Whenever Si Tong recalls his childhood, he always has a sense of absurdity. She was obviously an only child, but she felt like she once had an older brother. A mother laughs at her daughter for being stupid:
"Am I even misremembering how many babies came out of my belly? When you were a child, you always clamored for me to give you a brother to play with. I said that I could only give birth to a brother. Besides, I wanted to have children, but the national policy wouldn't allow it."
When she was very young, she cried and asked her mother to give her a brother because she was always alone and had no one to play with.
She knew she couldn't have a brother. But the scenes that occasionally flashed in her mind were so real - in the summer, when she was little, she poked the holes of crabs with twigs by the stream, which made the crabs angry and clamped the twigs with pliers. She happily caught the crabs and turned around excitedly to offer the treasure -
"Brother, look, I caught it again!"
The person behind him sat quietly, not saying a word, just watching quietly, without even a trace of expression change. Si Tong didn't think he was cold, she just felt relieved that he did nothing and just stayed with her. In this memory, I am full of joy.
That "brother" had an unusually pale face that didn't look like a real person. Thin and skinny figure, always silent.
Maybe every lonely little girl has had a dream about a gentle big brother.
But are these really all dreams?