The more she walked, the more her thoughts became darker. The hate Shinkuu felt towards her parents was fed by the remembrance of Kiba. The vision of the beautiful evergreen garden and the hope to reach a place to rest in peace was completely wiped out. Around her, it became as gray and gloom as it has been always since the beginning of the bizarre travel across the Ibara. The girl was so absent of mind she didn’t realize she was walking through a slop, going upwards. Absorbed in depressing thoughts, Shinkuu climbed a hill, and only the fatigue of the climbing took her out from her mind. Eventually, she arrived at the top, finding a place inhabited by a few huge dead trees, which had ropes hanging from their branches. Shinkuu noticed all of the ropes were nodded in the way it’s used to hang someone. Even so, she wasn’t really surprised considering what she had previously saw. Also, the image of her deceased friend made her so depressed to the point the grief made her forgot about where she was and where she was going. To her, everything was like a bad dream, from where she was unable to wake up. She kept walking without paying attention to anything in particular, until she was near to the biggest tree in the hill. The girl was forced to stop, as what she saw was too unusual to be ignored: a bunch of strange creatures where gathered under the giant tree, screaming and laughing, jumping and shouting, dancing and signing. The appearance from afar of those creatures wasn’t clear to Shinkuu, so she, overtaken by her natural curiosity, left her grief aside for a while to sneak near to the weird party that was running before her. She was able to hide behind a close tree to the mass of unusual beings, and Shinkuu was able to see better their shape: they had dark skin, like carbon, presenting each of them different sizes and appearance. One of them was really short, with pointy long ears, pig-like nose and goat-like feet; another one was a mass of muscles from the waist upwards, while the downside was sustained somehow by thin legs; another one had a huge hump on his back; another one, which had somehow a feminine figure, had long hair, a big chest and thighs but a thin belly. All of them had in their faces a disgusting sneer in their faces, dancing before the giant tree. Somehow, Shinkuu found those disgusting creatures similar to the laughing shadows she encountered in the cave. When some of those creatures started throwing rocks at something, she noticed what it was: hanging from the tree, there was someone, a girl, with silver hair falling from one side of her face, covered in a pure white cloak that allowed only her face to be seen. The hanged girl made Shinkuu remembered the Teru Teru Bōzu, those dolls used in her motherland said to help cast away the rain when hanged outside the house. The hanged girl was the target of the creatures, and soon Shinkuu realized that the whole “party” perhaps was to mock the hanged girl. “How they can do something like that to a corpse… this place is really awful”, she thought aloud.
- You’re right, this place is awful, but the truth is the girl right there is not a corpse.
Shinkuu startled to the peculiar voice of the crow she had met before, when this one spoke behind her. She turned in the direction of the voice, finding the black bird standing in a branch of the tree she was using to hide from the creatures.
- W-what do you mean? Is she still alive? – said Shinkuu with trembling voice, still nervous.
- ‘Alive’ is not quite the word, but it’s true that the girl right there still feels what those creatures are doing at her.
- Those… monsters! Doing that to an inoffensive girl… they should die…
- You’re right, they should. Why don’t you kill them all?
- Uh? I was just… I mean… I didn’t mean that literally.
- But you really think they deserve death, don’t you? You would like them to be the hanging corpses, isn’t?
- … Even if that’s the case, there is no way I could do something like that. There are so many of them, and I’m just a normal deceased girl…
- You underestimate your strength, girl – asserted the crow, descending to a branch closer to Shinkuu.
- Then… what should I do, this time? Look them bad? Laugh at them?
- You need just to want them dead. Think inside of your head their annihilation, and it will become true.
- With… my mind?
- Both mind and heart. Strong feelings are quite powerful here, in the Ibara. That’s why you can kill just by wishing it.
“Strong feelings are effective here, in the Ibara”, repeated Shinkuu in her mind. She started to figure out the mechanism of the weird place she found herself in. Looking at the creatures bullying the hanged girl, she resolved in her heart to hate them until the last one of them was dead.
With decision on her eye and steps, she got closer to the ring of creatures. In her mind, she imagined to slay every single one of those nauseating beings. Soon the creatures noticed the newcomer with renewed interest, their eyes shining with a malevolent light, as if they were kids enthusiastic to have in their hands a new toy to break. “Die!”, shouted Shinkuu to one of them that was particularly near to her, but this didn’t die. It got even nearer to Shinkuu, making her wave from her conviction. But, once more, she tried, with a mix of excitement and fear. Suddenly, the creature closest to Shinkuu stopped, then it flew away with violence. It took a while to the girl to realize what just happened: one of the ropes hanging on the tree just moved by itself, catching the creature and hanging it on the tree. The hideous creature moved and shook in pain, until it caught its last breath. Even the creatures stopped to see what was happening before them. Just when the hanged creature stopped completely, the creatures rushed towards Shinkuu with both rage and fear on their horrid eyes. Shinkuu was also filled up with the same feelings and, using them as fuel to her power, she thought about every one of the creatures to be dead. And so, more ropes from the tree moved on their own, catching the creatures like fishes and hanging them on the tree.
“DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!DIE!”
Full of hatred and adrenaline like never before, Shinkuu shouted with all her heart the death sentence above everyone around her. She shouted until her throat hurt and couldn’t shout anymore. Wheezing, she stopped to look at the tree, and she was pleased at the vision of all the creatures finally hanged, like the poor girl they used to abuse. When she was thinking a way to put down the girl with the white robes, as if the tree could hear her thoughts, the branch holding the hanged girl move down slowly, placing the girl on the ground. Shinkuu ran until reaching the girl, holding her on her arms.
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