Vol Chapter 3 (2/2)

Chelsy carefully took the crown off her head and placed it on the mouse’s. She snorted with cheer, then unbelievably, stuffed it into her mouth.

“Ahh! Thank you. I was rather starving. And not a single one of those thorned flowers I hate so - I feel magnificent!” She shrilly laughed. It echoed in my brain.

“You hate flowers with thorns? …I think there a lot of pretty ones like that, though.”

“True, pretty flowers may well have thorns. Everyone will choose pretty flowers to decorate themselves with, even at the expense of a few wounds. And once it hurts them terribly, they blame the flowers and discard them,” the mouse said bafflingly in her shrill voice.

“Yet they knew of its thorns from the very beginning. …And didn’t you, too?”

“Huh?”

It seemed like the mouse was talking to Chelsy. She became fl.u.s.tered, not sure what to say in response.

“Well, here you are, as promised. You can open the door with this. It’s heavy, so handle it with care.”

The mouse snorted off to her side. Looking in that direction, I saw a st.u.r.dy axe sticking out of a stump.

I turned to Chelsy. “…Huh?” She swung her hands in denial. “I-I can’t carry anything too heavy… Can you do it?”

I picked up the axe, carried it to the door, and gave it a big downward swing. With a painful sound, it made a small gap in the door.

“Allen… You’re pretty gutsy, huh.”

Was that a compliment? I said thanks for the time being, and pushed the door further forward to enter the house.

As soon as I entered, a raw smell came through my nose. The smell made something acidic come up from my stomach and try to escape. I turned down and tried to keep it in.

“Allen, what’s wrong… Ahh…!”

Chelsy suddenly shrieked. Holding my sick stomach with both hands, I looked up.

A mix of shattered medicines and thick red fluids was scattered across the room. A human-like figure was laying on its side on the bed in the corner, and what was surely a monster… a creature covered with scruffy hair was staring at the bed, making a low growl.

“A, Al, Allen, r-r-run…”

Chelsy stepped backward toward the door outside. Yet the door which I’d cut open with the axe was somehow back to normal. Chelsy roughly banged the doork.n.o.b, but it wouldn’t budge.

Taking notice of the noise, the beast’s stocky body came our way. Its foul smell and moans further upset my stomach. But it was glaring solely at Chelsy, not me.

“Ahh…! No, no, no! That’s not grandma! Stop, I don’t want to see this! Never again! I won’t do it again… I’ll be good, so please… Forgive me… Let me wake up…!”

Speaking through sobs, Chelsy fell to the ground and covered her face. As if waiting for this opportunity, the beast nimbly ran past me and prepared to attack Chelsy.

“Watch out!”

Immediately, just like I’d brought down the door, I swung the axe down on the beast. A wild howl came out of its mouth.

At the same time, an unspeakable smell filled the room, and the thick red fluids around the room were added to with more.

“Chelsy…”

After the beast finished howling, it fell to the ground unmoving. I held my hand to Chelsy, but she just held her hands over her face and trembled.

“Stop… it… I hate… the color red… Father…”

She kept repeating herself. I kneeled down and looked into her eyes.

“…I’ll close my eyes… So I can’t see. Please… hold my hand.”

Still not looking at me, she offered me a shaky hand. I gently took it with both of mine. Instantly, I felt the coldness of it, and that voice echoed in my mind.

“After the girl fetched some medicine, she returned to her grandmother’s room to find that she’d been eaten by a wolf. The girl was terribly scared and could not move from the spot. Then the wolf drew near her.”

“The moment the wolf reached for the girl, it was cut in twain. Behind the wolf stood her father, wielding an axe. The girl trembled at the sight of the slaughtered wolf and her red-stained father.”

“Afterward, the girl ran all the way back home and locked herself in her room. There was the voice of her father. There was the voice of the girl, too.”

“”Father killed a person. But isn’t it me who’s most to blame? Was that father? Was it a person?”“

”The more she thought about it, the more the scene was jumbled in her head. So she decided not to think about it.”

“…The girl renounced having to acknowledge anything.”

…When I opened my eyes, Chelsy was lying on her side. Something was s.h.i.+ning in a pool of blood next to her. I gently took my hand away from Chelsy’s… and touched the key.

And again, a nostalgic voice filled my mind.

“What, Allen? You’re going out to the library again?”

“Yeah, I already finished this book, and I really want to read a new one.”

“Hmm. I hear children are catching a disease that makes them never wake up… But you’re always bounding with excitement to read, so I’ll bet you’re safe, Allen. Hahaha!”

“Why, Allen’s been up all night plenty lately, hasn’t he? Please tell him off, dear.”

“When you’ve got something you like, it’s great to get absorbed in it. Off you go, son!”

