Chapitre 26: The Red Hood Man
Ru had jumped from the tree and was falling. Although he couldn't measure how many seconds it would take him to fall, he felt like he was about to hit the bottom of eternity. The very essence of time seemed to warp and twist around him. The pine tree, the catalyst for his descent, had become monstrous in his perception. Its once familiar trunk now loomed impossibly large, its bark a distorted canvas of browns and greens that whipped past in a dizzying blur. Ru looked like he'd been transported into a Salvador Dalí painting.
"Enough! Enough of this!" Ru screamed, having been falling for approximately six minutes. And he continued to shout incessantly: "Help! Someone help me!
After a while, time took on a dual sharpness. Ru constantly fell from darkness to light, and from light to darkness.
"Oh my goddess! This is terrible! I'm in so much trouble! Please help me!"
When white turned to black, black to white, and Ru's descent continued without pause, a laugh echoed. This laughter transformed into a red dot at the end of the fall line.
As Ru approached the end of the line, the dot grew larger and turned into an aerial view of a red hood. The hood was followed by a pink cat mask, a red suit, and finally a pair of leather shoes with pointed toes. Ru's fall came to an abrupt halt. He stood nose to nose with the immaculate shoes, upside down.
"What an absurd kind of a being you are, Donatella," a male voice with a strange accent said from behind the mask.
"My name is Lirui Xiaolian and unfortunately Thargata," Ru said. He was not out of breath, which was quite surprising. As he concentrated on his own thoughts, he suddenly realized, "Wait a minute, did I not breathe?"
Yes, he somehow wasn't breathing at the moment. And he was just standing like that, maybe you know, in a weird way... He was upside down, looking at this strange man's shoes in red.
"I seem to remember these shoes from somewhere, but I can't find where," Ru said.
"You saw it in the boutique window, Donatella," the man said.
"What are you talking about?" Ru asked, a bit annoyed.
As soon as Ru reached the ground, he trembled seriously for the first time as his hands passed through the earth without feeling anything. "I... I'm dead."
"It's okay, Donatella. I have a body for you," said the Red Hood Man.
Ru was in shock and couldn't speak. All he could do was blink. His eyes closed tightly when he realized this. He hoped that all this nonsense was a dream.
When he opened his eyes again, instead of shoes he saw a purple tie, a black shirt, and the lapels of a red jacket. Looking up, he saw red glowing eyes behind a pink cat mask.
"What the hell are you? Are you a demon?" Ru asked, trembling in his voice.
"No," the Red Hood Man replied.
"Are you a witch?" Ru asked.
"No," the Red Hood Man replied.
"Yes, you're the style icon who nailed the look I was going for," Ru said, mockingly.
There were no tree branches and no stars in the sky above the man, just wet grassy earth. So Ru was still upside down, and it seemed that the man was upside down, too.
"What are you? What's going on," Ru asked.
He saw the pine branches beneath his feet and the crescent moon and stars beyond as he waited for the man's answer. Ru panicked in a completely different mood and shouted, "Oh my goddess, what is this?"
"I wanted to stand upside down when you stood upside down, Donatella," the Red Hood Man said. He spread out his words and spoke fast, especially when you were in a panic like Ru, it was hard to understand what the man was saying.
"Fix me! Fix me now!" Ru cried.
"Roll like you're underwater," the Red Hood Man said.
"Like underwater," Ru said, relieved by the analogy. He did a simple somersault. Though he couldn't feel it now, the earth was beneath his feet and the sky above. "Oh!" he said, relieved.
"Give me the genie's seal and I'll give your body," the man hurried on.
Ru asked, "Genie?" At that moment, a blinding brightness was revealed; mighty flashes of lightning followed by thunder.
Ru looked up at the sky in fear and saw raindrops entering his eyes and continuing on their way. "I can't feel anything, what should I do? Where is my body?" Ru said as he continued to watch the lightning bolts.
The man pointed to a spot just behind him and said, "It was there."
"What do you mean it was there?" Ru looked where the man was pointing and saw a dug grave. The gravestone, which looked rather sloppy and poor for a member of the Thargata family, read "Lirui Xiaolian Thargata, R.I.P.".
"Damn, the witch must have taken my body," Ru muttered, still confused from one moment to the next.
"Yes, she took it, but the sorcerer will take it back from her, don't be afraid," the man said snickering.
