The Writer walked extremely steadily, his arms carefully avoiding the boy with the birthmark's incomplete leg, holding him securely and steadily.
The boy was cautious, not quite daring to put his full weight on the other person.
His body was somewhat stiff, his back held straight and rigid. With just a turn of his head, he could see the Writer's handsome, refined face.
Belatedly, he realized he had wrinkled the other's collar. With a slightly trembling hand, he let go and then tried, bit by bit, to smooth it out for the Writer.
The gentle, jade-like black-haired young man curved the corner of his lips slightly, tilting his head a little, pretending not to have noticed the other's small actions.
They finally stopped outside a somewhat Western-style red building. Red walls, red tiles, the roof had several chimneys, and the walls featured colorful mosaic inlay art.
However, due to long neglect and lack of repair, the mosaic's original pattern was no longer discernible.
They pushed the door open and entered. Orphans were sitting in small clusters around one person. The child in the center was holding a book, mouthing something.
The only few light sources in the room were the burning fireplaces, but the flames inside looked as if they could die out at any moment, twisting and flickering unsteadily.
One of the surrounded children was speaking, but finally couldn't hold back and stopped, unable to suppress the expression on his face, feeling physiologically nauseous.
He only felt his stomach churning violently, sour bile surging up his throat like a raging torrent. For a moment, he couldn't speak, and thus the story was interrupted.
The fireplace flames beside them suddenly became unstable, red turning black, yet instead of dying, they became even more vigorous, dancing and clawing like demons.
The orphans encircling him stared with deep, eerie eyes, their mouths opening and closing like manipulated puppets, extremely bizarre. "The story? The story? If you can't tell the story well, you must be punished!"
One of the older orphans held a ruler, raising it high. The boy who had interrupted the story could only tremble as he stretched out his hand.
"Smack—"
The heavy ruler came down without hesitation. The boy's palm immediately split open, flesh torn, blood splattering everywhere.
But he couldn't make a sound. The boy bit his lower lip tightly, swallowing the cry of agony down.
Then, with his other uninjured hand, he opened the book again. After taking a few deep breaths, he could only continue the story with a trembling voice, "That little girl then happily went home with her gifts..."
Xiao Gui'an glanced around and noticed the teachers were nowhere to be seen; he didn't know where they had gone.
Only two caregivers were watching from the side.
Shouldn't storytelling, during storytelling time, be done by those of us who are teachers?
As their group approached, the flames in one of the fireplaces automatically ignited. A storybook with a worn cover stirred as if moved by wind, seemingly waiting for someone to tell its story.
"I hope it will be a friendly bedtime story." Xiao Gui'an gently set the birthmarked boy down, then picked up the storybook.
He lowered his gaze to look. The cover showed a cute little girl running through a forest, surrounded by adorable animals acting very affectionately towards her. A little bird sang on her shoulder, and flowers displayed smiling faces.
"How about I tell you all a story instead?"
The surrounding children hesitated. The deeply bowing caregivers nearby noticed the commotion from their group and slowly, bit by bit, moved closer.
In the end, the children could only obediently sit in a circle around the Writer.
[It's just telling a story. I'll definitely make it vivid and lively, I can even do character role-playing!] Xiao Gui'an opened the storybook enthusiastically and cast his eyes down.
Then, the next second, he knew he was wrong. He was truly foolish, really.
He only knew that storytelling should be emotional, but he subconsciously overlooked the fact that in such a bizarre instance, how could there possibly be a normal, heartwarming storybook?
Completely different from the seemingly cute art style on the cover, what was displayed before Xiao Gui'an was a real, mangled, bloody corpse of a girl, gutted, with her face covered in bite marks.
The surrounding wild beasts tore at her flesh with sharp, huge teeth. The crimson, sticky intestines from her belly were brutally dragged out, mixing with dirt on the dead leaves, then being ripped apart and devoured.
Just looking at the image, one could almost feel the overwhelming stench of rot and decay hitting them.
Xiao Gui'an kept a straight face and flipped a few more pages. The subsequent pages also showed one horrifying, shocking scene after another.
It was literally a real-life dark fairy tale.
No wonder that boy couldn't continue. Looking at this stuff while trying to tell a story, the psychological trauma must be immense.
"Snap—" The Writer simply closed the book.
It ended before it even began.
The fireplace flames behind him grew restless again. The expressions of the orphans sitting around him also began to change, bit by bit.
"Teacher has a good memory and has already finished reading the story. Next, I will tell it to you all, bit by bit."
The Writer wasn't flustered and provided a perfectly valid reason. The expressions of the orphans surrounding him immediately returned to normal.
This move could be called directly interrupting the spellcasting.
The flames that were about to descend into madness also quieted down. The distorted shadows reflected on the floor suddenly hesitated—