In the darkness, the scene came back more clearly. This was another one of my memories. I knew the man who smiled and stroked my head.

…That day, I…

2

Proceeding down the path through the woods, I could see the sky more clearly. Yet the sunlight also relentlessly shone down on me.

“So this is also a memory of before she started living at the facility…”

This was exactly the path to Mrs. Revis’s house, with not the slightest difference.

I received a letter from Mrs. Revis a few weeks after taking Letty into my care at the facility. Following a certain incident, her daughter was holing up in her room and wouldn’t talk much at all. She’d heard that I gave children counsel at my facility and asked in the letter if I could come take a look.

I had been in correspondence with Mrs. Revis’s daughter Chelsy. My mentor was sick, and I was worried for Chelsy, who looked after her mother with much devotion. I recall her being delighted to receive my letters full of riddles. In the last letter I sent, I stated my intent to visit Mrs. Revis, but the Letty incident came up that day, so I couldn’t make good on that promise.

Cliff had planned to drop by the facility three days after I received my teacher’s letter, so I left Letty to him and visited the house. When I knocked on the front door on which a wreath hung, a woman appeared, much weaker than the last time I saw her.

“Ah… It’s been a long time. You’ve gotten bigger again. Or maybe I’ve just shrunk,” she joked. Her smile was the same as ever; she certainly was Mrs. Revis. But her voice seemed less active, and more strained.

“I believe we last met when I entered college, didn’t we? I’m so indebted to you.”

“…You’ve become a fine man. Even if you used to be quite the crybaby at the orphanage.”

“Ahaha… You’re embarra.s.sing me, miss.”

Long ago, my sister and I lived at an orphanage where Mrs. Revis worked. That was where she gave us our names and taught us. When I was about ten, she left the orphanage to raise her newborn daughter, but we still occasionally contacted one another, and she still a.s.sisted me at times.

“So then, about your daughter…”

“Right… She’s in her room. The door’s not locked, but she won’t look us in the eye or talk with us. Especially… not my husband.”

“Well, first of all… What exactly happened?”

My teacher’s face clouded when I asked that. After a short pause, she began to explain.

Mrs. Revis often asked her daughter to retrieve medicine from her pharmacist mother - from the daughter’s perspective, her grandmother. A few days ago, she made the same request as ever, but her daughter didn’t return. Just then, her husband came back home, so she asked him to go check on her.

When he arrived at the house, he found it in disarray. At the back of the pharmacist’s room, messy with bottles and medicinal plants, was an unfamiliar man who looked ready to attack his daughter at any moment. To protect her, he picked up a nearby axe and swung it down on the man.

…Luckily, the girl was unhurt, but she ran home in fear, and hadn’t left her room since.

“The man had a big bag stuffed with medicine. Many of my mother’s medicines are rare, so he might have been a thief. Of course, we can no longer ask him… nor my mother.”

“…I read that in the letter, yes. I’m grateful to her as well, of course, so… You have my condolences.”

I lowered my head. She’d told me in her letter that it was too late not only for the intruder, but her mother. She politely bowed in response.

“It must have been terrifying to be threatened by an unfamiliar man… But for her own father to swing an axe down on someone before her eyes, whatever the reason… It may have been much too shocking for a young girl.”

“…Indeed. Could you try talking to her? She strongly refuses my husband, so he’s given up on trying.”

My mentor showed me to her daughter’s room. I knocked and opened the door to find a girl donned in red trembling in the corner of the room.

“W-Who…?”

“So… you’re Chelsy. We’ve talked a lot through letters, haven’t we? Yes, I’m the one who wrote those. Sorry that something came up, and I couldn’t come when I promised. This isn’t actually the first time we’ve met… but it was years and years ago, so you probably don’t remember.”

I spoke slowly with a smile so as not to scare her. She didn’t seem ready to bolt, so I approached to a reasonable distance. Even kneeling wouldn’t put me on level with her, so I sat on my knees.

“Will you tell me why you’re staying over there and not talking to your parents?”

She hesitated for a few minutes, but finally looked to me and started to speak.

What she told me largely matched with what Mrs. Revis said. So she was in shock from her father murdering a person in front of her.

“…That man was very kind. But all of a sudden, he was like a wolf… He attacked grandma, and messed up her medicines…”

She tried to tell me everything that happened that day one at a time. But she stopped like something was caught in her throat.

“You don’t have to strain yourself. …Can you not talk with your father?”

“…I, can’t. Father only comes home sometimes, anyway… I’m sure he doesn’t care about me that much… so, it’s fine.”

As she spoke, big tears began to fall from her eyes. I took a handkerchief from my coat pocket and handed it to her, and she took it shakily.

