He saw near him faint signs of footprints leading deeper inside, toward a section where the cave wall was slightly parted as if someone had pushed a stone door open. Beside him, his sword and hat lay neatly placed, untouched by the damp ground. He exhaled a long breath, chest rising and falling in relief as he murmured, "Huuuu… am I still alive? That means…" His eyes drifted toward the cave mouth. He turned slowly, leaned his back to the cold stone, and sat down. Outside, the sea's roar had softened into a hushed murmur, the rain light patter had faded, leaving only the occasional drop that fell from the cliff's edge. The wooden pendant on his chest hung exposed through his torn clothes, still glowing faintly as if breathing. He touched it once, realized something, and smiled toward the emptiness in the cave's dark corner.
He limped out of the cave, dragging one leg, but still moving with a big smile the determination of someone returning from death's door. When he reached the entrance, he saw streaks of red smeared across the sea—almost like blood dissolved into water, floating with the gentle waves licking the cliff's base. A red sun was sinking low, blooming like a flaming lotus across the horizon. Flocks of birds were returning in lazy arcs to their nests on distant rocks, their silhouettes cutting across the molten sky. Slowly… slowly… the last strands of rain evaporated. A few small green algae drifted near the cliff edge, their tiny bodies glowing faintly in the new dusk. His eyes widened and softened, utterly mesmerized, and he whispered without thinking, "What a beauty…"
A voice came from behind him responded, "Isn't it?"
"Yes," he answered automatically, still entranced.
He didn't even flinch nor turned around. Instead, he nodded and said with calm sincerity, "Miss, the beauty of the descending sun is truly something… its elegance can't be put into words." His gaze drifted back across the expanding sky where violet stars were beginning to peek through, glimmering between melting clouds. The last homeless birds darted toward their nests on tiny cliff holes, like glowing shadows passing through the world's breath. Still, he didn't turn his face fully toward her.
He shifted sideways a little and bowed slightly. "Please sit properly, miss. Greetings."
The woman laughed softly. "I am a woman, not miss. If you are assuming me as miss, so why don't you rotate your head at least a little, little boy?" Her voice teased, light as drifting petals.
He replied, still without turning, "Are you not woman also? Hmm... I know you're a woman and even if you weren't, please sit here. I haven't seen a sunset like this in years. I don't want to look away now, I fear I might come back from another illusion… because it's too beautiful to ignore."
"Oh?" she said, leaning forward mischievously, "More beautiful than me?"
"Yes," he answered without hesitation.
She blinked in disbelief, then narrowed her eyes. "You didn't even look at me once. How can you say the sunset is more beautiful?"
He scratched his cheek. "Ahh… that is because nothing can be more beautiful than nature. Even heavenly deities would lose their beauty before her."
As if responding to his words, a gentle breeze swept across the cliff, carrying pink petals drifting from nowhere, petals that danced above the sea's surface like tiny lanterns being set free. The woman glanced at them and asked, amused, "But didn't those heavenly deities create this nature?"
He smiled faintly. "Then that means their beauty lies in their heart, not their face."
She burst into a whole-hearted laugh, the sound echoing across the cliff like bells chiming in the mist. His ears twitched at the joyous sound, and for a moment he wondered if laughter could carry colour of its own.
He finally turned, and froze.
There, stretching before him, was a long stone road that had not existed before, winding across the cliff like a bridge to some forgotten world. Pink-leafed trees swayed on either side, their trunks marked with glowing blue veins that pulsed with life. Some petals drifted gently down to the stone path, vanishing as soon as they touched the ground.
Below, on smaller cliffs, tiny spirals of land jutted out with ponds reflecting the dying sun. Far in the distance, beyond the mist, he could see another island—vast, round, surrounded by towering spires like crystal pillars. Its top was lost behind drifting clouds, only silhouettes flickering like ghosts of temples.
Near them, on the main cliff, golden ball-shaped creatures bounced softly. Each had a single large eye blinking slowly, tiny bat-wings sprouting from their sides. They fluttered in and out of small cave openings made by nature's hand. Every time they entered or exited, their wings left trails of shimmering dust, illuminating the dusk like falling stars.
