Scene 126 — "Still Alive"
The silver flowers remained lowered.
The hidden world listened.
Waited.
Watched.
The young girl stared at the unconscious stranger.
Her hand hovered only inches away.
For several moments she hesitated.
Then—
she touched him.
Nothing happened.
No light.
No vision.
No strange voice.
No hidden power.
Nothing.
The world remained exactly as it had been.
The girl blinked.
Confused.
She wasn't sure what she had expected.
Yet somehow the absence of anything felt stranger than a reaction.
Her fingers rested against his wrist.
Cold.
Not frozen.
Not unnatural.
Simply cold.
The pulse was there.
Weak.
Slow.
Steady.
Alive.
The girl frowned.
She checked again.
The pulse remained.
Impossible.
She looked back toward the wound on his chest.
The injury still made no sense.
Every instinct told her the stranger should be dead.
Not unconscious.
Dead.
Yet his heart continued beating.
Slowly.
Patiently.
As though refusing to listen to reality.
The girl sat beside him among the silver flowers.
The basket of blue fruit rested forgotten nearby.
Her attention never left the white-haired stranger.
His face looked calm.
Too calm.
Not peaceful.
More like someone sleeping through a storm.
The hidden world gradually returned to normal.
The flowers rose.
The rivers flowed once more.
The breeze returned.
Whatever strange tension had filled the air slowly faded.
Only the stranger remained unchanged.
The girl sighed.
"...You're causing trouble."
No response.
The white-haired stranger remained asleep.
She studied him again.
The strange clothes.
The dried blood.
The injuries.
Nothing about him resembled the people she knew.
Nothing about him belonged here.
The hidden world was isolated.
Protected.
Forgotten.
Yet somehow this stranger had appeared among the silver flowers carrying enough wounds to kill several people.
And he was still breathing.
The girl looked toward the crystal forests.
Then toward the distant rivers.
Thinking.
Considering.
The obvious choice would be to leave.
Return home.
Forget this ever happened.
Yet her eyes drifted back toward the wound.
Immediately she knew she wouldn't.
Because if she walked away—
he would probably die.
The realization annoyed her.
She had planned on gathering fruit.
Not rescuing mysterious strangers.
The silver flowers swayed gently around them.
The stranger remained motionless.
The girl slowly stood.
Then crouched again.
Looking directly at him.
"...You picked a terrible place to collapse."
Still nothing.
The white-haired traveler slept on.
Unaware.
The girl rubbed her forehead.
Thinking.
The hidden world stretched endlessly around her.
Her home was not close.
The journey back would take hours.
And the stranger was not exactly small.
Another problem.
She glanced toward the basket.
Then toward him.
Then back toward the basket.
The comparison lasted several seconds.
Finally—
she sighed heavily.
The kind of sigh reserved for situations that had already become unavoidable.
"...Great."
The traveler continued sleeping.
The girl pointed at him.
As though making sure he understood.
Even though he was unconscious.
"This is your fault."
Silence answered her.
The silver flowers swayed.
The rivers flowed.
The crystal forests whispered.
And somewhere beneath all of it—
the hidden world seemed strangely pleased.
The girl narrowed her eyes at the unconscious stranger.
Then slowly reached down.
Preparing to somehow move a man who should have been dead two days ago.
Without realizing it—
her life had already begun changing.
And the traveler remained completely unaware of it.