Hidemi's Rambling No.353

In my hometown, the hamlet where I grew up mainly consists of old families of the place. Since each family has lived there generation after generation, my childhood friend’s father is my father’s childhood friend, my childhood friend’s grandfather is my grandfather’s childhood friend, and on and on. My closest childhood friend lived four houses away from us. We were both of an age and played together every day. Her mother and my father were both of an age too, and they had known each other since they were little. When her mother was a child, her grandfather had a boy outside marriage. He took the little boy over and began to raise him in his family. Because he had three daughters, it can easily be imagined that he wanted the boy to be a successor of the family. Of course, his wife, my friend’s grandmother, wasn’t happy about it at all. She was cruel to the boy and treated him harshly all the time. In the height of summer, she ignored the boy’s constant begging for water. He was too little and thirsty to distinguish between water and benzine. He died from drinking the latter. My friend’s grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s in her later years and often ran barefoot around the neighborhood. She sometimes came into our house and begged for water, saying she was extremely thirsty. In other cases, she claimed she was chased by the little boy and asked for help. She was running from him until the end…