"Still, they called me a thief!"
She continued to cover her face as she bawled her eyes out.
She seemed to have returned to that time at the orphanage when she was surrounded by the other children and their cruel finger-pointing.
The memories she had suppressed for a decade and a half surged through her inner defensive walls and overwhelmed her. She could hear and see the deafening accusations, evil gossips, and hideous faces around her. Accompanied by images of the harsh beatings and serious scolding she had received, all of them played on a loop in her mind. The way they tormented her heart was akin to the grinding of a saw chain.
The reverberating white noise pushed her to the brink of sanity. She attempted to block out the suffocating noise by covering her ears and screaming, "I'm no thief! I'm really no thief! Mu Wanrou is the thief; she stole my thing! That's my thing…"