Vast and boundless.
Azure skies, drifting white clouds, and a breeze carrying the faint scent of grass as it brushed past her cheeks...
Staring blankly at everything around her, Mu Mu stood there in a daze.
Blue sky, white clouds, grasslands, rivers, butterflies, dragonflies... and the warmth shining down upon her, warmth she had never experienced before.
...Warmth?
Forcing her eyes wide open, she raised her head to look at the source of that warmth in the sky.
Then she saw the sun set against the blue sky and white clouds—the great fireball hanging in the heavens that she had once said she hated.
And the moment she saw the sun, she froze.
...It was different.
For the first time in all these years, she learned that flames could make someone feel warm instead of pain.
Fire could bring warmth, too.
Whether intentionally or not, a crystal-clear river wound its way past her side. A hundred flowers bloomed in profusion, while colorful butterflies played and danced among them.
And when a dragonfly quietly landed on her fingertip, she stared blankly at the tiny life perched there as tears silently slid down her face.
Ever since she developed self-awareness, her world had contained no colors other than cold walls and blazing flames.
She had been born as a container, existed as a tool, and endured as the final safeguard.
And tools were never supposed to have emotions, nor were they supposed to possess human hearts.
...When had it begun?
She seemed to have forgotten.
From the moment she gained consciousness, for a full ninety years, she had remained in this corridor, with darkness and fire as her companions, and endless loneliness and pain as her neighbors.
When her self-awareness had first emerged, she would sit blankly in the darkness with her