Children, have never cried once Author: Ling Shisan
Originally reprinted from: The child lying in the box
"Can't I pursue my own happiness?"
This is the answer that my mother left to Amin before she left.
Left with a little money and a promise of "I'll be home at Christmas".
For the mother, 12-year-old Amin and three other half-brothers and sisters are probably just stumbling blocks blocking her path to happiness.
This story comes from the movie "Nobody Knows", and this movie is based on real events. The prototype of the story is the abandoned baby incident of Nishi Sugamo in Tokyo in 1988.
The five mothers and sons had moved many times in the city. The four children were born to different men, and she was not even sure who the father of some of the children was.
A single woman with four children without hukou, two of whom are very young, lied to the landlord that her husband was abroad, and only she and a 12-year-old son rented in order to get a good house.
The other two young children, Amo and Xiaoxue, were sneaked in in a suitcase, while her daughter, Jingzi, sneaked in at night when no one was there.
She made three chapters with the children: no loud noise, no going out, and secretly when her daughter Jingzi was doing laundry on the balcony. Except for the eldest son, Amin, who can go out, the other three children are existences that cannot be discovered by anyone.
Such days are neither good nor bad, although I can't go to school, although my mother often comes home in the middle of the night drunk, and although my mother always has to "go on business trips", the children know that as long as the mother is there, it's fine.
Even if she doesn't go home today, she will definitely come back tomorrow.
But this is often the case. Those who are favored are fearless, and those who yearn for love love them carefully.
In the eyes of the children, the mother is their whole world, thus showing excessive sensible beyond their age.
The naughty younger brother, A Mao, accidentally dropped the toy on the balcony. He lay on the floor of the balcony and picked it up with his slippers, because he kept the agreement with his mother and could not be seen by others.
On the birthday of the youngest sister, Xiaoxue, she insisted on going to the station to wait for her mother, because she believed that her mother would come back on this day.
In the cold winter, Xiaoxue still chose to wear a pair of slippers to go out. Those shoes would make a funny sound when walking, but it was a long time ago.
Maybe it was Xiaoxue's favorite pair of shoes, or maybe she hoped that her mother would know that it was Xiaoxue when she heard the sound of the shoes.
Xiaoxue took out a box of chocolates that she had treasured for a long time, and the last one she had been reluctant to eat was left as a birthday present for herself, even though her mother did not come back in the end.
Jingzi's character is quiet and sensitive. When her mother goes out, she will lie on the window and watch until she can no longer see it. When her mother came back, she stood in front of the door holding the doorknob tightly, excited and cautious, just wanting to open the door the moment her mother opened it.
Later, her mother never came back. I don't know when it started, Jingzi was used to staying in her mother's wardrobe, surrounded by her mother's clothes, and there was a mother's smell there.
She asked Amin if her mother didn't come back because she wasn't obedient enough.
Amin has always been in charge of taking care of the family. He is careful with his budget. He has been standing in the snow to wait for the final price reduction of food. He keeps bills every day and wants to go to work, but he is not yet 16 years old.
Until the New Year, his mother still did not come back. Amin finally got his mother's current contact information, the phone was connected, and the mother's voice came from there, "Hello, this is Yamamoto's house."
The surname of "Fukushima", which originally connected the five of their mother and son, was discarded and named "Yamamoto".
Amin did not speak.
All the hardships of life may not be unbearable for Amin. The most painful thing is that there is still hope in the hearts of younger brothers and sisters, and he is the first to understand.
He knew that this time his mother really found her happiness, she had a home and would never come back.
But no matter how careful you are, the money is still difficult to support the children to survive all the time.
It didn't take long for the water and electricity to stop, and the landlord came to ask for rent. They started drinking water from the park and eating expired food from convenience stores.
The children were running out of the house, they were running on the streets as if they had no troubles at all. They put roadside wildflowers in buckets of instant noodles and bring them home to plant, as if everything was hopeful.
Kyoko has a dream of playing the piano, perhaps because her father is a composer. Jingzi saved all the money and dreamed that he could buy a piano one day, but he gave all the money to Amin at the most difficult time.
A Ming knew that his mother would not come back, but during the New Year, he wrapped the little money left over into a red envelope and gave it to his younger brother and sister, saying that it was sent by his mother.
When the kind-hearted convenience store clerk asked why he didn't go to the child welfare agency, Amin simply explained, "The four of us can't be together. We've experienced it before, it's terrible."
My little dreams, the desire to go to school like my peers, the joy of childhood, and the love from my parents are all gone.
But the mutual company from siblings can never be lost again.
The convenience store clerk quietly gave the children expired food, the landlord did not kick them out of the house who owed the rent, the baseball coach let Amin, who loves baseball the most, play, and the middle school girl Saki really regarded them as friends.
The world is not so cold.
The children never cry, and the only tear in the whole film is shed by the mother early in the morning, when she may be ready to leave.
It is this tear that is enough to support the children to believe that their mother still loves them.
The departure of the mother not only cut off the children's financial resources, but also slowly destroyed their spiritual world.
Children are like being soaked in cold water, or like wild flowers, they work hard to live, but eventually die a little bit.
That day, Xiaoxue fell from the chair and could not get up again.
Amin wanted to take his sister to the airport to watch the plane, that was their agreement. But Xiaoxue has grown up, and the box that used to hold her sister in the past can no longer fit.
In the end, Koyuki could only be put in the box that used to hold her younger brother.
Amin bought a lot of her favorite chocolates for her sister, and put on the pair of slippers for her. Jingzi put the rabbit doll that Xiaoxue had been holding in her arms.
Amin and Sashi were pushing their boxes on the road. Pedestrians passed by in a hurry . Maybe no one paid attention to the children who used to hide their identities.
From birth to death, few people know about it, and few people care, just like a snowflake that melts.
She used to lie in a box and was taken to new homes, and now she lies in the box, silently, as if she had just fallen asleep.
Before dying, Xiaoxue, who was stepping on the chair, looked out desperately, perhaps still waiting for her mother to come back.
The plane cut through the sky and headed towards Osaka, where my mother is now.
This time, you can see it.
When his mother left, Amin once said, "Mom, you are so selfish."
Mom replied, "It's your dad who is really selfish."
The mother has loved many men in her life, but these children may just be the product of cheap love and glasses of alcohol.
But children come into this world to be loved.
What will happen to the lives of these children afterward?
Nobody knows.
"Giving birth to a son for you, my life is complete"
You never know how hard someone works to stay alive
To girlfriends: I hope you are well, but not better than me
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