Method of Educating Children

Joshua sat there and watched an entire real-life version of "Beauty and the Demon."

This space had been built from the impressions of the film's audience. There were many things in it that did not conform to reality, yet the feel of some things was no different from the real world.

The scene where Belle and the Demon Prince frolicked together.

One moment, Joshua had been sitting inside the castle; the next, the setting had become a snow-covered garden outside it.

Belle and the Demon Prince ran through the garden, while Joshua could only find a spot near the snow to sit down.

The icy touch of frost and snow traveled directly from Joshua's fingertips into his mind. Unfortunately, though the piled snow looked soft and fluffy, it felt as hard as solid ice beneath his touch.

As Joshua counted down the time until the movie ended, that strange laughter sounded beside him again.

The girl entirely shrouded in a black robe had focused all her attention on Belle and the Demon Prince. Even though Joshua was sitting nearby, she treated him as if he were air.

Yet she occasionally let out strange laughs. It was indeed the laughter of a little girl, but the way it sounded like jammed gears and distorted audio made Joshua's skin crawl.

"Is it really that funny?"

Joshua spoke to her. Wrapped in her black robe, she revealed only a small portion of her bare arm.

She looked to be only ten or twelve years old, yet intricate patterns had been branded onto her arm. They looked like runes.

Her laughter stopped briefly when she heard Joshua's voice, then that eerie sound began again.

The longer Joshua listened, the stranger it felt, as though what sat beside him was not a real person but