When the Waves Crash Upon the Shore

"Listen, feel, think."

Kenttanka stood in a panic on the shore, letting the seawater wash over the tops of her feet. In that world of utter silence, all she could hear was Tom's voice. He soothed the terrified, fawnlike girl in a calm tone, his figure—visible only to her—floating behind her like a haunting spirit as he whispered softly by her ear. "Don't resist. Since you could embrace me... naturally, you can embrace it. This was your right to begin with. Someone took it from you. All you need to do is adapt to it."

Tom had roughly left his own drawings on that blank-paper soul. To her, everything she already knew by heart was so strange. After finally recovering her strength, she had sprinted madly to the seaside. Even when the gravel and shells on the tidal flats cut open the soles of her feet, even when she stumbled, she kept running forward. She wanted to escape it all, escape the cage built from malicious words, escape this memory she could not accept.

But what use was that? If there was one thing that could always catch up to a fleet-footed runner, it had to be his soul. The same was true for Kenttanka. Memories that were perfectly normal to ordinary people clung to her like nightmares. As her understanding gradually sharpened under Tom's construction, that stormy night thirteen years ago also broke free from the chaotic colors and branded itself before her eyes like shackles. She was like a prisoner under interrogation, her eyelids forced open with tape while the television before her replayed blood-soaked images again and again.

Back then, she had not understood what had happened. But now, having accepted Tom's intellect, she understood completely.

She widened her ruined eyes and looked around in panic, but