Chapter 33 “Little Fish Orphanage”

Chapter 33: "Little Fish Orphanage"

"—Bang!!"

Before anyone—human or ghost—could react, the black box shattered completely, revealing what was inside.

It was a small hedgehog, curled into a ball, its body covered in sharp spines.

Little Fish's hand was still suspended in midair, and a single drop of bright red blood silently fell from her fingertip onto the sharp quills of the hedgehog's back.

"What are you doing?!" Tongtong glared unhappily at Xiaoyin, who had smashed the box.

Xiaoyin stared back at her with a dark look, her fingers moving swiftly:

"Kill it."

She pointed directly at the hedgehog.

Tongtong, enraged that her game had been interrupted, clenched her fists tightly and shot back: "No way! That's my hedgehog! I worked so hard to raise it this big!"

The two children seemed to be arguing.

Even though everyone could only hear Tongtong's fierce retorts.

But watching Xiaoyin's rapidly gesturing hands, and Tongtong's flushed cheeks and tear-filled eyes, they could tell Xiaoyin was probably cussing her out.

Little Fish, however, seemed completely detached from the whole thing. She didn't withdraw her hand. Instead, with her palm covered in blood, she opened it and brought it close to the hedgehog.

Soon, as if spellbound, the hedgehog sniffed gently, retracted all its spines, and slowly crawled onto her bloody little hand.

This time, Little Fish used her other hand to stroke it—her palm still completely unscathed.

Looking at the hedgehog in her palm, Little Fish's eyes crinkled in a smile. Without intervening in the quarrel between the two children, she directly plunged her left hand into a new black box.

This time, in less than three seconds, Little Fish withdrew her hand, and in her palm was a light gray glass bead, exactly the same as Tongtong's eyeball.

"Is this it?" She held up the bead in front of Tongtong's eyes, cutting off the increasingly tense and hidden conflict between her and Xiaoyin.

Tongtong froze.

After a moment of eye contact with the bead now almost touching her nose, she seemed a bit disappointed but quickly forced a smile.

"Yeah, yeah! That's it! Little Fish, you're amazing!!"

As she spoke, she reached out to grab the bead.

But unexpectedly, Little Fish moved her hand away, avoiding her grasp.

"Little Fish?" Tongtong looked at her in confusion.

Little Fish smiled at her.

The next second, that same bead, identical to her own eye, was suddenly crushed to pieces in Little Fish's hand.

Leaving behind only a pile of fine glass shards.

Embedded at varying depths into the otherwise smooth and clean skin of Little Fish's palm.

Now both her hands were bloodied and bruised, the blood staining the hedgehog and also the glass shards covering her palm.

This change shocked everyone and every ghost that had been secretly watching.

Tongtong, especially, was the first to be stunned into silence. After a long moment, she stepped back and asked cautiously, "Little Fish... why did you crush it?"

Little Fish tilted her head innocently, as if she weren't the one bleeding, holding up her bloodied little hands and replying obediently, "Because you wanted to bully me. You wanted to see me bleed."

Tongtong's eyes went wide!

Her pupils suddenly shrank, and this time she stepped back a full three paces. Her gaze at Little Fish was filled with shock and panic.

Seeing such a strong reaction, Little Fish asked in confusion, "Isn't that right?"

She waved her bloody little hands like a puppy beckoning, staring straight into Tongtong's eyes, not letting her look away, speaking unhurriedly: "Because I bullied you before, I pulled your head off. So when we played the game, you deliberately swapped the glass bead to bully me, wanting to see me scared, wanting to see me bleed. That way you would feel better inside, right?"

The child's uniquely slow, soft, and sweet voice fell into the ears of Tongtong and everyone else present. They felt a chill, but also couldn't help casting looks of awe at Tongtong.

How dare she?

Wasn't Tongtong the child who had previously protected Little Fish the most?

The players had already lost track of what these children were thinking, let alone why they could switch sides so easily.

Had they lost their fear? Or was it...

Or was it that they thought Boss Little Fish seemed too easy to push around today?

Apart from Tongtong herself, probably no one could get an accurate answer.

But right now, Tongtong was truly terrified.

Facing Little Fish's clear, unclouded eyes, Tongtong took a step back without thinking. Inside her little head, thoughts raced wildly, trying to think of any excuse, any better excuse.

But as her mind raced, it flashed back to the night Little Fish had pulled her head off, and went blank.

She couldn't think of any excuse.

All she could do was force out a defense: "I... I didn't. The glass bead was in this box from the start."

So it wasn't that she had deliberately swapped the bead.

It was just Little Fish's bad luck that she hadn't chosen the correct black box on her first try.

Hearing her defense, Little Fish shook her head. Looking at Tongtong's flustered face, she said the words the children knew best and dreaded most:

"You're lying. I don't like children who lie."

"I won't take your little red flower today. You've made it ugly."

After saying this, Little Fish, holding the hedgehog, walked past Tongtong, who was now red-eyed and grievance-filled, and went back to sit under the eaves, staring into space.

The onlooking players were left with mixed feelings.

It was hard to say who was more pitiful...

