Page 43
"But if you don't change them, they will wither in less than a week."
"So just leave them in the soil. It would be pitiful if you just cut the stems and put them in a vase just for decoration."
"Ah, I see," Nao understood what Reiya meant, "Miss, you are so gentle. I will convey this to Miss Maria."
Because the work of selecting flowers and replacing the flowers for decoration is usually done by the head maid Maria herself. She also takes care of the flower and vegetable gardens in the manor by herself every day.
"Miss Lingye, why did you get up so early today? Are you feeling unwell?"
As soon as I mentioned Maria, she arrived.
She is still wearing a maid outfit with a blue lining and a white lace apron. Although she is the head maid, Maria is actually not very old. She is even younger than Nao and is only 20 years old this year.
She was abandoned in front of the statue of Mary in the church when she was young, and was adopted by the Oshima family, so she was named "Maria". She graduated from high school at the age of 13 and was admitted to the University of Tokyo. She completed all the courses in just two years. She was an absolute child prodigy, but she had a bright future, but she chose to return to the Oshima family after graduating from university.
Mr. Oshima would not accept it if it was just a way to repay a favor, as it would delay the girl's future. But Maria insisted on doing so, and became the head maid of the Oshima family. On a daily basis, Kanno Kane took care of Mr. Oshima's outings, while Maria was responsible for the affairs of the house.
But now Lingye is the only master left.
"I'm not feeling unwell, I just woke up a little early. I was just planning to go for a walk in the forest after I washed up."
"Going to the forest? It just so happens that Mr. Hachiken left Hokkaido the day before yesterday. He just got in touch and said he has arrived in Tokyo. He should be back soon. We can go and greet him."
"Leaving the day before yesterday?" Ling also suspected that Maria had given the wrong time. It was only a three-hour flight from Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido to Haneda Airport.
"Yes, Mr. Hachiken came here in a trailer."
"Trailer? Coming from Hokkaido?" Ling also looked at Maria and felt incredible.
That's almost half of Japan. Hachiken's home is in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Not only is it nearly 1400 kilometers from there to Tokyo, but because Hokkaido and Honshu are separated by the sea, driving requires taking a ferry across the Tsugaru Strait. Two days have been almost sleepless.
"Hachiken couldn't bear to part with his Mikawa, so the plane couldn't check him in."
“Yuchuan… ah, no wonder!”
Lingye also remembered this name. Mikawa was Mr. Hachiken's favorite horse. He was already over ten years old this year, older than Lingye, which was considered middle-aged for a horse.
This horse was raised in the manor's horse farm for a while, but it was not the private property of the Oshima family. Instead, it was fostered to Mr. Hachiken by someone else. So when the Oshima family got into trouble and Hachiken resigned, he took the horse away.
"That was something Aki asked him to do. He didn't want to abandon Mikawa on the farm in Hokkaido." Maria smiled like a little fox who had stolen a chicken.
Aki Mikage and Hachiken were old classmates in high school. Aki's family ran a horse farm, so it made no sense for her to send the pony to someone else for foster care. But she did so, and Hachiken accepted it.
The two have graduated from college for six or seven years now, and are already "working people" in their thirties. However, neither of them is in a hurry to find a partner. To outsiders, Yuchuan is undoubtedly a token of love - yes, this outsider specifically refers to Maria. As a spectator, she thinks this melon is big and sweet.
After going to the bathroom to clean up, Ling took a shower and went downstairs to the lobby. She looked up at the wall clock and saw that it was still early. After washing up, it was only 6:10.
"Miss, is breakfast the same as before?" Maria was already waiting for her in the hall.
Ling also recalled that if Chef Shigong made breakfast in the past, it would mostly be vegetable salad, vegetable soup and dessert. But Chef Caibo made more various pastries.
"Who is the chef today?"
"Today's breakfast will be prepared by Chef Shinomiya, and lunch and dinner will be prepared by Chef Saiba."
"Then let's do the same as before, but I don't want to eat dessert. Tomoyo and Sakura will be here at 9 o'clock. Please, Chef Shinomiya, prepare dessert for three people and I will eat with them then."
"So should we prepare breakfast now, or eat it after we come back from our walk?"
"No, I'm not hungry yet. Let's go for a walk first."
