A piece of paper was stuffed through the crack under the toilet door, and on it were two inexplicable sentences:

"Don't accept birthday gifts!"

"Don't attend physical education classes!"

I looked suspiciously outside for a moment, but there was no one out there, so I returned home as usual.

As soon as I opened the door, my mother was standing upright in the middle of the room, turning her head and smiling at me.

I stood still, with a sense that something was not right.

At that moment, the sound of utensils rubbing against each other came from the kitchen, and suddenly my father walked out of the kitchen holding a knife, with a ferocious and exaggerated smile on his face.

But I knew that was impossible. He hadn't come back here since he divorced my mother.

Seeing me, my mother actually held a cake and mechanically and awkwardly sang to me, "Happy birthday to you..."

But the tuneless singing only made me feel an unprecedented fear.

"Darling, your birthday gift, oh."

She held a metallic-colored box. When the box opened, I saw the sports shoes that I had longed for inside. The brand new logo was attached to the back of the shoes, and the streamlined sports style attracted me so much.

Although I had given myself the command to refuse in my mind, my hand had already accepted the gift.

"Do you like it, darling?"

"Can our family always be happily together?"

My father picked up the knife and cut a piece of cake, but his movements were so stiff that the cake was chopped into a mess, and the splashed cream hit my mother's face, but she didn't seem to mind at all, and her smiling face remained unchanged.

There seems to be something here that is tempting me. It seems to know that I long for my parents to be reunited and it knows my desires.

I heard my mother's excited and eerie urging from behind my ear:

"Darling... If you accept the gift, then you should go to school properly..."

I turned my head, and outside the window, it was already bright, but my wristwatch, which was clearly on my wrist, was still stuck at 8 o'clock in the evening.