In the past, behind the Holy Cross Orphanage, deep in the cave.
Fana uncovered the camouflage branches and weeds covering the cave and groped into the bottomless darkness. She held a small flashlight in her hand, and the flashlight light pierced through the cave like a sharp sword.
into the endless darkness, as if lost in it.
The flashlight found a child with his head buried in his knees in the corner at the bottom of the cave.
Raya Hada raised her head from her knees and raised her hand to block the dazzling flashlight.
"Eat." Fana said.
Laya still had no intention of getting up. She pouted and shook her head.
Fana turned off the flashlight and sat next to her in the dark.
The two girls sat in silence for a moment in the dark, until Raya broke the silence.
"I don't want to go back." She said lowly, "I hate that place and everyone."
Fana said nothing and only touched her head gently.
"I like it here." The annoyance in Laya's voice was slightly reduced, "It's very quiet here. There are not so many annoying people."
This was their secret stronghold, and they were the only ones to discover this place in the entire orphanage. They carefully camouflaged the entrance with branches and shrubs so that no other children would discover it.
Of course, even if you don't pretend, there is not much chance of being discovered. There are only half of the children with normal minds in the whole yard, and many of the half have mobility problems. The remaining few children will sneak out from time to time.
Basically, it's just the two of them, no one else will find this place.
Raya raised her head and looked in the direction of Fana in the darkness: "We will always be friends, right?"
"......Um."
The girl gently stroked her head, treating her like her own sister.
"Yes."
...
At this moment, now.
"I thought you had forgotten this place a long time ago." Laya said, "Let me guess, the accident that happened in the store owned by Yoshimura made you contact me, right? When I noticed that you happened to be at the scene of the accident,
At that time, I thought about this possibility.
But how did you connect me with Yoshimura?"
"Neighbor," Fana said softly, "I saw it."
"Has a neighbor seen me? Let me guess, it's Aunt Li who talks a lot?" Laya shrugged, "I only stayed at Yoshimura's house for a few days, and I tried my best not to show my face, but I didn't expect that someone would still see me.
..."
Just earlier today, when investigators from the Ninth Division were investigating near the Yoshimura home, a neighbor mentioned that a little girl was suspected to have been in and out of the Yoshimura couple's home two days before they disappeared. As far as the neighbors knew, the couple had no children.
Fana heard about this. She went to the house in the afternoon and asked the neighbor about the child's appearance. She quickly thought of her former friends in the orphanage.
So she came here, where she grew up.
"Look at you, with your pretty face and exquisite clothes, you are already a princess, right?" Raya said sarcastically, "I guess it must be very difficult for you to come back to a place like this for a stinky rat like me.
not easy."
"I don't......"
"I bet that old guy Zhai Liangtao must be very respectful to you now. If necessary, he would like to kneel down and lick your black silk stockings."
Raya didn't seem to want to listen to her at all.
"Because you are human-like now, you have become a white swan, so naturally you cannot hang out with us, a group of forgotten ugly ducklings. Do you know? I have seen you, I have seen you outside.
We live in a single-family apartment in the most prosperous center of the city, with beautiful clothes and private transportation. The old guy used to look at us like we were looking at mold, but now he has to provide for you.
I bet you feel better about yourself now, right?"
Fana: "..."
"Ha, if you want to say that you have been donating money to make your conscience feel better, I know." Raya was unmoved, "I don't care what the old guy promises about the future here. But we all know that.
It’s an illusion.”
Laya's eyes were cold.
"I know it, and deep down you know it too. We are all outcasts, from birth.
Our lives are destined to be a lonely straight line. Even if we occasionally cross paths with someone, we will only end up with the fate of being abandoned again.
Because this is our truest appearance. Maybe you can use money and status to whitewash yourself, and maybe others will hypocritically cooperate with you and tell you that you are important. You can also spend a lot of money to make this cursed place look better.
Glamorous.
But no matter how hard you try to immerse yourself in that illusion, you will never be able to fill yourself up. Because we are born this way, we are people born with a gap."
Fana was silent for a moment.
"You were adopted." She said suddenly, "Why..."
"I'm glad to hear you mention this." Raya smiled, "Yes, that experience was very important to me. At that time, I did naively think that the gap could be filled, and I really felt so. But
I soon found out I was wrong.
They felt that I owed them as an adopted person and that I would never be able to meet their demands. I thought they might just be acting on impulse, and it didn't take long for them to lose their initial enthusiasm.
I overheard them seriously discussing sending me back to this place. I knew then that some things are innate to us, like a curse, and it's impossible to get rid of it no matter how much you hate it."
After a pause, she changed the topic, and a somewhat charming smile appeared on her childish face.
"But it was during that period that I learned a more important lesson." She said with a smile, "God took away what we were born with, and we have no choice but to learn to take it ourselves.
return.
Look, it’s like this.”
Fana noticed the figures coming out of the shadows of the firelight on both sides.
From the body shape, it can be vaguely seen that they are a man and a woman. The bones are twisted and bloated, and the protruding eyeballs in the eye sockets are covered with bloodshot eyes. The appearance is shocking.
"Let's meet my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jordan." Laya showed a bright smile, "Look, they love me from the bottom of their hearts now."
Fana glanced at them.
"what have you done?"
Raya did not answer the question directly.
"Do you remember? I have talked to you more than once before... I asked why there is so much love in the world, everyone has it, but we are the only ones who don't?
But that doesn’t matter anymore.”
The girl grinned, revealing an even weirder and more captivating smile under the flickering firelight.
At the same time, Fana noticed that more eyes lit up in the shadows on all sides of the cave.
Distorted men and women, some walking and some crawling, walked out of the darkness into the firelight one after another. Countless shadows were cast by torches on the stone walls and the ground, as if woven into a dark net to protect Laya in the center.
.
"Look." The girl's smile became even brighter, "Now, I have countless loves."