After Andre returned to the village, people said that Andre had simply transformed into the first believer in God.
He didn't tell his family anything. He only bought wooden statues and crosses with a few small sums of money he used to buy wine. Low-grade yellow candles were always burning in the house, and sometimes he even bought more expensive white candles.
With his sincere prayers and the comfort of being safe for a month, he was finally convinced that he was just having a nightmare.
As for where the hunting dogs and prey went, what is there worth investigating...
Until one day, his youngest son Mikhail came to him in a panic and told him that there was an extra person in the family.
The twelve-year-old boy dragged out a thinner child from behind. His hair was silvery white, shining with dazzling luster, and his obedient black eyes blinked blankly.
Andre was indeed dizzy and fainted.
Oh, God!
——————
To the surprise of the little boy Mikhail, after his father fainted, his mother did not react much to the "stranger" hiding in the house. She just treated him as a child who could not survive in the woods without a father and mother, and treated him openly and generously. The ground ordered him to work and gave him some food.
In the eyes of farmers' wives, hiding in other people's homes is nothing more than asking for food.
Mikhail watched in shock as the child took the food, first approached it carefully to smell it, and then dived in, not knowing what kind of magic he was doing.
"Use your mouth..." Mikhail took the frozen and hard piece of porridge, opened the child's mouth, and roughly stuffed it in. The child blinked, and the white silk behind his back, which was about to move, had to calm down.
Really! Is he here to take care of this idiot? Mikhail was very impatient. He was a twelve-year-old child after all. He went in regardless of whether the child would eat or not. He used a strong hand and scratched the child's tender face with his nails, causing thin drops of blood. Seeping from the wound.
Is this bleeding? Well, Mikhail wiped his wounds hard with his dirty hands and ignored the child.
He didn't notice that the few drops of blood were swimming vividly on his fingers, and scattered in the air when he wasn't paying attention.
Mikhail felt a burning pain in his hand. When he raised his hand, he saw that his skin had also been scratched.
Forget it, he sucked his finger. He did a lot of rough work on weekdays, maybe he was bruised just now.
After the strange child officially became the child and coolie of a distant relative of the farmer's family, Murakami had a new thing. Mikhail was so excited about this that he could hardly sleep. Early in the morning, he urged the child - they all called him Alexei - to get up and work, while he burned the samovar and thought about it.
"...A rich man came from the city and said he came to choose a child to be her brother. Charity activities, this kind of good life with food and drink..." Mikhail said to himself, he He had never seen a wealthy person before, but he only knew that the village chief's family was well off, enough to make him yearn for it.
He looked at Alexei, who could only say "yes" and "right" at the moment, and continued his words, "This kind of good thing is obviously not yours."
The white-haired boy with a short ponytail worked steadily and turned a deaf ear.
Mikhail saw that he was bored or didn't understand at all, so he lit the samovar and went out to inquire about the news.
Alexei's hands and feet were surprisingly nimble compared to many children of the same age. After doing everything, he sat quietly in a hidden corner at the back of the house, waiting for the next assignment.
Mikhail, on the other side, bravely walked outside the village chief's house, looked at the road leading outside, and expected that a bright person would come.
He had been in the city and knew the prosperity and comfort of the city, as well as the elegance and grace with which those in high positions commanded them. Could this noble guest on the snowfield be an opportunity?
"Hi, kid." Suddenly, Mikhail's ears felt warm, and someone came over unknowingly and whispered in his ear.
Mikhail turned his head suddenly and saw a black-haired girl, wrapped in warm and neat clothes, with long braids hanging down her chest. She looked about eighteen or nineteen years old, with a clean and carefree smile.
His boy's intuition told him that this girl could be that noble person from the city, right?
"You are..." Mikhail tried his best to control his expression, recalling the reserve and calmness of the people in the city, and pretending to be omniscient.
"Yes, you are so smart. You are so smart, do you know that my coming here is a secret? It is our secret." The girl smiled.
secret? This...is not quite the same as the rumors. Mikhail nodded anyway. All he had to do was impress the nobles and prove that he was qualified to be the "chosen son of good fortune" and live a better life.
"What are you here to do, do charity?" Mikhail asked cautiously. The implication was that since he wanted to adopt a child, it was better to take a look at his cleverness.
"No." This answer broke Mikhail's calmness.
The girl looked thoughtful, "I am looking for my own brother. He has been lost for a while. I walked around, maybe I can find him. If I find him, I can leave."
The girl paused for a moment, then smiled helplessly, "There's nothing we can do if we can't find one. I'm also happy to support talented children like you."
This sentence made Mikhail regain his composure. He said that it was his unshirkable responsibility to help the girl find her relatives, and casually asked about the appearance of the girl's brother.
"Oh, speaking of which, my brother is easy to recognize. He is an albino, has a head of white hair, and looks like he doesn't know anything about people."
White hair, stupid, could it be——
Mikhail was stunned instead. There were really such good people in this world.
He shouldn't have asked this question.
He hurriedly bid farewell to the girl and returned home as if he were fleeing. The girl's meaning was very clear. If she found her brother, she would not need to fund others for charity. Charity can take many forms. She could slightly improve everyone's lives and let the book The good luck belonging to a certain person is chopped into pieces and distributed to everyone, and what he can get by then is probably only as much as a piece of bread.
Mikhail grabbed Alexei and walked into the room. Looking at his dull look, he suddenly had a whim and picked up a pair of scissors——
——half a month later
The nobles who came to the village finally decided on the candidate for good luck, and it was Mikhail, the youngest son of Andrei's family.
Mikhail has been very narrow-minded since he was a child, and the people in the village didn't have any objections, but just sighed.
The noble lady named Miss August looked at the twelve-year-old Mikhail without any disturbance in her eyes, and then turned to the village that was gradually receding.
The aura that was somewhat familiar, but dissipated quickly, made her somewhat suspicious of the child who followed her in the end.
Is her brother really not there?
What happened to this child?
In the village on the other side, Andre also made the final decision. As his son became prosperous, his father would be indispensable in the future. He decided to go to the city to work as a worker, taking his sons and daughters with him. He no longer thought about a certain winter day. The scene in the forest where a monster devours his prey.
Alexei's head was cut bald by Mikhail, so he had to wear a hat all the time. He looked at the bag of coarse grains and some money that the adults handed to him, plus the rice he was still wearing. Hail's old clothes, look around the farmers' houses and the dim villages at night.
After all, he had nowhere to go.
Then follow their example and go to town.
