Chapter 131

Chapter 131: A Childhood Cut Short?

From Little Red Riding Hood’s reaction and the look on the new girl’s face, Yu Sheng quickly guessed what had happened.

His brow tightened, but before he could speak, Little Red Riding Hood waved in a rush, saying: “Wait here a moment. I will be right back.”

“No, I am coming with you,” Yu Sheng said as he stood up without waiting for permission. Next to him, Foxy scooped Irene into her arms and stood as well.

“This is an internal matter of Fairy Tale, and we have gone through this process many times,” Little Red Riding Hood said, her expression dark and heavy. “Thank you for caring, but…”

“There is no ‘but.’ I know what you mean, but your wolf bit me,” Yu Sheng cut in at once. He knew how to make this stubborn miss give way, so he brought up the old incident without hesitation. “I have already been pulled into Fairy Tale. I might dream my way into that Black Forest again, so I have to learn more.”

Faced with that, Little Red Riding Hood lost the will to refuse. She gave Yu Sheng a complicated look, then nodded lightly.

Rapunzel looked at Yu Sheng and the others in confusion, like she had many questions, but after seeing Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes, she swallowed her words and turned to open the door.

As soon as they left the parlor, Yu Sheng saw many children gathered in the hall.

Some looked only six or seven, even younger. Some were around twelve or thirteen. They grouped together in little knots. They were at the age when kids are the most talkative, yet now they were very quiet.

A girl in a blue dress saw Little Red Riding Hood come out. She hesitated, then walked over and tugged the hem of Little Red Riding Hood’s clothes carefully: “Teacher Su said… Xiao Xiao graduated today. Is that true?”

Little Red Riding Hood pressed her lips together, bent down, and patted the girl’s head: “Yes. She is leaving today and going somewhere else.”

“Will she still come to class this afternoon? I made her a gift…”

“Give the gift to Teacher Su. She will pass it on for you. Children who graduate leave very fast. There is usually no time to say goodbye. But I will go see her off for you.”

“Oh…”

Little Red Riding Hood straightened and hurried down the corridor with Yu Sheng and the others.

Once they were out of the children’s sight, Yu Sheng asked in a low voice, frowning: “You said this has happened many times?”

“Many times,” Little Red Riding Hood said with a small nod. “Some children are already very unstable when they arrive. Some already have mental illnesses. Fairy Tale makes their condition worse. Our danger is not only at ‘adulthood.’ All through childhood there are cliffs to trip over.”

Irene lifted her head from Foxy’s arms, asking: “They do not know the truth?”

“The youngest ones do not. Extra tension, fear, and confusion make Fairy Tale hit them harder. Around thirteen or fourteen, they start to understand from their dreams what is coming, and they begin to grasp the power Fairy Tale gives them. We call this Node ‘Awakening.’ After that, they become ‘guardians’ for the little ones. We have a mature guidance process.”

Irene buried her face in Foxy’s arms again and spoke in a muffled voice: “This is the first time a phrase like ‘mature process’ has sounded so uncomfortable to me.”

Yu Sheng stayed quiet. His lips were pressed tight, and his face looked dark, like a fire was burning under it, along with a strong and stubborn idea taking shape.

Irene noticed something in him. She shot him a quick glance but said nothing.

They crossed the east building quickly and, led by Little Red Riding Hood, passed through a covered walkway between two buildings and entered the one people called the west building.

The moment they stepped inside, Yu Sheng felt a change in the environment, or rather in the mood.

A faint sense of ‘pressure’ seemed to fill the whole place. The corridor was so quiet it made people tense. The lights were bright, but he kept feeling there were dark corners everywhere. It was a kind of ‘dark’ in the mind, like many things that light could not drive away were crouching in the west building, cutting it into scattered pieces.

“There are many seals and isolation measures in this building,” Little Red Riding Hood said softly, noticing Yu Sheng’s expression. “This is our containment and research wing. A child in trouble must first get ‘safety handling’ here before being sent outside.”

Yu Sheng said nothing. He only nodded.

