Const Orphanage 4

Elvira slowed his pace, carefully listening for any sign of others nearby.

His breathing slowed, and his heartbeat seemed to decelerate as he concentrated, picking up distant sounds clearly amidst the noise.

There were children's voices reading in a classroom nearby, the sound of care workers shuffling their feet against the floor, and the ticking of many clocks swinging back and forth.

There were also other strange, disordered, and faint sounds, such as a rhythmic knocking or the noise of hands slapping against glass.

Navigating through the terrain and exploiting blind spots, and after evading five care workers and dodging Georgewill's rounds twice, Elvira finally made his way to the third floor as he had intended.

The third floor was pitch dark, like the gaping maw of a beast. This floor used to house the medical room, storage, and Teacher Ginger's dormitory. Whether it had changed or not now, Elvira had no idea.

He paused in front of room 301 for a moment, listening intently, but there was no one inside.

He took a bobby pin out of his pocket, straightened it, and inserted it into the keyhole, easily picking the lock and opening the door.

This was Teacher Ginger's dormitory, and the layout and furnishings appeared just as they had been.

Elvira gently closed the door behind him, looked around the room, and walked over to the desk by the window, touching the tabletop.

It was immaculately clean, dust-free.

He took a deep breath; the room had no unpleasant odors.

It was as if someone had been living there all along.

He then turned to look at the bed on the left, which had neither pillows nor blankets. Opening the wardrobe on his right, he found it empty, devoid of any clothes.

Had Teacher Ginger really left?

Elvira frowned, moved the chair aside, and crouched under the desk. He reached out and felt along a seam between the side of the drawer and the interior of the desk.

Indeed, it was here.

He pulled out a familiar notebook—it was Teacher Ginger's diary.It was also a gift he had sent her last year.

Once, when Elvira had knocked and entered, he saw Teacher Ginger hiding the diary in a crevice between the drawer and the desk.

Holding the diary, Elvira sat on a chair and began reading it by the daylight streaming through the window.

"Today, a new Dean arrived. I don't know why, but I don't like him. I hope he will be good to the children."

"He bought many medical instruments and placed them in the basement, saying he wanted to conduct health check-ups for the children. That's great; he's really generous. I've always wanted to get the children medically examined, but it was never resolved due to financial reasons. Surprisingly, the Dean is quite wealthy."

"The original Care Workers have aged and should retire, so the Dean gave them a generous amount of money to send them home. Additionally, he hired a dozen young disabled people, saying it was an opportunity for these youths to independently support themselves. I strongly agree with this."

"He wanted to expand the Orphanage, to provide a warm home for more children who have lost their parents. So, I agreed to let him build on that grassland. But he is the Dean, and he still wanted to discuss it with me; he really is a humble young man."

"After the expansion was completed, he said the paint's chemical components were toxic and feared it might harm the children. So, he locked up all the entrances, preventing the kids from going in. As for when they could enter, he said he'd wait until the unscrupulous merchant who sold him the paint compensated him. He truly considered the children's well-being."

Elvira flipped a few more pages and saw a line in large letters:

"Recently, I've been feeling tired and distracted, always forgetting things and zoning out—"

Flipping further, the diary entries abruptly stopped.

He carefully felt the gap between the pages, then closed the diary to examine the section more closely.

—The content of several pages appeared to have been violently torn out, leaving only large patches of emptiness.

The handwriting gradually became more erratic, in some places nearly piercing through the page: "I want to report this to the Dean…"

The last few words of this segment were obscured with ink, making it impossible to discern the original text.

Following that, there were two lines of questioning. Initially, each letter was dotted with a few specks of ink, but towards the end, the handwriting became erratic, as if the writer was questioning themselves while writing:

"Where is the Dean? Does the Dean really exist?"

"Am I—the Dean?"