After all, nobody liked being tattled on.
Especially when the report was slanderous.
All her earlier thoughts vanished.
At that moment, the girl's mother couldn't stop thinking about what she had just witnessed.
Only after the fact did she begin to feel angry and worried.
At first, she had been too shocked to think of anything else.
The girl's mother returned home.
The girl was doing her homework in her room.
She looked so focused that there was not a trace of anything unusual about her.
If she hadn't seen it with her own eyes...
If her daughter's classmates hadn't come to tell her... their faces full of unmistakable strangeness and worry...
She might have thought everything that had happened was just some absurd dream.
She leaned against her daughter's bedroom door.
Her expression was complicated and unreadable.
The girl finished her homework.
She turned her head casually.
The next second, she froze.
"...Mom?"
"You scared me."
"Why are you standing there?"
"And why aren't you saying anything..."
The girl's mother straightened up.
She closed the door behind her.
Then she walked toward her daughter.
The girl felt confused and a little uneasy.
She found her uneasiness strange.
And she found it amusing, too.
She hadn't done anything that should make her feel uneasy.
A smile flickered in her eyes.
"Mom—"
Her mother cut her off.
What happened next was completely beyond the girl's expectations.
Her mother demanded to know why she had been talking to a big tree.
Her expression was stern.
Her tone was even a little harsh.
The girl was already flustered and at a loss because her secret had been discovered.
Her mother's attitude only made her angrier.
She got into an argument with her mother.
In the