"H-Hey."
Little Red regarded him with a stare. Why was she staring at him? Did she know what happened in the hallucination?
What even was that shadow in the mirror? What was going on?
Asher gulped, gingerly getting out of his cot. The woman behaved as she usually did, silent and stoic.
It didn't look like she had any awareness of what he saw there, how the false world melted into blood instead of shattering into light like it usually did.
"So... Was that skill good?"
Unexpectedly, Little Red nodded.
"It was. Stay on the bed."
A soft(er) voice urged him back to bed. Still rough, just softer than usual.
So caring?
The display of his skill seemingly increased Little Red's impression of him.
"-!" The chilly air cut through his skin as Asher abruptly reddened. Belatedly, he noticed that the clothes Little Red gave him were nested in her arms.
He burrowed back into the bedsheets.
Little Red turned back to the task at hand.
A spool of red yarn rested in the woman's lap as she patched up the tears in his cloak's fabric.
Asher's shirt and pants hung on the wooden nightstand, already repaired by a few shoddy patches of black thread.
"T-Thanks."
Little Red didn't respond.
Asher rolled over, staring at the woman as she worked.
Her eye narrowed in concentration as she swiftly threaded the needle in and out of the cloak, with mesmerizing speed.
It was in this tranquil silence that fifteen minutes passed. The cloak, nearly shredded to pieces from the match flame's power, required a few more minutes than the woman anticipated to repair.
Finally, she tossed all his clothes onto the bed, dusting her hands as she stood up.
"Wear these. I'll be in the kitchen."
With that, she left him alone.
As Asher donned his outfit, he thought about what he saw in the last hallucination.
Now it was certain; the story of 'Little Red' did not follow the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood' that Mei told him.
First, the wolf was alive. Second, Little Red had a gun. Third... What the hell was that shadow in the mirror?
And if the girl called it Little Red, did that mean that the shadow was the true Abnormality?
"So confusing..." Asher muttered as he donned his cloak, admiring himself in the mirror. Forgetting the topic for a split second, he mustered his best 'serious' face. The reflection mimicked his expression perfectly.
"Hm, that doesn't look half bad. 'Course, it doesn't look good either." His childish demeanor was wholly unfit for such a serious expression. He tried to make a snarl, bursting into a fit of giggles at the strange combination of innocence and aggressiveness in the mirror.
"Haha! Ah, but that mask would look good though..." He imagined the wolf's-teeth mask that Little Red had, on his face instead. A shiver of excitement tingled in his spine.
Having seen enough of his reflection, he made his way to the kitchen.
Beside the countertop, Little Red was absentmindedly grinding a kitchen knife on a whetstone. Sensing his presence as he approached, she looked up, nodding once before lowering her head to her work once again.
Asher glanced out the window, where rays of dusk shone into his eyes. Late afternoon.
"How long was I out?"
"Three hours."
Asher blinked as the woman stared at him. The knife slid back into her cloak.
His stomach rumbled.
"Hungry?"
Not waiting for an answer, Little Red stood from her seat.
"Follow me for dinner."
Asher could only follow her as she led him outside.
...
Immediately after they stepped outside, Little Red broke into a jog.
Asher ran behind her in silence, as the woman led the way to some unknown destination.
After a few minutes she stopped.
A shredded grove of trees filled Asher's vision. This was the place where Little Red attempted to shoot the Wolf at.
As evidence, the decapitated bear that Asher killed hours ago was still slumped on the floor, its head a few meters separated from its body.
Amazingly, the bear's severed neck still sizzled with the match flame's residual heat. Spread along its fur, several gigantic, cream-colored mushrooms had already taken root, sucking the nutrients away from the corpse.
Little Red stepped forward. Her kitchen knife flashed out from her cloak, slicing off two of the larger mushrooms from the bear's body. The stem of the fungi squeezed out a few globs of congealed blood as it pulsed angrily.
With a second of thought, she turned back to him.
"Is this... The killing blow was the product of your skill, correct? Was this at maximum power?"
Asher nodded.
