Who Is Little Red Riding Hood?

Kas stared for a long while at Nosa's crescent-moon eyes. Then he took the umbilical cord, looped it around her slender neck, and slowly tightened his arm...

The feeling of suffocation overwhelmed her throat. A slick sensation seeped from her neck into her soul, and Nosa felt a warmth and peace she had never known since birth. It was as if she had returned to the state before she was born, curled up in her mother's amniotic fluid—surrounded by nothingness.

The outline before her eyes gradually blurred. As death drew near, the shadowy figure moved closer, gathered her into an embrace, then became a streak of light burned onto her melting retinas.

On the brink of death, she whispered her final words:

"Mom..."

Nosa's life faded away, and Kas squeezed his eyes shut.

He could tell that the kindness hidden in Nosa's heart had been awakened by her mother. For a girl whose fate had mocked her before she was even born, Nosa had shown remarkable restraint.

The witch had toyed with her life, her growth, everything about her. She should have become a monster, but instead she followed her nature and chose kindness, never letting this calamity spread beyond the forest...

A Beast Speaker capable of influencing the Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer, consumed by hatred for humanity, would bring terrible disaster upon the Sorrow Mountains.

He released his grip and gathered the girl into his arms, her body robbed of warmth by the wind. As he looked at her upturned lips and the withered umbilical cord dug into her neck, he felt an inexplicable sorrow.

"This umbilical cord was the only thing in her life that ever made her feel warm..."

Seneya looked somewhat saddened, but she was clearly not as affected as Kas, who had killed Nosa with his own hands. Tilting her head in confusion, she watched him murmur under his breath.

"Woof?"

"It's nothing. This is all over, and we need to get moving again."

Kas wiped at the tear tracks that weren't there. He had to admit he was easily moved, but there was too much room for such feelings in the Sorrow Mountains.

He carried Nosa back into the house and laid her on the wooden boards they had pieced together from an oak bed and the dining table, beside Angeli and her younger brother.

After tending to the arrow wound in his shoulder with a heated blade and clean water, he looked at Nosa's pale hand resting in her mother's bony one.

"If none of this had happened, you would have been a lovely girl..."

He picked up the boar hide bundle of smoked jerky and took one last look at Little Red Riding Hood, lying peacefully on the makeshift coffin boards. Then he kicked over the stove.

Flames engulfed the wooden house. In the howling wind created by the pressure difference, he glimpsed a woman in the firelight. For a moment, he thought he heard a gentle "thank you."

Was she Angeli, Little Red Riding Hood, who had been devoured by hyenas, or some other girl who had died a cruel death? Kas didn't know.

He nodded slightly to the face flickering in the flames and murmured, "It's the least I could do..."

Aside from the map, he took only the Woodcutter's Axe he needed. Let this girl, who had cherished the memory of her fake family, leave in peace and warmth.

"Kas, hurry back and look around! There must be a clue about that Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer in the house!"

Ancestor was still nagging nonstop. He cared more about the clan's totem than Little Red Riding Hood's death.

After communicating with the "spirits" several times in a row, Kas was feeling rather tired. He couldn't even be bothered to entertain the nagging Ancestor. Holding up his torch, he walked in the direction marked on the map.

The map showed every area of the Sorrow Mountains in meticulous detail. Comparing it to the terrain of Ferode Canyon, Kas realized just how frighteningly accurate it was. It even marked the hidden Sacred Forest of the Her Tribe.

This raised many questions in Kas's mind. Was the witch who had toyed with Nosa's fate the same one who had cursed Seneya?

Was the shaman's prophecy a fleeting glimpse of the future, or a deliberate curse made in collusion with the witch...

Perhaps the map had been left for Nosa to exploit her Beast Speaker talent and control beasts into attacking human settlements in the Sorrow Mountains.

He glanced back at the wooden house, its rafters now collapsed in the flames, and felt that this sacred ritual to find the shaman a wife had become even more mysterious.

Seneya walked silently at his side, one step behind, her expression as quiet as ever. She had a lot she wanted to say, but Nosa, the only person who could understand her, was dead.

"Miss Seneya, are you hungry?"

Kas smiled and set his tangled thoughts aside for now. He untied the boar-hide bundle from his shoulder and took out a palmful of smoked jerky.

