Wednesday's eyelashes twitched ever so slightly.
"Two years later, Victor miraculously returned on his own. But his parents found that their originally obedient and cute son had become... erratic, and he was accompanied by a small, black, gooey monster."
"And what they found hardest to accept was that their son seemed closer to that black, gooey monster than to his own parents."
Larissa's voice carried a complex emotion.
"Crushed by immense guilt and fear, they finally contacted me, incoherently begging Nevermore to 'take in' Victor—"
"The word they used was 'take in.' I felt as if they were discussing a dangerous item needing proper storage, not their son."
"They believed that in an environment full of 'Outcasts,' Victor might appear... more normal."
"What?!"
Enid abruptly stood up, the chair legs scraping against the floor with a harsh sound.
"They... they threw Victor away?! Again?! How could they do that?!" Her voice trembled with anger and disbelief.
She could barely imagine how the teenager, who had barely escaped the hellish laboratory and returned home covered in wounds, must have felt when he realized his parents were preparing to "discard" him again.
That was a hundred times crueler than any physical injury.
"Terrible parents."
Wednesday commented coldly, her tongue still sharp, but a faint chill flashed in the depths of her dark eyes.
Although her mother was dominant and loved to interfere in her life, Wednesday had never doubted the deep, even slightly twisted, love her parents held for her and Pugsley.
"Not discarding, but fostering him with me... fine..."
Seeing Enid's agitated reaction, Larissa reluctantly corrected herself, "Essentially... it's about the same."
"In any case, Victor seemed keenly aware of their intentions. On the way here, he jumped out of the car and ran. That run lasted ten years."
"It wasn't until a few months ago that he suddenly called me, asking if Nevermore still needed an 'erratic student plus a black, gooey little monster who loves chocolate'."
A heavy silence fell over the office.
"Do you understand now?"
Larissa's gaze swept across Wednesday's and Enid's faces.
"Victor likes you, and that feeling is genuine and passionate. You might be able to fill some of his emotional gaps to some extent."
"But some things... like the unconditional acceptance and care that should come from a birth family, cannot be replaced by any outsider."
She stood up, signaling that the audience was over.
"Go back now, girls. Some wounds, he must choose himself whether and when to show them."
Wednesday and Enid silently stood up and walked out of the Principal's office, one after the other.
The door softly closed behind them.
The corridor lighting was dim and quiet. Neither of them left immediately; they just stood side by side, processing the heavy, suffocating truth they had just heard.
Enid's eyes were slightly red. She sniffled hard, her voice hoarse from holding back tears.
"They... they don't deserve to be parents at all!"
Wednesday did not respond to the emotional accusation. She simply turned her head, her gaze piercing the corridor window, looking out at Nevermore Academy's perpetually gloomy sky.
The lines of her profile remained cold and hard, but the tightly pursed corner of her mouth betrayed a hint of unusual solemnity.
After a long while, she slowly spoke, her voice lower than usual, as if stating a cold, yet devastatingly accurate, equation she had just calculated:
"Therefore, his near-obsessive instability, his almost greedy demand for affection and refusal to let go..."
"Perhaps it wasn't entirely the influence of the Venom or the 'gift' of the laboratory."
Her gaze returned, resting on Enid's tear-filled face.
"That was merely the only way a little boy, abandoned time and again, found... to survive."
"Using the loudest noise to mask the deepest silence."
Enid's tears finally rolled down. She nodded vigorously, then quickly wiped them away.
Neither spoke again, simply turning around in tacit agreement and walking toward the dormitories.
Their steps were much heavier than when they arrived, but a shared resolve to protect something quietly grew in the silence, solid as steel.
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