[Hehe... bet you didn't expect this. I've started another book.]
[The last two both crashed and burned. Hopefully this one can at least earn me the minimum payout and let me keep writing for a month.]
[Then again, I should count as the first author on the Tomato website to write about Little Red Riding Hood from Neverness to Everness. Enough talk-straight to the story.]
[Note: Little Red Riding Hood first appears in chapter 15. If you don't like the opening content, you can skip straight to chapter 15.]
[Brain storage area]
It had been raining for four days.
The drainage system in Hethereau City's old town was overwhelmed. Half a foot of murky water had collected in the alleys of Halfwidth Street in the Bridge District, mingling with the light spilling from neon signs to give off a dirty, orange-red glow in the night.
The second-floor window of the abandoned apartment building at the end of the alley was broken. Someone had pasted newspaper over most of the shattered glass, leaving only a palm-sized gap. Wind poured through it, sounding like someone blowing into an empty bottle.
Jin'en crouched beside the gap, his knees pressed to his chest, his back against the icy wall.
He hadn't eaten for three days.
Four, to be exact.
On the first day of rain, he had still had half a compressed biscuit, scavenged from a trash can behind a convenience store. The wrapper was torn, and the biscuit had gone damp. Chewing it felt like having a mouthful of wet sand.
But he had eaten it anyway, one tiny bite at a time, stretching it over two days.
From the third day onward, there had been nothing but tap water-if he turned the faucet in the park restroom down to a trickle, he could drink enough to half fill his stomach without making enough noise to attract the security guards.
He was nine that year, or ten.
No one had ever told him the exact number.
The orphanage records listed the date he had been left at the entrance, but that wasn't his birthday.
His birthday was a rainstorm-or so Inanna later told him, with a tenderness that made it hard to tell whether she was joking or serious.
"I found you in the rain," she said. "So that day is your birthday."
But that came later.
At that moment, Jin'en didn't yet know the name Inanna, didn't know about Red Letter, and didn't even know what he would face next.
All he knew was that his palm burned, as though a ball of fire had been sealed beneath his skin and couldn't find a way out.
That feeling had been there for as long as he could remember-at first, a slight stinging in his fingertips, then spreading across his whole palm. In the past few days, even his wrist had begun to go numb.
He knew something was wrong.
He had once seen a child draw a cat on the wall in the orphanage's backyard. Then the cat's tail had suddenly lifted, giving everyone a fright.
The child was taken away the next day.
No one knew where.
Jin'en didn't want to be taken away.
But he didn't want to stay here either, in this derelict room whose door wouldn't even lock, in this old apartment building he might destroy with his own hands at any moment if something inside him went out of control.
He hadn't told anyone when he left the orphanage. At midnight, he had climbed over the iron fence and followed the streetlights as they grew dimmer, walking to the edge of the city, to where even the streetlights no longer shone.
He had thought he could simply disappear that way.
But loneliness hurt.
His stomach hurt, his back hurt, his fingertips hurt.
On that rainy night, he tucked his hands under his arms for warmth. His fingertips touched a patch of skin on his wrist, and he pulled them back from the heat.
He looked down-a thin line of moonlight leaked through a gap in the newspaper, falling squarely on the inside of his wrist.
A faintly glowing pattern lay there, like a mirror on the verge of shattering-irregular lines spreading outward from the center, ready to widen into a disaster at any moment.
Jin'en stared at the pattern for a long time.
Then he pulled down his sleeve and tucked his hand back against his chest.
Footsteps hid within the sound of rain.
Jin'en was the first to hear them.
His hearing had always been keen, much keener than that of the other children at the orphanage. The teachers called it some kind of "gift," but Jin'en thought it was more like a curse-he could clearly hear even the liquid flowing through the pipes in the next room, making it impossible to sleep.
Now he heard heels tapping through standing water, unhurried and rhythmic, as though she were playing a tune only she could hear.
He immediately held his breath and slid down against the wall, making himself smaller.
He wasn't sure who was coming-it might be a patrol officer, someone from the orphanage looking for him, or the kind of person he wanted to meet even less.
Hethereau's nights had never belonged to children.
The footsteps stopped downstairs.
Then someone came up.
The stairs had long fallen into disrepair, and every step groaned, but the visitor's footsteps were steady. Each foot landed in the middle of the stair, as though she had walked through this building a hundred times and knew its structure better than the people who lived there.
A sudden, sharp pain shot through Jin'en's palm. He bit his lip without making a sound and looked down. The crack beneath his cuff was more distinct than before, brighter than the moonlight. Tiny arcs of light darted through its lines, as though something outside were drawing them.
The door was pushed open.
A woman stood in the doorway.
Jin'en's first reaction was that she shouldn't be here.
She wore a long, dark blue coat, without a single crease at the collar or cuffs. Raindrops slid straight off its surface.
Her hair was silver-white, parted to one side and falling to her waist, with part of it tied up.
