Free Web NovelNot long after, the day arrived again when those wealthy people came to the church to perform their strange sacrificial rites.
Generally, the Dean would call Him to the church one day in advance. On that day, He would not return to the ordinary dormitory to sleep. He would sleep in the church.
Bai Liu tossed and turned with the copy of The Slender Man Killer’s Records He had given him clutched in his arms. In the end, he climbed out of bed and carefully put on his shoes, then headed toward the church.
The church had been locked by the Dean, but Bai Liu had spent enough time there to know a few narrow ways inside—such as the small broken window hidden behind a curtain.
Bai Liu climbed through the window into the church. By the moonlight, he searched the pews for the other person, and finally found Him behind the divine statue.
The instant Bai Liu saw Him, his face showed no fluctuation at all.
He was curled up inside a bathtub slightly too small for his body. The tub was filled with bloody water. His face, so pale it was almost transparent, was half-submerged in the blood. Not even the sound of breathing could be felt from him. A layer of snow-white frost coated his eyelashes, while his hands, feet, and forehead were covered in needle marks still seeping blood.
“Xie Ta,” Bai Liu called his name for the first time.
Xie Ta slowly woke in the bathtub. He opened his eyes and saw Bai Liu. He reached out as if wanting to touch him, but something stirred inside the tub.
A thorny vine covered in mushrooms stretched out from the bloody water, winding tightly around Xie Ta’s neck, wrists, and ankles. One second before his fingertips could touch Bai Liu, he was bound fast and imprisoned within that blood-colored baptismal pool.
“What are you doing?” Bai Liu heard himself ask calmly.
Xie Ta said, “Baptism. This is the ritual before they draw blood.”
“Those people came to draw your blood, didn’t they? They need your blood to save themselves.” Bai Liu continued asking, his tone very steady. “If they draw this much blood from you, you’ll die, won’t you?”
“I won’t.” Xie Ta looked at Bai Liu. “I’m a monster, so I won’t die.”
As Xie Ta spoke, a breath of white mist left his lips—proof enough of how cold his body was right now.
“Then are you cold, sleeping here?” Bai Liu asked.
Xie Ta shook his head honestly. “I can’t feel it.”
Bai Liu stepped one foot into the bloody water, then knelt down and forced himself into the narrow gap where Xie Ta was curled up. Bai Liu’s warm body temperature passed continuously through the bloody water to Xie Ta.
Xie Ta blinked slowly.
The frost on his eyelashes melted in Bai Liu’s breath.
He could feel the cold now, because Bai Liu was so warm.
Then Bai Liu opened the book Xie Ta had given him as if nothing were wrong—he had brought it with him—and asked, “Want to read together?”
They slept together in that filthy baptismal pool full of blood, looking up at the divine statue gazing down at them, ignoring every taboo as they chatted without purpose.
“Is there any meaning to baptism?”
“Baptism means God bestows a blessing upon His newly born, most beloved believer.”
“Can this kind of thing be called a blessing?”
“...For them, perhaps.”
“You really believe that? You don’t actually think God exists, do you?”
“Mhm.”
...
Bai Liu fell into a deep sleep curled against Xie Ta’s icy arm.
When he woke the next day, he was lying in his own bed, without a single trace of bloody water on his body.
Xie Ta did not return until the afternoon. He looked even paler than before.
This time, the needle marks had spread to his face. The backs of his hands and feet were covered in shocking bruises left by repeated blood draws.
Bai Liu silently used bandages he had stolen from the infirmary to wrap the needle holes that were still bleeding.
Xie Ta watched him quietly, then suddenly said, “Take those bandages off. Your Slender Man plushie doesn’t have a face anymore.”
Bai Liu’s lips pressed into a straight line.
The wealthy people who came to draw blood began visiting more and more frequently, and Xie Ta appeared less and less.
Even when he did occasionally appear, the suffocating stench of blood and mushrooms on his body was difficult for others to endure.
Whenever Xie Ta showed up, the children would keep far away from him, constantly waving their hands in front of their noses in disgust, as if trying to fan away that strange smell along with Xie Ta himself. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Xie Ta also seemed to know that the odor on his body was unpleasant. He rarely appeared before Bai Liu anymore, only watching him from a distance.
Occasionally, when Bai Liu walked over to find him, Xie Ta would disappear.
When he did not want to come into contact with people, it was as if he did not exist at all. No one could find him.
Not even Bai Liu.
Bai Liu began contacting adults outside the welfare home and doing gray-area work that a child could do, earning a considerable amount of money.
Only with enough money and enough ability, once he had made all the preparations, would he have the confidence to take Xie Ta and shake off the investors’ pursuit, then escape from this welfare home.
