In the forest, I avoided the creaking trees that brushed at my shoulders and found the clearing.
There was the flower field.
It looked as gloomy as the sky, and the faded colors were completely different from the vibrant tableau of the day before.
"..."
And the flowers were not only the wrong colors, but the wrong shapes as well.
As far as I knew, I had retraced my path from the day before, so I shouldn't have ended up in a place that looked so different despite its similarities. However, there was a certain uneasiness that I couldn't shake.
I got down from my broom and walked over to the source of my unease. My foot made an unsettling squish when it touched down, and I could feel the flower petals dying underfoot.
A pleasant scent hung in the air above the flower field.
In front of me was a person. The true source of my discomfort was there—she was the discomfort.
"..."
It was the young girl who had given me the flower bouquet, and now there was a man facing her, too. He was wearing different clothes from yesterday, but I remembered his face. He was sitting in the flower field, smiling at the girl.
It was the young guard.
"Hello again."
"Ah, the traveler from yesterday. Hello." He gave me a very simple reply.
"Is that…thing your little sister?" I asked.
He tilted his head. "Yes, I finally found her. I couldn't believe she was in a place like this." Still wearing a gentle expression, he grasped the girl's hand.
The longer I looked, the stranger it became—somehow, I couldn't call the girl holding the young man's hand human anymore. Flecks of green dotted her skin, ivy vines curled around her body, and her vacant eyes stared into the stagnant air without blinking. Her mouth was gaping wide like a cave, and drool oozed out from the corners.
The strangest thing, though, was her lower half. From the waist down, she was wrapped in huge red flower petals, as if a human had grown out of an enormous flower. Flower and human had become a single, bizarre sight.
The guard gazed at her, spellbound. "She's so pretty. Who would have thought she was all the way out here, becoming so beautiful?"
"..."
"What's wrong?"
I shook my head, "It's nothing. I'm just surprised because she looks very different from yesterday."
"Ah, yesterday. I'm sorry about all that. I was just feeling out of sorts because I didn't know where my sister had gone."
I turned my gaze slightly downward and saw his leg had ivy coiling around it. I'm sure he couldn't move any more than his sister could.
Or rather, he could, but he had probably lost any desire to move.
"..."
He paid my presence no heed. If I didn't speak to him, he would soon turn back toward her and continue talking to her with vacant eyes.
"…I can't believe you kept this amazing place all to yourself."
"…Ah, that's right. Say, why don't we bring everyone here from back home? If we show them, they'll be so happy."
"…I especially want them to see you, now that you're so beautiful."
"…Hey, that's okay, right?"
"…I see. Thank you."
I suspected he was hearing words I couldn't. To me, it just looked like a one-sided conversation with the thing that used to be his sister.
The little sister had been able to converse with me the day before, but now she couldn't even blink anymore. She certainly couldn't express anything verbally. Her emotions, her physical body, her entire self had been lost in the flower field somewhere. She had lost the ability to do anything except be admired.
Just like a flower.