Chapter 1
Dad was criticizing Mom. “Is this how you raise our pup? She has no table manners at all! She threw up her food onto the table right in front of the host! That was disgraceful.
“I just reprimanded her slightly, and she immediately started pretending to be sick. You spoiled her. I must teach her a lesson—”
Mom snapped. She slapped Dad before scooping me into her arms and sprinting toward the Healing Hut.
I hovered in midair as I followed her closely.
Tears streamed down her face. She had once laughed and said that I had grown too big for her to carry. But now, she ran so swiftly that she didn’t even seem to feel my weight.
I suddenly disliked Dad. In fact, I kind of hated him.
Why did he have to treat us this way?
His heart used to ache for me, even if I had only tripped while walking. Now, I had died right in front of him, and he still didn’t even look at me.
Yes. I had died.
So, this was what death felt like. When the old lady next door passed away last year, did she drift along in the air like this too?
However, I hadn’t seen her at the time. Did that mean that Mom and Dad couldn’t see me now, either?
The thought made me a little upset, and I looked down at Mom.
She was carrying me, and her face was pale from crying. The healer in the Healing Hut didn’t even take me from her arms. He just sighed and shook his head at Mom.
…
Mom hadn’t slept in two days. She had done everything on her own. My body was placed in a wooden crate and buried beneath the largest tree in the forest.
Mom sat against the tree trunk, staring dazedly at the patch of earth where I had been buried. She only went home when it got dark.
Her eyes were swollen from crying as she lay on the bed. She lay there without moving an inch, like my body that had been sealed inside that wooden crate.
I hovered beside her and tried to pat her back, the way she had always put me to sleep. However, my hand went right through her body.
