When Cesare's consciousness returned to the illusion again, he was already immersed in the sadness of memories. He remembered the painful parting in his childhood.
It is precisely because every time I think of my mother's face, I feel heartbreaking pain, so in order to protect myself, my brain forces myself to forget this memory, and strives not to recall the pain...
As if comforting Cesare, Captain Claudius in the illusion gently leaned down and put his arms around Cesare's shoulders, patting him twice.
"A person's childhood is the only time in his life that he is truly alive." He said lightly. "And the rest of my life... is just filling in the regrets that I lacked in my childhood."
Cesare shook his hand away impatiently.
"How can a murderer come up with so many great principles... You already know my past, and you have seen my crying and weak side. Now you can laugh if you want... You are hanging on to me just to tease me. Is that..." Cesare said weakly, having given up on escaping from this illusion.
After hearing Cesare's words, Claudius smiled and shook his head. "Teasing you? No, no, no...you misunderstood me, young master, I said, I'm here to help you." Claudius said and pointed to the big tree with the swing hanging on it.
"Cesare, who is the person hiding behind the tree in your memory...?" Looking in the direction of Claudius's finger, the swing was no longer swaying, the surrounding area fell into dead silence, and the sunlight gradually faded. Submerging into the earth took away all the original vitality.
The shadow of the big tree submerged my childhood home, and all the beautiful things slowly disappeared like smoke.
Claudius was right. In Cesare's memory, there was always a shadow moving vaguely behind the big tree at night...
During his mother's illness, little Cesare would always see muddy footprints left by strangers around the house. The footprints would come on foot from the flower field, first hiding behind a tree, and then circling the house a few times. We walked back the same way.
Similar footprints appear almost every week, but the family just treats them as curious passers-by and takes a look before leaving.
Little Cesare, who couldn't hear bedtime stories, often suffered from insomnia. Sometimes when he looked out the window in a daze, he saw the sneaky man...
Although he wears different clothes each time, sometimes he is a farmer, sometimes he is a merchant, sometimes he is in a luxurious dress, and the other person's face cannot be seen clearly through the window, but he always feels that the body shape and height are very similar to the same person.
"Do you remember anything about that person, Master Cesare?" Claudius asked, his tone sounded like he already knew something, but he was just using questions to guide what Cesare should remember. Very important thing.
"It's been too long, I can't remember it for a long time..." Cesare couldn't explain why he subconsciously resisted this question, and he didn't want to continue to recall it in his mind.
"Please think again, tell me Cesare, what did you see behind that tree?"
Claudius's voice seemed to have magic power, touching things buried in the depths of his memory. He looked at the big tree from his childhood and watched two blurry figures slowly emerge from behind the tree. shape……
Cesare recalled that he seemed to have seen two people hiding behind a tree and talking quietly.
They were far apart, so they couldn't hear their voices at the time, and it's even less possible to know the content of their conversation now.
The figures behind the tree are a man and a woman.
There was a woman among them who looked very familiar. The ugly and old black dress must be Cesare's tutor, Ms. Margaret.
She came to the countryside to teach Cesare almost every afternoon, and was responsible for bringing daily medicine to Cesare's mother. She would go back to the city as soon as the sun went down, never delaying.
But it was almost completely dark when Cesare saw her through the window, and Cesare had already completed today's classes.
Ms. Margaret should have returned to Florence by this time. Why would she appear near Cesare's house? Who is the man talking to her?
The man was dressed very plainly and tightly, and it was too dark to see his appearance. Margaret said a few words to him briefly and then raised her hand to point to the house next to him.
The man glanced in the direction she pointed for a few times, then took out a pocket watch from his arms, looked at the time, and turned around to leave.
When the man was holding the pocket watch, he inadvertently exposed the back of his hand... Cesare seemed to vaguely see a terrifying scar on his hand. The scar extended from the back of his hand to the sleeve of his arm, even if the light was very dim. It's also eye-catching enough.
In comparison, it looks very much like the scar left by Cesare's mother on the assassin who attacked their mother and son in Florence...
Claudius walked around Cesare, fiddling with his unique gold coin.
"Cesare, you are always avoiding a very critical question, a question that only you can find the answer to. Do you think your mother... really died of natural causes?"
His question made Cesare feel dizzy for a while, as if his body had activated its self-protection function, making it impossible for Cesare to continue thinking along this line of thinking.
have no idea……
This was Cesare's answer to this question. He was not sure whether the appearance of those two people was necessarily related to his mother's death.
That scar might be just a coincidence or a mistake, or maybe the man was just a friend of Ms. Margaret's who came to enjoy the coolness in the countryside at night.
Cesare didn't want to slander others for no reason. He didn't have any evidence. When he saw the two people talking quietly when he was a child, he didn't think too much about it, so he didn't tell the rest of the family.
Or ask Ms. Margaret when she comes back to teach again, just because Cesare doesn't want to say another word to that stuffy old woman.
But now I look back and think of this incident again. The assassin attacked my mother in Feilengcui, and the medicine my mother took every time was brought by Ms. Margaret from Feilengcui...
If there is really any connection, if the man who interacted with Ms. Margaret is really the assassin she met in the city, then what kind of medicine is the mother taking every day...
Could it be that his mother's death was caused by his failure to tell the rest of the family that he had already discovered the suspicion?
Could it be that... I clearly had a chance to prevent my mother's death... but I missed it.
The more Cesare thought about this, the more his head hurt. Every nerve in his body tried his best to avoid this memory and reassure himself that things were not as he suspected.
At this time, Claudius was more like the representative of the opposing faction in Cesare's soul. He smiled strangely and continued talking as if he were striking while the iron was hot.