He followed Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel down the uncomfortable corridor. Sunlight fell through the windows and left broken shadows on the walls. At last they reached a heavy iron door. A young woman in a light gray jacket stood there, looking about twenty-something, her face tired as she leaned on the wall and stared into space.

An adult.

Yu Sheng paused when he saw her. Then he remembered what Little Red Riding Hood had told him.

She was an employee sent by the council.

Rapunzel whispered an introduction: “This is Teacher Su. She looks after the children under seven. She was sent by the council. The Cursed Children like her very much.”

Teacher Su snapped out of her daze and noticed them. She barely glanced at Yu Sheng. Her eyes went straight to Little Red Riding Hood.

“It happened during class,” she said softly. Even though she was an adult, she sounded like a child who had made a mistake in front of Little Red Riding Hood. “I… should have noticed sooner.”

“Noticing sooner would not have helped. It might already have been too late before she was sent here,” Little Red Riding Hood said, shaking her head. “We need to go in and check.”

“…All right,” the young woman said, biting her lip and nodding. Then she seemed to notice Yu Sheng, Irene, and Foxy for the first time. “Wait, who are they?”

“Colleagues,” Little Red Riding Hood said as she pushed the heavy iron door. “And my friends.”

The woman blinked in surprise. Yu Sheng was already walking past her. Before stepping through, he turned his head and gave her a nod, saying: “Hello. I am Yu Sheng, from the Hotel.”

Foxy copied him cheerfully, saying: “I am Foxy, from the Hotel.”

“I am Irene, from the Hotel,” Irene chimed in.

Before the woman could react, the figures had gone inside. The iron door shut, leaving her standing in the hall in a daze.

The room was brightly lit.

But the ‘darkness’ that seemed to spread from the mind was even stronger than in the corridor.

Yu Sheng saw that the big room held nothing at all, except for a small single bed in the center.

A thin figure lay there under a light quilt, as if fast asleep.

A strange resistance stirred in his chest, but Yu Sheng still stepped forward.

The child lay there with a peaceful face.

But there was no breath, and her chest did not rise at all.

Fine, unsettling red lines covered her neck, arms, and calves. Blood stains clung between the lines, as if those parts had once been broken apart and then barely pieced back together.

At once Yu Sheng remembered Little Red Riding Hood’s arm in the Valley and how it had changed.

“We handled it in time, so no other children saw it,” Rapunzel said in a low voice at his side. “She briefly turned into a wolf in a nightmare. It was just a moment, but it was already too late.”

“…Luckily, at the last moment she returned to a human form,” Little Red Riding Hood sighed softly. “At least we can send her off as a person.”

“Wait, a wolf?” Yu Sheng asked, his eyes widening as something clicked. “Her ‘symptom’ is turning into a wolf? So…”

“You did not know?” Rapunzel said from the other side as she pointed at the child on the bed. “She might have been the next Little Red Riding Hood.”

Then she lowered her eyes and shook her head: “But now it does not matter.”

“You have seen it,” Little Red Riding Hood said after a long breath. “This is how the story ends. Her childhood is over.”

“You will end like this too?”

“Yes. Later I will end like this too. If I am lucky, it will be in a human form. If I am unlucky… it will look different.”

Yu Sheng said nothing. He stared at the girl in red for a long time, then at the child on the bed. He stood still for a long while, lost in thought.

Minutes passed. Just when Little Red Riding Hood was about to speak, Yu Sheng suddenly moved.

He reached out and touched the blood near the child’s neck.

Rapunzel’s eyes flew wide as she stepped forward, saying: “What are you doing?”

Without looking up, Yu Sheng said: “I want to know what she saw in her last moment. If I can, maybe I can say a few more words to her.”

Rapunzel froze. She was about to speak again when Little Red Riding Hood reached out to stop her.

At the same time, Yu Sheng let out a puzzled sound: “Huh?”

Irene asked before she could stop herself: “What is it?”

Yu Sheng did not answer. He kept his hand on the blood, standing very still for more than ten seconds, as if he had sensed some unusual message. After a while, he blinked and let out a sharp breath.

“…She is not dead,” he said softly, with doubt and confusion in his voice. Then, as if to make it clear, he looked around at everyone and gave a firm nod.

“I think she is not dead.”