The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows: Volume 3 [Parts 1 to 7] by Sakaku Hishikawa

Author:Sakaku Hishikawa
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 4: My Childhood Friend, the Mastermind

Many people benefitted from what happened in the orphanages of the slums—the children, however, weren’t among them. They were seen as little more than laborers, fed minimal meals, and crammed into small rooms with iron-barred doors and walls stripped down to rough stone.

In one such cramped space, several children had been sleeping, curled up against one another. With no room to even stretch their limbs and surrounded by darkness, the children were chilled to the bone with nothing more than the cold stone to sleep on. In the back echoed the sounds of a child’s sobs.

Zenos, wrapped in a paper-thin blanket, turned to the sound. The crying came from Gina, a girl still far too small for the harsh environment of the orphanage.

“Is someone crying?” another child by the wall asked.

“It’s Gina,” Zenos replied.

“They’re gonna get mad at us for making noise.”

“I know that, Velitra. Are you okay, Gina?” he whispered, but Gina only carried on sobbing softly.

“Maybe she’s cold. Here, use my blanket,” a child further back suggested.

“Maybe,” Zenos agreed, wrapping both blankets around Gina. “She can have mine too.”

With the warmth from the extra blankets, Gina finally calmed down, and her breaths steadied as she fell asleep. But...

“Who was making noise?!”

One of the adult supervisors roughly yanked the metallic door open and slammed his club against the wall. The twisted object, used for nothing but domination and punishment, sent a dull sound echoing throughout the room. “Rule number fifteen of the Dalitz Institute! Private conversations are forbidden! Violators will be punished!”

In the face of the supervisor’s menacing presence, the room fell completely silent.

“Who was talking?! Give me names!”

“Um, there must be some sort of mistake, instructor,” said a girl with purple hair, timidly, as she stood up. The children were expected to address the adults at the orphanage as “instructors.”

“Liz, yeah? You’re the leader of these brats?” the instructor replied. “What’s this ‘mistake,’ huh?”

“They were just talking in their sleep.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. When we’re tired, we tend to talk in their sleep more often. But that’s only because of how hard we work during the day.”

The instructor flipped through a stack of papers and snorted in disdain. “I guess this group’s work isn’t bad.”

“And we’ll do even better tomorrow.”

“Be more mindful of sleep talking in the future.” With that completely unreasonable warning, the instructor left the room.

Once the adult was gone, Zenos whispered quietly to the purple-haired girl, “Thanks. Liz.” He appreciated that Liz, their leader, was always covering for them.

“No, no. As her older sister, I should be the one taking care of Gina, but I was worried that talking to her would get us all in trouble. Thank you, Zenos, and Velitra too.”

Her gentle voice was so soothing.

***

And today, laying on the bed at the clinic, was that same purple-haired girl. Well, more woman than girl now.

“Zenos,” she said, her eyes wide open in surprise. “You’re really that same Zenos?”

“Yeah. And you have a different air about you now, so I wasn’t sure I had the right person, but you’re definitely that same Liz, huh?” Zenos replied happily.

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