"Go and search those corpses. See if there's anything valuable. Throw it in a place where the sea water can't reach. I'll push the corpses back into the sea."
Nuns said to the little boy. The little boy frowned and looked at the sea. "The corpses will be washed back."
His teacher was a strange person. She wore Nuns' clothes and did not hesitate to desecrate the corpses and take away the belongings of the dead. She even seemed to be very interested.
"No, they won't come back." Nuns walked to the side of a corpse. It was a disgusting corpse that was swollen from the sea water.
She pressed the wooden stick on the bulging stomach and pushed it towards the sea.
The corpse was not washed back by the waves. After Nuns's wooden stick left, it seemed to be pushed by an invisible hand. It floated deeper into the sea until it could no longer be seen.
It was like a small boat that was sailing, fearless of the wind and waves. It sailed into the distance and finally sank to the bottom of the sea.
"Don't just stand there and watch. Come and help me."
Nuns turned to look at the little boy. "I can't do the work of two people alone. It's too troublesome."
Next, the little boy followed Nuns and searched the pockets of the corpses. He took the gold and silver ornaments that were meaningless to the dead.
Nuns pushed the corpses that had their valuables taken away into the sea. She watched them leave before she continued to push the next corpse into the sea.
After a while, Nuns suddenly asked the little boy, "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" The little boy squatted beside a corpse and looked up at his teacher.
"Other than the sound of the wind and the waves, do you hear anything else?"
The little boy closed his eyes. Vaguely, he seemed to hear a person's voice. "I heard a person's voice."
"That's no longer a person," Nuns said. "It's only the remains of a person."
"When a person dies, they're no longer a person?" The little boy asked.
Nuns was silent for a while before she replied, "To me, when a person dies, what's left behind is just a pile of dead things. But whether it's the others or my students, they aren't very willing to accept my idea."
The little boy felt that this was natural. This was a thought that only a terrifying necromancer would have. His teacher might be even more terrifying than a necromancer, at least to him.
"You have no respect for the dead," he said to Nuns.
"The people in this world can't even respect life, so why should I respect the dead?"
Nuns said, "When people die, they are nothing. Instead of respecting a bunch of dead things, why not cherish their own lives and others' lives more?
They regarded the corpses as sacred objects, but wantonly plundered and killed their own kind.
Am I strange, or are the people in this world stranger? "
"I think you're the strange one," the little boy said bluntly.
Hearing her student's words, the nun didn't show any signs of anger. Instead, she laughed out loud. "You're right. I'm the one who's more strange. Life and death are the same thing. Who was killed and who survived? It's already happened. What's there to talk about?
The dead don't disappear, they just turn into something else. "
"Is it a soul?" The little boy asked.
Nuns shook her head. "It's not that kind of thing. If a dead person doesn't become a 'living thing' in a sense like the undead, then they're really dead. There's no such thing as a soul, only the remains of a soul.
That's a piece of information, but it's definitely not the person who once existed. "
The little boy tilted his head and looked like he didn't understand. He even stopped what he was doing.
Nuns snorted a few times and didn't continue to talk about this. "Forget it, you won't understand even if I tell you. Your students are all fools and mortals. It's not interesting at all.
But this is also where you're cute. At least you're willing to listen to me.
Those who don't want to listen to me are all brainless, barbaric musclemen. I'm so angry that I don't want to see them anymore. Those who can barely understand are all ungrateful bitches. Some of them even treat me as a lifelong enemy. They really don't have a conscience … "
Nuns was like an old woman, talking non-stop.
The little boy didn't interrupt, just listened quietly, and continued to fumble with the corpses.
His teacher was sometimes like this. Usually, she was similar to children, but sometimes, she was even more childish than children.
But sometimes, his teacher would be different. She gave him the feeling of an old person, nagging about the past.
Looking at her appearance, she wasn't much older than her student.
Nuns continued to push the corpses into the sea. Each corpse was like a stable boat, steadily sailing into the sea and finally sinking into the depths of the sea.
The little boy knew that these corpses would be eaten by the creatures in the sea. In the end, only skeletons would be left. Some of them probably didn't even have complete skeletons because their bodies had long been torn apart.
He didn't feel much about these things. His family members starved to death in front of him, and in this day and age, even a child would have long been used to the fact that death was actually everywhere.
The two of them busied themselves by the sea for a while until the sun, which was still high in the sky, began to set. The sky and sea were dyed with a thin layer of dusk.
The corpses by the sea were almost cleaned up. Although there were still remnants … that were like pieces of meat and organs, they would no longer affect the nearby sea.
These corpses floated in from the north. No one knew how long they had been piling up here. If it weren't for the teacher and student cleaning them up, in a few days, they would have affected the chapel below.
