Chapter 3: Breathing Forest

In northern Japan, there was a small village called Luyahan.
It was hidden between mountains and thick forests. Night arrived early there, and people closed their doors before darkness fully settled.

Haruki lived in that village.

He was eighteen years old, but his eyes carried more tiredness than his age should allow. When Haruki was fourteen, his father died after a long illness, tuberculosis. From that day, the weight of the family slowly fell onto his shoulders.

Now, his home had only his mother,
his thirteen-year-old sister Ayane,
and his ten-year-old younger brother Ren, who usually stayed with their mother.

Money was never enough...So Haruki went to the forest every day...He cut wood, loaded it onto a small hand-pulled cart, and in the evening, he went to the city to sell it to a wood merchant....That day, Ayane came with him.

The cold was stronger than usual.
The sun had already started to set, and the forest was growing darker. There was a strange damp silence between the trees, as if even the wind was moving carefully.

Haruki was cutting a tree....The sound of his axe echoed through the forest.

Nearby, Ayane was picking up dry branches from the ground.

Then—

crrrch…

A soft sound of dry leaves being pressed...Ayane’s foot had stepped on leaves hidden under the soil...She stopped. She looked around. ..There was nothing.

“Just leaves,”
she whispered to herself and bent down to pick up another branch...But someone else had heard that sound....Between the trees, deep in the darkness,...something was standing there....It looked human..But it was not human.

It had no eyes.
Where its eyes should have been, there was only empty blackness....It could not see....It listened...The sound of leaves came again from Ayane’s steps.

Slowly, the creature turned its head toward that direction.

It felt the ground.
It smelled the air.

And then—

it began to move.

Slowly.
Without making a sound.

At that moment, Haruki stopped.
His axe froze in the air.

A strange fear rose inside his chest.

“Ayane…”
he said quietly,
“Did you hear something?”..Ayane was about to answer when—a branch snapped nearby.

This sound was not theirs.

Ayane’s breath caught...For the first time, she understood—the forest were no longer silent.It was listening.And now…it  getting closer. 😶‍🌫️...