THE MYSTERY OF THE FAIRY TALE NIGHT

The moment she ate the cookies, she could feel a few buds of hope taking root within her. She still couldn’t believe she had found the chance to reach dreams so distant that she had never even dared to approach them. A storm of joy was surging inside her, fueled by the overwhelming excitement of finally receiving the support she had waited for all these years. While her imagination spun countless scenarios about her future, the witch told the girl that it was time to go home, that it was already very late. With a look full of gratitude, the girl listened to the witch’s words and walked over to her cloud vehicle. After settling her body into the cloud, she would return to her little home the same way she came—listening to the songs that had brightened the night. She sat comfortably on the fluffy cloud cushions, turned to face the direction where the witch stood, and studied her one last time, for a long while. With a smile as beautiful and wide as a field of blooming flowers, she expressed her heartfelt thanks. The witch did not leave the girl's gratitude unanswered, responding with a sweet smile and advising her to be careful not to fall into doubt about her future. She waved her hand from side to side in the air until it disappeared from view. Mizuki, not leaving the waving hand alone, waved back in response to the witch; with the farewell over, she quietly began to follow the light advancing through the darkness. When she looked back one last time toward the place where the witch’s house had stood, she saw the mouse staring blankly at the cloud vehicle. Wanting to express her gratitude to the mouse as well, she waved at it—but the mouse stood still like a stone statue, still gazing at the vehicle with an emotionless, vacant expression. Though Mizuki found the mouse’s state odd, she paid it little mind and turned her attention back to observing the path ahead.

As the whiteness piercing the darkness before her eyes began to blur, some memories she had experienced just minutes ago started to quietly fade from her mind without her noticing. Turning her head from side to side, she took the opportunity to examine the secluded forest area—one she wouldn’t have dared to enter alone—and managed to see dozens of animals she hadn't had the chance to observe closely before. Although Mizuki greeted the animals she encountered with a gentle expression, she was met only with pitiful stares in return. She didn’t know the reason—or reasons—behind these looks, but she didn’t believe she deserved such treatment. As she continued to glance around with suspicion, she noticed the cloud vehicle gradually speeding up. Everything in front of her became momentarily clear for a few seconds before moving backward in the opposite direction of the vehicle and suddenly vanishing from sight, replaced by another being. Like a cycle, one creature entered her field of vision while another exited. Her eyes spun left and right, trying to keep up with the speed of this cycle. As the vehicle moved so fast that she couldn’t make out what was disappearing into the trees around her, she began to wonder whether they were getting close to the house as the car finally began to slow down. Among the unfamiliar trees, she tried to find something she recognized. As the road stretched on, she drew closer to familiar clues, and the doubt within her began to ease. They had now arrived at the road leading to her home. When she realized that the memories of the night she had experienced were beginning to fade, she mentally reviewed everything to ensure she wouldn’t forget. She was eager to tell her aunt about this fairytale-like night. When they arrived home, she carefully stepped out of the cloud vehicle, thanked it, and entered the house. She ascended the stairs quickly yet cautiously and went to her aunt’s room. When she quietly opened the door, she saw that the light was off and her aunt was asleep. Her lips puckered in disappointment at not being able to immediately share her experiences. Hoping her aunt might wake up, she waited by the door for a while, gazing at her aunt’s face. But her aunt continued sleeping. She closed the door softly and walked to her bed. Once in her room, she glanced at the drawings she had made and tried to recall the witch’s encouraging words, but she could only remember the beginnings of the sentences. The endings were gone. Unable to remember how any of them ended, she was forced to complete them in her own mind. With a warm smile still lingering on her face, she realized she had forgotten not just those words, but many other things about the night. She laid her tired body on the bed, curled her legs up to her chest, and strained her mind trying to figure out what she remembered and what she didn’t. The more she thought, the more the memories in her head cackled mischievously and became jumbled, misleading Mizuki. After minutes of arguing with her own memory, she found that the only thing she could clearly recall from the night were a few verses whispered in the language of fireflies:

The dust lantern of the stars dazzled the dreams of the sorrowful,

She kept repeating these few lines that she could somewhat remember; now and then, she filled in the parts she couldn't recall with rhyming lines that came to her mind, trying to pass the sleepless hours that wouldn't grant her rest. She sang songs she made up for hours, and she grew so tired of singing that she finally closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep—but in vain… Instead, colors stretched and shrank in turn above the darkness manifesting behind her closed eyelids, taking on strange shapes that she molded like clay to build her own imaginary world. For some reason, the first person to appear in her mind was Mr. Asahi, playing the piano and singing with his magnificent voice. The words spilling from his lips made the butterflies in her heart sparkle, warming her from within. When the sleep fairies saw that the girl had been drenched in the intoxicated rain of love, they sprinkled sleep dust onto her body. Intervening with her warming heart, they saved it before it could ignite. Now, perhaps, she would see dreams—or maybe nightmares. Her soul was ready to leave her body and enter the realm of dreams.