Even though it was an extremely immature and naive plan.
A faint unease and urgency made Bai Liu realize that if Xie Ta did not leave soon, he might never be able to leave.
But Bai Liu’s activities were eventually exposed.
The child who exposed him shrank behind the Dean, his face filled with both fear and excitement. After swallowing hard several times, he raised a trembling hand and pointed at the expressionless Bai Liu.
“I saw him doing... strange deals with that adult! He helps adults do bad things! I saw it! Those adults even gave him money!”
“Did you do such a thing, Bai Six?!” the Dean demanded sternly.
Bai Liu did not deny it.
He merely looked away indifferently, his gaze falling on Xie Ta, who sat silently among the crowd.
He did not explain what he had actually done.
Because it was meaningless.
These people did not care what he had done, nor would they ask. They had already pronounced him guilty.
Of course, what he had done truly was not anything good.
These teachers simply feared him.
They feared this strange child who spent all day with Xie Ta, who had become increasingly gloomy and terrifying, who liked reading bloody stories, and who always looked at others as though they were livestock waiting to be slaughtered.
So naturally, he had to be punished.
Bai Liu even had the idle mind to judge the teachers’ methods of punishment. It would only be the same few tricks again. It was not the first time he had been punished.
But just as a teacher came over, grabbed Bai Liu’s arm, and prepared to drag him away, Xie Ta suddenly stood up with one hand resting against the back of a chair.
His expression and tone were eternally flat.
“I was the one who made him do it.”
This time, the teachers exploded completely.
Compared to Bai Liu, the one they feared most was naturally the taciturn Xie Ta.
They surrounded Xie Ta, yet cautiously kept a distance of one meter from him, forming a hollow circle.
The Dean questioned him cautiously, fearfully, and condescendingly.
“Why did you make Bai Six do such things?”
They never doubted whether Xie Ta had actually done it.
Just like when they declared Bai Liu guilty, they dryly and decisively pronounced his sentence.
Because he was a monster, and Bai Six was a bad child who associated with monsters.
Anything they did was only to be expected.
Xie Ta glanced sideways at Bai Liu, who was being pulled up by the teachers.
Then, very suddenly, the corners of his mouth curved upward, very, very ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) faintly.
In the second Xie Ta smiled, Bai Liu felt that his silver-blue eyes must have looked very gentle, very beautiful, and softly curved.
But they were hidden by his hair, so he could not see them.
Xie Ta confessed his crime in the same gentle tone he had used when giving Bai Liu the book.
He said, “Because I wanted to contact people outside, then take Bai Six and run away.”
“How dare you try to run away?!” the Dean shrieked hysterically. “Do you know how much trouble you would cause us if you escaped?! We’ve already entered the second stage of screening! Those investors won’t give us money without your blood!”
The children scattered in panic, chattering fearfully.
“Blood?! What blood?! The blood flowing out of those needle holes?!”
“He really is a monster!”
After realizing she had let the secret slip, the Dean instinctively covered her mouth.
The next second, she glared viciously at Xie Ta and dragged him by his thin wrist toward the church.
“Everything you have was given to you by this welfare home, and yet you still want to escape!”
The Dean’s rage overcame her fear, and she cruelly judged the punishment Xie Ta was about to receive.
“I think we’ve given you too many privileges. You need to be educated properly. Tonight, I’m locking you in the church for baptism!”
With that, she dragged Xie Ta away by the wrist.
Bai Liu struggled through the noisy children and teachers. He forced his way out of the crowd and chased after them, reaching out both hands toward Xie Ta as he was taken away.
“Xie Ta!”
Xie Ta turned back to look at him.
The wind lifted the curls over his forehead, revealing those silver-blue eyes, as beautiful as a lake after the snow had melted.
Bai Liu stared blankly into Xie Ta’s eyes.
There was no sadness in them.
They were calm, and seemingly filled with contentment, reflecting him wholeheartedly.
Xie Ta also reached out and caught the hand Bai Liu stretched toward him from the crowd.
Their fingers interlocked.
It was a cold, damp touch. Bai Liu could feel the raised needle scars on the back of his hand.
“Bai Six.” Xie Ta smiled very faintly and held Bai Liu’s hand tightly. “Don’t be afraid. I’m a monster. I won’t die.”
“Let go!” the Dean snapped, violently tearing their tightly clasped hands apart.
Bai Liu gritted his teeth and refused to let go.
But Xie Ta quietly loosened his grip.
And so that tight hold vanished in an instant.
Xie Ta shook his head at Bai Liu, telling him not to follow.
Then he turned and calmly, almost habitually, followed the Dean toward the church he already knew so well.
Bai Liu had never been an obedient child.
