Su Youjin felt as if her head were splitting apart. A soft, seductive voice came from nowhere, following her like a shadow, sometimes faint, sometimes loud. She had been through this more than once, but the worsening headache still brought her to the brink of collapse time and again.
A shrill laugh scraped at her eardrums, while a beguiling voice lulled her mind. It kept whispering softly, "If it's so painful, why not give up? Just give up. Then it won't hurt so much..."
Images fluttered before her eyes, like black-and-white silent films flickering past at high speed. She saw herself as a lonely child, standing all alone in a spacious room with a doll in her arms. Her expression had shifted little by little, from hurt, anticipation, longing, and resentment to sorrow, indifference, and numbness.
She saw countless silhouettes of her parents: one making a phone call, one walking away, their faces glimpsed in passing, their lips moving. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could guess.
The scenes, steeped in the stale air of the past, gradually shattered into fragments, like a smashed window. Each shard had sharp edges that glinted with a cold light. As light and shadow shifted, they reflected her hollow, emotionless eyes.
The bewitching whispers by her ear repeated tirelessly: "Hate them. Resent them... Why give birth to me only to neglect me? Why can't anything I do make you stay, even for a moment... I want to be with Mom and Dad... Mom, Dad, look at me... Mom, Dad, spend some time with me... Despair. Give up..."
Su Youjin could barely make out the voices anymore. The negative emotions in her heart were gradually swallowing her.
She was sinking into darkness.
The fox demon was growing impatient. It had never