The Edelweiss Tombstone

[School Life | Youthful Campus Romance | Utter Revenge | Japanese-Style Mystery] On the day I transferred to the school, the class president, Saya Yumeko, smiled and took my hand, saying she wanted to be my best friend.

No one cared about this broken-down village that was about to sink beneath an artificial lake. In a few months, everything here would be submerged, and no one would remember it. I put up with the doodles in my textbooks, the dirty shoes in the trash can, the ice forced into my mouth. I thought that if I endured a little longer, I could leave with my family.

Then the fire burned my home to the ground. My parents were burned to ashes, and my little sister lay in the hospital, never to wake again. Only then did I see what twisted demons hid beneath those smiling faces. The gentle princess was a madwoman who saw me as prey. The silent photographer was a bystander waiting to watch me transform. The lackey who fawned over me was a rabid dog willing to burn down my home just to survive.

Later, rumors began spreading through the village about a woman in a red coat, a vengeful ghost who came to claim lives. The people who had bullied me began disappearing one by one. Some said she was crazy. Others called her a curse. No one knew she only wanted justice for her dead family.

On the day the heavy snow stopped, she disappeared. That spring, the dam filled, and all of Bailai Village sank beneath the lake. Only the edelweiss on the cliff bloomed year after year, like a gravestone she never had.