When the sculpture knife passed over her index finger for the third time, Elvira confirmed the pattern: the blood drop would only heal when it touched the silver leaf bookmark. The dark red liquid seeped into the wolf's eye along the metal lines, and the wound disappeared like a pencil mark erased by an eraser.
"You'll get sepsis if you do this." Lila grabbed the utility knife and waved her nails stained with acrylic paint in front of her eyes. "Tell the truth, are you playing some dangerous game with the mysterious senior?"
Elvira bandaged her good finger: "Wound treatment exercise for art history class." The clock on the wall showed that there were still twenty minutes until sculpture class, and she could hear the roar of the exhaust fan in the pottery kiln on the third floor.
Lila suddenly leaned close to the crescent scar on her collarbone: "This location...wasn't there last week, was it?" The cool metal pendant brushed against her skin. It was a brand new camera-shaped pendant.
"Change of style?" Elvira changed the subject, stroking the feather necklace that had been replaced around the other person's neck with her fingertips.
"Eric said the lens suits me better than feathers." Lila spun around to show off her black leather choker. "He came to shoot the club event yesterday and said my composition was like Diane Arbus."
The school bell saved Elvira. When she fled into the studio with her clay box in her arms, she found a stranger sitting by the window. A dark grey turtleneck sweater wrapped around her slender neck, and her profile was gilded with furry gold by the morning light—it was the customer who bought all the tuna rice balls in the convenience store surveillance.
"Transfer student Lucas." The professor knocked on the outer shell of the electric kiln. "Avella is helping him get familiar with the equipment."
When the boy stood up, he knocked over the iron chair, and the metal legs scraped the ground with a harsh sound. He took the sculpting knife she handed over, and the moment their fingertips touched, the wolf-shaped bust on the workbench suddenly buzzed. Elvira saw fine cracks appearing on the surface of the clay, as if countless transparent spiders were crawling underneath.
"Sorry." Lucas quickly withdrew his hand, and the sound of his Adam's apple rolling was clearly audible. When he turned around, the air he brought up smelled of cedar and rust.
Elvira watched him out of the corner of her eye throughout the class. Lucas kneaded the clay as stiffly as if he was assembling a gun, but every time his sleeves brushed against the workbench, the tips of the clay that Elvira had shaped into fangs would shine slightly. When she turned her head for the last time, she found that he was wearing a fingerless glove on his left hand - there was a hole at the ring finger, revealing red skin.
After class, a rainstorm suddenly hit. Lucas blocked the door of the equipment room: "Your hand..." He stared at her bandaged index finger, her eyelashes stained by the rain, "Do you need a Band-Aid?"
"It's healed now." Elvira untied the gauze, revealing smooth skin. Raindrops dripped down the iron frame of the skylight onto his shoulders, leaving dark spots.
Lucas suddenly grabbed her wrist and pressed her against the wall, his nose almost touching her hair: "Do you know the price of touching the taboo?" His pupils were a cloudy silver-gray in the shadows, like cumulus clouds before a rainstorm.
The alarm sounded without warning. When Elvira broke free and rushed to the fire escape, she only saw the fluttering corners of gray clothes at the end of the corridor. Her sketchbook was spread out on the ground, and the latest page had a sketch: the outline of clasped hands, with thorny vines wrapped around the wrists.
When repairing the radio that night, the knob suddenly got stuck on a certain frequency band. A familiar voice was heard in the electromagnetic noise: "...The only survivor of the November 5th explosion has been discharged from the hospital..." Elvira slapped the shell hard, and the moment the battery compartment popped open, something fell on the carpet.
It was a button-sized metal wolf head with congealed blood stains on the back.