Ligo tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
Tonight, Susie was covering her night shift and watching Arevalo. She knew she ought to rest early so she could relieve Susie tomorrow afternoon, but Ligo kept scrunching up her face, rubbing her eyes, and muttering as she turned over. Finally, she got out of bed and splashed some water on her face.
—She had heard Hesta's entire conversation with Eleven that evening.
It wasn't intentional. Hesta had come back in the middle of the night and suddenly gone to look after the child, so Ligo had merely taken a few extra steps around the place, nothing more. She had still been sneering when she heard Hesta seriously lecturing Eleven. Who could have known that, as the conversation between the adult and child went on, her own name would come up?
Ligo couldn't laugh anymore.
The thought of Hesta coming to apologize tomorrow made Ligo unbearably awkward. She had nothing to explain to Hesta, nor did she want to hear any explanation from her—her anger was very real, but it wasn't directed entirely at Hesta.
Even now, she still carried a strange resentment, but she didn't know whom to cast it at—she hated Hesta, Sahame, Eugene, Shosko... even Liz.
She hated every one of them, yet she loved every one of them just as deeply. She treasured them more than her own life. And yet these people—these people Ligo considered her closest friends—were all eager to risk their lives. It was as if each of them had something dangerous in her heart, something every one of them placed above her own life and death.
How could that not make someone hate them?
These past few days, whenever Ligo thought of it, she ground her back teeth until they nearly shattered.
And yet this