Chapter 508: Gray Memory

The boy returned to the classroom, his back hunched and his head bowed, so no one could see his pure, beautiful eyes.

I walked down from the second floor and went back to hiding by the classroom's back door, looking for a chance to make contact with the little boy.

To me, the values Elder Chen had instilled in him were completely twisted. That kind of servile devotion would only ruin the child.

Inside the classroom, bobbing, oversized heads glanced toward the Hunchbacked Boy, whether intentionally or not. Their eyes were filled with malice and mockery, their warped faces magnifying every expression. I was beginning to understand why these children appeared in such grotesque forms in the dream.

Their stunted limbs meant that in the memories of the Dream Realm's owner, these classmates weren't particularly capable, while their oversized heads meant that what stuck deepest in the owner's memory were their faces.

Those ugly, disgusted expressions were magnified endlessly in the eyes of the Dream Realm's owner. No one is immune to slander and ridicule, least of all a child.

'If I were the teacher, maybe I'd encourage the boy to pick a fight with them and tear off two or three chunks of their flesh. Once they knew what pain felt like, maybe things would change.' At that thought, I shook my head. With a personality like mine, I'd probably never make it as an honorable people's teacher.

"Who told you to sit down? Go stand at the back of the classroom! I'll settle the score with you after class!" the male teacher snapped viciously. The director had shown up for a surprise inspection, only to find his class in complete chaos. The director had seen every bit of it, which would drag his evaluation way down.

He had only come to the orphanage as a volunteer teacher to gild his reputation and pad his resume.

The class soon ended. The male teacher grabbed the boy by his clothes and dragged him out of the school building. "I wouldn't have guessed you had such nerve, daring to kill the director's pet bird. For this whole week, you aren't leaving after school. You'll stay behind and clean with the duty group. Understand?"

The boy nodded submissively, and only then did the teacher leave.

By the time school let out, it was already pitch-black outside. Many things in this place were the complete opposite of reality—for instance, the children attended class at night, then played and slept during the day.

Of course, that might also be tied to the personal feelings of the Dream Realm's owner. Their memories of going to school and being around classmates were dark and devoid of even a sliver of light, which was why the Dream Realm was pitch-black during class hours.

The students left the school building in twos and threes until only the duty group and the Hunchbacked Boy remained. By coincidence, the leader of today's duty group was none other than the tall boy, Fu Xin.

"The teacher assigned us a helper. It'd be a waste not to use him. Come on, let's go play soccer."

"Are we really leaving?"

"The teacher said himself that he's supposed to help us. Just leave the cleaning to him. If you guys aren't coming, I'm heading out first."

"Let's go, together."

As soon as the teacher was far enough away, the duty group grabbed a soccer ball and bolted out of the classroom. In the room of crooked desks, askew chairs, and scattered books, only the Hunchbacked Boy was left behind.

He stood against the wall and watched the duty group run off without saying a word. Then he picked up a broom and began sweeping in silence, setting the desks and chairs back in place. His small figure looked like a mole, covered in dust and grime as he did other people's work.

I kept peeking from outside the door and nearly stepped in several times, though in the end, I held back for the sake of the bigger picture. 'I need to figure out where this child stands first. Everything about entering the dream this time is too bizarre—I can't act rashly.'

Even now, I still couldn't figure out why the protagonist of the Dream Realm was a Hunchbacked Boy I had never met, when it was clearly Ye Bing's Dream Realm I had entered.

The boy cleaned earnestly rather than just going through the motions. Yet he seemed born with bad luck—no sooner had he finished the job and gotten ready to leave than a loud crash echoed through the classroom.

The kids playing soccer out on the field had shattered the classroom window.

"Run!"

"Fu Ming, let's go!"

The children outside scattered at once. The Hunchbacked Boy stepped over to the window, though he hadn't clearly seen who kicked the ball through the glass.

Fetching a broom and dustpan, the boy didn't go looking for the teacher right away. Instead, he swept up all the broken glass inside the room first, then stood staring blankly at the shattered classroom window for a long while.

In the end, I had no idea what decision he had come to. All I saw was him taking the soccer ball in his arms, locking the classroom door, and walking out toward the field.

