Location:15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFkiUNLmjE1
An old library inside a closed literary club in New York.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9l1RDAEmSf
The walls are covered in dark wood, and books fill the space as if they are watching.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKDYIGdsPmg
The fireplace is dead, despite the cold, as if the fire was the last thing to die in this place.
Time:15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdjcmM43YmM
Eight o'clock in the evening.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLVOI92K36T
After Ella announced her intention to reveal what she had found,
Three faces waited around the table.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0isfsS5rf0
The fourth chair remained empty, and no one asked about it.
James Holloway - pale, raising his eyes to the ceiling more than he looked into faces.
Laura Quinn - composed, but her hand shook when she touched her teacup.
Thomas Reilly - never seen before, but his voice was familiar from old radio broadcasts... the writer of the terse, deadly articles.
Ella entered and placed a file on the table.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGZKXGsc7cB
Quietly, she sat down in the fifth chair.
Then she said,
"I won't ask a single question. I'll just read."
She opened the paper and began in a monotonous voice, as cold as the novel's title:
"I had no face. You dressed me in every script you rejected, writing it in my voice when you were ashamed of your own voices. You didn't kill me with bullets, you killed me with sentences. But the last sentence is mine, and mine alone."
Silence.
James looked at Laura.
"We weren't friends," Laura said. "We were silent conspirators."
"Why did you kill Leonard?" Ella said.
"Thomas finally answered:
"Because he tried to give Athan a body. He wanted to make him a real person…to sign his name, to be published, to be remembered. And that was forbidden."
James, his voice trembling, said:
"Athan wasn't ours; he was a shadow of us all. Making him real meant exposing the lie on which we had built our glory."
"So you preferred him to die?" Ella said.
Laura replied, "No one wanted to kill him. We thought his fear would stop him. But he went to the lake that night... carrying the truth."
At the end of the meeting, they all left their papers on the table, as if surrendering a part of themselves to death.
Ella walked out into the night.
The snow fell slowly.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyIXGY1iL3J
A single thought grew in her eyes:
Maybe no one killed Leonard.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOtv5MLf6dm
Maybe he just... decided to leave his body behind, so that Athan could remain free.
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