It was too noisy to be quiet, or too quiet to be noisy. Despite I was 200% sure that this garden was deserted, there was something buzzing somewhere. I could feel their chillness more than hear them, which was lurching in the ambush, waiting to raid. Every second the smell of the frigid air rippling over the surface of the darkness, the bitter breathing echoes pressing the eardrums was so precious. It made me feel sick.

With the stab of terror felt like a spike driven through my heart, I knew I should run. The woods, however, was so big that my legs hadn’t prepared for such a traipse, which enjoyed my exhaustion. The wind whooshed into me, flinging my hair into my eyes and drumming in my ears with the gathering babble. I sped.

But, they’re not slow, either.

The dullness of danger rent the air. My breath caught and solidified in my chest. The night was full of the muffled noises: scream of desperation, suffocating begging for mercy and helpless sobbing, undulating my skin. I could not bear to look around, to see whose scarlet mask dived out of the darkness. I could not even bear to lose their track for a while, could not look into their ghostly eye-hollows. Finally, I turned away and forced my eyes into the surrounding—NOTHING, just endless mazes of towering ancient wildlings.

Death was cooing. Like snow on a cold window, those creepy whispers blurred the hard surface of hovering hope that I had half-believed I could outdistance death itself. Yes, half, and nothing. They were inside me, now.

The images of that ghostly emerald stares forced their way back into my mind. It was such a strange feeling to bore into them as though I had parted from them long ago.

Goodbye, Shawl, goodbye...

Death was impatient.

Then the world resolved itself into screaming pain and uncomprehending montage: for a long time, everything was looking. The interior whispers were panting. My thought floated an inexplicable moment of some glittering summer, the smell of lemon-tree, and the weight of a gentle-voiced promise—my eyes stared away without seeing, the ghost of a smile etched upon my cheek. How strange that the last moment could be shining. My will to live seemed to be less significant while my fear of death was tarnished in the dazing light. I was not running, again. The funeral drum pounded my heart fiercely inside. But I didn’t care. I needed to absorb. The longer I looked, the more my mind couldn’t match. It was far beyond my imagination that the field in sunlight was so familiar. The weight of its waving green seemed to be too heavy to bear… I overstretched my glance, and my surrounding staggered themselves before my eyes. A ragged spot flew through across the brush. It was closing, fast, desperate, and recognizable. Then, I suddenly realized that I was looking several miles away at her, or—ME.

The field was empty. The wind washed her hair. I watched that this cold-blood run to her own destruction, which required a strange kind of bravery. To tail others’ shadow, even which definitely mirrored my own self, seemed to be an easy relief… Come, half of I yearned the final moment run quicker, half of I was afraid of what might come slower. It was not anything related to be frightened to walk into the grave, but something else, the killer.

The air roared. A fury of loath mingled with hysterical desperation invited both of our attention. I looked up. She spun around. The cold blade of sliver glint shot out of the darkness, straight into her…my back. Something more than blood was leaking from her back. Sliver snow white—neither gas nor liquid—it gushed everywhere, staining the grass around her. And the field was enchanted flowery at once.

The world fell silent in horror. Inside whispering wave receded, too. My mind was in free fall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because of the evidence of all my sense was dying.

At that right moment, it’s the first time that I realized the thing hanging in the sky was a scarlet Moon.