of the crowd at the moment, wearing a bearskin hat embroidered with red five-pointed stars, her ears are hidden in the brim of the hat to hug the warmth, there is no stepping or crowding, just quiet Standing obediently, hugging the puppet bear, looking through the gap between people's arms, looking at the tombstones piled up in the ice and snow.

When Alyosha was walking in the dead of night, it is said that the nurse found his body in the morning. He did not get up to wash in the morning bell as before. When the angry head nurse opened the door, the body of Alyosha on the bed was already stiff. It fell off, lying stiff in the cold quilt, with a faint frost on the closed eyes, and the eyelashes were bent by the weight of the ice beads, hanging in an arc, just like his curled up body when he walked.

Why do eyes and eyelashes freeze?Maybe it was because Alyosha knew that his life was not long before he died, so he secretly cried for a while?Renata silently guessed what might have happened last night. A child who was already seriously ill was lying on the bed, feeling his body getting colder by inch, knowing that he was going to die, so he couldn't help crying, Afraid of disturbing others, she secretly cried, and halfway through crying her tears froze her eyes!Then there is eternal darkness, I can’t open my eyes, I can only freeze and numb in the darkness until I lose consciousness, and then I can’t even cry, because my lips are also frozen, and my tongue is spinning around in my mouth , The eyeballs also turned, and finally they couldn't move, and they left completely, disappeared in the darkness, and disappeared in their lives.

I heard that people will have the illusion of warmth after being frozen to death?Would Alyosha do the same?Maybe, after all, in the version that Renata heard, the head nurse said that he had a smile on his face when he left. Renata had never seen Alyosha’s body, although the few led by Khorkina The children swear that they have seen it, but if they are asked to describe it more carefully, they can only stammer and say that he is covered in hard, frosted, and scary. Ask with a blushing face if you think they are lying!

Renata didn't dare to choke with Khorkina, and none of the children in the port dared to choke with Khorkina, because those who choked with Khorkina always had bruises and swollen faces the next day. As for who They couldn't tell the reason for the beating, and even the nurse couldn't find out the 'murderer', so they could only warn them repeatedly not to fight in private.

The sun climbed into the sky, it was getting late, and the mourning had lasted long enough, the head nurse was obviously a little impatient, and she began to speed up to tell about Alyosha's life, this paragraph was very brief and almost passed in a few words ——Alyosha himself is only eight years old. What kind of life can an eight-year-old child have?
He grew up in the port day after day, never experienced adventures, never fell in love, and never went out of this North Pole to see the outside world, so the head nurse can only praise him as a pure child.Because purity means cleanliness, and cleanliness means dullness, dullness is like white paper, white as the unchanging arctic ice sheet, no fault can be found, but after a long time, I feel bored, just like this routine The same as the form of mourning.

Renata quietly lowered her head and yawned. It was a very rude thing to do at a funeral, but he was really not familiar with Alyosha. Among the crying children, five were easily emotionally disturbed. The three girls are Alyosha's real playmates on weekdays. They are still young. Although they don't understand the meaning of death, they know the cruelty of farewell - which means that they can no longer play ghosts and catch people. His companions will lie under this snow mound for the rest of their lives, like other children who have left them.

In a distant place, the same snow mounds stood there, also with black tombstones inserted, but some were staggered, the latest two of them were two children who went away last year, their names were Gregory and Mikhail Er, they are all clever children. One walked with acute gastritis and ate the dirty things left in the kitchen, and the other walked with a bad cold and tried to take a cold bath in the coldest few days. Alyosha who left last night seems to be because of taking a bath The encephalitis caused by not rubbing your head is undoubtedly a fatal thing in the Arctic port where the medical level has been lost in the inland of the motherland.

In recent years, it seems that there have been more and more safety accidents. Renata is aware of this, and children keep leaving them. Alyosha is not a special case, and she is not the last one. Protect yourself well, just having 'Zorro' in your arms is not enough, 'Zorro' can only save her from monsters, but what really takes away the children is the silently invading disease.

Renata swears that from today onwards, she will strictly follow the new life safety guidelines released by the doctor this morning, and never give her delicate body the slightest chance of getting sick, at least she must quit bedwetting first!I heard that bedwetting is the easiest way to get a cold. Mikhail died of a bad cold. She didn’t want to have a high fever of 45 degrees like the other person and almost turned into a humanoid heater (this is what Renata heard from Khorkina. Yes, the original version was 45 degrees, and it may have been changed to [-] degrees after consulting the book, but there is still a big discrepancy with the facts).

"Just quitting the bedwetting is not enough. Judging from the situation in recent years, it is difficult to not get sick sometimes in this port, and Mikhail's fever was only 45 degrees at the worst time, 45 degrees. Probably he can’t survive even half an hour, and my bath water is too hot at [-] degrees.” Behind Renata, a light voice suddenly came from the distance of the crowd, and the voice was full of utter desperation. The banter that should have appeared on this occasion.

