The woman with the sickle wore an expression that belonged to none of the human emotions—not joy, nor anger, nor sorrow, nor pleasure.
Before a scream could be uttered, the woman shoved the girl down into the bamboo grove.
She was muttering something, but the girl could not understand it.
Nor was she any longer aware that she herself was letting out a low groan, like that of a beast.
Withered leaves, thin and fox-colored, shaped like tiny boats.
Across the carpet of those leaves laid out in the bamboo grove, she is lured, as if sliding, deeper and deeper into its depths—
—Abducted.
No one comes to help.
No one is watching.
And so, in a momentary void that opened up in the town, in a sliver of time where lawlessness is permitted, the girl is tortured.
Her body is destroyed.
A first experience.
This is a world apart from being struck as discipline, or getting a cut through carelessness.