38. The Blood Pond
"Hey."
Rin's voice became a soap bubble and floated to my ear.
When it popped—chirin—it made the sound of a wind chime.
That tone, so clear it was detestable, caused my auditory sensors to malfunction. The noise vanished from the world, leaving only her voice remaining as a signal.
"I said, hey."
Rin called out to me persistently.
I finally realized that she had been calling out to me like this from the very beginning.
As if paying off an accumulated debt all at once, I asked back briefly.
"What?"
Then, as if she had something she'd been wanting to say for a long time, Rin held out both hands toward me.
It looked like she was seeking a hug, but conversely, it also looked like she was rejecting me, trying to push me away.
Unsure how to interpret it, I outputted the impromptu, honest emotion that welled up in that moment, without holding anything back.
"No."
Her outstretched hands dropped slowly, powerless.
And from Rin's red eyes, a single red drop spilled over.
The tear fell onto sand as fine as flour, but it was not absorbed by the grains. Maintaining a strong surface tension as if asserting "I will not be tainted by anyone," it kept a nearly perfect spherical shape.
That overly round red bead eventually yielded to gravity and began to roll.
Its destination was the pond.
Rather than simply rolling, the tear of blood moved with a sense of animalistic will, like a thirsty beetle instinctively rushing to the water's edge.
And without hesitation, it threw itself into the pond. Like a small animal attempting suicide, it leaped into the air and landed on the water.
Thump.
The sound of the single drop of blood falling was not the light splash of water.
It was the beat of a heart.
The heavy, throbbing sound of terror that rings out the moment one witnesses the most terrifying thing in this world.
The water's surface, which had stubbornly refused to react to the countless salmon swimming upstream, spawning, or the floating giant eggs, now wavered and began to ripple from that single tear of blood.
The ripples spread, touching the giant eggs floating bobbing on the surface.
Cracks ran across the surface of the eggs touched by the waves.
Hatching had begun.
Jagged cracks, like enraged lightning, were carved into the eggshells. As the cracks widened, the contents began to leak out.
But what leaked out was not liquid, but "sound."
It was the cry of cicadas.
Like water dripping from a loose faucet, a chorus of cicadas leaked from the cracks. When the eggs eventually opened like flower buds, the compressed screams inside exploded.
The eggshells peeled back in beautiful streamlines, unfolding to mimic large flowers, transforming into massive lotuses.
Amidst the ear-shattering chorus of cicadas shaking the atmosphere, countless elegant lotus flowers bloomed as if performing a ballet to the stage music.
Eventually, the entire surface of the Reverse Flow Shrine's pond was covered in pale blue luminous bodies.
Each lotus boasted a size large enough for four or five adults to ride comfortably.
Rin began to move.
As she walked to the edge of the pond, several lotuses approached like goldfish. Skillfully manipulating their submerged roots—rhizomes swaying like countless long hairs or jellyfish tentacles—like tail fins, they gathered around Rin.
Rin kicked off her wooden clogs and lightly jumped onto the petals of one of them with bare feet.
Vrrrm—
A quiet motor sound echoed.
The lotus carrying Rin glided toward the center of the pond, then, like a drone, defied gravity and floated softly into the air.
However, the lotus roots were abnormally long.
No matter how high it rose, the countless capillary roots extending from the rhizome—those fibers looking like bundles of hair or jellyfish tentacles—remained submerged beneath the sulfuric acid surface. They were like umbilical cords connecting the drone-lotus to the blood pond, and at the same time, like a luxurious canopy designed to highlight the existence known as Rin like a jewel.
Rin looked down at me from her floating lotus throne.
Feeling the overwhelming difference in height, I asked quietly.
"Where is Oto?"
Then, with a gesture as if she were carrying a beloved child, Rin gently stroked her abdomen.
And with an extremely satisfied expression, a mixture of satiety and affection, she declared:
"She's already inside my belly."