'If you do not perish in silence, you erupt in silence—is he finally going to fight back?' I was certain the child had finally found a bit of spine, only for things to play out quite differently from what I imagined.

Holding the soccer ball, he asked everyone he passed if they had seen where his teacher went.

Only after another orphan pointed the way did he learn that his teacher had been called over to help out at the Disabled Children's Rehabilitation Center.

'Don't tell me this child is planning to take the blame for those little brats?' An ominous feeling crept over me, and I followed closely behind the Hunchbacked Boy.

The small building where the intellectually impaired and disabled children lived and underwent rehabilitation training was isolated from both the teaching area and the playground, kept in a semi-enclosed state. The director had arranged it that way out of good intentions, afraid that the children with physical or intellectual disabilities would be bullied by the healthy kids.

This building had an even larger floor area than the school building. It stood apart from the other sections of the orphanage, with a duty teacher specifically stationed at the entrance to keep watch.

"Teacher Hu, are you here?" The Hunchbacked Boy knocked on the duty room door. When no one answered after a long moment, he circled around to the window, gripped the sill with effort, and peered inside. Neither the duty teacher nor Teacher Hu, who was in charge of his class, was there.

Without thinking much of it, the boy held the soccer ball in his arms and walked straight into the semi-enclosed disabled children's Rehabilitation Area.

"Teacher Hu?" Most of the rehabilitation rooms had their curtains drawn and their doors locked. The Hunchbacked Boy walked on, stopping every few steps until he reached the last classroom by the corner of the stairs. Here, the curtains weren't pulled all the way shut, and from the doorway, the faint voices of two men could be heard inside.

"Old Wang, people outside won't catch the two of us doing this, right?"

"Relax. The provincial authorities won't let our orphanage take in abandoned infants anymore, saying our facilities don't meet the standards. As luck would have it, the third-floor teachers and the director are all out today—they took the babies over to the Social Welfare Institute."

"Heh, that takes a load off my mind."

"Look at what a coward you are. Do whatever you want—as long as you don't knock them up, nothing at all is gonna happen."

The Hunchbacked Boy was close enough to hear every word clearly. He crept up to the window and peered into the room without blinking.

My hearing was sharp, and when the line "as long as you don't knock them up, nothing at all is gonna happen" reached my ears, my curiosity was instantly piqued. I slipped over quietly and used my Judging Eye to look inside the room.

One look revealed something truly shocking.

Inside the dim, shabby room, two neatly dressed male teachers sat in chairs, and standing in front of each of them was a rather young girl.

They had plain features and wore the standard orphanage uniform, with the three characters for "Heaven's Gate" printed across the back.

"Old Wang, a chance like this doesn't come often, so I won't hold back on your account." The hands growing out of Teacher Hu's face waved excitedly. He stood up, walked over to one of the girls, and let his hands roam over her uniform. The grin on his face grew wider and wider. The girl's expression, by contrast, was bizarre—she just kept giggling vacantly, not even knowing to resist, like a rag doll with no self-awareness at all.

'An intellectually disabled child?' My heart clenched.

"What a good girl." The hand growing out of the back of Teacher Hu's head patted the girl's cheek, while several of his other hands had already slipped under her uniform, even touching those places.

Even though the intellectually disabled girl didn't understand what was being done to her, her body's instinctive reaction still drew unconscious sounds from her throat. A flush crept across her cheeks as she kept smiling with a vacant, foolish grin.

'Beasts!'

My gaze turned icy as I suddenly felt the curtain being pulled back on a monstrous, appalling dark secret right before my eyes.

I was beginning to understand why Teacher Hu appeared in such a grotesque form inside this Dream Realm.

Inside the room, the neatly dressed Teacher Hu looked like an octopus. His hands moved rapidly, as if wishing he could sprout several more just to stroke every inch of the girl's skin at once.

Faint, breathless sounds echoed in the room. Thoroughly pleased with the girl's reaction, Teacher Hu laughed without restraint, completely unaware that his subhuman side had been witnessed, leaving an indelible gray memory in that boy's heart.

The scene inside the room dragged on. The girl's uniform was torn off, and the three characters for "Heaven's Gate"—meant to carry such special meaning—were trampled underfoot without anyone caring in the slightest.

Then again, in this world, where is there any heaven?