Fireflies danced through the air. Alice reached out in a panic to catch them, but the tiny specks of green light slipped uselessly through her fingers.
“I’m sorry, I…”
She realized she had made a terrible mistake, and for a moment, she was paralyzed by frantic indecision.
“Stay calm, Alice! Whether an action is right or wrong is only settled at the very end. This is no time to hesitate!” Little Candle’s voice rang out by her ear.
The forceful, steady tone of the reminder stabilized the young black-haired girl’s fraying nerves.
She clenched her fingers and looked around blankly, only to find that everything had changed. Wherever the ghostly glow of the fireflies touched, reality manifested.
The town was not nearly as exquisite or tidy as she had once seen.
The cobblestones were rotten and broken, the gaps filled with a dark gray sludge that overflowed beneath her feet. Greasy stains ran down the walls like weeping sores. Door hinges were rusted through, window frames were decayed, and everyone’s clothes were nothing but tattered rags.
By the flowerbed, Agostino the gardener seemed to rouse from a deep, heavy slumber. He lifted his rough, deformed palms—skin cracked and calloused—and paddled them through the air like a sea turtle. Suddenly, a wail that sounded nothing like a human voice erupted from his chest!
Like a beast caught in a thicket of thorns, he began to kick and thrash wildly at the town’s only beautiful sight: the rosebushes. He smashed the roses he had meticulously tended day after day, grinding the petals into the mud beneath his boots.
“Fake! It’s all fake!”
He let out a horrific cry of anguish. Grief surged from his heart with such intensity that it corroded a jagged hole straight through his chest, and a pitch-black liquid began to pour from the wound.
There were so many roses, but now they lay scattered, nothing more than shredded bits of red paper.
The beast collapsed among the thorny stems. He was dead.
Alice was terrified by the gardener’s tragic end. She spun around to look at the classroom, only to see the silhouettes of her classmates fading away. Their laughter and chatter vanished into the cold wind whistling through the rotted window frames.
Mr. Wenger sat slumped on the ground, his eyes vacant and his face etched with misery. He was muttering something under his breath.
Alice’s heart ached for him. Mr. Wenger must be suffering so much, she thought. He had poured his heart into nurturing them, yet the tree had borne only illusory fruit. The life he took such pride in had never existed from the very beginning…
She felt a desperate urge to run to him and comfort him, to tell him that Alice was real, and that he hadn’t lost everything.
Suddenly, Little Candle screamed in her ear:
“Run!”
In that split second of hesitation, Alice saw Mr. Wenger’s skin begin to liquefy. He transformed into a pale, slimy mass of tumors. His lower body spread out like mucus, sticking to the floor and merging with the entire classroom.
In an instant, the wooden building groaned and shook. The front wall split down the middle like a monster opening its maw. The broken window frames became rows of rotting teeth, and the humanoid mass of pale slime that was once the teacher became a giant tongue, lashing out as the mouth opened and closed.
Alice let out a piercing scream. Her eyes wide with disbelief, she scrambled backward and fell hard onto her backside.
“Run! Get out of there!” Little Candle shouted.
Alice scrambled to her feet and took off at a dead sprint. Her shoes slapped against the ground, the impact making the soles of her feet throb with pain. Behind her, a terrifying roar like a localized tsunami erupted. She didn’t need to look back to know that the monster-classroom was in hot pursuit. The most horrifying part was her homeroom teacher, now nothing more than a giant, sticky tongue.
It was the most violent, thunderous sound she had ever heard—a rhythmic rumble-crash—as if countless walls were being knocked over like Falling Dominoes.
“Head for the alleyway!” Little Candle reminded her.
Alice dived into a narrow alley ahead. Immediately after, she heard a bone-chilling crash right behind her, as if a house had collapsed.
The walls on either side of the alley entrance were smashed. Shards of brick tumbled down the slope, nearly clipping her calves before rolling all the way into the pond at the end of the path, sending up plumes of water like exploding mines.
She looked back. The classroom-monster was blocked by the narrow alley. It couldn’t squeeze inside. She had survived.
Alice came to a halt, leaning against her knees as she gasped for air. Her muscles were stiff and trembling. It was a stroke of luck that the alley had been directly opposite the classroom, otherwise, she would have been flattened.
Everything that had happened exceeded her understanding, leaving her utterly lost.
The young black-haired girl desperately “flipped through the books” in her mind, searching the fairy tales she had read for some kind of solution she could use.
But those books had never described anything so grotesque or absurd.
She looked at Little Candle and asked, “What is happening? Am I dreaming?”
“You are in someone else’s dream, Alice. The dream has invaded reality, and everything has been twisted,” Little Candle replied.
“I’m in someone else’s dream? Then… do I even exist?” Alice’s face turned pale in an instant.
“The dream has enveloped you, but you are real. I promise you that.” Little Candle’s words once again steadied her spirit.
“Then… am I really a Savior? Can I save the people in this town?”
Alice looked up, her eyes full of hope. She was the one who had accidentally broken the container holding the Light of Dispelling Delusions, so as soon as her mind stabilized, she felt a desperate need to make amends.
Little Candle smiled and said, “Then let’s get to work!”
Alice nodded vigorously. Guided by the three little spirits, she navigated the streets until she reached the nearest tailor shop.
The old tailor was setting up a stool, preparing to hang himself. He couldn’t accept the horrific truth that the daughter he had raised with such hardship was nothing more than a paper doll. Without his daughter and son-in-law to care for him, he had nothing left for the rest of his life. He was alone and miserable, a void that no amount of money could fill.
“Stop! Mr. Atro!”
Alice tried to intervene, but the old tailor’s heart was already dead. She managed to hold him back for a moment, but he remained still, a mournful sound escaping his throat. The moment she let go, he would surely throw himself back onto the noose made of cloth strips.
“What do I do?” Alice looked at Little Candle in distress.
“You are the Savior. Your heart’s desires will manifest! Right now, you need a bundle of Worry-free Grass and some matches to light them.”
“Okay!”
While holding onto the old tailor to keep him from ending his life, Alice chanted in her heart:
I am the Savior. Worry-free Grass and matches, I command you to appear!
Shua!
A moment later, a small bundle of dried grass with purple tassels and a box of matches appeared out of thin air!
Alice’s mouth hung open in surprise. She really was the Savior; she could make things happen just by thinking of them!
Her confidence surged. She struck a match and lit the grass, waving it under the tailor’s nose. Thick clouds of smoke billowed out.
Upon inhaling the incense, the tailor’s emotions settled. His entire body relaxed. It was as if his mental world had been washed by the river of time; his heavy pain and despair thinned until they were as clear as water.
Time was of the essence. Alice left the tailor shop and searched along the street, letting any distraught residents she found take a whiff of the Worry-free Grass.
Finally, the young black-haired girl reached the overgrown slopes outside of town. The Poet stood before a small, fresh grave, holding a bouquet of white paper flowers. He looked leaner and more elegant than ever.
“Are you alright?”
Alice trudged through the thick meadow, her feet sinking into the grass with every step. As she reached the Poet’s side, she was immediately enveloped by the profound, lingering melancholy he radiated, causing her own mood to sink.
“She is gone.”
“I know… She never existed. A poet is always lonely; friendship and love exist only on paper… If one weren’t lonely, who would choose to be a poet?”
He knelt down and placed the paper flowers before the grave, but they were quickly swept away by the wind. Waves of grass rolled toward the horizon. He slowly recited:
“How beautiful are the flowers of spring,
How mournful are the birds of spring,
How passionate is the wind of spring,
Stirring my thoughts and the hem of my robe.”
