Noises of bushy branches gently blown by the wind, song of birds such as laughs, breeze cold as the autumn wind that carries dead leaves with it… With this, Shinkuu finally opened her eyes. She wasn’t able to understand where she was, unable to feel neither what was upon her nor below. Some time lapsed before she was able to feel her limbs and then try to raise, which she felt terribly heavy.

“I’m … alive?”

She continuously asked herself this question, until she finally get to sit on the floor. Then she asked herself where she could be after looking her surroundings: a wide opaque grassland that extended for many meters until a line of giant gray trees she sawn in the horizon. She realized being surrounded by those trees, while she was in the middle of this circle of dead trees. There was nothing else but a cloudy and colorless sky.

- Oh, I see you finally woke up.

Before Shinkuu could think about anything else, the voice she heard was so close to her back that she jumped forward and, losing her balance, fell to the ground.

- Oh, my apologies, it was not my intention to scare you.

Shinkuu turned, and found the voice came out from someone with an humanoid silhouette which hid themselves under a dark cloak. Withe cloak closed and they head covered by a hood, there was no way to see what or who was under the dark veil. Nor a limb or a glance of skin was there to give her a clue, and when she tried to look at their face, she found darkness darker than the cloak.

Their voice was somehow the one of a male, so she though perhaps “he” would be the correct way to address the mysterious person. Then ‘he’ continued:

- Haha! Did I really scare you, didn’t I? Once again, I beg you pardon, since it was not my intention.

- Are you… the Death? – was the first thing it came to her mind to ask.

- The Death? Oh, no, I am nothing more but a shadow of this place, indeed not important at all.

- Really? – Shinkuu felt a little less scared about her situation, since the “shadow” didn’t seem to mean any harm to her, though she was nonetheless worried about his presence. When she rose from the grass, she was stroke by the memory of her committing suicide – Where am I?

- This place? If you would like to call this place somehow, then you could call it ‘Ibara’.

- ‘Ibara’? What kind of place is this? I’ve never heard of such place when I was in the world of the living!

- Aren’t you Japanese? Sigh, and I thought it would be a good idea to choose that name to make you understand easier…

- Well, I can’t! – Shinkuu answered a little angry – So? What does it mean?

- ‘Ibara’, that is ‘thorn’ in your mother language, like those of the roses. This is a place of suffering and pain. That is the reason I chose that as a name. This is the place where you are standing right now.

- What?! – Shinkuu, with her desperate act tried to escape the pain and suffering of her life. Hearing that she now found herself in a place of suffering as well totally demoralized her – I… I died back then, right? It’s this the place where I should pass all the eternity?! – anxiety and rage make her chest burn and hurt.

- Calm down, young girl, there is no use of such manners – the ‘shadow’ was calm and motionless as always – To begin with, you are not exactly ‘dead’. Not yet at least. Ibara is a place ‘in the middle’, a crossing point, not your final destination – he said, pointing with his hand a path leading to the forest of gray trees. The girl noted the shadow’s hand was a human hand.

- And… Where does that path lead? – she asked, trying her best to not fell to the ground in despair. Looking to her interlocutor face again, this time she was able to catch sight of a smile. A human smile.

- This path with lead you to the place you really belong.

For an instant, when the ‘shadow’ open his arms theatrically, answering to Shinkuu’s question, she thought she saw some light falling from the sky giving her a little hope, as she once saw in a movie. But it was just her imagination: the cloudy and gray sky was there as it was before. No light, perhaps no hope as well. She stared at the ‘shadow’ while he was returning to his stand still pose, thinking about his words. Little by little she felt inside her something: the desire to end her suffering once for all. Somehow, the sadness of becoming conscious about the place she found herself in started to become the fuel of her new founded determination. An instant later, though, her fragile nature take the advantage and pointed a question she didn’t thought about before.

- To the world of the living… It’s not possible to return, right?

- Do you see perhaps some other path, before you? – was the answer, but the ‘shadow’ had something else to say to the girl – At any rate, it was not you the one who desired to escape that place because you found it painful and disgusting?

- Yes…

- Then go forward, young one, and not lose any time. Because, you know, there is someone waiting at the end of your journey here.

- Really? – Shinkuu couldn’t believe those words. Who would be that person waiting for her in a place like that? Her desire to keep going forward to free herself from suffering growth even more.

- But of course, I am not the kind of shadow that would tell a lie. Now go! You would not make them wait any longer, would you?

- Y-yes!

For a moment, Shinkuu felt her cheeks turned red at the thought of someone waiting for her. The excitement made her run through the path and, remembering that it wouldn’t be nice from her departing without thanking the ‘shadow’, she turned to do it.

- I was forgetting: thank you for your help! – said she, turning again in a rush to keep walking her new founded path of hope.

- It is always a pleasure, Shinkuu…

These final words froze the girl completely. Until that very moment, she never tell the ‘shadow’ her name and, nonetheless, he knew it. She turned once again, but her guide in that unknown world was nowhere to be found. He disappeared without leaving a trail. A few chills run over Shinkuu’s back, making her run faster. Soon her figure was totally devoured by the gray deep forest.