Location:77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhc4BBCsRjB
An old library inside a closed literary club in New York.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhL7JF6eBoK
The walls are covered in dark wood, and books fill the space as if they are watching.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKsdxoicyGZ
The fireplace is dead, despite the cold, as if the fire was the last thing to die in this place.
Time:77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7DmWc8TXSZ
Eight o'clock in the evening.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5T60RfXUZ2
After Ella announced her intention to reveal what she had found,
Three faces waited around the table.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwmJ2s5fv5o
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.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO10cMEmZwD
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.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrkwHUvlc5W
A single thought grew in her eyes:
Maybe no one killed Leonard.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnr0sNExCfe
Maybe he just... decided to leave his body behind, so that Athan could remain free.