Only a few minutes after the Dean took Xie Ta away, he secretly and carefully crawled through the broken window hidden by the curtain.
Bai Liu hid behind the curtain, curling himself into a small ball as he peeked at Xie Ta and the Dean standing beneath the divine statue.
Xie Ta was dressed in pure white, holding a flickering white candle in both hands.
He stood barefoot before the divine statue, head slightly raised, eyes closed, reciting prayers at an unhurried pace.
The Dean stood beside him, holding a whip and watching him coldly.
After the prayers ended, the Dean stepped forward and stared at him.
“Next is the baptism. But today, because you entertained thoughts of betraying God and escaping, today’s baptism must be thorough. We must completely wash away the evil and filth inside your body!”
Xie Ta lowered his eyelashes.
“It cannot be washed clean.”
“I am the very essence of evil that cannot be gazed upon,” he said softly.
The Dean froze for a moment.
Then her face darkened even further.
She snatched the candle from Xie Ta’s hand and shoved him into the rippling baptismal pool.
Holding the candle, she laughed cruelly and triumphantly, as though she had finally defeated some demon she had feared for a very, very long time, with a kind of madness that came after surviving disaster.
The Dean let out a sigh of relief as she looked at Xie Ta submerged beneath the ripples.
She held the candle horizontally over the pool and said coldly, “You may only get up once the candle has finished burning. Understand?”
Drops of wax fell one by one into the clear water, solidifying into pale, misty flowers like sacrificial blossoms, floating directly above Xie Ta as he lay at the bottom of the pool with his eyes closed.
The baptismal pool was like a coffin too small for him, firmly and grotesquely binding him inside.
Without anyone noticing, the divine statue facing the baptismal pool moved.
The expression on the white marble face shifted into a very human reproach, as though blaming the child in the pool for being disobedient and wanting to flee God’s protection.
[You are a thing of evil, a fallen god. You cannot leave God’s confinement. You should never have thought of escaping for the sake of a child you bewitched.]
The statue condemned him coldly.
[Tawil, you know that child was bewitched by your evil. He is not the new believer you seek.]
Tawil’s eyelids trembled beneath the water.
[No. I did not regard him as my new believer.]
The statue questioned him coldly.
[Then what did you regard that child as? He has looked into your eyes. He is not far from madness.]
[You should kill him. Otherwise, he will become an evil monster like you and destroy this world. You know this is the fate of everything you contaminate.]
Tawil’s fingers, crossed over his chest, moved slightly.
[I regarded him... as someone I want to read books with forever.]
[But you know that is impossible, Tawil. Kill him. Kill this child you have defiled!] God commanded.
[I cannot do that,] Tawil refused calmly. [You may kill me, but I cannot kill him.]
The statue’s expression turned furious.
[...Even after being exiled here, you dare defy God’s command. You truly deserve punishment. Sleep forever!]
It opened its hands directly above Tawil.
The water at the bottom of the pool became heavy, viscous, and freezing, as though flowing ice were turning into sharp needles passing through Tawil’s body.
This made his brows knit slightly, but they soon relaxed again.
Underwater, Tawil curled the hand that had held Bai Liu’s.
His trembling eyelids went still.
The warmth of Bai Liu’s palm still remained in his hand, but that warmth gradually dissipated in the icy water, stopping together with his breath.
His fingers, which had tightened to hold on to that warmth, slowly loosened.
Tawil’s body floated suspended in the water.
“Xie... Ta?!”
The Dean backed away several steps in panic, then reached forward to check Tawil’s breath.
The candle slipped from her hand. In her panicked stumbling, she stepped on it and extinguished the flame, putting out the only light in the church.
“It’s over...”
The Dean sat on the ground, dazed. She clutched wildly at her hair, muttering to herself in disbelief.
“Isn’t he a monster?! He didn’t die even after so much blood was drawn! He didn’t die after being baptized so many times, so why would he drown this time?!”
“It was only a few minutes! The candle hadn’t even finished burning!”
The expression on the Dean’s face grew even more terrified. She kept shaking her head, as though Tawil would come back to life as long as she refused to admit it.
“No. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible!”
“He’s dead. What am I going to do?!”
The Dean collapsed to her knees before the baptismal pool.
She could not imagine that the death of this child would bring her such fatal terror.
The Dean looked blankly down at Tawil’s flawless face in the pool and muttered to herself, “...If anyone finds out I drowned Tawil, those people will drain my blood. I have to find another child to replace him!”
Hidden behind the curtain, Bai Liu watched the Dean’s hysterical breakdown without expression.
A strange certainty kept Bai Liu watching quietly.
Tawil had said he was a monster and would not die.
He must be pretending to be dead to fool this stupid Dean.
