"Redelle Woods?!" shouted a girl, who was wearing a white ribbon tied at the back of her hair. She seemed unable to believe what she'd heard, even though the two men beside her weren't quite as surprised as she was. "She has a name like that but prefers to be called Red? Sometimes I wonder why she's so weird." That girl was none other than me.
"Well, now we just need to find out the surname of that twin, don't we?" said the man in the green jacket, and Mother confirmed this with a nod.
"In that case, what are we waiting for? Let's—" Before the tanned man could finish speaking, he was immediately interrupted by Mother.
"Wait, there's something I want to ask you both." Her eyes were fixed on me and Robin, and I could sense a profound seriousness in her gaze; a gentle breeze brushed against my skin and a few birds flew overhead. "When you faced Death, you all fainted, didn't you?"
That terrible memory immediately flashed through my mind; I actually didn't want to recall it again because, at that moment, I'd been powerless to save Red. That overwhelming sense of guilt still haunts me to this day. "Yes, I felt some of my bones shatter at that moment," Robin nodded, saying he'd felt the same.
"But were they actually broken?" That question felt like a slap in the face, and made me realise something odd—I was absolutely certain I'd heard the sound of my own bones snapping, and I'd felt a great deal of blood pouring from my body, yet my bones were still intact and nothing was missing.
Robin closed his mouth and stared at the ground; a cold sweat began to pour down his face as he only just realised the inconsistency. "My tailbone should have been shattered… but when I woke up, all the internal injuries had healed, leaving only minor external wounds…" His pupils grew smaller. "Why didn't I realise something so obvious?"
I clutched my head, which felt as though it were about to explode, as I tried to dig up memories I might have forgotten. "When I woke up… I immediately found myself in hospital with wounds that just needed bandaging… but I never questioned why." The more I tried to remember, the more chaotic my thoughts became.
"Ah," I fell to my knees and, without realising it, my hands were already beating my own head hard; everything in my brain felt as though it were being swept up by a tornado, throwing everything into utter chaos. I could hear Red's scream as her arm was torn off, my father's scream as his soul was forcibly ripped from his body; I couldn't even tell which memories were from the past and which were from the present. "Red—was she my childhood friend? Ah, no, Robin was my childhood friend—wait, that sounds wrong… Do I actually have any friends at all?"
When I looked up, I saw a hand reaching out to me; I rubbed my eyes and saw the same blonde hair. "Mom? What are you doing? Wasn't your body already burnt by the water?" All around me, everything was dark; I couldn't see a thing, only my mom and I were glowing as if bathed in a spotlight.
Without realising it, I leapt up, shoved my mom to the ground and sat on top of her. "You should've stayed sinking in the fire… but why have you turned up as if you'd done nothing wrong?" My hand moved of its own will and grabbed her blonde hair before yanking it.
She shoved me so hard I crashed into the ground; her expression turned worried but instantly shifted back to one of pure rage. "You're the devil's spawn!" she screamed at me; her eyes were blue, though as far as I could remember they were grey—ah no, her whole body had turned monochrome, like in old films.
I looked at Rapunzel, my colleague—a fellow police officer with a square moustache and a black bowler hat. "Are you all right?" she asked my mom, her body now just as monochrome as hers.
I'd just realised something. "Ah! My friend's name is Ciel—she's a huge fan of yours, you know… er, wait… not Ciel, but Bricky! My friend's name is Bricky—he's a massive fan of yours!" I said, and I reached into my pocket to get a piece of paper, but before my hand could reach the pocket of my green pinafore dress, I noticed that my hair looked strange.
My blonde hair was also starting to fade into a deep black, "Oh! Black, my favourite colour—it's the colour closest to yellow, isn't it, Red?" I looked to my side but couldn't find my twin anywhere. "Why does she always leave without telling her big sister?"
I gazed up at the faintly visible sky, "What a shame—I was hoping to see a red sky again… red is truly beautiful, like blood flowing from a human body—oh, good heavens!" I saw my hand holding a knife, already plunged into my own stomach. "How careless of me! But then again, a clumsy girl has her own charm, doesn't she?" The earth shook as if the world were about to shatter in a matter of moments.
SLAP!
A hard slap made all that absurdity vanish; I looked up at the blue sky and at my hand holding a knife made of ice. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and when everything had returned to completely normal, I saw a woman with green hair kneeling in front of me with an expression of great concern. "Mother?" I managed to say her name.
The woman immediately hugged me. "Thank goodness you've snapped out of it… you were saying all sorts of weird things just now." Her embrace grew tighter, and I noticed a few strands of ginger-coloured hair on my hand. In front of me, I saw Robin and Romeo, who looked utterly bewildered and shocked by what had happened.
What I'd been forced to sacrifice after becoming a Fable was my sanity. If my mind was even slightly messed up, I could instantly go totally nuts, just like I had just now. Robin and Romeo were staring at me with weird looks, and although I tried to ignore it—since that's a normal human reaction—the pain was still there—those same weird stares that were always thrown at a kid my age in the past.
"Forgive me"