When hues of yellow settled in the sky and her eyes slowly opened to greet a new day, they suddenly grew wide. Whether the witch had a hand in it or not was unknown, but in addition to vaguely remembering the events of the previous night, she also believed they had been merely a dream. She sprang up from the bed in a rush, gently pushing aside the blanket draped over her. Even though she thought it had all been a dream, something—some unknown force—compelled her to draw, making her believe in the reality of what she had seen. The moment she got out of bed, she reached directly for her pencil and sketchbook, eager to see whether her skills had improved. She moved the pencil with great excitement, narrowing her eyes and carefully examining the marks of ink taking shape on the page with every stroke, hoping to find progress compared to her usual drawings. No matter how hard she tried, what she drew looked no different from her earlier, less-than-successful works. The pencil that had once created wonders by channeling the darkness hidden in its ink now lay in a small pile on the floor along with crumpled, half-filled pages and black shapes woven into the paper like stitches of feeling. She was determined to draw until her art surpassed even the perfection of master painters—until her work moved everyone. Yet receiving constant criticism from those whose support she sought kept her from ever feeling satisfied. No force in the world could make her like her own drawings. She kept drawing with a greedy desire for more and more, forgetting the very reason she had started in the first place. The only thing she remembered about the early days of her art was that drawing had once been her escape from pain. When she was younger, inexperienced and powerless, she realized she couldn't face the dark world on her own and searched for even the smallest reason to hold on to life. Everything about the world felt foreign to her, and she couldn’t find that elusive something to tie herself to it. But as she grew older, she got used to sinking—falling deeper and deeper from darkness into a hellish abyss, without ever finding a way out. Only when she realized that the cell she had wasted her life in, unable to take even a single step, was nothing but the very darkness that terrified her to her core—did she finally understand. It took her years to grasp that the cursed flowers blooming inside her soul had been sown by the crashing lights in the sky she was forced to listen to as a child, despite her fear. As she teetered on the edge of losing herself in horror, she imprisoned herself in her world of imagination. However, she believed that by escaping from reality, she could find a way to adapt to life. She could never tell anyone about the feelings and thoughts that killed her in order to prevent people from abandoning or pitying her. Once, when she tried to explain her situation to others, she couldn’t get past strange looks. A person who hadn't tasted the forbidden potion of darkness couldn’t understand the depth of the suffering that haunted her soul. As she tried harder and harder to appear different from the masses who didn't understand her, she grew more and more alienated from herself, caught between two conflicting identities. When the idea that she shouldn’t live anymore consumed her, by chance, she encountered the songs of Mr. Asahi. While listening to his hopeful songs, she clung to the beauty of dreaming and fighting for those dreams. If the dream she saw was real, she knew that she had gained the power to achieve her dreams, and this power would eventually become active over time. She wanted to draw endlessly, to create new worlds with the explosion of colors. She would finish her work at her aunt’s shop, take care of the housework, and once done, retreat to her room to draw. The days passed in a continuous cycle, and for each of those days, she followed the same routine. Even though the clock’s hour hand had long past midnight, Mizuki would still command her eyes to stay open, sending sleep away as it waited at the head of her bed. She couldn’t suppress the urge to draw, and the sneaky thoughts in her head kept urging her to create more art.

While the lines she drew changed in a positive way compared to her previous works, her drawings were getting closer and closer to perfection. Mizuki’s aunt grew worried about her worsening condition and kept pondering what she could do for her. Mizuki, noticing that there was little change in her aunt’s concerns, showed her the pictures she had drawn. Her aunt couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Mizuki’s drawings. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, unable to believe what she was seeing. Still, Mizuki’s aunt had to admit that the drawings were indeed magnificent. However, she explained to Mizuki that she shouldn't push herself so hard and took some of the paintings to hang them in the shop, calling her to help with the orders. There was no way her aunt could manage all the orders on her own. Mizuki was to help with creating clay vases and pottery, as well as painting the dried clay items, paying close attention to the details. She decided to start with making a clay vase. Kneeling down, she placed the clay she could barely carry into the ground. She began shaping the clay as it danced between her fingers, creating forms with every touch of her hand. As she worked, the layers of clay grew thinner, and she spent hours shaping different forms. Once she finished all the clay items on her list, she felt exhausted. She tucked her sketchbook and pencil into her clothes and, using the excuse of needing a break, went outside to rest in the garden. She planned to go to a secluded spot just beyond the shop to draw. She would capture the nature around her with words and sketches in her notebook, and later, use these notes and drawings as references when painting on the canvas. Her imagination broke free from the narrow constraints imposed by the universe and, through the immense capacity for association, began creating impossible, symbolic representations of life. In her mind, a spectrum of colors, from dark to light, began to take shape, merging and blending as they spread across the page. Dipping her brush into the pale watercolor palette, she carefully applied the color to her notebook, creating a patchwork of vibrant strokes. Even though the colors in her paintings weren't typically very vivid, somehow, they always shimmered with an intense brightness that added a realness to her work. Mizuki, experiencing this "miracle" thanks to the cookie the witch had given her during the dream-like night, couldn’t help but marvel at the dazzling light in her eyes. 

She was drawn to mix the colors more and more, unable to resist the allure of the swirling brushstrokes. Her eyes widened in astonishment, unable to tear herself away from her work. She hadn’t yet realized that some of the colors in her paintings were stolen from the extravagant hues of the world around her. She no longer wanted to do anything but draw. This insatiable desire to draw had taken control of her, persistently trying to overpower her. Despite not having felt such a passion for drawing before, she was slowly letting herself be consumed by it, abandoning all control. Her aunt, constantly worried about her, strongly opposed Mizuki’s constant obsession with drawing, which had caused her to fall into a pitiful state. Although her aunt tried to talk to her, she couldn’t seem to stop her. Time and time again, she tried to speak with Mizuki, but it was all in vain. Mizuki spent nearly every waking moment drawing—she couldn’t stop. No matter how many paintings she created, it never satisfied her. She was like a robot designed to paint, with neither her body nor her feelings under her control. She felt the strings of her fate connecting her to something beyond her understanding, yet her mind blocked her from questioning the reasons behind it. Even though she was aware that something was wrong, she couldn't change it—her will was suppressed, and the witch easily took control of her already overwhelmed mind.