As soon as she said that, another candy bar rolled in under the door.
Natalia was puzzled by this. She picked up the second bar of candy – it was green in color. It was a green apple-flavored candy.
Who could that be?
She wondered who would be so bored as to be shoving candies under her door.
“Who’s that?” She asked again, and three more candy bars rolled in.
Natalia picked them up and suddenly realized they were different flavors from the candies that she’d previously hidden. These were purple, and there were pink ones too. She had never eaten this kind of candies before. She curiously peeled one open and realized that this was a soft candy. When she bit into it, a rich yogurt aroma suddenly filled her palate and overflowed between her teeth!
So sweet! But it also carried a tinge of sourness.
However, this sourness did not affect the taste at all. Instead, the combination of sourness and sweetness made it taste better than all the other sweets she’d eaten in the past. She’d never had many candies. Until she was six, she didn’t even know there was such a thing as candies.
It wasn’t until later, after coming to Michel Hospital, that a nurse saw how lovely she was and secretly slipped her a candy. It was the first time she’d tasted anything that sweet and she loved it.
This nurse really loved her. Every time she saw her, she would give her all the candies she had. Sometimes, they were apple flavored. Sometimes, they were strawberry flavored. Sometimes, they were grape flavored. But the nurse always had only these two kinds of hard candies. Sometimes she had one, sometimes she had a few with her.
Later on, the nurse gradually became busy. Often, she would not see her for days. And so Natalia would secretly hide these candies in a box, one at a time, and after a while, she managed to hoard a box full of them.
She especially loved these candies, but she couldn’t bear to eat them. Because back then, Professor Romanka had just started experimenting on her, and so he warned her that no sugar was allowed.
Unaware of the consequences of her sugar consumption, she would eat these candies surreptitiously.
Later on, Professor Romanka found the hidden candies under her pillow. It then led him to discover the box full of candies. In a fit of anger, he reprimanded her and kept the box of candies in his office.
Since then, Natalia had not been very close to him. She had never liked Professor Romanka very much, to begin with.
Children are spiritual. Because they don’t understand many things, their liking for or dislike of a person is purely based on whether that person is friendly enough to the child.
Although Professor Romanka appeared to dote on the girl and be close to her, for inexplicable reasons, Natalia just didn’t like him. If she had a choice, she would have chosen to stay in the orphanage rather than be with Professor Romanka. Up till now, she addressed Professor Romanka as “Professor.”
In fact, the first reason Romanka had adopted her was because he thought she was cute. The second reason was because he thought she had some potential. Having a dual personality made her a good test subject and she had experimental value. There were many factors that he could exploit.
And because of that, she’d started to withdraw from people. Later, the nurse became too afraid to continue giving her candies and was also re-assigned to another department. Thus the girl became even more withdrawn.
