In the heart of a bamboo forest humming with life, where emerald shadows embraced the light of day, two figures moved slowly through the solemn stillness.
One of them was an elderly man. Silver-white hair flowed over his shoulders like threads of moonlight, and he wore a robe of white cloth embroidered with a faint silver sheen.
Despite the frailty that age might suggest, his features carried an unnatural handsomeness—an immaculate beauty untouched by flaw, as if time itself had paused to polish his face into a flawless jewel.
The old man held a pitch-black umbrella above his head with dignified calm, while his gentle gaze drifted toward his young companion.
She was a girl no older than ten, dressed in a crimson dress the color of fresh blood. The vivid red clashed sharply with her charred-black hair that flowed behind her like an endless night.
Her beauty was overwhelming—the kind that could ignite wars across the world. A strange beauty capable of pulling a soul from the depths of despair and casting it into boundless skies of happiness.
"I'm tired, Grandpa… how long are we going to keep walking? My feet are starting to tremble from exhaustion," the girl complained, her childish voice tinged with impatience.
A soft, amused chuckle escaped from the old man as he watched her with eyes glinting with cunning.
"So quickly your strength has failed?" he said. "It seems boredom has defeated you before the distance could."
The girl pouted slightly.
"And how could I not be bored? All we see are these green trees, over and over again."
She kicked a small pebble lazily, then let out a deep sigh that shook her small shoulders. Walking over to a fallen tree trunk, she sat down with her arms crossed over her chest, pushing her lower lip forward in childish protest.
The old man glanced at her calmly. He tilted his black umbrella slightly, blocking a ray of sunlight that had nearly touched her face.
"Shall I tell you a story?" he asked in a mysterious tone.
The girl rolled her eyes toward the sky in obvious annoyance.
"Oh… are you going to tell one of your boring stories again? The ones that make time itself stop from sheer dullness?"
The old man stopped walking and looked at her with exaggerated seriousness, though a spark of humor danced in his gaze.
"They are not boring stories, little girl," he said. "They are truths wrapped inside tales. You must understand that. Hahahahaha."
The girl sighed again and rested her chin on her palms while watching an ant dragging its burden across the dirt.
"Even if I told you I don't want to hear it," she muttered lazily, "I know you'll tell it anyway. So go ahead… tell it quickly so we can finish this faster."
The old man laughed heartily, amused by her tiny arrogance mixed with childish charm.
Then he adjusted his umbrella, and suddenly his voice transformed into something deep and mesmerizing.
"Volume Eight of the *Book of Fantasy*...
Tell me, little one—long ago, in ancient times, a red guppy fish swimming happily beneath the sunlight that pierced the water's surface encountered a hummingbird.
It was no ordinary meeting.
It was the collision of two worlds.
The hummingbird had collapsed near the water after exhaustion overtook it, its wings weakened from crossing endless seas without a single piece of land appearing on the horizon for rest.
The fish looked at him with wide eyes and saw the trembling breath in his tiny chest.
She called out in a gentle voice,
'Strange bird… where do you come from, and where are you going?'
With great effort, the hummingbird lowered himself onto her floating back. His eyes were clouded with fatigue as he gazed downward.
"The world belongs to me," he said wearily. "I have no single home. I wander across the vastness of the earth, searching for sights that delight my mind."
"Is the world truly that vast?" the fish asked, her voice trembling with curiosity.
The hummingbird closed his eyes, as though summoning distant memories.
"It is vast, little one—far wider than your imagination can contain. There are plains whose ends the eye cannot reach, and mountains that embrace the clouds until they dissolve into blue.
The world is an expanse that devours those who have no wings."
The fish spoke with sudden excitement.
"Then tell me about this world. Describe its vastness… and what life looks like far from the salt of the sea."
So the bird began telling her the wonders he had seen.
He spoke of forests clothed in veils of mist, and of the sun washing its face in the golden sands of deserts.
With every story, the fish's amazement grew, and her curiosity became a fire that consumed her peace.
She looked at the hummingbird with a strange admiration she had never felt before.
His voice had become the very oxygen she breathed instead of water.
The bird did not leave her back for days.
They drifted together across the silent surface of the sea like a single being.
And slowly, love slipped into her heart like a sweet poison.
In that moment, the fish made a suicidal decision.
She wanted to leave.
She wanted to follow those wings into the horizon.
The sea that had once been her home suddenly felt like a narrow cage, and the sky that had once been the roof of her world became the freedom she longed for.
But how could a creature of the depths follow the master of the winds?
If she left her watery home, death would be the only thing waiting for her.
Her story would end before it even began.
Her heart drowned in a whirlpool of dark thoughts.
