Lanky lowered his head, his eyes flickering, but a strange smile crept onto his lips: “It’s my fault for not keeping an eye on little Nina, Director! Punish me!”
“Hey, hey, hey! This has nothing to do with Lanky! Director…” Nina ran back, panting. In the sweltering summer, her hair was drenched with beads of sweat.
“I just wanted to play with little Nina! She’s going to be a hairstylist in the future, and it was so hot that day, I was just trying to help her cool off!”
At that moment, Luka, still short and chubby, came over with his hands full of dog hair, practically confessing to the crime! The director sighed, “You guys! Truly a solid triangle! A protective triangle!”
Nina looked unconcerned, “Mangoes and starfruits are meant to be eaten! If you don’t pick them, they’ll rot. And as for the windows… it wasn’t on purpose! Dodgeball is meant to be dodged! How could I just stand there and get hit? The ball doesn’t have eyes; it can fly to any house… I can’t control that.”
If the director wanted to punish someone, it should be Luka, since he threw the ball, and besides… his family could afford to pay for it!
The director was both angry and amused, “You do wrong and still act like it’s your right! Nina, you’re really getting more and more outrageous, letting Lanky and Luka spoil you, making you more and more unruly!” The director swung the bamboo stick towards Nina, but unexpectedly, a red mark appeared on Lanky’s bronze-colored arm.
“Ah! Director, you really hit him!” Nina complained, feeling sorry.
“Isn’t that because your wildness is getting worse!”
Luka stood by, grinning foolishly, not knowing what he was thinking. The next day, he pulled out a bunch of counterfeit Barbies he had bought from the night market, a rare treasure in the orphanage. But Luka only gave them to Nina: “Here, practice with these!” Luka smiled shyly and brightly, as if he wanted to say, “Praise me, praise me, praise me to the heavens!”
Nina looked at the dolls with disdain, finding them somewhat tasteless. “Boring! You have everything you want; these dolls aren’t anything special.”
Luka frowned. He was only in third grade and didn’t understand how anxious Nina, who was about to enter middle school, felt.
Lanky walked over and patted her back: “Don’t worry! After graduating from high school, I’ll find a way to give you a home, once we leave here…”
“Hey, hey, hey! What about me? You guys want a home? Easy! Just let my grandpa and grandma adopt you!”
Nina looked at Luka as if he were foolish, “Do you think it’s as easy as buying groceries?”
Lanky interrupted Luka before he could speak, “Little Nina, you should pay attention lately; the new instructor has been looking at you strangely.”
Nina nodded, irritably tugging at her hair, “I really want to leave this hellhole; it feels like being in prison, so boring!”
At that moment, Abby, who had been shooting hoops in the yard, heard Nina’s complaints and ran over with a water bottle.
“Goodwill is still okay! The place I was at before was even more exaggerated. Not only did we eat vegetarian and chant scriptures every day, but the instructors looked at you like you were trash.
Most of the time, they ignored us completely, since our mothers were all runaway workers, which made our very existence a sin. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want to be born at all!”