"Say what?"
"We will stop the witch from selling succubi* to you in exchange for a powerful artifact," the man rasped. "Don't be afraid," he added unconvincingly, his eyes flickering nervously to the trees that surrounded the clearing.
"Should I believe?" Ru said frowning.
"If you want to spend your new life as a sex slave, we won't interfere." said the man, chuckling.
If Ru hadn't died, he would have been foaming at the mouth with rage. "What the hell did you say?" he yelled.
"I don't know, that's because you seem willing. Maybe you miss being whipped," the man said with a nervous chuckle.
"Here we go, a new pervert," Ru grumbled.
A moment later Ru moved forward, or rather simulated movement, amidst the intensifying rain. He pondered whether he was floating or gliding, entertaining various hypotheses. Amid this mental maze, his gaze fell on the freshly dug grave and brought him to an abrupt stop.
"You were only fourteen when you died, Donatella," the Red Hood Man said.
"I was so young," Ru said, almost crying for himself. When he went to the grave and tried to open his coffin, he encountered the situation of passing through objects again. "Did my atoms disappear when I died, or what?"
"I'll open it for you," the Red Hood Man said and teleported to Ru's side.
As Ru recoiled in fear, the man performed a non-contact gesture to open the coffin.
Turns out the person in the coffin was not Ru, but a girl his size.
"Who is this? This is not my body," Ru said.
"This is Ru, and you are Donatella. If you want to be Ru again, you must give me the genie's seal," the man said, speaking quickly.
"How can I give you the seal? Which the genie do you want? Aladdin's Genie?"
"You will draw the seal," the man said, raising his voice for the first time.
"Will I draw it? If I knew, I would draw it now, believe me. I want to live. I just want to return my own body and not be Donatella. I might even be Donatella," Ru said, looking at the corpse of the girl. The girl's skin was white and blue. "What's wrong with that girl," he asked suddenly.
"What's the matter with her," said the Red Hood Man curiously.
"I meant, what's the cause of death, it looks like she bled to death," Ru said, examining the body.
"Too bad she's out of blood," the man said, adding, "Now enter this body and draw the genie's seal for me."
"No, I won't. This body is dead, and it doesn't belong to me. I want my own body. If you give it to me, I will draw the genie's seal," Ru said, his voice and gestures showing how determined he was.
"I won't, first you draw it and then I'll give it to you," the man insisted.
"Is that so?" Ru said in a calculating manner.
"That's so," said the man standing in front of her.
"So that's it," Ru said, standing similarly.
"That's right," said the man, stretching his chest.
"You'll see," Ru said, and as soon as he said that, he attacked to enter the man's body.
The man giggled. "Hihihihi, don't tickle me, bacherozzo!"
Ru could hear the man's giggling and voice in her mind. He wasn't in the man's body, but it was as if he was just standing in a red darkness. Ru took another step and stepped out. "What is 'bacherozzo'? And why is it empty for you," he asked.
"It means 'bug'. I am not empty inside, you are wrong," the man said, turning aesthetically on his heel.
"I'm wrong, am I? Perhaps you would like to correct me, sir," Ru said, raising an eyebrow.
"I'll correct you, Donatella, when you draw the genie's seal," the man said, hands on his waist, leaning towards Ru.
"Start by finding a body that isn't dead. Because I'm tired of being a soul," Ru said, giving up.
"You are not a soul, Donatella, but a wandering consciousness."
"A wandering consciousness? What nonsense is that?"
"The soul is not absurd, consciousness is absurd, is it, furfante?" the man asked, putting his hands in his pockets and assuming an upright posture.
"What is 'furfante'? What language are you speaking? You keep confusing me and giving me headaches ouch!" Ru said, annoyed.
"It means 'rogue'. It's Italian. You have no head, you are just consciousness," said the man.
"Okay, Italian demon, you win, let's go. Let's find me a body or even a brain, I'm fine with a robot or a computer. No problem," Ru said, speaking as fast as the man. Then he stopped, wondering who or what he was talking to. He hoped it was all going on in his mind.
In the end, Ru nodded his head in self-affirmation and said an Italian proverb to explain the situation: "Far d'una mosca un elefante.*"
-------------------
Italian proverb in English: "To make an elephant out of a fly."
Succubus: A female demon that seduces men to drain their energy.
Succubi: Plural form of succubus.
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
reçu État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone