Chapter 11 - The Creepy Meal

[Where the hell am I?! I'm sitting. I'm tied to a stool, and in front of me is a table with ... oh, my God, what is this? There are plates under "them". Is this food? Or are there only cutlery on some of the plates?]

Han looked at the twisted branches woven together. All the branches grew from the handle that touched the table. [This is… It looks like a stirrer and like the "brushwood" that I ate when traveling to Russia with my uncle.]

Familiar faces sat at a long table. They were a child girl, a badass girl, a mistress and a Yellow Scarfkin. But mangaka also noticed an unknown person of huge size. The bully was sucking on some kind of root growing out of a pale turnip.

But the guy's thoughts were interrupted.

"Kipa! Yaro Kipa!" Somebody shouted in Han's ear.

"Lord, holy seraphim, red witch, why are you smiling so broadly at me? You're either making fun of me, or ... oh, my God! No! I will not become your toy!.."

The lady's straight and ink-black eyebrows furrowed.

" ... only if you let me stay alive." I agree to everything, don't hurt me!" the mangaka began to cry

"Leroo," the lady pushed the lady away and hugged Han.

"Kh!"

The mistress stroked the mangaka on the head, pressing it to her chest. Han calmed down. [My God! Is she your angel?]

The lady in the red hood walked around Han and hugged him on the other side. [The devil!!!]

"Yaroi Kipa ranoh trig panagon!!!" The mistress sang.

"Ahem?! Yaroi Kipa ranoh treegh panagon!!!" the lady laughed out loud.

The mistress waved her hand. "Leroo, ku shedu phe yaroi alaimi."

"Yaro shed kui alaimi-sha!!!"

The mistress sighed. "Stormeh, lan guguhu enh!"

"Yo-o-o-o-o-o-h!" The child girl who hugged Han during his rebirth flapped her sleeves. "Kegu limi enh!!!

The child girl clapped. Jointed paws emerged from under the dome in the middle of the table. There was a sweet smell.

[Wait… What is it?]

A spider, or rather, a spider-like creature, carefully stepped over the plates.

The child girl pointed with her sleeve to a bowl with translucent balls.

"Ulaimihu, Akhe Pihha."

The spider pinned balls on the paw, then he broke off the limb and handed it to the baby. She was pinching her paw with her sleeves.

"Shtormahu, Akhe Pihha!" The child girl with a smile gnawed transparent balls, simultaneously eating a spider limb.

[How to describe the hopelessness? How to explain the purest madness? How can I convey what only a person who has come face to face with the unknown and frightening, strange and alien, can feel, as if the sky and oceans would change places, and logic would become dust?

I don't know! But if I had a camera, or at least a canvas with a brush and a mirror, I would definitely capture myself, the expression of my new face… I want to scream… I really want to scream...]

Han didn't know whether to laugh or cry. [Oh, I've been in such crazy situations, why did this scene cause such emotions. Maybe because it seemed normal and ordinary to me? Am I ceasing to be normal?.. ]

The badass girl, Moyi, stroked the baby on the head, after she turned to the spider. "Pihha, ulimu, gah-omah bih Tshemah!"

The spider poured red saliva over the "brushwood with a handle". The scarlet bloody substance began to bubble and foam. The branches moved like worms. Soon they broke off from the handle themselves and intertwined into many tiny balls of bloody brushwood. Ball after ball followed moi, and each of them jumped into her mouth.

"U-u-uum! Shtormeha, Pihha." The girl happily crunched. Noticing Han's look, she smiled, " Ku shormi, Kipa. Bihah kui treegh panagon to?"

Han was keeping silence.

The girl corrected her purple bow sheepishly. "Weheh Enhu to, Kipa?" The girl opened her pretty mouth, filled with the remains of red twigs. She took one out and kissed it. The piece of brushwood seemed to instantly grow to the size of the original.

Moyi held the piece up to Han's face.

"I won't do eat..." But as soon as the guy felt the intoxicating smell that came from this delicacy, he stopped being so persistent.

Han looked more closely at the live firewood. [My uncle didn't like to eat food that moves. The same dancing octopus. Such delicacies frightened him. I have adopted this fear, especially after I saw one visitor of restoran choke on a still-alive squid. The tentacles blocked the trachea, and that visitor died.

At first, when he coughed and made strange noises, I thought that a demon had possessed him. Then the restaurant employees bustled around him. I perfectly remember the faces of my mother and uncle when they took me away from the restaurant. I've never seen them like this before...]

Han looked at the smiling girl in a purple bow. Out of the corner of his eye, the guy noticed the look of the Scarfkin, who lower eyelid was twitching.

"Enhu! Ledug to?" The girl muttered under her breath.

"Bih negih to, yaroi shedeh?" A witch in a red hood appeared behind her, smiling angrily.

Scarfkin cringed.

"Pe bih, Akhe Leroo! Pe bih! Ulimi hagehu!"

Seeing the frightened Scarfkin, Moyi turned slightly pale. The girl's body tensed. The witch grabbed the girl by the scarf, as if wanting to strangle her.

"Akhe Leroo!" Moyi took off from her seat and fell at the witch's feet. "Ulimu hagehu Skaahra. Karen denh shormachen!"

The lady in red bared her teeth, opened her mouth to spew curses. But the mistress pulled her by the shoulder.

"Leroo, Kipa ranoh trig panagon karen denh. Ku weheh gah Saahra shedeh kui alaimi to?"

The lady sighed, then looked at Han.

"Bihah iptaren yaroi shedeh to, Kipa?" the witch in red pointed out Han.