"His name was Jing. He was a mirror that had mutated into a Strange Creature-a mirror ghost."
"'Jing' wasn't exactly a name I put much thought into, but he disliked all the other names I gave him, so in the end, we settled on 'Jing.'"
"He was my lover."
The Strange Creature sitting there paused briefly after "saying" this.
"After the Cataclysm, some of the Long-Life Species survived, but the surviving nonhuman races gradually began to mutate. Their temperaments and ways of life changed drastically. Once-friendly kin and even lovers turned against one another, even slaughtering each other. My people and I were no exception."
"I had only just become my people's leader before the Cataclysm, and when it struck, I led some of them to survival. But when everything became ruins, our sanity seemed to collapse along with civilization."
"For a very, very long time, my people seemed to become beasts driven only by slaughter and bloodlust. They still had consciousness, yet they were utterly different from who they had once been, as though all their kindness and reason had been completely eroded after the Cataclysm."
"As their leader, I was also teetering on the edge of becoming a beast. Only in moments of slaughter could I barely regain my awareness. Back then, I survived on the blood flowing across the ground, and my body was weaker than those of my kin. I was powerless to stop anything. Though I resisted the killing, rather than become a leader who abandoned his own people, I chose to remain beside them, watching them commit countless murders in their wretched state."
"Even now, when I recall that time, those memories still seem shrouded in a thick veil of blood, impossible to see clearly."
"It was during that terrible time that a severe