On the first day she was thrown in here.
Many children tried to steal her clothes and her doll.
Shirley stepped forward, fought those children, and protected her.
On the second day.
A boy she had beaten held a grudge. On their way back here, he tried to attack her from behind with an iron nail, but she bit his wrist and drew a great deal of blood.
It was after that that they became friends.
At least, to the girl named Shirley, she was her only friend in this cellar.
"We'll escape sooner or later."
She often told her that.
"And we have to escape. Especially me. If I grow any bigger, I won't be able to do the work here anymore. There are already lots of gaps between the gears I can't squeeze into. Once I'm useless, they'll definitely kill me, because I'm not pretty."
The scene changed again.
The irritating roar of steam engines filled their ears. In the sweltering underground space, enormous gears and conveyor belts ran everywhere.
And Lynn finally saw clearly the work they were forced to do every day.
Children only a few years old.
Driven by whips, they were stuffed into the gaps between interlocking gears. With the simplest tools, day after day, they cleaned debris from the deepest crevices adults could never reach. Many children had severe burns and whip marks, and most had even lost their hearing to the constant roar.
And Black String Moon, his Miss Doll.
At just five or six years old, she too was stuffed into those mechanical wheels, mechanically serving as a part of that industry, day after day.
But she had one advantage.
She never cried, never broke down, and never screamed.
Even when a whip left long, bloody welts across her back, her