Sometimes, the dead didn't just leave behind a decaying body. Their remains might come back to life and become an existence that ordinary people would be afraid of.
The little boy avoided the disgusting intestines. He didn't want to step on them. In the past, he had tried to accidentally step on the intestines of these people. The slippery and muddy feeling made him feel so disgusted that he almost vomited.
The most disgusting thing was when the teacher beside him said in a cheerful tone, "Don't step on the intestines until they burst. Some people didn't excrete before they died. Their intestines are filled with disgusting things."
At that time, the little boy innocently asked what disgusting things were in the intestines. After hearing the answer, he couldn't help but vomit everything he ate that day.
"What else could it be?
It's the unbearably smelly stuff that you excrete after digesting the food you ate. "
At that time, the teacher said this with a smile, but the content was so vulgar that it completely ruined the impression of her delicate face. "Let me put it bluntly. That is …"
Before the teacher said that word, he had already started to vomit.
This time, he would definitely not be as stupid as before. He would definitely not let himself step on those organs that were scattered on the beach.
However, his teacher's thoughts were probably different from his.
"Be careful not to step on those intestines."
This time, his teacher mentioned this matter again. And it seemed that she still remembered what happened last time. "I remember that you stepped on a part of the intestines until it burst. That smell, that scene … In the end, I seemed to have chased you out of the chapel to sleep."
"I rubbed my feet until they broke, but you still chased me out."
Thinking of this, the little boy looked dissatisfied. "I've smelled it. There's no strange smell!"
"I'm sorry, but at that time, you gave people the feeling that you had a smell."
His teacher was very straightforward and straightforward. "I know you're unhappy, but isn't it valuable to treat this kind of embarrassing incident as an interesting memory?"
The little boy didn't think so.
The two walked out of the shallows and onto the beach without seawater.
Nuns picked up a conch from the side, wiped it clean, and handed it to the little boy. "As usual, you still finish the work."
"Tonight's dinner?" The little boy asked.
"You'll have an extra big sausage." Nuns said, "If you still have the appetite to eat it."
The little boy took the conch.
The first time he did this kind of thing, he couldn't even eat meat that day. But now, he was so used to eating those sausages that looked very similar to human intestines without batting an eyelid.
No matter how similar the meat of poultry looked, it would not be human intestines. Now, the little boy no longer had that kind of psychological burden.
The little boy put the conch to his mouth and blew it.
The dull sound of a horn sounded on the beach, and faint green human silhouettes appeared on the blood-stained beach. They walked towards the sea in groups and were finally drowned by the sea.
Listening to the sound of the little boy blowing the conch, Nuns watched these remnants of once human beings leave.
When the little boy stopped, there were no more spirits on the beach.
He put down the conch and looked at the sea.
The sea was calm, and the shore that was filled with the smell of blood also calmed down.
"They won't come back, right?" The little boy said to his teacher.
"You've already sent them away. They probably won't come back." Nuns replied, "Do you feel sad?"
The little boy shook his head. He had seen too many deaths, and he matured earlier than the average child. He also understood a lot of things. Death didn't make him afraid, and he didn't feel too sad. "Will anyone feel sad because of their death?"
"Of course, there will be people who will feel happy because of their death."
Nuns walked to the little boy and touched his head. "I hope you won't be the one who feels sad or happy because of death, Apo."
While Apo was distracted, he was pulled back to reality by Romuona's voice.
He felt that he had a dream, a dream about a long time ago — — but he didn't fall asleep. It was just that the memories occupied his mind.
If Romuona didn't wake him up, he would probably continue to be in a daze.
Romuona stood not far from him, holding a conch in her hand and staring at him with her eyes wide open.
He remembered. The reason why he fell into the memory was because he saw Romuona holding the conch, and it overlapped with a little boy.
Whether it was age or gender, Romuona and the little boy were completely different, but Apo saw the shadow of the past.
"I'm sorry, I was in a daze. People are like this when they get older." Apo said.
Romuona shook her head, indicating that she didn't mind. "Mr. Apo, can you really soothe the souls by doing this?" she asked.
Apo was silent for a while before answering, "Someone once taught me how to soothe souls. Now, I'll teach you.
Whether you can soothe those souls or not depends on your talent.
Blow it. "
Romuona followed Apo's instructions. She blew the conch according to the method Apo taught her.
At that moment, Apo saw Romuona and the conch covered in a faint layer of light.
He couldn't tell if it was an illusion brought by the sunlight or Romuona's own light, but when he saw Romuona like this, he shed tears.
Romuona stopped blowing the conch because of Apo's tears. "Mr. Apo?" She was a little surprised to see Apo crying. She had never seen this side of him before.
Apo didn't wipe away his tears, letting them fall on his cheeks. "Romuona, don't become an adult like me …"
He muttered to himself.