Chapter 126

Chapter 126: Nightfall and Childhood

The night was deep and still.

A streetlight outside shone through a small window in the side wall, spilling pale light into the orphanage hallway. The corridor was quiet, as if the noise of the day had never happened. In the steady darkness, the calm felt strangely reassuring.

Little Red Riding Hood walked slowly down the hall, passing door after door. Each time, she paused to peer through the observation window and check inside. Only after confirming nothing was wrong did she let herself relax and move on.

The guardian on duty for the first half of the night had to patrol like this twice. The one on duty for the second half had to do it three times, until the sun rose and the night finally faded away.

Footsteps sounded ahead.

Little Red Riding Hood lifted her head and saw a small figure approaching through the dim corridor. A short girl with ear-length hair, maybe two years younger than her.

“Snow White?” Little Red Riding Hood blinked in surprise. “You’re not on duty today. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Can’t sleep. Got up to walk around,” the thin girl said casually. “Then I remembered you should be patrolling by the east building, so I came to check on you.”

“Mm.”

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t say much. She simply fell into step beside Princess Snow White.

By the organization’s rules, after ten at night, everyone had to be in their rooms. But that restriction only applied to children under fourteen, or those who hadn’t awakened yet. Princess Snow White was already counted as a guardian in Fairy Tale. She knew what she was doing, and Little Red Riding Hood wasn’t going to nag her.

“You don’t sleep much anymore, do you?” Snow White asked suddenly, breaking the quiet.

Little Red Riding Hood hummed.

“As adulthood gets closer, you need less and less sleep,” Snow White said softly. “Sometimes two or three hours a day is enough. But in exchange, those few hours become extremely dangerous.” Her voice dropped even lower. “Peaceful dreams almost disappear. Once you fall asleep, the chance of entering Fairy Tale is almost one hundred percent. Every night becomes a trial.”

She hesitated. “I heard the King say that last month you didn’t have this. It only started this month.”

“My birthday is next month,” Little Red Riding Hood said calmly. “This is normal.”

Snow White pressed her lips together. After a while, she asked, “Are you scared?”

“A little,” Little Red Riding Hood admitted. “But I’m fine. My wolf is with me.” She glanced sideways at Snow White in the dim light. “But you—why are you suddenly talking to me about this? You don’t usually pay attention to this stuff.”

Snow White didn’t answer right away.

After several seconds, she finally said, “The new child today… did you notice her?”

“I noticed,” Little Red Riding Hood said. “She doesn’t talk much and she looks nervous.” She thought for a moment. “The transfer staff said she used to live in a public orphanage in the North District. She kept having nightmares and triggered some abnormal phenomena, which caught the Special Operations Bureau’s attention. So they sent her here. Does she have a problem?”

“Little Match Girl stayed with her today,” Snow White said. “She said the child still can’t remember her dreams clearly, but when she read storybooks, she resisted anything involving wolves—pictures or words.”

Little Red Riding Hood stopped.

For a second, it looked like she might say something. Then she started walking again as if nothing had happened.

Snow White kept pace. After a long, heavy silence, she spoke again. “…That child might be the new Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Then you’ll have to take good care of her,” Little Red Riding Hood said seriously, “the way I took care of you.”

Snow White immediately scowled. “You’re only two and a half years older than me!”

“And I was your guardian for two and a half years,” Little Red Riding Hood shot back, giving the thin girl a sideways look. “Eat more. You’re still as skinny as last year. If you keep this up, even fewer kids will listen to you.”

“I do eat. I just can’t gain weight. What do you want me to do?”

They bantered the way they always did, until they both fell quiet again without meaning to.

In the end, Snow White broke the silence first. “There’s more than one record of someone making it through adulthood in the organization. Don’t be afraid. Like the King—if you convert to human age, he’s already over forty. And the Cinderella before last supposedly made it past her twenty-sixth birthday.” She tried to sound steady. “I don’t think it’s strange for two Little Red Riding Hoods to exist at the same time…”

Little Red Riding Hood listened quietly.

She’d thought about the same things herself. Snow White’s reassurance echoed what Dr. Lin had told her, and what she told herself, night after night. But what else could she do?

