As the sun gradually slanted westward, golden dusk spread across all of Bolai Town. The residents who sang and danced after dinner seemed to have heard a new twilight melody, and even the steps beneath their feet burst into new life; the poets in the square plucked their harps, chanting poems of the evening glow in elegant tones; the painters by the river also hurried to capture this beautiful moment.
In many places, dusk was hailed as the key that unlocked darkness, yet in Bolai Town, it had become a treasure worthy of song.
But no matter how dazzling a treasure was, there were places its light could not reach. The orphanage deep within Tisen Lane was one such place.
In a dim little room, Little Saim opened his eyes.
He rubbed his eyes, climbed down from the bed, pushed open the window, and looked at the sky outside—gloomy and heavy, with only occasional hints of brightness glimpsed amid the distant rows of shadowy buildings, revealing the dusk caught between the cracks.
The orphanage was forever shrouded in gloom, as though cut off from both dawn and dusk beyond its walls.
If ordinary people came here, they would probably be frightened out of their wits. Even the bold would not like such a place.
Yet as Little Saim felt the cold, death-tinged world around him, his heart was strangely at peace.
Compared with the weary, stifling labor of the past few years on the farm, this was the first time he had truly relaxed. Perhaps because of how he felt at this moment, he neither disliked nor feared the orphanage.
He sat before the window in a daze for a while, his mind filled with all manner of thoughts—of the past, the present, and imagined futures.
It was not until