Ghervil couldn’t fathom why she had made such a decision.
She had been hiding behind a tree, overhearing the agent’s warning to the officers.
The Ratmire White Rat was notoriously vengeful, known to track its prey by scent for retaliation.
If it wasn’t killed or stopped here, Ghervil would be relentlessly pursued wherever she fled, potentially endangering Mrs. Keith and their beautiful new neighbor.
She didn’t believe herself special enough to warrant so many people holding it back, merely to buy her a chance to escape.
Nor did she think she could truly escape; in her current physical state, she couldn’t even outrun a common rat, let alone this mutated aggregate with its near-immortal characteristics.
Her act of direct confrontation had also been ill-considered.
This was no longer a normal world, where criminals or murderers might be monsters beyond human resistance.
She should have invested more effort into convincing Helm, thereby formulating a superior strategy.
A flicker of hope ignited within her when she witnessed the irreversible damage Helm’s dagger inflicted upon the giant rat.
At the very least, the Epidemic Prevention Bureau agent, the only one with a chance to kill the giant rat, had to survive.
“Run! Don’t just stand there gawking, turn around and flee into the forest!”
From the direction of the shout, Helm knelt on the ground, clutching his wound, his eyes bloodshot with terror.
The rat that had been on him had vanished from his sight.
Fear surged within Ghervil, her pupils contracting sharply as she desperately urged her body to obey her brain’s commands.
‘Damn it!’
‘Move, now!’
“Bang!”
She finally managed to turn and take a step just before a tremendous sound erupted, yet she was still flung backward by the shockwave.
The bush where she had stood was neatly severed as if by a sharp scythe, and mud splattered everywhere.
Within the swirling dust, a faint, pitch-black monstrous shadow was vaguely discernible, emitting an eerie high-frequency sound akin to teeth grinding, interspersed with shrill squeaks.
Ignoring the pain of her fall and not daring to look back, she scrambled to her feet and ran into the forest with all her might.
Behind her, the sound of snapping branches echoed.
Closer and closer it came, closer and closer.
Perhaps ten seconds, perhaps twenty.
At this rate, she would surely be caught.
She had tried her best to weave through areas dense with thick trees, squeezing herself between their narrow gaps.
As she ran with all her might, her thigh and calf muscles felt as though they were tearing, her lungs burned with an agonizing fire, and a metallic taste of blood emerged in her wide-open, gasping mouth.
Glancing back, she saw the colossal, shadowy figure darting wildly through the woods, not in a hurry to kill, but reveling in the thrill of the chase.
“How utterly boring…”
Thwack!
A sharp pain flared.
Her foot caught on something like a thick whip, and the momentum of her sprint sent her tumbling and rolling a considerable distance forward.
Her forehead collided with the root of a stout apple tree, its branches adorned with scattered red apples, which had stopped her fall.
In a semi-crawling posture, the pain forced her to press her hand, sticky with leaves and mud, against the wound on her forehead.
A warm current soaked her hand and the upper half of her face, her eyes stinging as if from tears, and the blood that had seeped into them now streamed down the corners.
‘This body is so prone to injury,’ she muttered, ‘and my wound on my backside hasn’t even healed yet…’
Unable to support herself, she collapsed to the ground, sighing weakly.
Her body was practically immobile, her stamina completely depleted.
Swish, swish, swish—
The sounds of the giant rat tearing through the woods and grass exploded nearby, then ceased.
She lifted her head, attempting to discern what lay ahead.
A terrifying, grotesque face intruded upon her blurry, blood-red vision, while a constricting sensation gripped her ankle.
Everything within her field of vision—the ground, trees, weeds, and mud, the sky and the mist—began to spin rapidly, turning upside down.
She found herself suspended upside down, dragged by the giant rat’s tail, dangling in mid-air.
Directly beneath her head was a monstrous black maw, stretched to a horrifying extent, capable of biting off her head or even swallowing her whole, emanating a stench of blood.
Unable to react, she felt only overwhelming dizziness.
Everything seen through her blood-soaked eyes was filtered by a crimson haze, growing increasingly blurry until she could no longer distinguish anything.
Her consciousness sank deeper and deeper, the vivid red fading into darkness.
****
“Wake up, Kateru,” a frail voice urged, “This medicine just came from Dr. Komel.
She’s still letting us pay on credit this time, so don’t worry about the money…”
An aged voice brought her back to consciousness.
Opening her eyes, she saw a kind-eyed, worried old woman, her face etched with deep wrinkles, offering a bowl of brown medicinal soup garnished with dark red petals.
‘Kateru? Why was she calling her by that name?’
‘Wait… this didn’t feel like reality…’
It was a profoundly strange state: the light streaming through the window felt comforting on her, and an unprecedented sense of tranquility, uniquely her own, suppressed an external surge of irritable anger.