The werewolf's throat bobbed several times. She stepped forward, picked up a slice of meat, and chewed it carefully before swallowing.

Kas held out his hand, expecting Seneya to take more, but then he saw her slow her pace, drooling, her eyes full of inner conflict.

"What's wrong? Doesn't it taste good?"

"Aowu~" she whimpered softly, desperately resisting the smoked jerky Kas held to her mouth. Her pitiful expression made her look like a husky being fed with a pig's ladle by its grandmother.

Kas couldn't understand Seneya's resistance at all. Had tonight's events made her allergic to meat? Would she have to become a vegetarian from now on?

What was the difference between a wolf that ate plants and a dog that ate shit?

"Come on, be good. Once you've eaten, we'll go catch something else. We'll try a different recipe this time. I'm sure you'll like it."

But no matter how Kas coaxed her, Seneya kept her jaws clamped shut and wouldn't take a bite.

All he could do was say he was getting a little tired and open a corner of the boar-hide bundle for the Werewolf Lady to hold.

As they walked, he watched Seneya's nostrils twitch. Her restless little hand hooked over the edge of the bundle, and drool ran from her puckered lips down her chest like a waterfall.

"Go ahead and eat. I really don't mind that you have such a big appetite..."

In the blink of an eye, Seneya pressed her forehead against Kas's. Her pupils contracted several times as if to ask:

Really? I can really eat?

When Kas nodded, Seneya first took a handful of jerky and offered it to him. Then she crouched by a tree and flung her arms through the darkness in a blur. In less than ten minutes, she had finished the entire bag.

Kas stood nearby, his brows twitching incessantly. She could eat way too much... I really can't afford to feed a glutton.

The two of them slowly walked away. A quiet drizzle began to fall, and the hazy mist swallowed the entire forest.

[Plan: Who Is Little Red Riding Hood]

[Status: Complete]

[Inspiration: He loved her deeply, yet had never seen her. Though she had been remembered in the shaman's prophecy, printed on the swaddling cloth of a doomed child, and lodged in a hyena's throat, he still couldn't recognize her, because the only version of her he had ever seen came from a retelling of the prophecy.

She did not love her. Just as a mother had never realized that the meticulous care she gave her child was called love, she remembered only the wrinkled little monster who had emerged from her belly with its umbilical cord still attached. That was her child.

She did not know what love was. She wore a ragged robe woven from flax fibers, held a hooked pole in her hand, and had damp lichen and moss covering her head. The scent of lilacs and pansies seeped from her bones. Her empty eye sockets, stripped of flesh, brimmed with hatred and longing for her loved ones.

Who was Little Red Riding Hood? Every child cursed by the prophecy was Little Red Riding Hood.]

... Under the clear sky after the rain, night receded. Dark red clouds, heralding the sun's imminent rise, rolled across the heavens, their rosy glow more brilliant than ever.

The Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer, Angeli, raised her head. The first ray of sunlight on the horizon fell upon her enormous, crown-like antlers.

The sunlight was dazzling. Its brilliant colors seemed to seize her gaze. Facing the wooden house reduced to ruins, Angeli let out a mournful cry.

Nosa was dead...

But Angeli wouldn't let her stay dead, adrift alone on that River of Darkness flowing toward the end of the world. Like another Angeli, she, too, considered Nosa family.

In the sunlight, she stepped into the burned-out ruins of the wooden house and lowered her crown-like antlers. Golden light flowed through the crown, and the earth rejoiced.

There was no grand display of magic, nor even a breeze to visit the place. The Golden-Branch Giant Antlered Deer tossed up ash and dust, and a pale hand reached out from the ruins.

Nosa's naked body seemed to have been given new life. She sat cross-legged in the muddy ashes soaked by the rain, the sorrow in her eyes completely washed away.

Her amber eyes gazed at the pale sun of dawn. She reached toward that hollow orb, trying to grasp the fleeting morning glow.

This time, she no longer touched the heart wrapped in cursed fate, that cold, beating soul scorched and seared by the flames of revenge.

The ray of light she held in her hand bore witness to the past—and to her break with curses and destiny.

Standing beneath the sunlit sky, she reached out toward the rising ball of fire.

"Mother..."