NOVEL ONLINE FREE Sniffle… From the darkness, a pale face slowly emerges.
Suspended in mid-air, it gave off an aura that screamed not-human, inching closer to the girl.
Before long, it stopped just a few steps away.
Before the short distance, it quietly came face to face with the girl.
“….”
However, there was no change in the girl’s expression.
In fact, it didn’t seem like she even cared about the pale face.
She was looking straight ahead, her gaze lingering not on the floating face but rather higher up.
Just staring at the empty void.
“Um?”
Then suddenly, a little girl’s voice rang out.
It wasn’t the girl’s voice.
At this moment, the girl wasn’t ready to say anything, her mouth tightly shut while she stared into the abyss.
Most importantly, the voice was coming from the direction she was looking, floating right in the air.
Huh?
From the space that seemed empty, someone’s figure started to appear gradually.
With a size comparable to the girl and disheveled hair.
Dressed in tattered clothes that looked like something an experiment subject would wear, it was clearly the appearance of a little girl.
“Big sis, can you see me?”
The girl who descended from the void asked the girl.
And at the same time, she began to look slowly at the girl from side to side for some reason.
As the girl moved her head slightly to match the little one’s moves, she answered the question in a somewhat stiff voice, as if to say, “What a silly question.”
“Well, obviously I can see you.”
“—Really?!”
Right after the girl spoke, the little girl’s eyes widened as if they were shining.
She leaned her face closer to the girl.
“Really? Really, can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up? This? That? Everything?!”
The curious, high-pitched voice of the little girl bombarded the girl’s ears like pom-pom-pom.
On top of that, the little girl was folding and unfolding her fingers rapidly, oscillating her face even closer.
With an energy bubbles that were completely innocent, almost explosive, the girl seemed to be getting tired already.
Thinking the girl was too close, she gently pushed the little one away with her hand.
“…Can you say one thing at a time? I can’t understand you at all.”
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that I haven’t seen anyone like you in ages, and I got too excited. Hehe.”
The little girl scratched her head, looking embarrassed.
Like how a kid her age should be, she displayed a naive expression.
The little girl cleared her throat exaggeratedly a couple of times, then extended her hand towards the girl as if to shake hands.
“I’m Revi! What’s big sis’s name?”
After introducing herself, the little girl turned to look at the girl, as if it was the girl’s turn now.
With a hand extending towards the girl, demanding a response.
“…”
The girl stared at the hand for a moment, sighed softly, and then just muttered her name briefly without holding the little girl’s hand.
“19th.”
“…19th?”
Upon hearing the girl’s name, the little girl tilted her head, looking perplexed.
Well, an unusual reaction wasn’t too surprising.
If someone introduced themselves with just a number, it would be normal for most humans to react this way.
“What do you mean? Did some mean adults give you that name?”
However, the little girl’s reaction wasn’t actually because of the strangeness of the name.
She began to question whether that strange name was perhaps given by adults, as if she harbored an unusual grudge against them.
“Mean adults?”
“Yep! Mean adults! Your name must have been given to you by them, right?”
As the girl asked, the little girl nodded in affirmation.
It seemed she was worried that the girl might be abused in some way.
Well, it might be possible, the girl thought.
After all, it’s not common for people to be called just by a number.
Especially those who are treated as if their human rights were violated, like prisoners or experiments, usually only go by numbers.
So whenever she introduced herself as “19th,” the reactions of those around her would always be strange.
“I don’t know what criteria you’re using to say ‘mean,’ but…”
Still, it wasn’t that she was being abused.
Originally, this number was given due to various complicated circumstances.
But to pinpoint the most important reason, it was because she simply didn’t say her proper name.
“Maybe they aren’t that bad.”
And for those who work towards a global goal like world peace.
If someone were to ask her to judge whether these people were good or bad, disregarding all the complicated circumstances, it was probably obvious they leaned towards the good side.
So she rejected the little girl’s words and expressed that she was indifferent about her name.
“What do you mean?”
Right after the girl’s answer, the little girl’s face began to harden instantly.
“Adults are all… all bad.”
The pitch of the little girl’s voice dropped, once bright and cheerful but now eerily grim.
The lively aura from earlier vanished like a lie, only to be replaced with a menacing, dark presence swirling around her.
“They always make us do hard, painful, annoying things. And they call us ugly names… Why don’t you see those people as bad?”
Cold shivers filled the surrounding space.
With doe-like eyes staring at the girl, the little girl looked at her with suspicion for several intense seconds.
“Could it be… big sis is a mean adult too?”
The little girl inched closer to the girl’s face.
However, it no longer had the innocence it once had, and just as their faces were about to touch, a tense moment hung in the air…
“…That can’t be! It must be that big sis was held by mean adults for too long!”
Suddenly breaking away from the girl, she shifted back to her cheerful demeanor as if nothing had happened.
“Yep, that must be it! I’ve heard that it happens with something called Stone Cold Syndrome or something!”
“No, it’s Stockholm, not Stone Cold.”
“That… that doesn’t matter!”
Even though the scene was chilling, the girl showed no change in her expression.
Without surprise, fear, or confusion, she simply pointed out the little one’s misconceptions calmly.
Just like always, her half-lidded eyes showed that she was feeling considerable fatigue from this conversation.
“To drive the bad energies away, we need to change the names given by the mean adults. So, for big sis, what kind of name would suit you…”
The little girl started muttering to herself happily again.
Words jumbled together, produced at random, mixed pronunciations.
Naturally, the girl was already showing her displeasure with her expression.
Whether the little girl knew that or not, she just kept inventing different names.
“Nine, how about Nine? Isn’t that better than some weird number?”
Finally, as if she had come up with an incredibly ingenious word, she suggested a name that was just a syllable away from the number the girl had mentioned.
“…That’s still a number, isn’t it?”
“No way! The pronunciation of ‘In’ is different, so this is completely a different word!”
“I don’t really understand how that’s different…”
“So, if you listen closely to this part—”
The sound of two little girls bickering echoed through the hallway.
A firm argument without even a single inch of yielding.
However, like most people, without any real logic, it was nearly impossible to win a verbal debate against a stubborn child.
“…Fine, just call me whatever you want.”
With a little sigh, the girl gave up responding to the little one’s illogical reasoning.
Resigned to simply allowing the little girl to rename her as she liked.