noveltune Chapter 42 – Good children
Chapter 42 – Good children
Xia Liang, who used to be Xia Liang, always remembered a sentence in her heart: Good children are loved by others.
It originated from when she was young, her parents were still loving and life was still happy. Her mother said to her, "Is our little puppy obedient? Only good children are loved, and mommy also likes good children."
"Little puppy" was her nickname at that time because she liked to bite people when she was angry. So whenever she opened her mouth, her parents would jokingly say, "The little puppy is biting people again."
Xia Liang felt that she was not a little puppy, and she could be very obedient. Since then, she rarely bit people when she was angry.
She became a good child in the eyes of her parents and relatives.
She was well-behaved and cute at home, and her sweet smile made her parents dote on her. She was sensible and generous in social occasions, and her relatives and elders always praised her. She was obedient and serious at school, setting an example for her classmates.
The more she tried to be obedient and sensible, the happier her life became. Xia Liang gradually got used to it. But everything changed a few years later.
She didn't know if it was because of her father's "finding another job" or her mother's "being cheated out of a large sum of money", but after that, she rarely saw smiles on her parents' faces.
Her father always came home with a worried look, and her mother always sighed more frequently and became angrier.
Whenever this happened, Xia Liang would step forward and try to make them happy, to make them smile.
At first, this method worked to some extent. When Xia Liang showed a cute and obedient appearance, her parents would force themselves to be in a good mood and laugh with her. But as time went on, no matter how hard Xia Liang tried, it was all in vain.
She found it strange. Was it because she wasn't obedient enough that she couldn't make her parents happy?
One day, she discovered that her mother started taking money from home.
Her mother said she could earn money, but except for the first few times when she brought money back, the money she took never returned.
Her father started coming home less and less, and even when he did, he would argue with her mother. He would angrily accuse her mother of "gambling and wasting money", while her mother would blame him for "being unemployed and having an affair".
At that time, Xia Liang was still naive about these words. She knew that gambling and having an affair were bad things, but she never thought they would happen in her own family.
She gathered up the courage and decided not to be a good child for the first time because she wanted to oppose her parents. She wanted to persuade them not to argue, as constant arguing would ruin their relationship.
But this attempt failed. Her parents ignored her and just told her to "go away".
So Xia Liang became a good child again. No matter how much her parents argued, she no longer tried to stop them. She just kept showing her smile to them.
She continued to study hard at school and brought home many certificates and awards, hoping that her good performance would make her parents happy. But these certificates were eventually treated as worthless pieces of paper and casually thrown on the table.
As the arguments between her parents escalated one day and turned into a physical fight, the certificates were knocked over and soaked in hot water, making the words on them illegible.
Later on, her father started hitting her mother and then shouted for a divorce.
He said he had had enough of her mother, that he had a new love, and that he wanted to choose his own happiness.
The school teachers were powerless to stop this. No matter how they reprimanded the students in class, they couldn't control their behavior outside of school. It wasn't until the end of elementary school, on the day when all the children graduated, that one teacher spoke to Xia Liang with a tone of disappointment:
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"They've all become like this, why can you still smile, you silly child?"
Why could she still smile? Xia Liang didn't know the answer to this question herself.
Or rather, was she still smiling?
There was clearly no one left for her to show her smile to, and no matter how much she tried to act cute, it was meaningless. But she still did it subconsciously.
Just like that, after entering junior high school, because of the rumors from elementary school, no one wanted to be friends with her.
No matter how Xia Liang tried to please them, everyone was just afraid and avoided her.
The only ones willing to accept her were the so-called "bad girls" and "delinquents" in other people's mouths. They thought that the fact that Xia Liang's mother was a murderer and in jail was cool.
"But you look too plain."
That's how they evaluated her: "If you want to join us, you need to change yourself first."
So Xia Liang learned how to put on makeup.
If dressing up could make them accept her, she would dress up; if acting frivolously was what they wanted, she would imitate; if they needed money to acknowledge her, she would give it to them.
She wanted to be accepted, to be cared for, to hear comforting words, to have close relationships with people, to be "loved".
The emptiness in her heart couldn't be filled, and she followed these "friends" like a dying person clutching at straws, just hoping they would look back at her.
Until she reached the edge of the quagmire, she saw her friends standing in it, waving at her.
She began to want to refuse, to retreat, but she was firmly trapped, with some unknown force pushing her, trying to push her into it.
There was no way back.
Just when she had given up and decided to calmly accept her future, another force firmly pulled her back from behind.
Then, someone grabbed her wrist and pulled her from the boundless darkness into the azure sky.
The beautiful blue was the color of the sky, as clear as the pair of eyes looking at her.
She asked herself:
"Do you want to become a Magical Girl?"