—How beautiful! —my daughter exclaimed—. The blue of the water mixed with the yellow of the leaves is gorgeous. Hey, if I were on those leaves, do you think I could walk on the fountain without sinking?


    What an innocent idea. Actually, the leaves would give way to her weight and she would sink immediately.


    Without discouraging her, I responded in a playful tone:


    —If you had an umbrella and used the wind, you would have more chances of achieving it, right?


    I wanted to indulge my little girl who no longer had salvation, even if just a little.


    Her eyes sparkled when she heard me.


    —I''ll show you someday! —she promised with a radiant smile—. In that lake near home. During autumn, when the leaves float on the water. Someday...


    Someday she would show me.


    Later, after multiple coughs, my daughter died suddenly. She was barely nine years old.


    Her lifeless body had been light when I hugged her. Even without a soul, she had been too light. Shedding tears, I wondered if she had really been alive at all or if I had just been having a long dream.


    I buried my daughter in the same cemetery as my wife, and then returned to the place that had been home to the three of us, resuming my life with reluctance.


    My days were nothing more than indolence, dissolute and surrendered to sadness. Humans were creatures that grew tired of things, incapable of remaining sad or happy forever. Such was our nature.


    To escape harsh reality, I had become a hardened drinker.


    When the merchant guild I was working for went bankrupt, I had been living in inertia since that moment. I was tired of my savings balance that continued to decrease, I thought I could cover my losses by gambling in casinos.


    At the moment when my delirium calmed and I could realize my own stupidity, I had already lost an enormous sum of money.


    After the war, I had looked with contempt at people who lost their purpose in life and were driven to suicide.


    But now I was exactly like those people I had despised in the past.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    I couldn''t blame my wife and daughter who had died. I, who drowned my desperation in drinks, could barely maintain an honest thought in my head: ?What will I do when I have no money to buy liquor??.


    My own house had been foreclosed, so I spent all my days in a crowded mansion doing nothing.


    Being unable to be part of society bothered me, there were times when I wanted to scream. —Seriously... what am I doing in this place?


    It was then that I realized my abdomen was stained dark red.


    No, it wasn''t just the abdomen. A large wound, as if torn, extended to the tip of my shoulder and neck, fresh blood still flowing from it.


    A pool of blood had formed on the asphalt where I stood. While trembling with fear, I touched my abdomen and felt a strange slimy substance.


    Why didn''t I realize this before? And to begin with, why hadn''t I felt any pain? How did this happen to me? An instant later, my vision collapsed as if the world were upside down, and I fell right where I was standing.


    —Now I remember... Yes, I ran out of money and then... I had been to countless job interviews, sometimes receiving rejections from people who seemed to repudiate my personality and I was assaulted by an unbearable disgust.


    After some time, I received a job as a miner. The work was hard, but it had a guaranteed salary, although not large. I was thinking that if my life stabilized, I could start over.


    At that moment it was just a dream and to achieve it I had to stand firm again. However, at the moment I realized I was going to be able to achieve it, my body was engulfed with a strange agitation.


    I remembered having gone to the cemetery to visit my wife and daughter''s tombs.


    It was an embarrassing moment that day, I cried like a child and lamented my life, the devastating pain and immeasurable emptiness filled my soul.


    Wishing with all my heart that they would return to me.


    With blurred vision, I suddenly looked to one side.


    An oval object that seemed to be made of ceramic was lying on the cemetery floor. The strange thing was that it had features similar to a human face but deformed.


    It was when the brown object with a human face began to cry blood tears, making its face terrifying.


    Feeling a strange sensation I had never felt before, I looked at the sky. The landscape before me was changing at a terrifying speed.


    It seemed to be in another dimension.


    I looked at the sky and my jaw dropped when I saw a reminiscence of a surface of some planet with countless spiral points overlapping each other.


    Suddenly, the landscape of the dimension changed and what I saw was...


    The figure of my wife.


    Although her face was a bit dark, I instantly recognized her figure when she smiled softly and stretched out her hand as if wanting to reach me.


    Unconsciously, I stretched out my hand and tried to touch her hand. However, I quickly pulled back my hand when the woman''s smile horribly distorted, showing a face made completely of flesh and bones without a face.


    Nevertheless, it was already too late. I had touched one of the woman''s fingers.


    —Perhaps that was the third most unfortunate moment in my entire life.


    Upon remembering all this, the voice of desperation filtered out of my throat as I burst into tears.


    I still retained human form when my body temperature exceeded the critical point.


    My arms and legs atrophied at an incredible speed and, in a moment, multiple eyes of different sizes covered my body, all blinking and moving independently alongside an amalgam of putrid flesh and twisted bones.