Just wait a little longer.
Once the Dean left, Bai Liu would walk over, and Tawil would stand up from the baptismal pool and give him that rare smile.
Perhaps he would even brush aside his wet hair, look at Bai Liu intently with those silver-blue eyes, and ask why he had come.
The thought of that scene made Bai Liu’s heartbeat quicken slightly.
The Dean did not dare let the investors know she had killed Tawil. freewebnøvel.com
She moved Tawil’s body out of the pool and secretly carried him out through the back door of the church. Then she tied stones to Tawil’s hands and feet and threw him into a small lake in the overgrown wasteland behind the church.
That lake connected to a river outside.
After some circulation, Tawil’s corpse would flow with the lake water into the river, and then into the sea.
But Bai Liu would not let Tawil go that far.
Bai Liu silently followed the Dean as she destroyed the evidence, making no sound.
The Dean looked as though she was about to go mad. If he appeared now, this hysterical woman probably would not mind dealing with one more child’s corpse.
Only after she fled in panic did Bai Liu come out.
He buried his face in the small lake covered with green duckweed, dove underwater, and reached out to grab Tawil as he sank into the mud and sand below.
The lake was deep.
The duckweed was green.
And Tawil was sinking quickly.
The black silt was like some creature that devoured human corpses. Before long, it had covered Tawil’s body, greedily trying to drag him down into hell.
But Bai Liu endured the filthy lake water pouring into his mouth, nose, and ears, along with the fierce urge to cough. Gritting his teeth, he seized Tawil’s only exposed hand from the silt and pulled with all his strength until the air in his lungs was completely gone.
Bai Liu felt as though his brain was about to burn from lack of oxygen.
But he finally pulled Tawil free.
Bai Liu tore away the heavy stones and ropes tied to Tawil’s body, then held him tightly and swam upward.
After reaching the shore, Bai Liu leaned back on his hands, looked up at the starless sky, and gasped for breath.
Duckweed clung to his face and eyelashes. His whole body was soaked through. Cicadas chirped in the surrounding grass.
It was truly a pathetic scene.
But for some reason, Bai Liu suddenly let out a faint, amused chuckle.
He kicked Tawil, who lay silently on the ground with his eyes closed and still had not woken up, then asked, “How did you know I was going to take you away? What if I only worked for those adults and earned money because I wanted to spend it on myself?”
With a slight, awkward, casual smile, Bai Liu glanced sideways at Tawil.
“Aren’t you being a little too self-important, Xie Ta?”
Tawil’s face was stained with duckweed.
He still did not wake.
Bai Liu sat up first, then slowly shifted into a crouch.
He looked down at the motionless Tawil and reached out to brush away the wet hair plastered to Tawil’s forehead.
This person really was beautiful.
Bai Liu’s fingertips moved from Tawil’s long eyelashes beaded with water, all the way down past his straight nose, and finally stopped on his impossibly pale lips.
And those most beautiful silver-blue eyes—
the eyes he seemed to have shown only to Bai Liu,
and that seemed to have looked only at Bai Liu.
“Xie Ta.”
Bai Liu’s voice was very soft.
He leaned down and pressed his ear against Tawil’s chest, his eyes wide open.
“If you don’t wake up soon, I’m going to give you mouth-to-mouth. I’ll bite you to death.”
No heartbeat.
No breathing.
No body temperature.
There was no sign that Tawil would wake up.
“I mean it.”
Bai Liu buried his head against Tawil’s chest. His fists slowly tightened until his knuckles turned white.
Bai Liu could smell the heavy, familiar scent of blood on this person, mingled with the smell of water.
It was the breath of approaching death.
Bai Liu gripped Tawil’s shoulders even harder and pulled him into a tight embrace.
The water dripping from both of their bodies merged together.
“I guess you weren’t being self-important,” Bai Liu said softly, resting his head in the hollow of Tawil’s neck.
His forehead pressed against Tawil’s heart.
He lowered his head and blinked slowly. A drop of water fell from his duckweed-stained eyelashes.
Tawil’s head rested lifelessly against Bai Liu’s shoulder.
He did not answer Bai Liu’s words, and his eyes remained closed.
Only the cold water flowing from his hair into Bai Liu’s collar reminded Bai Liu that he did, in fact, still exist.
They embraced and leaned against each other, their hands interlocked.
Bai Liu rested against Tawil’s shoulder. His voice was very calm.
So calm there was not a single ripple in it.
“Didn’t you say you were a monster?”
“Wake up like a monster, and then I’ll admit that you are one.”
“You being like this...”
“makes me feel very scared, Xie Ta.”
A drop of water slid from Tawil’s eyelashes, like a tear falling onto the back of Bai Liu’s hand.
