What a dull fairy tale…

Bai Youwei thought, eyes still closed.

She turned over, trying to find some drowsiness. When she opened her eyes, the window was still full of stars.

The stars glittered brilliantly, but she had no heart to appreciate them. Only an uncomfortable sense of being watched lingered at the edges of her mind.

*Whoosh* —

Ning Yao pulled the curtains shut, and the room plunged into shadow.

Ning Yao clapped her hands and said to the little ones on the beds, “Alright, alright~ The story’s over. Everyone back to your own beds. Don’t disturb Zichu-gege’s rest.”

The three children chorused a collective “okay” and obediently clambered back to their own spots.

Bai Youwei closed her eyes again.

……

Sleep did not come easily.

The wooden planks were too hard, the bedding too thin. With no change of clothes and no chance to wash up, she’d had to sleep fully dressed. By the time dawn began to lighten the sky, Bai Youwei was already awake.

She sat up and looked around at the other beds. The three little ones were still sound asleep. Yi Zichu and Ning Yao were nowhere in sight — their blankets folded neatly at the head of their beds. They’d clearly risen long ago.

Bai Youwei got up, put on her shoes, and noticed her rabbit perched at the head of her bed. She thought for a moment, picked it up, and said quietly, “There are eyes everywhere here. Until I’ve figured out the situation, I need you to act like a normal rabbit. Understand?”

Worried it had slept through her words, she gave its belly a firm pinch.

The stuffed rabbit: “……”

Bai Youwei sighed, her gaze sweeping the room with a hint of disdain. “Honestly. Not even a place to charge anything.”

She smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, tucked the rabbit under her arm, and trudged out in low spirits.

……

The welfare home was laid out in a three-sided arrangement, shaped like a concave character — a central activity yard, flanked by a school building and a residential building, with staff quarters and a communal cafeteria along the remaining side.

The building where they slept was the children’s dormitory wing. Bai Youwei didn’t bother with the upper floors — there were already four large rooms on the ground floor alone: Sun Room, Moon Room, Star Room, Cloud Room.

The names sounded playfully childlike, and the decor matched — warm cartoon drawings on the walls, paper cranes and five-pointed stars hung by the windows. But everything was old and faded, all of it coated in a dim gray film.

Drafts howled through the broken windows. Water stain marks bled across the ceiling. The door, when she barely touched it, shed flakes of paint with a whisper.

The conditions here were genuinely awful.

At least today’s weather was pleasant. The sky shone a clear, washed blue, and the sunlight fell warmly over everything, keeping Bai Youwei’s mood from sinking all the way to the bottom.

Near one corner of the activity yard, she spotted what looked like a makeshift greenhouse.

Not the professional kind sold in markets — this one was handmade from plastic sheeting and bamboo strips, rough and crude, but functional. The vegetables growing inside, however… Bai Youwei couldn’t identify any of them.

She had to admit these children were impressive. So young, and they were already growing food in every spare patch of soil to survive.

Where were they now? What were their names again? Right… Yi Zichu… Ning Yao…

Bai Youwei still had plenty of questions for them, so she continued searching through the welfare home.

She walked along the activity yard toward the school building on the other side and found a study room, a recreation room, a reading room… All of them, of course, long abandoned.

She wandered further to the cafeteria, and finally heard voices.

Ning Yao’s voice sounded carefully controlled, tight with frustration:

“No matter what… you have to send Jiujiu away today! We barely have any food left…”

Bai Youwei’s steps halted. She froze for a moment.

What was happening? Were they so poor they were about to abandon a child?

—