Feathers...
Feathers falling from the sky...
Feathers falling from the sky, floating within bubbles...
Covered and enveloped by a white halo, feathers falling from the sky, floating within bubbles...
That was the scene before the boy's eyes...
And this scene was also the first image to enter the mind of the boy, who looked only eleven or twelve years old but had, in the truest sense, just been born, after he opened his eyes and truly gained his own will and consciousness...
Everything before him was white...
The feathers that gave off halos and floated within bubble after bubble were even purer white...
This was a world with nothing in it...
There was only a stretch of white bright enough to sting the eyes, along with pristine feathers drifting back and forth through this white world atop floating bubbles...
Watching this incredible sight, the boy seemed to lose himself. His neat, jet-black short hair fluttered in the wind as his deep black eyes, like stars, gazed at the feathers falling from the sky. He felt as though he were submerged in amniotic fluid, cradled in his mother's embrace, his heart filled with unusual warmth and peace.
However, that feeling did not last long. In the next moment, another scene appeared before the boy's eyes, making his heart suddenly tremble.
They were still feathers falling from the sky, floating within bubbles...
Yet this time, the feathers falling from the sky and floating within the bubbles had not only lost their brilliant white halos, but seemed to have been deliberately snapped apart, becoming scattered fragments, so dim and bleak...
As he watched those shattered feathers, stripped of their brilliant halos, gradually drift down from the skies of this white world, complex emotions surged within the boy.
Loss?...
Anger?...
Sorrow?...
Unwillingness?...
Perhaps all