But that wasn't what Renata cared about the most. Even she yawned at Alyosha's funeral, so what right did she have to accuse him of teasing a man who had been dead for half a year?What she really cared about was that this voice actually said what she was thinking just now, as if peeping into her brain, it brought out the original words of the villain who was talking to her in the deepest part of her heart!

Renata turned her head alertly, took half a step back and bumped into the slender Yakov in the crowd behind him. Yakov turned his head and gave Renata a sullen look, as if blaming her for ruining the solemn atmosphere of the prayer, and was about to say At some point, he suddenly stopped talking as if thinking of something, the slight anger on his face faded like melting snow, and turned back to look back at the praying head nurse with a blank expression.

At this time, the head nurse also turned the pages of the Bible in her hand, which contained the condolence written by the doctor in the morning. The most exciting part has been read, she cleared her throat and wanted to speak the next line as solemnly and sacredly as possible, children She also tightened her face to express her memory of her companion, but at the end of the crowd, Renata's attention was completely attracted by the girl on the snow not far away.

The girl's hair is golden, and the color is different from Renata's light platinum like withered grass, and it is not the golden texture of Khorkina. If you want to describe her golden hair, Renata can only think of it in the textbook I have seen on the Internet the golden color of the wheat waves swaying in the wind in the autumn wheat field. It is the gold of sunlight, the gold of vitality, and people can feel the warm gold with their eyes.

Renata didn't know this girl. She had never seen her among the 38 children in Black Swan Harbor, because if she had seen her, she would not be able to forget the existence of such a beautiful child, and even stood with Khorkina She will be a little ashamed in front of her.But she just appeared here so generously, integrated into the funeral, squatting on the deserted snow behind everyone, humming a tune that no one could appreciate, wearing the same outfit as them, wearing He happily builds a snowman in a bearskin hat and cloth gloves.

"Renata, do you know that Alyosha's greatest wish is to see the beach once?" The blond girl raised her head and chatted with the alert Renata naturally. Reflecting the ice floes on the Arctic Sea and the shadows of icebergs in the distance, it adds a bit of freezing whiteness to her golden mood, "Alyosha yearns for the distant summer and the sea, and the warm golden sand Well, if she was born in an inland city by the sea, he would probably be an excellent waver, so I think he also wanted to be buried in the sea when he died, and now we can see that he died as he wished."

"But this is not the sea." Renata hesitated for a long time, and found that no one noticed that she and the blonde girl had deserted at the funeral, and then she gradually got the courage to talk to the other party.

"This is the sea. At least hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, the ice sheet under our feet was not an ice sheet, but an ocean. It wasn't until the weather became cold that the seawater was frozen and became the thick ice layer now. So Ah Liao Sha was buried in the sea, just like his wish when he was alive." The blonde girl said.

"Are you an acquaintance of Alyosha? I haven't met you before. What's your name?" Renata couldn't help asking in a low voice, hugging Zoro even more tightly.

"I know Alyosha, but Alyosha doesn't know me, but that doesn't prevent me from getting to know him very well." The blond girl smiled and said, "A very good kid, lively and clever, so his best game is Ghost catcher, in this game he plays the best role is 'ghost', because he runs the fastest, very fast, can catch his companion every time, if he grows up, it must be this Not one of the fastest kids in the harbor!"

Renata seemed to have heard some things about Alyosha before, and she did have the impression that the child was restless and unable to sit still, but this did not dispel her doubts. She stared at the blonde girl and asked: "What about you? I never Haven't seen you."

"It's just that you haven't met me. The doctor, the head nurse, Khorkina and many others who should know me know me. Now you can know me too. You can call me Yelena." The blonde girl stood up and patted She clapped her hands, the snowman she built was completed, Renata looked down, and the snowman on the ground did what the cold wind couldn't do.

On the ground, a curled up little boy made of a snowman was lying quietly on the ground, covering his chest with his hands. However, in front of him, a heart of snow was lying half a meter away, as if It was picked out alive, and a bright arctic poppy was stuck on it. The flower that should have been white was shockingly red.

The blond girl didn't pay attention to Renata's reaction, she just quietly looked at the boy curled up on the ground, then looked at the huge black port in the distance, and said a word.At this time, the head nurse in front of the tombstone also read out the last words of condolences, and Renata heard them clearly. Both the blonde girl and the head nurse seemed to say the same sentence.

They said, "Not returning as scheduled is the meaning of parting. Every time you leave without saying goodbye, it is a long-planned soul journey."

　ps: The following is a short story about Black Swan Harbor
　　
　
(End of this chapter)