III. The holes got Ears

The usual noises of chatter, brooms, and falling chairs stopped earlier than usual, the main reason being the Slow Marc event.
The Lady in Apron locked us all in our respective rooms, the cellar of the orphanage being mine. It is deprived of any windows; only the spaces between the planks on the wall allow the sun to light its interior.

The only entrance and exit are the now-locked door and the mechanism behind it, which requires the use of the Lady’s music box to activate and free me.

Grandpa once told me how those locking mechanisms worked.
The device needs to sense the vibration of one’s note.
A string is attached inside a sealed glass exactly like the boxes in our throats.
Only, they do not require air to vibrate.
They are tuned to a specific note that can only make them vibrate if the same note is played by a music box.
By doing so, the device switches on through the strength of the string’s vibrations, and the door locks or unlocks.
Therefore, it means I am stuck here.

From the shadows, Decy’s face lights up under a sun ray as he silently approaches me.

“Y…you lost… your grandpa’s… necklace…” he says shyly.

“As a matter of fact, I did, and I lost my temper with it.” I lift my face to be able to look at him.
“I apologize if it startled you.”

“Mayth… m-mig…might hav-”

“I already know that!” I say, raising my voice. Doing so makes Decy hide his face away from the sun.

“S…S-SORRY!” he stutters.

“Decy, forgive me, I am unable to control my feelings right now.”
I approach him and get to his level by kneeling.
“I need to get out of here, Decy. You are right about Mayth, and who knows what she could trade it for.” I pause for a moment.
“I need to find a way to either get this door to open or-”

“I…i kn-know a… w-w-way…” He points his thin finger at an old box behind our bed.
“I…r-r-removed some p-planks below th-the box… and covered it…”

“How did you manage to do it without me noticing?”

“I…d-d-did it when you’d… g-go… r-race with the others…”

“Why would you do such a risky act that would clearly be punishable by the Lady in Apron?”

“Y-you don’t n-n-need… to know…”

I stand on my feet and walk toward the box. It seems heavy; I wonder how he managed to move it by himself…
Something is obvious: it will not be the case for me. I look at Decy and, by tilting my head in the direction of the box, he understands that I require his aid.

Together, we move the box out of the way and a hole leading to a thin space in the ground unveils itself. It seems large enough for me to crawl through it.
I thank him and proceed to do so.

As I venture deeper into it, I notice a thin paper sheet moving slightly. It seems to block the view from a hole dug into the planks, large enough to look through.
It is suspiciously well hidden and the nature of the hole is not natural. It has been made by a tool, something that is forbidden for us monthlings to even think about handling.

Curiosity guides my fingers and my face approaches the hole so I can look through it.

What I saw first surprised me, then disgusted me. We monthlings only have the right to wash ourselves if we successfully reach dinner, and Decy has never participated in it.
I always thought it was because he was too weak to run, although it seems that he prefers to feed his nasty eyes rather than his stomach. I would puke if I had anything inside mine to puke out.

The thought vanishes. I place the paper back and continue to crawl. I pass the point where the door is supposed to be and the locking mechanism is right in front of me.

If I break it, the next time the Lady tries to lock it, it will fail. She would have to inspect it and, by doing so, she’d find this passage.
I’d rather not put us both in danger.

I finally find a passage that would allow me to get out. I begin to venture toward it, but my ears decide to focus on something subtler. A conversation.
It is quite difficult to turn around in this hole, but I believe the sound comes from the peeping hole. I crawl back to it and decide to place my ear above the paper.

The sound of a bucket of water being spilled on someone is all I hear at first. Someone is washing.

“You could be more gentle doing so,” a voice asks amidst the splashing noises.

“You are bold to even ask anything from me. You know how easily I could put an end to your talking by making your mouth shut forever, right?”

This voice sends shivers throughout my whole body. It’s the Lady in Apron’s.
It is harder to figure out who she’s talking to, but that is definitely a monthling.
She would never speak to one of us unless it’s a direct order or a scolding. This very scene contradicts every part of her personality.

“My Lady, haven’t we been through the threats already? Aren’t we partners?”

“I’d rather become a high pitched white noise than call myself your partner.”

“Alright, I get it.” A splash of water resonates.
“I have a-” Another splash of water prevents me from hearing properly.

“Do you await praise? What would I even do with that?”

“There are many buyers who could be interested. I heard that even in the high court of Harebell Palace a certain-”

The water bucket falls on the ground with a loud noise, covering the name.

“- interested. If you are the one behind this sale, they could send someone to replace you here and you could finally be freed from us.”

“Although there is nothing for you to gain from that-”

“Ah- you’re tickling me!”

A rush of nausea grows inside of me. From what I can hear, it would seem that the Lady in Apron, the white terror of the orphanage, is currently willingly washing a monthling with her bare hands…

“Shut your mouth. It disgusts me to do that; don’t make it more shameful.”

“Alright, alright, I was just joking.”

It is a girl-like voice. Its vocabulary and the way she, or he, speaks are unlike every monthling I know. It doesn’t make sense at all.

The rest of the conversation is about the events of today, nothing more than I already know as I was the front-row witness of it all. After discussing it, they both leave the bathroom.
I find myself drowning in confusion, the most frustrating part being my inability to figure out who was talking, and I would not have risked peeking and being noticed by the Lady under any circumstances.

I decide to crawl back to the passage to check what’s outside.
It seems to be one of the corridor closets from the second floor. From the distance I made, I would guess it is the one right before the stairs, meaning that exiting through it at this time would be very risky. I would have to wait for the Lady in Apron to go to sleep.

I have no idea what time it is, nor when she goes to sleep, as the only clock present in this orphanage is in the dinner room.

I crawl back to the entrance of the hole, get up to enter the cellar, and ask Decy to help me cover the hole again.
He looks at me as if expecting a death threat or a proper beating. Only, it is better to keep that hole a secret from anyone, and the fact that i found it from him.

“Why do you look at me like that?”

“F-f-for n-nothing…” He looks relieved.

I clean the dust off my dress and put myself to bed as it is the only way, for the moment being, to wait for the moons to rise.
After an hour, Decy joins me inside of the bed and quickly falls asleep. I cannot prevent myself from moving away from him after imagining what he could’ve seen and done in that passage.

Now, i wait.