The girl had grown up at Red Maple Leaf Boarding School ever since she could remember. From childhood to adolescence, she had been as quiet as a deaf-mute girl.
Whenever teachers and children saw her, she was usually sitting alone in some corner untouched by sunlight, quietly sucking on her fingers as her watery eyes watched the passing crowd.
As she grew older, her differences gradually came to light.
She seemed to suffer from some strange form of anorexia. While the other children wolfed down their scarce meals, she would often swallow only a bite or two symbolically before giving the rest to her classmates to divide among themselves.
One teacher had once happened upon her crouching in a dark corner of a wall overgrown with mushrooms, scooping up the soft earth beneath the fungi with her fingers and stuffing it into her mouth. When the teacher came over to stop her, she seemed to realize that her behavior was unacceptable. She hurriedly hid her dirt-stained fingers behind her back and put on a shy, innocent smile.
Nor was that all. The girl could see things ordinary people could not see and hear whispers ordinary people could not hear. Once, when it was her turn to clean the cemetery, she suddenly crouched before a small yellow flower and muttered strange sounds no one could understand.
At first, the teachers assumed she was merely playful. Just as ordinary children liked to imagine invisible friends, they thought she was simply pretending to speak with flowers and grass out of childish innocence.
Until one day, a teacher nailed 47 to a cross, then saw that strange bad child walking down an invisible staircase late that night.
Terrified by the bizarre sight, the teacher instinctively looked away, only to glimpse the girl standing among