I lost you.

But when I find you again, you are jumping around at somewhere mysterious.

Dark covered the place; dark figures stretched everywhere. It is an architecture without any illumination, as if blackness was the colour that dyed it. You, like a frog, meandered through the darkness in that architecture, pa.s.sing through its lanes.

You run, at night, in this labyrinth-like architecture with a bad cosplay costume.

For your face is covered with the frog’s skin, no matter how many doors you pa.s.s through or how many places you go to, your face will not change, so the frog is in itself a special change. I haven’t named everything yet, but now that I think about it, the frog should be one of those effects.

How great it is for it to stick on your face, hard and unremovable.

As I continue persuading myself, I follow you. As you hop around, I feel you have thrown away the rationality in your human nature. You have became agile, and I have lost you a good few times.

This place is enigmatic and easy to get lost after all.

Architectures flood this place, yet darkness cover my eyes; I b.u.mp into things all the time, restraining my actions. These restraints seem to limit me, deprive me of strength and motivation.

But I won’t give up now. I climb up a building with all my pa.s.sion, yet the slippery wall gave me no place to hold on to: my hand falls off and strike me on the ground.

What the h.e.l.l am I doing?

As I climb and fall dramatically, you have already dextrously pa.s.sed through the crevices of the building and escaped from me.

No, I cannot let you go away. I must catch you.

The building in front of me sprays colours of all the spectrum like the neon lights on a night street. They also look like Christmas decorations, yet this piercing light is painful to my eyes.

I begin to feel worried.

You seem to have gone on a night trip, away from your boring house, but that isn’t somewhere you can put trust on. This blazing light emitting from the building is its sign of not accepting your presence.

When you walk forward, noises spring up. These noises resemble car beeps, loud speakers, arcade machines, and computer stops; they also resemble sound of anger or sadness, they deter people, make them fear.

This seems like a Location that perturbs people, that puts stress on their shoulders.

I carefully walk along the enigmatic neon lights.

“Woah?”

So careful I was, my head still b.u.mped hard into something, tipping off my balance.

That thing suddenly popped up in front of me.

“W-What is this?”

It is a large stand-up advertis.e.m.e.nt board, flashing like the neon lights, but it stood firm like a strong man. It has hands, legs, a head, and also a face; its eyes look sternly at me, yet its face is as red as a drunkard.

As it sit like a fitness champion, it still flickers like neon light: imagine such a peculiar being.

“What? Isn’t this only a decoration?”

It looks like an eerie advertis.e.m.e.nt board, standing there. Although they are invisible, they still though seem to have a nose, and it hurts a lot when I b.u.mp into them.

As I stand still, holding onto the board, suddenly something popped up and frightened me.

As I came to my senses, I am surrounded by squirming things.

“W-What’s this?”

A bunch of bright, creature-like things squirm around me. They are as big as me, or maybe smaller, squirming in weird ways and to strange directions.

Their shapes are different, but they emit the same kind of neon light. Some of them wriggle like tentacles; some of them look like arrows or flags; and some of them have only a big and round shining eye, a monster one could say…All of them are vivid, as if the microscopic creatures like fleas and parameciums are magnified to a joking scale.

Through their transparent bodies I see their capillaries and intestines that are so ugly I have to quickly avert my eyes.

Although we bear no understanding to these microscopic creatures and bacteria, their presence in our bodies and our surroundings is true. They have somehow stuck themselves on our lives. These creatures are thus definedin such way.

We don’t notice them, but they do exist.

When a normal and honest man steps into the urban noise, he enters a completely new world: all that comes to his eyes are flashy and delinquent females.

They have lived on the same ground and in the same age, yet they share no word or touch.

When you walk in the night, you look extremely excluded from these things. You won’t come into contact with them, nor would you give them an eye. But you feel sticking around with these dangerous flashy things a better option than solitude.

And so you jump into them.

I want to chase you, but these weird things stop me, restricting any movement I could manage.

I can hardly breathe among them. They take pleasure in noise and lavish it. This strikes me as a carnival or parade for monsters.

How good and refreshing it would be to be a member of them. But to me, excluded, I would feel nothing but depression and unrest. If I join the clamour of this parade, I am sure I would be led astray—If I become one of these night ghosts, I could never recover my human nature again.

It would be like walking along a wrong path in life led by fair-weather friends.

But you, so ignorant, walked to those flashing beings.

“W-Wait!”

I run after you with all my might, like a mother who fears her daughter will turn into a delinquent.

You cannot go there. No matter how boisterous it may look, it will someday perish.

“Guh?”

As I run frantically, my nose hit into a fat monster.

I almost fall down by the pain.

Can these monsters not notice me? Do they not know me or have no interest in me? They move according to their will, ignoring my presence.

If I get myself worked up over them, I would only be the troubled one who let them get into my nerves and trip me over.

I ignore them, push them away, and crawl under the muscular advertis.e.m.e.nt stand’s shoulder to reach you.

As I finally get away from that noise, I sighed with a phew.

It is as quiet as a dream. What a relief. Those piercing noises are poison to my body.

I let my hand resting on my chest to fall down, and I look up.

I witness it with my own eyes.

“Hey? What are you doing?”

You sit still in front of me.

You are still wearing a girl costume, entirely incongruent to your frog face. You make it like you have put on the wrong makeup set. You open your mouth, stuffing something inside like a predator.

It looks like a shimmering bird.

Bird usually means stress, but you choke it down, like stuffing coins into a frog’s mouth, or something bad like smoking or drinking alcohol.

“You can’t eat that!”

I shriek, running to you.

That isn’t something nutritious—well, hazardous I a.s.sure you. But you stuff it down as if you would die if you don’t eat anything.

You look like a kid who have been stripped from food.

What do you desire?

The neon bird flaps its wings in struggle, but it is gone as it runs down your throat.

I call you nervously at your side.

“Are you all right? Spit it out! Now!”

I scold you like I would scold a kid. I s.n.a.t.c.h your face and shake you about, to make you spit out the shimmering bird you swallowed. The magical thing is that I can touch you now—probably only when the frog is covering your face.

As you stay still, the frog’s skill peels off, revealing your face.

Your face is wet—I don’t know if it is sweat or some weird liquid—your eyes closed like you are sleeping, same as usual. This rea.s.sures me. If the face under the frog skin becomes someone I don’t know, I won’t know how to react.

Suddenly you hold your stomach and moan.

“Hey? Are you okay? Must be what you have eaten!”

I look at you worryingly.

Then you flashed—out of the blue.

Neon rays spilled from your whole body, just like the squirming creatures in this world. You have eaten the forbidden; you want to enter this place resembling the urban nights.

From skin to hair, you end up emitting rays across the spectrum.

You look as if you have put on makeup and put on flashy clothes, transformed from a chaste girl to a creature I have never seen.

And it is repugnant.

“Spit it out! You don’t need it!”

I scream out my lungs, dissuading you.

I hope you can retain your chast.i.ty and remain what you are. But the process of life is a process of contamination. With the c.u.mulation of knowledge and experience, the flow of years will cover your chast.i.ty slowly with dust.

You can never return to the purity and innocence as a child.

Horrifying.

Even if you have changed your appearance and become flashy, you are still you. But I hate and loathe, or even fear, your transformed state.

Flashing, you pa.s.s through me.

Like a fairy.

Or like a changeling, a child stolen by fairies, a being alien to me.

Your psyche stolen away, you leave me.

Wait for me.

Don’t leave me here.

I don’t want to be alone.