Little Fish placed the hedgehog on her shoulder, then sat on a low stool, her wrists resting on her knees, letting her bloody hands keep dripping blood.

Drop by drop, quiet yet unsettling.

It always felt like... she was deliberately hurting herself to bleed.

Xiaoyin pursed her lips and crouched beside Xiaoyu, staring anxiously at her bleeding little hands for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up, her small figure rushing toward the activity room.

Before long, she ran out clutching a pile of things.

She also pulled Panpan over.

"Wrap Sister Xiaoyu's hands."

"Stop the bleeding."

Xiaoyin pointed at the things she had brought, then at Xiaoyu's hands.

Panpan understood her meaning right away. Upon seeing the tiny, closely packed cuts on Xiaoyu's little hands, she let out a small gasp.

"Little Sister Xiaoyu, does it hurt a lot?" She sympathetically held Xiaoyu's palms and blew on them repeatedly. Then, under Xiaoyin's increasingly urgent urging, she swallowed and, with trembling hands, used the tissues Xiaoyin had found to carefully wipe the blood off Xiaoyu's little hands little by little.

Xiaoyu lowered her eyes. She had been silent ever since she finished talking with Tongtong just now. Even now, though Panpan's actions caused great pain to her wounds, she remained quietly watching, her calm expression never wavering.

It wasn't until Panpan cleaned away the blood and glass shards and picked up the clean cloth strips Xiaoyin had found, ready to bandage her.

Xiaoyu retracted her hands, curling her fingertips away, causing Panpan's bandaging attempt to miss.

Panpan said worriedly, "Little Sister Xiaoyu, bear with it. It needs to be wrapped up to heal faster."

But Xiaoyu stared at her throat as she swallowed silently and asked softly, "Sister, do you really want to eat me? Drink my blood, gnaw off my flesh, and bite through my bones?"

Panpan said, "...I don't."

What a feeble excuse.

Xiaoyu's eyes crinkled in a smile at her, then looked up at Tongtong, who had come close with her head down, not daring to speak, and at the other children who seemed very concerned about her condition.

She finally seemed a bit impatient, yet she still sat obediently on the small stool, tilting her fair little face, innocently and peacefully gazing at every child before her who appeared so kind to her.

"Sister Sangye, you want to keep me here, help you come up with more games, so you can become stronger."

"Bai Ye, you want to make me like you, break all my bones so I can never grow up."

"Tongtong, you're afraid of me and you hate me, so you want to bully me secretly, wanting to see me cry like you and become an easy target to bully."

"Yang Yang, you want to pull me out of my body, then crawl into my body and become the new Xiaoyu, right?"

"Luo Luo, you want an adult to adopt you, but I wouldn't let them hug you all, so you've always hated me."

"And Song Pingan..."

"And..."

Xiaoyu looked at these children who were both strange and familiar. In the chilly night wind, she slowly said everyone's names and spoke all the things that shouldn't have been said.

The players were nearby, and they also heard it clearly.

But they were all dazed.

As dazed as the group of children standing in front of Xiaoyu.

Then Xiaoyu slowly said another sentence.

She stared at Sangye and said slowly and deliberately, "Sister, actually, Mother Director isn't here at all, and she won't wake up, right?"

After Sangye's initial shock, her gaze toward Xiaoyu turned icy and blood-red.

She curled the corner of her mouth, staring at this little one who seemed harmless and delicate but was actually extremely clever, and asked her, "How did you guess?"

Xiaoyu shook her head. "I don't need to guess. I just know."

She certainly wouldn't tell Sangye that Mother Director secretly had another Xiaoyu Orphanage elsewhere.

She would never tell her, just to infuriate her!

Xiaoyu was extremely spiteful.

Sangye was taken aback for a moment and pressed coldly, "Since you know all this, why expose it now? I clearly promised you, and you were the one who chose not to leave. What are you trying to do by saying all this now?"

She looked very fierce.

Actually, she was a bit humiliated and angry at having been tricked and exposed.

"Because I miss home~"

Xiaoyu sighed softly, puffing out her cheeks accusingly: "You're all very bad. I don't want to be friends with you or play with you anymore."

Upon hearing this, many children tensed up in unison.

Tongtong stepped forward in panic, her eyes red-rimmed, apologizing, "Xiaoyu, I'm sorry... Please don't be angry, okay? I really didn't bully you on purpose."

Xiaoyu was a bit angry. "Did you forget? I told you, I'm lucky Xiaoyu!"

That's why when we play games, I would never be unlucky enough to find the glass bead only on the third try.

Tongtong flinched, then hurriedly tried to make amends: "Th-then I'll give you my eyes to play with. Don't... don't be so angry."

Children's apologies are that simple—giving away their most precious thing, as if that would easily earn forgiveness.

But Xiaoyu shook her head at her.

"I don't want them."

Xiaoyu's refusal was both earnest and cruel: "Your eyes aren't as pretty as the glass bead from earlier."

"You dirtied it."

"I hate dirty things."

"Author's Note"

Xiaoyu: You all flip-flop, so I flip-flop too [cat paw]

.