The air is the freshest in the early morning. Later in the day, when the mist in the forest has dissipated, the atmosphere will be gone.
"I understand." After considering the time for the walk, Maria estimated that she would be back around 7:30, so she asked a maid to tell Chef Shinomiya to start preparing breakfast at 7 o'clock. Then she followed Ling out the door.
Whenever Lingye goes out, Jianye is always with him, and at home it is Maria. Lingye has long been accustomed to it.
On the other side, in the TAC team, Beidou was called by the captain.
"Shall I go on patrol? But I was on night shift yesterday." Beidou said. He was not dissatisfied, just a little confused.
"It's like this. Konno has some family matters to attend to these days, so he asked me for a week's leave. I approved his one-week leave. He was in the mountains in the second half of last night and just came back half an hour ago. Yoshimura is responsible for air patrol, so I can only arrange for you and Minami Yuko to drive the patrol boat to take charge of the sea."
"Is that so? I understand. No problem." Beidou raised two fingers and saluted.
The TAC team doesn't usually have such intensive patrol missions, but last night Beidou received a call from Lingya and learned that a super beast had appeared in the Seto Inland Sea. He immediately reported the situation to the captain.
In the early morning, the TAC team cooperated with the local maritime police to find the empty fishing boat in the inland sea that Beidou mentioned, confirming Beidou's information. Of course, Beidou did not mention Lingye, but only said that he found something unusual while patrolling in the air last night, and there was a flash that looked like a super beast.
The appearance of an unknown super beast was enough to put the TAC team into a state of wartime readiness and increase the intensity of patrols and searches.
"But where is Konno's home?"
Beidou just muttered something casually, but it floated into Noriko's ears.
"Team Konno's hometown is in Okayama."
"Okayama? Isn't that a port city on the Seto Inland Sea?"
Chapter 56: Lonely Child
"Hit him!"
"Hit him with a rock!"
"Meng Er, Meng Er, the Meng Er who has no mother and no father, the Meng Er who is unwanted by everyone."
Konno, who had taken leave to go back to his hometown to attend the funeral of an elderly family member who had passed away, had just got off the bus. Before he could feel homesick, he saw several children chasing and beating another child.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
Konno is chubby and likes to chant Amitabha in the TAC team, just like a funny character. But his burly body is very oppressive in front of children.
Seeing that an adult came to stop them, the bullying children who threw stones quickly dispersed, leaving only the beaten child, who fell in the sand pit and was trying to stand up.
"Hey kid, are you okay?"
The boy stood up, ignored Konno, and said nothing, just brushing the sand off his clothes.
"I said, can't you speak?"
"You can't speak!" Meng Er glared at him.
"Hey, boy, you can actually talk."
"Don't bother with him." A voice next to him interrupted.
Konno turned around and saw a policeman in uniform. He got off his patrol bike and walked over with his feet propped up. Because the weather was too hot, he took off his police hat and fanned himself.
"This is the child of the Yoshida family. His mother died a long time ago, and he has been living with his father, a fisherman. But two weeks ago, his father went out fishing with a boat, and no one on the boat came back. Since then, the child has been acting strangely. This morning, the police station notified us that everyone on the boat was killed. He must have been stimulated and has mental problems."
"You are the one with mental problems. My father will never abandon me." Meng Er, who was irritated by the police's words, glared like an angry bull.
The police officer made a "that's it" expression, "He has been fighting with others these past few days, and he is always the one who takes the initiative to provoke. Isn't he a fool to pick a fight with a group of people? He was probably the first to start a fight today."
"No, they were the ones who scolded me first, saying that I was an unwanted child!"
"Then you can't hit people. It's wrong to hit people anyway. And you're the only one there, and there's so many of them. Wouldn't you be the one who suffers? You might as well secretly put a sack on someone who's alone at night... Ah, let's not talk about this," the policeman swallowed the rest of his words, "Look, you're injured, aren't you? I went to ask for an explanation for you a few times ago, but the parents said that you hit them first. What should I say then?"
Meng Er's knee was bleeding, probably because the sand on the beach rubbed his skin when he fell to the ground. There was a lot of blood, which had all flowed down to his feet.
"Come with me to the hospital to get bandaged." The policeman pulled Meng Er and was about to put him on the bicycle.