“If you like… You could come to my place until things settle down. There’s another child there, about your age, who’s had a similar experience. …And she’s a girl, so you won’t have to worry about it just being me.”

“…Really? But, my mother’s sick…”

“It’s fine, Chelsy.” Mrs. Revis opened the door and entered. She’d been listening to us from outside.

“I may be sick… but it’s really nothing major. You want to study, and be free to have fun too, don’t you? Your father said he’ll take time off work, so you don’t need to worry about me.”

“Mother…” The anxiety on Chelsy’s face cleared, and she looked between her mother and myself.

“Take care of Chelsy for a while.” My mentor walked over to Chelsy, held out a hand to lift her off the ground, and lightly pushed her toward me.

“I’ll still contact you periodically.”

“Right. Leaving my daughter to a former student… It feels a bit strange,” she remarked with her usual smile. Briefly, I felt a stabbing pain in my heart.

“Um… It’s nice to meet you.”

Chelsy politely bowed, then grabbed onto my sleeve. “You too,” I smiled, and saying farewell to Mrs. Revis, I returned with Chelsy to the facility.

“Teacher… You’re sleeping there again? I told you before, you’ll catch a cold…”

Chelsy shook me with her cheeks puffed up. I sat up, looked around, and searched my memory. …I’d fallen asleep on the sofa in the library.

“Ahaha… Sorry. I was being wary, but I nodded off anyway.”

“Geez… You have to be careful! There’s a big temperature difference between night and day this time of year… Oh, here, Teacher, um…”

Just remembering something, she dug through her pockets and handed me a vermilion notebook.

“Bye, Teacher. It’s time to sleep… Make sure you sleep in your room!”, she warned, rubbing her heavy eyelids. Even as she went to leave the library, she kept looking back at me, repeating that I sleep in my room.

“I know, I know, I will. Good night, Chelsy.”

She finally looked satisfied, and replied “Good night.” With a leisurely gait, she returned to her room.

I took a breath, and ran through what I knew about her in my mind. She’d periodically gone to get medicine from her grandmother’s house, and her mother warmed her not to take any detours.

Yet that day, she had gone to pick flowers from a garden. When she did, a stranger came up and talked to her. She was wary at first, but as they talked and he held her hand, she felt he wasn’t a bad person. Maybe the loneliness brought about by her father rarely coming home made her feel that way.

Afterward, the man said he’d come to visit her grandmother’s house to buy some medicine. However, he lived in town and had never been in the forest before, so he got lost. Chelsy thus decided to escort him to grandma’s house.

The story after that, I heard the same way from Mrs. Revis and Chelsy. I was hung up on the fact that the man seemed to abruptly change, attacking her grandmother and trying to steal her medicine. There had been many similar incidents lately. Though in this case, we heard nothing from the culprit…

“…I’ll need to gather more information.”

I stretched, and once again returned to my desk.

While recalling the events of taking Chelsy to the facility, I walked through the forest, and soon found a place similar to the garden I had pa.s.sed through on the way. However, unlike that garden, this one didn’t have any out-of-place flowers blooming without regard for the season. I sat carefully to not crush any flowers and calmed my breathing. And I recalled the first page of the notebook she gave me.

Teacher, I… still can’t forgive father. Those eyes… that color… I’m scared. …Help me.

If she could recover from the shock of that incident, would she be able to live there with her family again? It wasn’t inconceivable. But there was no reason for her to move back yet.

“…What?”

I heard the same rumbling as in Letty’s World, and the ground began to shake. The surrounding plants quickly grew like a fast-forwarded video, encircling me.

Was this… the World collapsing? Ah, not again…

I had a feeling this might have happened. Yet, I hadn’t thought in the slightest she would break her promise. Before I could solve that, green vines and oddly-shaped leaves began to coil around me, and I was swallowed up.

3

“Welcome back. …I say with a smile, but I’m made quite uncomfortable by that face you’re making,” the White Rabbit said with irritation. “Ah, well, at least you seem to have safely recovered the key. I can’t complain about that.”

“…Is there no way to save the people in those Worlds?”, I nervously asked the increasingly irritated Rabbit.

“Ah… Well, you do that by not entering their Worlds. No matter how much care taken, a person’s heart will inevitably be hurt by any other, won’t it.”

The White Rabbit folded his arms and began to tap his elbow with a white finger.

“Just think about it. Having the locks to hidden parts of yourself forced open. …The doors in the Worlds are there to keep those places locked up. And having sticky hands upon what you never wanted touched… Unpleasant even for you, yes?”

I silently listened to the Rabbit. …So the moment I entered a World, even if it was entirely unconscious, I was hurting them.

