"If I told you I was God," the woman suddenly asked, "would you believe me?"
The boy's eyes went wide, staring intently at the woman atop the ruins with a playful smile. For a moment, he felt as if his mind came to a halt...
"You little brat! I tell you to worship the Bodhisattva, and you run off here for what?!" The scolding of a middle-aged woman snapped the boy out of his stupor, making him shiver as a chilling sensation crept from his tailbone up his spine to his neck, followed by a hot, stinging slap on his body.
The boy trembled, but instead of immediately looking at his angry mother, he turned his head towards the top of the ruins—the woman had disappeared somehow, as if she had never been there.
As if, everything had been just a hallucination for the boy.
Faintly, the boy felt as if something was missing inside him... yet he couldn't quite say what it was.
