The voice seemed to belong to a little girl. ‘Is she the little girl from the photo?’

Unlike before, this time, the new arrival made a lot of noises. Slamming the doors, shouting and throwing stuff around.

“Why not?!” Dissatisfaction could clearly be noticed in those words.

The loud noises resumed. This time, they were coming towards his room.

‘This is it…’ thought Gorn, trying his best to put up an act.

With a loud bang, his door was slammed opened. In front of him was now a young girl dressed in overly large pants and a dark blue t-shirt. She had very long black hair, and her black eyes shined with energy and anticipation.

“You will play with me, right, Gorn?”

Gorn quickly analyzed all the details. The girl seemed to be the same little girl from the photo. Looking at her face, she was obviously not that old, but her height was certainly above what he had imagined her to be after seeing that photo.

“I don’t know, I’m feeling a little tired,” said Gorn, his facial expression remaining rather neutral.

The girl made a sad face: “But… You usually play with me from time to time. It’s been quite a few days since we last played, so I thought…”

Her eyes became teary, and she looked like she was going to start crying at any moment. Gorn removed the blanket, and got to his feet. “I guess we can play a little bit…”

Hearing his words, the girl’s sad appearance vanished, and was quickly replaced by a happy one. “Perfect!”

Gorn was a little stunned by her beautiful smile. In the next second, she jumped at him, embracing him tightly.

‘…’

It was rare for someone to be so happy over such small things. Patting her on the head, Gorn asked: “Alright, what do you want us to play?” he found it hard not to give her a large, warm smile.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Letting him go, she started to talk with great enthusiasm: “We learned a few interesting games at school…”

Gorn listened to her carefully. Either she didn’t have a decent conversation in a long time, either she was very talkative. Even without asking, Ella started to talk about various things.

‘This is easier than I imagined…,’ thought Gorn while keeping the girl company. Just by playing a few simple games with her, he could find out a ton of useful information. On top of it all, he even thought that the games were interesting.

Time flew quite quickly. Before they even realize, it was already quite late. The wooden door of his room opened yet again.

“Stop bothering Gorn so much. Come, it’s time for dinner,” the girl who spoke was one of the twins. Leaving these words behind, she left.

“Stop bothering Gorn so much,” Ella started to imitate her words mockingly.

“Let’s go eat!” turning her head, she said towards Gorn with a smile. It was a little weird seeing her switch her facial expressions so effortlessly.

Gorn followed her silently. After a few steps, they reached the first room of the house. It was larger than the rest, and from there, each family member could go to their own room without bothering the rest. Apart from his chamber, there were three more rooms.

“Why are you so late, don’t you know we eat at this hour?”

“Sorry mother, we just had some fun playing some game,” her face was without a shred of remorse.

Elisa sighed: “Take a seat, let’s eat before the food gets cold.”

Gorn tried to act as normal as possible. All four women were extremely beautiful, making his task a little harder than it should have been.

On top of her beauty, Elisa had a few wrinkles, and her face betrayed exhaustion. Furthermore, the twins seemed out of energy as well. Except the youngest, all of them were going through some hard times. They tried to hide it, but it was painfully obvious.

“How was today at school?” asked Elisa.

“It was fine, nothing unusual. Same as every other day,” answered Nora without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

“I see…” Elisa let out another sigh. By the looks of it, she felt that something might be wrong.

“What about you, Ella?”

“Well, today was quite fun, we learned a lot of things, such as…”

Ella started to talk with great passion while eating at the same time. Thanks to her, the atmosphere turned a little livelier.

The food wasn’t anything spectacular, but tasted great nonetheless. A vegetable soup, and rice with cabbage.

The uncomfortable questions never came. Except for some small talk, nothing appeared to be out of place. It looked like he was indeed part of the family.

‘What is wrong with these girls?’ thought Gorn. The family was clearly going through some very hard times.

After finishing eating, everyone cleaned their dishes then went to their rooms. Gorn did the same.

Falling on the bed, Gorn pondered over everything that happened. Thanks to Ella being so talkative, he found out a ton of useful information.

‘Is this her way of coping with the sad atmosphere?’ It was well hidden, but Ella’s sadness could not escape his eyes.