“…Oh, it’s quite all right. I’ll handle the rest. Never mind the Alices. Focus on the keys, please.” He grinned eerily. It might have been the first smile I’d seen that didn’t feel kind. I left the White Rabbit and headed for the third door.

The memory I got when I touched the key… It was breakfast that day. My father, reading the newspaper and munching on bread as he talked to me. My mother, warning me not to stay up so late. Me, smiling at both of them. It was surely the memory of that day I’d lost.

Seeming to regain a few emotions as I regained memories, I hesitated to go to the next World. Even moreso after what the White Rabbit told me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone any more.

“Sure that’s not ”don’t wanna be hurt”?“

The Ches.h.i.+re Cat was suddenly standing behind me. This cat was everywhere, I tell you.

”All people’re like that. They say just say what you want, but when you say anything bad, you got a knife at your throat. Yeesh, so what am I supposed to say!”

Doing a droll dance, he tilted his head at me. My discomfort began to clearly surmount.

“Ah, that’s it. Sayin’ nothin’ must be best, like you do. But if you don’t know a thing, you wouldn’t even have the thought, wouldja?”

…Was he putting me down for trying to get back my memories?

“Pesky knowledge just dirties the heart. Trying’s the first step toward exhaustion.”

“…There might be a way to help them.”

I was starting to grow a sense of rebellion. If I let myself keep getting rejected like this, I might just break eventually. I was scared to forget, or otherwise lose, myself again.

“Mweeheehee! I know Rabbit told you the cold, hard truth. But you still gonna keep going? Boy, you’re just like him. He ever teach you that one?”

He? Teach me?

There was only one person I could think of he would be referring to. Someone very close, who Rick and Chelsy had claimed to see in the Worlds.

“…You mean Teacher? Do you know him?”

“Sure do! I got some promises goin’ with him, hence what I’m doin’… Whoops, it’s time! We’ll talk later.”

I hope later is never, I thought - but the Ches.h.i.+re Cat’s last comments bewildered me.

…The Ches.h.i.+re Cat made promises with Teacher, and was working with him? What objective did Teacher have in going into the Worlds?

I didn’t know what Teacher was thinking, but from Ches.h.i.+re’s remarks, I could bet that he was already in the next World. I’d have to open the door to confirm that.

My earlier hesitation was suddenly gone. Bad as it felt, I had no choice but to take that cat’s claims as truth.

I put my hand on the third door’s k.n.o.b. Without delay, I forcefully twisted it open.

4

“Is that true?”

“Yep! There’s definitely somebody else in the Worlds 'sides you,” the Ches.h.i.+re Cat replied with a full smile.

As I thought, there was. It would be extremely bad to let them keep walking around, destroying the Worlds freely.

So then…

“…I’m going ahead.”

Pa.s.sing by the laughing Ches.h.i.+re Cat, I opened up the closet door.

My mother has a very weak body.

So I do the cooking, was.h.i.+ng, and other ch.o.r.es instead of her.

My father isn’t home much.

Sometimes he brings home a wolf or a deer.

I want to go to school, but I love mother, so I always stay at home with her.

Mother always lies in bed, saying, sorry, I’m sorry… And her voice always

sounds like it’s about to fade away.

My grandma in the woods had a job making medicine.

When my mother ran out of medicine, I’d go to grandma’s house.

One day, mother told me to go there like always.

“Today, I have something for you to deliver too, since I’m so indebted to her.”

“It’s full of bread and wine, but you’re not to eat it along the way.”

“Like I always tell you, don’t stray from the path.”

“Because there are scary wolves.”

I said I’d do what she said and left the house.

While walking through the forest, I found a pretty flower garden.

Don’t stray from the path, I warned myself.

But I was sure grandma would be glad if I could bring her some flowers too.

So I picked a flower or two.

Then a man came by and asked if I knew a medicine-maker.

He must have meant grandma.

I told him I was going there too, so he should come with me.

The man smiled, and helped me pick flowers.

Then we held hands and walked to grandma’s house.

I don’t hold hands with father much, so it was sort of a new sensation.

We reached grandma’s house, and grandma waved to welcome me.

The man bowed slightly, too.

“The medicine is in the usual place.”

I went to get mother’s medicine from the back room.

Just then, I heard a loud sound. There… there I saw…

…I saw a wolf eat grandma.

Then he stuffed a lot of medicine in a bag.

Then he noticed me, and started walking toward me.

I can’t… look people in the eye. I’m scared to… hold their hand.

It makes me… remember it.

If only… I hadn’t picked those flowers. And hadn’t met him.

And hadn’t… held his hand.

Lots… of blood came out. It smelled… really bad.

Teacher, I’m… still a little scared. But I’m… sort of okay.

Teacher, I… still can’t forgive father. Those eyes… that color… I’m scared.

…Help me.

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