Crimson Lake: The Afterward

The reddish shadow of the setting sun gave the 'Crimson Lake' a magical yet mortifying touch. If we were coming here instead of going back, I would've jumped up and down excitedly and told Sister Hin that it was the most beautiful scene I had ever laid our eyes on. But after experiencing the agony, crippling fear, and bizarre things that welcomed us when we visited the place, the red shadow extended to my heart.

And I knew at once that that shadow wasn't going anywhere. Step by step, I went away from the cursed place. When we reached the place where I had rested together with Sister Hin earlier that day when we were deciding whether we should enter the place or not. I stood still there, looked at my lovely older friend once again, and mumbled,

"How quickly does it all change Sister Hin? Can you believe it? It has just been a day and we… have changed so much. At this point, am I even the same Tiffany, and are you even the same Hinisha that we were in the morning?"

As if she was giving me a reply, she gave a goofy smile, giggled, and patted my head after I finished mumbling.

It broke my heart when I saw how she had become. Her eyes were still glazed and a silly smile was perpetually present on her face. At first, I thought she had just temporarily regressed mentally from the shock, but that theory wasn't sufficient to explain why she kept trying to eat the flesh of the person dragging them home?

Unlike what I felt from the slimy abominations, Sister Hin neither made me scared nor creeped me out. It just saddened me and filled me up with harsh guilt and regret that doused me from head to toe.

She frequently relied on me to walk but like a lost and curious puppy, she would try to run off at times as well, making me worry for her safety and mental state.

On our way back, occasionally, when I would hear her silly laugh, it would make me think about how I would answer her parents. What was I supposed to tell them? How was I supposed to face them? How could I tell them to their face that their daughter's psyche broke down from fear when we visited that one place, everyone kept telling us not to go to.

My mind was preoccupied with negative thoughts. They were gradually eating me. If it weren't for the heavy responsibility of bringing Sister Hin home, I would've rather stayed there and let the monsters eat me.

On my way back, as I revisited the places we had happily gone past earlier that day in an entirely different state and mood, I wondered to myself, 'What even were those slimy and stinky things? Natural-born monsters? Artificially-created weapons to guard the place, or something else entirely? Were they supposed to be there, were they created to serve a specific purpose, or were their existence a result of some supernatural mutation that happened through the course of the long period?

Regardless of their origin and true nature, they were incredibly dangerous, albeit a little dull in their skulls.

When I put my companion down to take a short break after a long tread, I soon realized a much darker, much more despairing problem that I was neglecting until now… her mangled, dissolved, half-chewed right arm.

Even since I had first seen it, I knew that if I had to take another look, it would have made me nauseous. Therefore, ever since I had come out of the despairing cave, I was subconsciously avoiding taking another glance at her wound.

Now, after a few hours had passed, as I was feeling extremely nervous thinking about the people back home and their reactions, my sight fell upon the gruesome state of her injury.

There was one essential point that I had neglected when I had seen her injury for the first time. It was that the 'thing' that bit her wasn't really a monster, but a smelly, acidic, unknown abomination that had abruptly crawled out of the darkness in Crimson Lake.

The wound that was left on her, therefore, naturally wasn't of the same nature as a bite wound one gets from an animal or a beast.

There was a sticky black substance attached to her arm that was very slowly and gradually corroding her remaining arm.

If she even had the slightest self-awareness, she would've told me or cried about it, but unfortunately, her mental state had already fallen apart.

All this time that I was worried about her mental state and how I would be breaking the misfortunate news to her family, her physical injury had worsened manifold.

There was practically nothing remaining of her right arm other than her sleeve.

The black liquid was still there as it fed on her flesh.