The Waltz of Crows and Magpies (Revamp)

Part .8.

PART .8.

**POV:L**

The dishes were such a chore to clean up, some stains needed my entire strength applied in order to completely remove them, which resulted in one shattering to a million pieces.

"Eh, don't worry, I shattered about fifty." Said Lin from next to me, struggling to clean the plates as well. "Fifty? How?" I asked, just trying to open up a conversation, even though she literally hit on me the previous day.

"Don't ask, I get mad easily." She responded, focused on what she was doing. I tried to find anything to talk about that wasn't sexual, since a few moments ago she was asking me about my height and weight before I turned her down again.

I kept on scrubbing, it was aggravating, but I tried to hide the frustration that was building up inside of me from cleaning. Guess it was my fault for volunteering to help Lin, I should've gone with Charles instead since he was visiting Krow... but he stopped me and told me it would be better off if I didn't talk to him that day.

He looked off, awfully quiet and radiating depressive energy. The way he turned down my request to work out with us was quite shocking.

Before I knew it I finally had something to talk about, maybe it was going to intrigue Lin enough. "By the way, Lin... how did you meet Charles, and Mag, and Krow?" I asked, and she froze for a few seconds before the words started coming out of her mouth.

"I mean, I don't want to expose any uh... secrets." She said vaguely, causing me to tilt my head in curiosity. "Ooooh what secrets?" I said, assuming it was something good.

"Secrets that the East is trying to hide... desperately." that sentence sent a chill down my entire body, those secrets probably had something to do with why they did what they did with Krow and Mag.

"Can you... can you please tell me?" I requested, wanting to know more since Krow didn't open up about that. "Since everyone else is scared to, I will." she said, letting go of the plates and turning her entire body to face me, her shoulder leaned against the counter

"Krow told you about what they did to him and Mag, right?" She asked, and I nodded my head silently. "It goes a lot deeper than that, Levi, it's nightmare fuel." She said with complete ease, her voice not quivering from fear once.

"...What do you mean?" I said, fearful about the details. What was the East hiding that was so... disturbing? Something that Krow was too afraid to tell me....

"I might regret telling you this so quickly, but since Krow told you the first part, I will tell you the other." She said, taking in a deep breath. Part of me was not ready to know, I didn't know what to expect.

"In the East, all kids are required to have knowledge on how to run a business, or to already open one by the age of eight... since there, the intelligence rate on newer generations began skyrocketing in the past few decades." She began explaining, and with every word she said I began getting more intrigued.

Intelligence rate? So did that mean that Krow, Mag, Lin and Charles were some sort of super geniuses? "So you could imagine the training they were forced to be put through, it was mental torture." She paused, letting out a sad sigh, I let her take her time.

"Every day they would drag us into these chambers with screens, forcing us to stare at them for hours on end with our eyes forced open. After that they would test us, our mental capacity and physical abilities." She continued, at first it was too much information to understand, but I was slowly able to catch up.

"That training, that every day routine with these torture methods lasted for four years straight, they were trying to drain the emotions out of us, only to leave our intelligence and nothing else. You can imagine what happened with those who failed..." She said, placing her hand on her head. She looked distressed.