Chapter 40: The Truth [Part 2]
"All I ever wanted was to be close to you, and because of you, now I am like this. This is all your fault!" With an enraged roar, Torus pounced on the matron. He pushed her down on the ground and grabbed her robes and pulled at them like a mindless animal driven by his instincts.
His voice cracked for a second before he steeled it. "All I ever wanted was... was to have you for myself, but that Jinn..."
Hearing the name of Jinn, Agnes snapped out of her daze.
"He not only mocked me but also humiliated me in front of the entire orphanage. Who does he think he is?" In his anger, Torus raised his hands and clawed down at the matron’s chest.
"First I will deal with you, and then I will kill that son of a whore!"
The pain in her chest did not even come close to the wrath Agnes was feeling when she heard those words coming from his mouth. Her eyes turned cold; she no longer felt panic or distress.
Slap!
With a swift move she slapped the boy across the face. The crisp slap echoed through the silent room, shaking the boy so much that he froze.
He looked down and saw the matron staring at him coldly. The look in her eyes reminded him of the boy who made him piss in the cafeteria.
"How dare you!" Torus roared and clasped her robes in anger, and the blood on his fingers was wiped against the fabric.
Agnes did not give him a chance to attack again and kicked him in the balls.
"Argh!" Torus instantly lost his strength and slumped on Agnes. Shoving the boy aside, Agnes stood up from the ground and kicked the boy again.
"You want to harm Jinn, yet you ask me, how ’I’ dare to hurt you? How dare YOU?" It felt as if she had transformed into a completely different woman. Torus groaned in pain as he was kicked over and over again.
After she kicked the boy a few times, Agnes’s breath turned labored. She was getting worn out, and once the adrenaline faded, she started to calm down.
Her mind started to clear up, and the woman realized what she had done. She turned around and took deep breaths.
Even after calming down, oddly, she did not regret her actions. She kept recalling his threat against Jinn.
Fearing she might lose control again, Agnes warned Torus without looking back. "From today on, I will expel you from the orphanage. If you ever go close to Jinn, I will make sure you never stand up in your life."
"HAHAHA!" Torus suddenly broke into a maniacal laugh, surprising Agnes. "First him and now you... both of you are the same."
Torus had difficulty speaking, making his words muffled. Agnes turned around and found the boy standing just a meter away from her. His eyes blazed with a murderous intent as he spoke,
"I will not let you humiliate me again."
Saying that, he charged at her, trying to tackle her down once more, but the matron reacted on time and moved to the side.
Agnes’s body reacted on its own, and she pushed him from the back to make him fall, but the boy stumbled and collided with the unlocked window up ahead.
Right before the matron’s eyes, the window snapped open and the boy fell through it. For a second she stared at the window without blinking.
Her body froze from shock and did not move for a few seconds. Soon, she could hear shouts and screams from a distance that snapped her from her daze.
She ran away from the room through a secret escape only she knew about.
What no one realized was that there was an old man, hidden behind one of the tall covered pieces of furniture, holding a red-colored book with a suggestive cover image, watching everything unfold.
...
"I was so shocked that I did not even realize what I had done until I came down and saw his body."
Sister Agnes broke down before Jinn, hugging her knees. Her breath was caught in her sobs.
"I... There are things I cannot tell you, but I want you to believe me. I came to know later that someone saw the whole thing happen, and that person was none other than the janitor."
At first when she was speaking, the matron would look at the boy from time to time. But seeing his constant calm smile, she felt courage gather in her heart to reveal everything to him.
But when she continued from here, she could not bring herself to look at him anymore.
"When I went to confront him about it, the Janitor just grinned and said that he would expose me to the world unless I... i— I met his demands." Her voice stammered several times.
"When I refused to comply with his demands, he rushed to leave and tell the officers everything, and before I knew it, I was strangling him from behind with my hands...."
With her head down, Sister Agnes spoke between her cries. "You must hate me now that you know what I have done."
"Not at all."
Those words affected her more than she realized. Raising her head, she saw Jinn now standing over her, looking down at her with the same smile.
"Come on, tell me what happened next." Jinn moved and sat beside her, surprising her even more.
"I— I..." Unable to form words, the matron wrapped her arms around Jinn and cried hard. Her sobs echoed through the silent room.
Jinn let her vent her emotions, and once she was finished letting everything out, she continued.
"I was meeting him behind the main building, so I buried him in the garden nearby." Her voice was lower than a whisper, but Jinn could hear it clearly. "But things went sideways when the next day one of the teachers noticed the marks I left in the ground."
"Mr. Clark came to me and told me everything without telling anyone else. This time, I did not even hesitate; there was already a plan in my mind."
Jinn looked down when he felt her trying to break the hug and tightened his hold around her.
Agnes shuddered for a second before she continued, "Then I asked him to take me to the site after nightfall, saying it might attract attention, and I made sure he did not tell anyone else."
"Later at night. After I was done, we cleaned up everything."
"We?" Jinn caught the slip and asked, but the matron suddenly pulled back and looked at him with a complicated look in her eyes.
"Jinn I want to tell you everything, but please... don’t ask me that. Don’t make me break my oath."