The Crimson Dress
It hurt.
Tears born of pain slid down my cheeks in thin, unbroken trails.
From a wound split open as if by something sharp, pretty scarlet blood ran along my forearm and gathered at the tip of a limp finger. Drip. Drip. It fell.
Perhaps it was the darkness around me. Looking at the blood pooling on the floor, I found myself thinking it looked like wine.
Had I drunk at all since coming to this side? I didn't think so.
All I could see was wine-colored blood, but what I wanted right now was beer.
I wanted to order chicken for the first time in ages and knock back something cold. Adel had even put in a TV during the remodel — I could eat and watch at the same time.
"You… you damn bitch! You're the witch, aren't you? That branch that vanished a few days ago — that was you too, wasn't it?"
A strange, buzzing voice drifted in from somewhere, but I couldn't bring myself to care.
I'd been cursed at so often that it was starting to feel familiar. Humans really were adaptable creatures, weren't they?
Blood that had gathered at the corners of my eyes from the pain fell straight down and vanished into the puddle at my feet with a soft plop.
A moment later came a sharp crack. The blood beneath me stirred all at once, wrapping around my bare feet and becoming a pair of vivid red shoes.
I'd never worn heels before. My ankles ached a little.
But they were pretty, so it was fine.
I took a careful step. A pleasant click rang out along the corridor.
Unsteady in the unfamiliar heels, I nearly twisted an ankle — but I caught myself and stood upright again.
I practiced walking slowly.
Click… click… click.
Practicing like this made me feel oddly as if I'd slipped back into infancy, just before taking my first steps.
Click… click… click. Click.
I was getting used to it. The heels changed my eye level, and the difference felt strangely fascinating.
What were these heels, anyway? Shoes carved from bright red jewels — they were extraordinarily beautiful.
Click. Click.
Before long I stepped into the red liquid flowing across the floor.
It was a little too murky to call beautiful, a little too sticky to call clean.
The red water crushed beneath my shoe slowly changed shape and became a single crystal flower.
It looked a little more presentable now. I gave a faint smile and nodded my approval.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
By then I had grown so used to the heels that I could walk without hesitation. In red glass slippers, I was surely beautiful.
I lifted my head a little and looked ahead.
A great many crystal flowers had bloomed there in dense clusters.
But it was not a beautiful sight.
Murky red had been splattered carelessly across blue crystal, and strange things jutted out here and there. One crystal flower held a blood-soaked arm. Another held a thigh shredded to ribbons. Another held a torso severed clean above the neck, with no head at all.
I didn't know whose work it was, but it wasn't beautiful.
In that instant, with the sound of a single step — click — the crystal flowers before me melted away like an illusion.
In their place, severed arms and legs rolled haphazardly across the floor.
That, too, was not a pleasant sight.
Who on earth had gone and dropped their arms there? Careless of them.
The red liquid spilling from the dismembered limbs began to fill the corridor. Began to dye it red.
All the while, tears poured endlessly from my eyes and soaked into the crimson hallway.
Click. Click.
Now every step pressed sticky liquid under the red glass shoes.
It wasn't a pleasant sensation — and yet, for some reason, I wanted to try it barefoot.
I carefully slipped off one glass shoe and gently set my foot down on the clinging red liquid. Splash.
A coolness just pleasant enough, paired with a sticky grip that seemed determined not to let go.
I'd expected it to feel disgusting. Surprisingly, it wasn't bad.
Splash. Splash. Splash.
As I wandered back and forth across the water, ripples spread over the red river.
I glanced down. My own lovely face looked back at me.
The rippling mirror was red, so the reflection of me was red through and through. Among all of it, my eyes — already a pale red to begin with — seemed to shine especially bright.
Even so, I was still pretty. Still beautiful.
Pale moonlight poured in through the corridor windows, and I alone went splash-splash through a field of red flowers.
Wasn't it a romantic scene? It would have been better if even one other person had been here.
But there was only me, so there was nothing to be done about it.
So I danced alone.
I wandered the red corridor this way and that, spun in place. Each time, red petals flew. Larger movements sent them flying higher. They wet my feet. Wet my ankles. Wet my calves. Wet my tattered clothes as well.
The more I danced, the more I soaked into red.
Red, and red, and red.
Simply, endlessly red.
Red petals whirled in wild disorder, embroidering the night sky until they became red stars.
My breath grew short. A red breath rose in my chest.
When I finally opened my eyes after dancing myself senseless, even the pure white round moon had somehow been dyed red.
The world was soaked through in crimson.
Red, and red, and so red —
that the once-white corridor, the dozens of limbs rolling on the floor, even the spectator watching me from afar had all been dyed red.
And at some point I was wearing a dress a shade redder still.
A soft, fluttering dress, the kind one might wear to a party. Slightly translucent, but the red was layered so thickly that nothing showed through.
The red dress swayed with every movement of my body.
It resembled a white dress a certain woman had once smiled and held out to me. That woman had offered me clothes eight separate times, each time calling it the last.
I had put it on. It was beautiful, and she had smiled.
That child had been adorable when she smiled. Whenever our eyes met she would fold hers prettily and beam, and even the smallest prank would make her flush and grow shy.
Black hair. Ruby-red, lovely eyes. Skin white as jade. A child who always carried the thick scent of lilies and wanted nothing more than to nestle in my arms.
Tania.
Click.
When I took another step, I found myself somehow wearing the red glass shoes again.
The floor had somehow returned to white.
My skin, my hair, the chunks of meat that had been rolling on the ground, even the moon —
all of it had gone pure white once more.
If two things remained red, they were these: my eyes, redder than they had ever been, and the blood soaking the floor beneath what had once been a spectator staring blankly at me from afar — now nothing more than a lump of meat.
"…Ah."
When I opened my mouth, a weak voice slipped out.
I must have poured out a bucket of sweat while dancing myself into a frenzy. My body was damp with it, and I was so exhausted that strength wouldn't come.
But I walked. Click. Click. Click.
The sound of red shoes made from tear-mixed blood rang quietly through the cold corridor.
Unlike before, no one was saying a word to me.
"…It hurts."
The wound cut by a blade long ago still stung. The bleeding had stopped at some point, but for some reason a strip of fabric — the same material as the dress I was wearing — had been wrapped snugly around it.
Even the knot had been finished in the shape of a simple flower. Perfectly to my taste.
Click. Click.
With every step down the corridor, the red dress swayed.
After walking a long while I reached the end of the hall and opened the door leading outside. The pale moonlight and cool wind I had only seen through the corridor windows came out to greet me.
Whoosh—
A cold wind swept over me once, and my pure white hair and red dress fluttered wildly.
I savored the scent of freedom for a moment, then glanced back. A massive factory-like building filled my view — the building I had just left.
A few rooms still had their lights on, yet the place felt eerily empty of any human presence.
I looked at that strange sight for a moment, then turned without regret and started down the hill where the factory stood.
It wasn't hard marble underfoot, so there was no click-click of heels. Afraid of twisting an ankle going downhill in them, I simply took them off and carried them in my hand.
Crunch. Crunch. The sound of bare feet on dirt. The sound of brushing through grass.
I walked barefoot for a while, feeling the texture of the natural world.
The uneven dirt path made my soles ache, but I didn't particularly mind.
I was walking toward home with light, refreshing steps when something I'd forgotten suddenly came back to me. I stopped and pulled out my phone.
It had been tucked inside the tattered school uniform I was still wearing under the red dress, so getting it out took a moment.
Then I opened the Association site and checked the box marking the commission complete.
It was the day another branch of Bind was erased.