"Oh... Oh, this is great!" Little Red broke into a searing grin, flooding Asher with an uncanny sense of pride.
As she spoke, the woman flung her knife to the side without looking. A deer cried mournfully in the distance as the knife hit its mark.
That by itself was an impressive feat. But as Asher turned his head to follow the knife's trajectory, his jaw dropped.
The deer... He squinted his eyes, making out the pinpoint dot in the distance.
The deer was over a kilometer away.
"And that's dinner. Hold these."
Asher fumbled with the mushrooms Little Red suddenly threw to him. He barely had enough time to appreciate the fresh, bloody aroma that spread from them before the woman reappeared in front of him, with the deer's corpse snug in her arms.
A clean hole ran through its neck, where the knife pierced its throat.
Dinner.
Instead of leaving immediately, Little Red turned back to the bear's corpse. She ran her hand along the rim of its neck, admiring the smoldering heat that persisted despite the ravages of time.
She grabbed its head, lifting the boulder-sized object to her shoulders with ease.
"I'll make a trophy for you."
Asher stammered a word of thanks, and Little Red's eye curved into a slight smile yet again.
...
In a few minutes' time, they had made their way back to the cabin. Little Red dropped off the bear's head by the doorway, taking the deer to the back for processing.
Having nothing better to do, Asher followed her to the cabin's back.
The first thing he saw there was an arsenal of metal blades and hooks. Then, a large wooden counter, dyed red with blood.
A small well to draw water from stood by his feet. This was the butcher station.
Little Red placed the deer onto the wide wooden board at the center of the table.
The woman got to work, hooking the deer and raising it into the air with a meat stand. In what seemed like an instant, she slashed the skin off the corpse, with a blade in each hand.
She cut off the head, briskly flinging it into the forest. Slashing past the stomach, did the same to the organs as well.
Asher wrinkled his nose in concern as Little Red took hold of the deer's hindquarters, ripping them easily from the joint.
This wasn't meat processing anymore; it was just brutalization at this point.
The front legs were torn off in a similar method.
Little Red grabbed a saw, grinding past the rib bones to tear out a rack of raw flesh. Blood dripped down the counter, forming a pool of brackish liquid on the ground.
Though the process was brutal, it was effective. When she had torn and cut off all the flesh she could, she used her fingers to scratch out any extra bits of meat between the bones.
...That part had Asher a bit queasy, to be honest.
The last bits of the deer's skeleton were tossed out to the forest, to be eaten by the denizens of the forest.
Little Red glanced beside her in surprise.
"Why are you still here?"
Asher blinked with wordless stupefaction as he watched Little Red draw out a bucket of water, washing away the gore on her gloves with it.
Finally, he snapped out of his shock.
"U-Um, just wanted to see what you were doing back here."
"Hm. Hand those mushrooms over."
She held her hand out, taking the two mushrooms that Asher was still holding onto. The previously cream-colored mushrooms had faded to a garish pale.
The woman placed the mushrooms onto the wooden board. Another bucket of water washed away the blood splashed onto it.
Before Asher knew it, Little Red had carried the board of 'dinner' through the back door, into the kitchen to be processed fully.
Asher let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
That was an... experience.
With nothing else to do, Asher went back into the cabin, meandering to his own room.
He plopped onto his bed, listening to the sound of sizzling meat from the kitchen. He closed his eyes, letting out a sigh.
For a few dozen minutes, he simply lounged in silence, spreading his arms and legs across the soft sheets.
Suddenly, he opened his mouth.
"System?"
It didn't respond, yet Asher knew it was listening. Recently, it had changed; before it would always respond to him immediately.
"I've been thinking about what happened today."
[Okay.]
Asher's eyes snapped open.
"How much are you hiding from me?" The way the System nonchalantly sealed his vocal cords, talking about insufficient 'Authority'. Just how much was hidden from him?
[6/7 = 85.7%]
"Wha...?"
[You will learn everything in time.]
"..."
*Knock Knock*
"Dinner's ready."
Little Red called from outside the door, inviting him to eat.
[Go and eat.]
Asher grumbled, clamoring out of bed.