She was beautiful, but not in a way that made people want to approach her-her features were so exquisite that she looked a little like a museum exhibit, beautiful and untouchable.
What truly made Jin'en nervous was her eyes.
They were a deep red, carrying a faint smile when she looked at someone, but that smile didn't reach their depths. She looked at him as though he were an object.
"I've been looking for you for so long."
She spoke in a thoroughly casual tone.
Jin'en's throat felt blocked. He didn't know what to say, or whether he should say anything.
The woman stepped over the threshold into the derelict room, which measured less than six square meters.
She glanced at Jin'en huddled in the corner, then at his hand. Her gaze lingered for half a second on the wrist hidden beneath his sleeve.
Then she crouched down to meet his eyes.
"Let me see your hand."
It wasn't a request.
Jin'en instinctively drew his hand in tighter.
He was afraid-not that this woman would hurt him, but of how she would react after seeing the crack.
He had seen that kind of reaction before.
When the orphanage's houseparent discovered the strange pattern on his wrist, the color had drained from her face. Then she found an excuse to move him into a room by himself. After that, he heard her lowered voice on the phone with the director: "That child... something's wrong with him."
Yet the woman before him showed no reaction at all. She wasn't afraid.
She simply waited, her posture relaxed.
"You know what that is?" Jin'en said.
His voice was terribly hoarse.
"Yes."
"You're not afraid."
She asked in return, "Should I be?"
The woman tilted her head, a casual, almost girlish gesture that didn't fit her cold aura at all.
Jin'en held out his hand without thinking. He didn't know why he did it. Perhaps going without food for days had left him unable to think clearly, or perhaps he really was too tired-too tired to keep hiding.
His right wrist lay exposed in the moonlight.
The crack had already widened. An extremely faint silver halo glowed along its edges, like the torn edge of paper, or red-hot glass.
Something hummed in the air at a frequency so low it was almost inaudible, yet it made his teeth ache.
Jin'en felt a searing heat in his wrist. He knew what would happen next-space would collapse around the crack, within a radius of roughly half a meter, and anything that came close would be torn apart.
He tried to pull his hand back, but it was already too late.
The woman's hand reached him first.
She didn't touch his wrist. Instead, she gently pinched his fingertips between her index and middle fingers.
"Shh-"
Her voice was soft, as though soothing a child having a nightmare.
Jin'en froze, because the crack hadn't widened.
The silver halo flickered a few times on his wrist, struggling, before slowly dimming.
The humming in the air disappeared as well.
Everything fell quiet again, with only the sound of rain still falling outside.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"...No."
"You're lying."
The woman released his fingers, stood up, and took a handkerchief from her coat pocket to wipe her fingertips-though nothing had actually gotten on them.
Jin'en stared at her, feeling like a rabbit caught in headlights, his limbs numb, unable to run or hide.
"My name is Inanna," she said. "You can call me Ms. T. But if you'd like..." She paused, the curve of her lips deepening just a little. "You can also call me Mother."
Jin'en thought something had gone wrong with his ears.
"You... you've got it wrong," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Then how long do you plan to stay here? Until you starve to death?"
"It's none of your business."
"You're right. It is none of my business." Inanna returned the handkerchief to her pocket, her tone as casual as if she were discussing the weather. "But that little performance of yours just now-the structural integrity of space within a radius of roughly sixty centimeters around you had already dropped to forty-seven percent... if it happens again, this building you're staying in might lose half its second floor."
Jin'en pressed his lips into a thin line.
"How many years were you at the orphanage?" Inanna asked.
"I don't remember."
"You ran away because you didn't want to hurt anyone."
"..."
"You see, I know everything." Inanna bent slightly to meet his eyes.
Those red eyes were so close that Jin'en could even see his reflection in them-a dirty, scrawny boy with tangled hair, his dark gray eyes looking larger than they really were because of malnutrition. "I'm not here to save you. I'm not here to do charity either."
"Then what are you here for?"
"To pick up a blade."
Jin'en fell silent.
He wasn't stupid.
During his years at the orphanage, he had learned many things-when to obey, when to run, and when to keep quiet.
At that moment, he clearly realized that the woman before him was no kindhearted soul. When she said "pick up a blade," her tone was as matter-of-fact as someone choosing cabbage at a market. But she was indeed the first person he had met who hadn't run away after seeing his crack.
"That crack of yours..." Inanna said. "There are people in Red Letter who can help you control it."
"What if I don't go?"
"Then I'll leave." Inanna turned and walked toward the door. "I don't force anyone. But-" She paused in the doorway and turned her head to look at him. "That crack on your hand, at its current rate of deterioration, probably has about three months left.
"After three months, it won't just be on your wrist-it'll climb up your arm, to your shoulder, to your chest, to places you can't control."
She didn't say what would happen after that.
Jin'en stood in the rain.
Only when he looked back on it later did he realize-he had followed Inanna out of that abandoned apartment building, followed her into a black sedan, and followed her across most of Hethereau City to Red Letter's mansion.