Only Kindness

The door of the ancestral hall opened again. The scissors in her hands were dripping with blood, matching the color of her dress. Seeing this, the villager who sent the basket into the ancestral hall collapsed to the ground. She tried to hold it in, but she still cried. No one came to help her; no one even dared raise their head to look.

The woman walked out the ancestral hall to stop beside the coffin. She whispered to the coffin like she was communicating with the thing inside it. Then, she turned to speak to the villagers.

The villager who held the second basket kept shaking her head like she was unwilling to give her child away. The woman held out three fingers; before she finished the countdown, the villagers beside the second villager grabbed the basket away from her and placed it before the woman.