Every Fairy Tale member nearing adulthood heard words like these.

And yet, for some reason, hearing Snow White say it now made something shift in her chest—an ache that wasn’t fear exactly, and wasn’t relief either.

She suddenly thought of Yu Sheng’s call earlier.

“Maybe…” she murmured.

Snow White, lost in her own attempt to find something lighter to say, didn’t catch it at first. She rambled another line or two before blinking. “Huh? What did you just say?”

Little Red Riding Hood steadied herself and met Snow White’s eyes. “Maybe it really won’t be that bad.”

She swallowed. “I mean… maybe something good will happen.”

Snow White looked blank for a moment, but she caught it—the faint glimmer inside Little Red Riding Hood’s always-calm gaze, something different from the past few days.

She didn’t know why, but she nodded anyway. “Well… it’s good if you can think that way.”

“A friend is coming tomorrow,” Little Red Riding Hood said, very serious. “I invited him to visit our home.”

Snow White’s eyes widened. “Ah—what? You invited a friend home?” She recovered quickly, but her tone still sounded stunned. “That’s rare. I thought only Rapunzel did that. Is it a classmate from school? You’re in the east building, right?”

“He’s a lord.”

Snow White froze.

“He’s coming at noon,” Little Red Riding Hood continued. “We’ll avoid the most unstable times in the morning and evening. He knows some things about me. And there’s no class tomorrow, so I’ll probably take him around the orphanage.”

After a long beat, Snow White groaned. “You should’ve told everyone at dinner. Now we have to arrange things tomorrow morning—move some unstable kids to the west building…”

“No need.” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. “He’s also a spirit realm detective. He’s worked with me before, and he knows some things about Fairy Tale. I’ve mentioned him. It’s that Yu Sheng.”

Snow White’s mouth fell open. “…The one who eats entities raw?!”

Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “Yeah. The one who eats entities raw. Though most of the time he still cooks them first.”

For a moment, Snow White went silent, like her brain had stalled.

Little Red Riding Hood kept walking.

Snow White stared after her for two seconds, then snapped back and hurried to catch up. As soon as she reached her side, she started firing off questions in a rush.

“How does he know about Fairy Tale?”

“Did you tell him? You usually don’t tell outsiders about this.”

“What is he coming for? Just to tour the orphanage?”

“You’re not planning to drag him into this, are you? You can’t. It’s dangerous…”

“Does Dr. Lin know? Should we tell Dr. Lin?”

Snow White questioned her the whole way. Little Red Riding Hood brushed her off with a few casual lines. Eventually Snow White stopped asking, and simply watched her walk in silence.

After a long time, Snow White muttered one last sentence, low and bitter. “We don’t have many rules, but remember this. The people who wanted to help before… they all died in the end.”

This time, Little Red Riding Hood stopped and answered seriously. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

Snow White pressed her lips together and said nothing more. They walked forward together.

Without realizing it, they’d already passed the dorm area and the dining hall. Ahead was the large activity room—the children’s “classroom.”

The lights were on.

“Someone forgot to turn off the activity room lights again,” Snow White frowned. “How much is that going to cost in electricity?”

Little Red Riding Hood pushed the door open and peeked inside.

This was where the younger children played and “had classes.” The spacious room was divided into several areas: old desks and chairs in the northeast corner, a small bookshelf packed with picture books and indoor toys in the northwest, a little blackboard near the door.

Children’s doodles still covered the board. Along the edges, many small slips of paper were stuck in a messy line—wish cards the teacher had guided them to write in class that day.

The wishes were everything: I want cake. I want new toys. I want new clothes. I want to go out and play. I want to watch cartoons all day.

Some were mixed with pinyin. Some were just drawings.

Little kids’ wishes, and the way they expressed them, really were all over the place.

Little Red Riding Hood smiled without meaning to.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one slip had been torn down and stuffed into the corner beside the teaching-aid box.

She pulled it out and carefully smoothed it flat.

“wo xiang grow up.”

That was what it said.

“Turn off the lights, okay,” Snow White said from beside her.

With a snap, the room fell dark—and the little wish on the paper disappeared into shadow.