Chapter 1210
Eleven could not stop crying. Her sobs echoed through the corridor, drawing the curiosity of more children, but every child who tried to peek out was ushered back into their rooms by the teachers. They gently closed the dormitory doors, leaving Eleven sitting alone in the corner.
At first, Eleven was still grieving, but eventually her crying turned into nothing but tears. They poured freely, washing away all her fear like rain. Her voice grew quieter and quieter until it became irregular sniffling. Both her sleeves had been soaked a darker color by her tears, and rubbing them against her cheeks felt unpleasant.
Eleven whimpered as she lowered her hands, then turned and saw that a pack of tissues and some water had somehow appeared in the corridor around the corner. Her breathing caught for a moment as she remembered the rules of tonight's Heart-to-Heart Salon. After a brief hesitation, she hopped lightly down from her chair, hurried over, pulled out three or four tissues in a row, pressed them haphazardly to her face, and drained the water in the paper cup in one gulp.
After doing all that, she ran back to the dormitory in great strides—knocked, entered, climbed silently onto her little bed, faced the wall, and closed her eyes.
She felt that Kiki had not forgiven her. So Eleven desperately wished for the night to end quickly, so she could see her again sooner.
"You said those things to Connargonsa earlier because you wanted to provoke him into revealing something, didn't you?"
Late at night, Silei and Klar walked together along the empty ridges between the fields. Wooden streetlamps standing along one side of the path cast circular pools of light onto the road, while insects fluttered around the lamps above their heads.
Klar