Demon King – Chapter 478 – The Image

During that period, the adults and teachers at the orphanage were constantly running around, doing everything they could to try and save the girl’s life.

Even after sending her to the best hospital in the city, the doctors were completely at a loss when faced with her strange illness. This unexplained organ failure and weakening of vital signs was something they had never seen before.

Even though the doctors did everything they could, the girl’s condition did not improve in the slightest. Her physical state continued to deteriorate slowly at a fixed pace.

While the girl was hospitalized, the adults and teachers from the orphanage came to visit her every day. And Yuki’s parents, as the only two children who had been especially close to her, were naturally brought along to visit her often as well.

Thinking back on it, it was rather subtle. As one of her so-called nemeses, Officer Li felt panic and worry the moment he heard that something had happened to the girl.

After all, they had grown up fighting together. Fighting turned into familiarity, and familiarity turned into attachment. Even if he would not admit it out loud, deep down, Officer Li already regarded the two silver haired girls as his friends.

“I know… I don’t have much time left.”

Lying on the hospital bed, the girl spoke weakly to the two children sitting beside her. Her tone was calm.

There was no fear, no panic. Even knowing that she was critically ill, she seemed to have already seen through everything, calmly accepting her current situation. She was composed to a degree that did not seem fitting for an eight year old child.

“But you, Ning Xin, don’t keep fighting with Xuanhai all the time… Xuanhai actually never disliked you, and he never really wanted to bully you either… right?”

The girl showed a helpless expression. The two people in front of her were the ones she worried about the most.

Clever as she was, she had long since seen through a certain little boy’s feelings. Every act of bullying stopped at the line, and later it even turned into him forbidding other children from bullying them. Aside from a certain tomboy who clashed with him out of irritation, who could not tell?

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Xuanhai was Officer Li’s name. Hearing the girl’s words, he simply fell silent. A boy’s pride would not allow him to admit it so easily, but seeing the sickly state of the girl on the bed, he did not refute it either.

“Don’t say that. You’ll definitely be fine. It’s just an illness. You’ll get better, won’t you?”

Gripping the other girl’s hand tightly, as her best friend, Yuki’s mother, the girl called Ning Xin, absolutely refused to accept the reality of her friend’s critical condition.

Children did not truly understand the meaning or concept of death. But somewhere deep down, both of them had the same feeling. The girl in front of them might be heading to a very, very distant place, so far away that they would never be able to meet again.

“Alright, don’t cry…”

Reaching out to wipe away the tears at her friend’s eye corners, the girl forced herself to endure the pain wracking her entire body and the overwhelming weakness, and sat up in bed.

“Don’t get up, lie down. You… wait, what is that behind you?”

Seeing the girl sit up, Ning Xin immediately panicked. But as the girl moved, both she and the boy beside her quickly noticed something strange.

Even through her clothes, there were two abnormal protrusions on the girl’s back that were extremely conspicuous. They looked like two misshapen, bulging bones, grotesque and frightening. For a moment, both children were scared.

“It looks like a monster, right? Actually, this has been here for a long time… I didn’t know what it was before either.”

Seeing that she had frightened her two companions, the girl’s tone carried some guilt, with a self mocking edge to her words.

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“It’s not a monster. We’ve known each other for so long, you’re not any different from us at all.”

Before Ning Xin could speak, Xuanhai spoke up instead, his tone filled with conviction.

Having known the two girls for so long, he understood one thing better than anyone. Mere outward differences did not affect who a person was inside. These two girls were only different in hair and eye color. They were no different from anyone else.

“Actually, I am different from you.”

To their surprise, the girl shook her head and denied them, then struggled to take out a small drawing board from under her pillow.

“During this time, I don’t know if it was a dream or something else… but I really did come to understand many things. You wouldn’t understand even if I told you.”

Hearing these somewhat baffling words, the two children were confused, but they also sensed a change in the girl that they could not quite put into words.

It was as if she had suddenly grown up during this period. She was still gentle and quiet in personality, but her overall presence had changed drastically. Precisely because they were so familiar with her, the two children could feel that change even more clearly.

“Take a look at this. I’m not very good at drawing, but this is the only way I could record it.”

Smiling a little shyly, the girl handed the drawing board to them, motioning for them to look at what was on it.

There was only a single portrait of a girl on the board. The drawing style was very childish and rough. Even though it was just pieced together with simple circular shapes and the image was very vague, the silver hair and blue eyes were still very obvious.

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“Is this your self portrait? It’s really good.”

Ning Xin exclaimed in admiration. For an eight year old’s level, the quality of this drawing was actually quite impressive.

“Don’t just see silver hair and blue eyes and assume she drew herself. You also have silver hair and blue eyes. Maybe she actually drew you.”

Xuanhai retorted, though he was really just picking on Ning Xin out of habit.

“Neither. This is actually someone else.”

The girl smiled and denied both of their guesses.

“Actually, there are more than just Ning Xin and me in this world with silver hair and blue eyes. There are many, many more.”

“Huh? You’ve seen others too? Our orphanage only has the two of us like this, right?”

The two children were immediately shocked. Because of her weak health, the girl on the bed had hardly ever left the orphanage. How could she know children from outside?

“Then who is this? Where did you meet her… also, what are these things on her? Such strange decorations… are these hair clips?”

Holding up the drawing board and examining it closely, Xuanhai noticed what was special about the girl in the drawing. There were many strange things on her body.

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There were two odd blue purple triangles on her head. On both sides of her body were several large triangles of similar color pieced together. The strangest of all was the thin line extending from her leg, with a small triangle connected at the end.

“Well… actually, I don’t know her either.”

The girl laughed awkwardly, took the drawing board back from Xuanhai, and gently stroked the portrait on it.

She did not know when it started. Maybe through dreams, or maybe through sudden headaches that appeared out of nowhere. The girl felt that her mind had filled with a great deal of information she had never encountered before. The image in her hands was something she had drawn step by step according to that information in her head.

“Although I’m not completely sure, right now… she probably doesn’t exist yet.”

Translator Note

She was talking about Eiru, right…?