Chapter 77: Childrens Welfare Home (1/2)

During the time when Bai Liu was holding the doll and thinking, the teacher called over the remaining five children.

The five children left in this welfare home stood in a row with numb expressions. They didn’t dare look up at Mu Ke and their eyes were fixed on their toes. Some of these children were lame while some had a crooked or hunched back. They were more or less disabled. They were like a group of chicks who hadn’t come out of the nest yet. The five children pushed and shoved together. They were like cheap goods under scrutiny. They were humble and reticent since they knew they weren’t worth a few yuan.

Bai Liu frowned the moment he approached the children. The mushroom smell on these children was even worse than what he had smelled from the corpses in the hospital. Mu Ke couldn’t bear it and waved his hand in front of his nose. “Are you only eating mushrooms here? Why is the mushroom smell so strong?”

The teacher hugged the five children slightly awkwardly. “In fact, they don’t really eat much.”

Bai Liu’s eyes swept past the teacher and the five children. “Did you eat a lot of mushrooms that day?”

The teacher was taken aback. “We ate with these five children and it was quite a lot.”

“Did the poisoned children eat less? For example, they only drank a mouthful of the mushroom soup?”

The teacher looked back before replying to Bai Liu, “Yes. It is because some children like the taste of mushrooms while others don’t like it. Some only ate a very small amount but they were still poisoned.”

Bai Liu retracted his gaze. Some children weren’t poisoned when eating too much and others were poisoned when eating only a little bit. It seemed that the poisoning had nothing to do with the dosage.

Then why mushrooms… why was it mushrooms every time something happened in this welfare home? In addition, what was the condition under which the weird mushrooms poisoned people?

Lu Yizhan saw that the blood drawing and various tests on the surviving children of the welfare home showed nothing abnormal. Like Liu Jiayi, they only had slight anemia. The five surviving children and Liu Jiayi had only one thing in common—it was that they had congenital or genetic defects. Liu Jiayi was blind while these five children also had various disabilities.

Bai Liu was lost in thought.

The teacher continued to take Bai Liu and Mu Ke around the interior of the welfare home. They entered a room full of photos, trophies and children’s drawings. The teacher turned to Bai Liu. “This is the exhibition hall of our welfare home.”

No one had been to the exhibition hall in a long time. Many of the trophies and certificates were gray from the dust. Still, it could be seen that this was a well-developed welfare home in the past. There were still many children’s drawings and some awards hanging on the wall. The photos of the annual Children’s Day performance were also hung on the wall. The color of the photos changed due to distortion. In the last photo, more than 40 children were smiling softly and docilely but only six survived. Five of them were following the teacher with numb expressions.

Many of the things exhibited were from the dead so it gave the exhibition room a lingering feeling of gloom. Bai Liu glanced at the entire room and seemed to find something. He turned to the teacher. “Can I take some of the photos and drawings down?”

Originally, it wasn’t easy to move these things but the children’s welfare home had become like this. Not much attention was paid to this room so the teacher nodded in agreement.

Mu Ke curiously watched as Bai Liu removed some children’s drawings from the wall and placed them on the ground to observe. He leaned in and asked in a low voice, “Bai Liu, have you found anything?”

“Yes,” Bai Liu responded softly. He didn’t give Mu Ke a look as he fiddled with the drawings. Mu Ke’s eyes followed Bai Liu’s hand. The children drew quite well. He felt that they were drawn by children who should have a good background in drawing.

The drawings included character sketches, still lifes, colored drawings done in pencils and crayon and simple black and white sketches. The style of drawing was different. The color of some of the drawings was very strong and saturated to the point where people were uncomfortable seeing it. The subjects of the drawings also seemed illogical.

There was one with a thin girl sitting on a hospital bed with white cloth over her eyes, a beautiful silver-blue scaled fish in a jar and a wooden, broken mirror on a charred and melted toy train. The drawings all seemed to be things that this welfare home had.

Mu Ku stared at it for a while before discovering something. He spoke in a surprised voice, “Are these all drawn by one person? All the signatures are a ‘W’.”

The drawings taken down by Bai Liu were all different but there was a ‘W’ drawn on each one. It was a strange curly writing and it was consistent in each drawing. Bai Liu finally glanced at Mu Ke. His voice was low and soft like he was whispering. “This is my signature.”

Mu Ke was surprised. “Yours? Why is it here?!”

Bai Liu didn’t give a further explanation. Mu Ke was curious but seeing that Bai Liu wasn’t prepared to say anything, he also shut up. The W stood for ‘W’ which was Bai Liu’s name and it was his customary signature. (Bai= white)

Bai Liu saw instantly that these drawings were his. They might be younger and more immature than his current drawings but they were indeed his.