Fragmented images flashed through her mind: this bowl of medicine was destined to be knocked from the old woman’s hands by ‘herself’, shattering on the floor, followed by a furious roar at the old woman,
“I told you I don’t need these things!”
“She even asked Bishop Sartre for me, and he’s allowed you to go to the Sanctuary for treatment…” The old woman, unperturbed, continued to counsel with a benevolent expression.
The scene continued: ‘herself’ stood up and shouted at the old woman,
“Doctors! Doctors! You don’t understand the true nature of those people at all! If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have been reduced to this half-human, half-ghost monster!”
“No, in my heart, you will never be a monster, and neither was your father.”
“Enough! I’ve had enough! You have no right to say such things to me.
I regret ever coming to this sick world!”
‘Herself’ finally snapped, anger overriding reason, and pulled a pre-prepared dagger from a pocket, lunging towards the terrified woman.
Another old person, who had been eavesdropping outside the door, burst in, attempting to snatch the dagger and grappling with ‘herself’.
But ultimately, they were two elderly individuals, and the outcome was already predetermined.
An unknown time later, ‘herself’ stood blank-eyed, clutching the bloody dagger, while two still bodies lay quietly on the floor.
Whoosh—
A fierce gust of wind blew open the window, and sunlight streamed through the mist, gradually illuminating and expanding the scene.
The bodies on the floor, the aged floorboards, the flowing blood—everything within sight was bathed in light, transforming into ethereal particles that floated away with the wind.
Time rewound; after the all-encompassing sunlight, the scene reverted, and the old woman stood before her, holding the medicinal soup, awaiting ‘herself’s’ reply.
“It’s over, Mr. Kateru-Angeli.” She did not act according to the established facts nor choose to alter them; instead, she merely watched silently, giving her answer to the woman, and also to ‘herself’,
“Nothing that happened here has changed… and nothing ever will.”
The benevolent old woman’s figure dimmed, then dissipated like a phantom.
Drip…
Drip, drop…
The clear sky quickly clouded over, and the sound of raindrops hitting the window grew increasingly dense, until it drowned out every other sound in the room, until it obscured everything within, as if it had all been a dream, the images hazy and indistinct, before plunging back into darkness.
****
Back in the real world, from Helm’s perspective as he rushed to the scene, the giant rat’s fangs had already brushed against the girl’s hair.
He was at least ten meters away, a distance far too great to intervene in time.
“Damn beast! No, stop!”
His roar had an effect: the girl’s body ceased its descent, and the rat’s movements halted.
Strangely, it remained utterly motionless after stopping, as if frozen in a painting.
A monstrous rat, fresh blood, a gentle breeze, leaves falling with the wind, and the girl’s flowing white hair.
It was a grotesque and disjointed, yet eerily harmonious, depiction of cannibalism.
He froze for a moment, but there was no time for further contemplation; the strange occurrences he had witnessed over the years were plentiful, and one more wouldn’t make a difference.
Suppressing the pain from his shoulder wound, he hurled the dagger forcefully towards the rat’s head.
It struck and penetrated with alarming ease; this time, there wasn’t even an ear-piercing squeak.
From the point of impact on its head, petrified patterns spread outwards, transforming the creature into bark, then vines, and finally, a thin layer of moss, solidifying it into an exquisite tree sculpture.
Carefully stepping on branches, he retrieved the wooden-patterned dagger, then severed the rat’s tail to lower the girl from mid-air, placing her gently on a clean patch of grass.
Helm anxiously patted her face,
“Sister!”
“Wake up, Sister Ghervil! You can’t fall asleep here…”
With the girl’s face covered in blood, it would have been strange if he hadn’t been worried.
“It’s too noisy, Agent,” the girl grumbled, opening her eyes with a resentful expression after a moment. “Can’t you let me get some proper rest?”
“Still have the energy to complain, I see.
Looks like you’re mostly unharmed.”
Just as he was about to let out a sigh of relief, Helm’s body immediately tensed again.
He saw the girl’s eyes glow with a vibrant, crimson hue.
“Your eyes…”
“It’s blood,” she replied succinctly, closing her eyes to gently wipe them with her hand.
When she opened them again, they had returned to their beautiful, dark golden color.
“Honestly, you scared me,” he finally relaxed, grinning as he sat on the grass, grateful for their survival.
“I thought…”
“How rude,” she said, “Am I really that terrifying?”
Though she spoke lightly, the girl wiped the blood from her face and tidied her disheveled white hair.
She then looked up through the gaps in the leaves, gazing at the beam of light striking the apple tree, a helpless curve forming on her lips.
“Well, isn’t this just great,” she sighed. “The last pair of socks for the season is ruined now too.”