Meng Er did not appreciate it. He pushed the policeman away, wiped his knees with his hands, and then wiped his bloody hands on the chest of his short-sleeved vest.
"Hey, kid, you're really interesting." Konno said with a smile. This kid's temperament was quite to his liking.
"Come to think of it," the policeman felt that he could no longer control this kid, so he turned to look at Konno, "Are you a tourist visiting Okayama? But, you look familiar."
"Ah, I'm Konno, Konno Tsutomu."
"Konno? Oh, is it from the Konno family? I heard that a good boy came out of the Konno family. He went to college and joined the defense forces."
"Hey, yes, that's me, but I'm on the TAC team now."
"Oh, the one who fought the Ultra Beast? That's really amazing, he's really promising! Our village has also produced a big man. Do you remember me? I'm from the Songshang family, I live in the house in front of the big locust tree behind the stone beach."
"Matsuue—oh, I remember now, it's Matsuue Fujimura, right? He was two years older than me in school, and I heard he was always getting into trouble. How come he's a policeman?"
They are all from the same hometown, and even though they were not very familiar with each other in the past, it still brought back many memories for Konno, and he felt happy.
"Hey, I'm not a policeman. I'm just a village policeman hired by the village. I didn't study hard before, and I always failed the exams. I can't rely on studying to get out, so I can only stay in this fishing village for the rest of my life. I don't know how to fish, so the village chief helped me arrange this job. No more, no more, I still have to take Meng Er to handle the formalities."
"What's next, kid?"
"Well, no one wants to see something like this happen. He also has an uncle from the Konno family... Oh, isn't he from your family? His name is Konno Taro."
"Yes, that's my cousin." Konno Tsutomu nodded. He has settled in Tokyo. The house in his hometown has been abandoned for a long time. If it is not properly maintained for a while, no one can live in it. Konno did not waste any effort and stayed at his cousin's house for the past few days.
"Da Lang's family only has a daughter, no son yet. I just went to the village to talk to him, and he heard about this and is willing to adopt Meng Er. There are some formalities to go through next, and I'm here to do this for this kid."
Song Shang said, looking at Meng Er, "Come with me, the village is waiting for you."
"I'm not going!"
"Why are you being so stubborn? Do you want to go to an orphanage? That's not a good place."
"I am Yoshinoya's child, my father is Yoshino Kouhei, I don't have any other father, never before, and never will have another father in the future! I only have one father!"
Meng Er said this and ran away alone. Song Shang shouted and quickly rode his bicycle to chase him.
Konno Tsutomu shook his head. He had no say in this matter. He had heard about the fishing boat incident this morning when he left the TAC team. He didn't expect that the fishermen from his village were among the victims. In the end, it was all caused by the super beasts.
On the other side, Oshima Manor in Tokyo.
At the gate of the manor, the bronze gate opened automatically, and a small truck with a trailer drove in. It drove along the road in the manor all the way to the horse farm at the edge of the forest.
The door of the cab opened and Hachiken got out. He ignored everything else and immediately opened the door of the trailer to check on Yuchuan. His beloved horse was eating hay peacefully in the trailer.
It took two days to walk this 1,000-kilometer journey. Fortunately, Mikawa didn't have any problems with the local climate. This was the horse that Aki asked him to take care of. If anything went wrong, Hachiken was really afraid that Aki would beat him to death.
"Good morning, Uncle Hachiken."
When Ling saw the trailer from afar, she knew that the forest guard Hachiken had returned.
"Miss! Your good health is more important than anything else. And Miss Maria, good morning." Hachiken looked at his watch. "It's not even seven o'clock yet. Why are you here so early?"
"Well, I woke up early today, so I came to take a walk. The forest in the early morning is so comfortable."
"You're right. The most comfortable time is five o'clock in the morning in summer, when the sky just starts to brighten and the forest is like a fairy tale world." Hachixuan said with deep emotion.
He was leading Yuchuan down from the car. Normally he liked to hug Lingye, but his hands were a little dirty at this time, so he had to give up.
"Does Uncle Hachiken often get up at five o'clock?"
"Well, actually, when I was in school, I had to get up at four."
At that time, Hachiken was studying at an agricultural technical school, and he joined the equestrian club, which required him to start cleaning the stables at 4 a.m. every day. Looking back, those were really hard days, but I miss them a little.