How could she break the chains of her nature to reach the one she loved?
One night, the fish fell asleep in a calm serenity filled with the presence of the bird who had become her entire world.
But when dawn arrived, she awoke to find her back empty.
A cold emptiness wrapped around her heart.
The hummingbird had left without a word of farewell, leaving behind a void greater than the ocean itself.
Yet sorrow did not break her resolve.
Instead, it became fuel for an inevitable decision.
She would chase the impossible.
She would pursue the fading shadow of her beloved in his world above.
The fish swam frantically toward the shore.
The moment her body touched land, she gathered every ounce of strength in her small body and leapt.
A leap toward freedom.
But it was a leap toward hell.
Reality struck her like stone.
Her lifeline was severed.
She writhed upon the dry sand in a horrific dance of death.
In those painful moments, she realized the enormity of what she had done.
No air filled her gills.
Instead, grains of dust choked her spirit.
She tried to return, beating the ground desperately with her tail, longing to feel the water again.
But the waves were far away.
And the land was a prison without bars.
Suddenly, a predator bird descended from the sky.
It did not see a dreaming creature.
It saw only a meal.
Its talons pierced her fragile body and it soared high above the sea.
Yet just as the fish was about to surrender to death, a stone flew from the hand of an unknown human on the shore.
It struck the predator fatally.
The bird fell lifeless.
And the fish slipped from its claws, plunging back into the embrace of the sea.
She returned to the water and gasped for breath.
Bitter disappointment filled her throat.
But strangely, this was not the end.
It was the beginning of madness.
She tried again.
And again.
And again.
She leapt toward death to learn how to live in air.
Again and again she challenged the impossible, as if her body itself had begun rebelling against the laws of nature so she would never lose the hummingbird's shadow again.
Years passed.
The fish continued her struggle against the inevitability of nature.
Each time she leapt onto land and faced suffocation, she did not return to the water the same as before.
Her body began to remember pain.
Her tissues slowly changed under the pressure of that relentless determination.
Nature's barrier did not break through wishes.
It shattered beneath the weight of repeated attempts.
To chase the hummingbird without dying in the sea, she needed a dual awareness.
Thus her vision slowly split into two.
One eye watched the horizon and the sky, calculating the winds and searching for the missing shadow — the Forward Gaze.
The other eye remained fixed on the depths below, watching the currents and the pulse of the ocean — the Backward Gaze.
The fish realized that existence in this world demanded a dual perception.
There is no future for one who forgets their origin.
And there is no life for one who fears the horizon.
It is said that from the scales she shed during that transformation, and from the tears that dried upon the sand, something strange was born.
The **Leech of the Gaze**.
A bizarre Leech unlike anything before it.
It was not a green plant full of life.
It was a soft black entity, writhing like a living shadow, its smooth body reminiscent of the fish's former skin.
It had no single stem.
Instead, its body split into two opposing heads.
One stretched upward, bearing bulging eyes mounted upon long tendrils watching the sky and the horizon — the Forward Gaze.
The other remained below, pressed against the soil with sunken eyes watching the movements of the earth and the pulse of the depths — the Backward Gaze.
Thus the **Leech of the Gaze** was born from the womb of impossibility.
While the fish's body transformed into this hybrid existence, the sky finally opened before her through her dual awareness.
It is said that for a fleeting moment—when both visions overlapped—she soared into the heart of the sky with her new body, chasing the hummingbird's fading shadow until she vanished behind the mist of the unknown.
Leaving the sea behind as the sole witness to her struggle.
"What is the Leech of the Gaze?" the girl asked, her eyes shining with a strange light, as if the story had stirred something inside her she had never felt before.
The old man slowly closed his black umbrella.
A mysterious smile appeared on his face, carrying the dignity of countless years.
"It is the future for one whose future has been stolen," he said softly.
"And the past for one who has lost their past.
It is the eye that never sleeps, so a person will not be lost in the chaos of fate.
It is the price a soul pays to see what others cannot."
"And the hummingbird… where did it go?" the girl asked, still trying to trace the echo of lost wings within her imagination.
A quiet laugh escaped from the old man.
It carried the bitterness of truth.
"There was never a hummingbird from the beginning, little one.
No bird fell upon the water's surface.
No wings ever touched the fish's back."
The girl's eyes widened in shock.
But the old man continued with unwavering certainty.
"It was merely a *fantasy* the fish created in a moment of deadly boredom with her cold world.
A fantasy she invented to begin her struggle.
A reason to break the chains of her nature.
She created it to become her compass toward the sky.
For sometimes… the greatest truths are born from the wombs of magnificent illusions."
End of Chapter