*I don't own Touhou. All rights belong to ZUN.
Colette ran, ignoring her aching legs and the sweat breaking out all over her. She'd desired to break away from her current life and her parents, who were probably dialing the police for a missing child report or searching for her themselves in her father's menacing black car at this very moment. It seems she'd gotten that wish.
"…not a kid. I'm not a kid," she spoke beneath gasps and panting. The cool air blew softly against her face under the gray evening sky. Her sluggish school bag bounced continuously against her hip, sometimes slipping off her shoulder.
It didn't matter whether she refused to accept change. It was still there like an endless great wall and no matter how stealthy and wile you tried to go around it, the wall could never be overcome. The only option was to evade it completely. Escape.
It was a spur of a moment choice. When her mother had been occupied, cutting the carrots meticulously and her father still at work, the storm that had been bubbling in her mind then overfilled. The way she was treated at school and the way she was treated at home—it was their entire fault. After the Big Move to Japan, her life was not as wonderful and spectacular as her parents has promised it to be. She had no choice in the matter probably because she was just a kid and didn't deserve a voice. She swung her school bag over her arm all of a sudden, not even bothering to empty her school contents. Trying not to make a sound, Colette wore her frayed sneakers, crept out the front door, and sprinted away from home.
Everything became a blur with hazy colors as she rapidly dashed for two hours: the street, the pavement, the big move, trees, middle school, pine trees, bamboo trees…
Bamboo trees?
At last, Colette stopped and gazed at the scenery, completely bewildered. Tall shoots of white bamboo that she'd never remembered surrounded her in overwhelming patterns, a few crisscrossing here and there. Others grew amazingly high up that when you looked up, what you saw of the night sky was a small black patch. The terrain was now flat dirt, even though she could've sworn she had been running on concrete the entire time. The bizarre pattern of the bamboo trees made her head spun, like the moment after you twirled yourself around when you were little and the whole world was shaking. They reminded her of those optical illusions in her pre-teen books that drove your mind wild except this wasn't on paper. It was all around her and seemed like reality. She could barely recall any of what had happened before or how she came to be here.
Why was I running and why do I have a heavy bag with me?
Then, as she remembered and Colette sank to the ground, her mind uttering insults at herself like coward! and immature kid! The last words of her stern father echoed in her mind before and, without intending to, she drifted to sleep, unaware of the widespread forest fire coming her way miles ahead.