The boy's breath caught. He slowly turned his head toward the woman who had been teasing him.
She was also staring at the dying sun, her face calm, soft, almost too serene for a place drenched in strange illusions. She wore a maiden's attire, sky-blue and white robes flowing like river silk, and a soft pink scarf tied loosely over her head. The cloth fluttered in the breeze, catching the last glimmers of daylight like scattered petals. He stared at her longer than he intended, as if his earlier bold words were stabbing him from behind, but he stayed silent.
In his mind, uninvited thoughts stirred. She is beautiful too… not like the sunset, but beautiful in her own way. But why am I feeling this? As if something that was sealed inside me—some emotion—was suddenly opened again. Strange. Did the pendant… do something?
As he drifted in thought, she spoke, her voice soft but tinged with amusement. "Indeed… it was more beautiful than me."
He blinked. She was staring directly at him now—eyes closed yet somehow piercing. When their faces aligned, an awkward silence pressed between them like a tight thread. He cleared his throat, cheeks warming despite himself. "Hmmm… but… you are also beautiful?"
She narrowed her lips in mock annoyance. "Didn't you say nature is more beautiful? How can you change your words in just a breath, little boy? Or did this old woman's fading charm finally bend your heart?" She tapped her cheek teasingly. "Still… I shall take the compliment. Rarely does an 'old woman' like me get called beautiful."
He looked away, toward the sea's now-soft waters reflecting scarlet and gold. "Didn't I just say beauty doesn't come from the face but from the heart? I just met someone whose face was beautiful, even though her eyes were covered… but her heart?" He scoffed. "Gar...bage."
The woman let out a gentle laugh. "Oh? You met someone else? Was she beautiful?"
He stared at her once, then answered honestly. "Hmm… if I compare between two people, you would undoubtedly be the more beautiful. But if her eyes were as I imagined—just as I imagined—then she might be more beautiful."
She puffed her cheeks like a child. "So beauty comes from eyes and heart, not the face, hmm? Even an ugly woman with a good heart can be beautiful? But your last words hurt me. Tell me, how did you imagine her eyes?"
He crouched, picked up a pebble, and drew two faces on the sand. One with covered eyes, which he now sketched open—bright, large, elegant—and another, hers, with eyes closed. He drew petals around both. Then he tapped the first one. "Still, she is beautiful. More than you. I think you lost some charm in your eyes."
She leaned closer. "Ohhh? Then why don't you look back… and see through me properly?"
His hand froze above the dirt. Something was off, her voice… shifted. It gained depth, a trembling reverb like multiple throats speaking together. Her tone slid from playful to hollow.
The breeze stopped.
The cliff suddenly felt empty.
The air thickened like syrup.
A long shadow stretched behind him—far longer than it should have. It crawled across the ground like a living stain, reaching him from behind. Slowly… slowly… he turned his head.
Nothing was behind him.
But then, at the edge of his vision, something moved.
A soft wet sound… crack… crack… crck… like bones stretching after a long sleep.
He turned fully and saw her.
A disembodied head, floating above the ground, attached only by a spine of pale bones that clattered like beads on a necklace. Her previously beautiful face now twisted, lips split wide in a smile too large for a human mouth. Her hair hung like drowned seaweed dripping water. Her maiden clothes hung loosely from nothing, swaying in wind that didn't exist.
Her face stared into his, except now her eyes were open.
And they were empty.
Completely white, pupils erased, like two eggshells cracked open by invisible fingers. The head tilted. Bones creaked. Her neck extended farther, farther, stretching like a centipede made of vertebrae. She whispered, "Now… am I more beautiful? Or was she?"
The boy… burst out laughing, a wild, chaotic amusement that didn't match the terror before him.
................
He stumbled backward, laughing so hard his stomach hurt, punching the rocks beside him.
"Hahahahaaa… you are!"
The floating head circled him slowly, her bones scraping the stone path as if tasting the air. She giggled, twisting her spine like a serpent around him and pull him up. "Hu huuuuu… look, I am higher than you."
Then, with a sudden snap, her head lunged forward, her spine rattling like chains whip-cracked in the dark. Her face stopped an inch from his, too close, her cold breath brushing his lips.
He said, "But you know… I am on the top and you are below."
She narrowed her eyes, confused. "Are you foolish, or trying to delay your death by saying useless nonsense about 'top' and 'below'?" He replied in one calm breath, "I heard that when someone kills another, the killer stands on top, and the one dying is beneath."
His tone was so casual it felt like a slap to her pride.
The demoness froze, staring at him. The sea wind hissed between the strange cliffs, dragging a long echo through the stone channels like someone whispering from underground. Somewhere, one of those golden one-eyed bat-winged creatures shrieked and fled into a small hole.
She lifted him higher, as if to assert dominance, then abruptly dropped him to the ground. Pebbles cracked beneath his body. Her head slithered forward, neck bones twisting into a looping figure-eight shape beneath her clothes as if her vertebrae had their own rebellious life.
She brought that floating head close to his face. And he suddenly, boldly, grabbed her head with both hands. Even the demoness looked stunned.
He burst into laughter, loud, reckless, almost unhinged. "Hah! Hahahahahaha—hunhhh—got fooled, didn't you?! But you really are beautiful… much more than her. Looking at you up close—even time couldn't steal your beauty!"
Her expression shifted from confusion to dawning irritation, then full understanding that he was mocking her. She snarled, "Enough!"
His laughter cut off mid-breath with a hiccup. The waves smashed harder against the cliff as if reacting to her anger. Far below, the tide pulled back strangely, revealing dark, long cracks in the seabed like veins under skin.
She asked, "Do you not fear me?" He blinked. "Who are you to fear?" "I'm a demoness!" she shouted. "A creature mortals tremble before!" He stared at her a long time, unblinking. "Are you really? Then I don't care." Her jaw hung open. "You… don't care?" He shrugged. "I've seen worse. Brutal things. Things with so much power even I ran and hid under the earth. Compared to them… you're almost cute."
He brushed past her as if she were just an annoyed neighbour and sat beside the drawings he had scratched into the dust earlier. He began fixing the lines with slow, deliberate strokes. The demoness leaned over his shoulder, her neck stretching, vertebrae clicking softly beneath her pale skin as she peered down like a curious serpent.
"Can't you use your real neck?" he muttered. "Even though I've seen it already… it's gross. Go back."
Her eyes widened with disbelief, then annoyance, before she let her bones retract, her head snapping back to her shoulders like elastic. She sat beside him with an irritated huff.
He gestured casually, "Sit, sit."
She flinched, almost offended. "Don't you fear death? I could kill you with a single snap!"
He walked right up to her, took her hand, and placed it firmly on his own neck. "Then grab it."
"...What?" she whispered. "My neck," he said, guiding her fingers to the vein. "Here it is. Aren't you going to kill me?" She asked in a quieter voice, "Don't you fear death?"
"Nope." He sighed. "Just a while ago, I almost died. You know what I felt? Exhausted. If I died, I'd just fall asleep again. Maybe I'd wake up somewhere else after a long time. Maybe not at all. I wouldn't know. I'd forget you too. No one cares about me, and I don't care either."
His grip on her wrist loosened. He smiled at her softly, almost too softly for someone who had nothing left.
"My mom already died to save me," he whispered. "So no one cares."
The demoness stared at him, her expression unreadable. The sunset behind them had darkened into a bleeding red smear across the horizon. The nearby island shadows stretched long and grotesque—like giant limbs reaching over the water.
Around them, pink petals still drifted unnaturally from some unseen place, but now they fell slower… heavier… like dead butterflies.
She asked quietly, "Why are you not crying?"
"I overcame it in those years."
"How many years?" she asked.
"Seven."
She inhaled subtly. "For a mortal… that is indeed enough time to forget feelings."
The wind shifted cold. The trees with pink leaves rustled like whispering paper, and in the far distance, thunder crawled silently across the sky. A faint hum vibrated from the cliff road, the one that suddenly existed earlier, like something was crawling unseen along the path.