The box became a ritual, as inevitable as the setting sun bleeding into night.
Every evening, after the pudding sales dissolved into failure, they dragged her back.
No tally sufficed, no desperate plea pierced the veil of indifference.
Lital would stagger through the doors, tray clutched like a shield in her quivering grasp, murmuring her meager victories—six cups gone, or nine, or twelve.
Once, in a haze of false hope, she claimed fifteen, her voice cracking as she recounted each phantom sale, fingers tracing invisible coins.
But Matron Gresha needed no truths; she craved only submission, a grinding down of spirit into dust.
"Four," the woman would sneer, her lips curling like withered leaves, eyes boring into Lital's soul regardless of the evidence.
"You think I don't spy your tricks? Hiding the rest in the bins like a sneaky rat. Pathetic. Utterly pathetic."
