Fox-masked girl figurine, the Trace

Look, I know how this sounds, but I swear I’m not making this up. Last night, taking that shortcut through the wasteland behind the old district, I actually ran into her.

She was just crouching under an old streetlamp tying her shoelace. Shocking violet hair with hints of blue, a massive crimson bloom pinned near her ear, and a bright red ribbon at her collar—looked like she’d just walked off a theater set. I thought she’d twisted her ankle, so I walked over and asked if she was alright.

Then she looked up. And my blood went completely cold.

It wasn’t just a mask on the right side of her face. It was alive. That white, red-veined fox mask didn’t have an edge—it was fused right into her skin, tangled with twitching tissue and veins taking root across her cheekbone. Where the eye should have been, a pool of faint cyan light flickered in the dark.

And her left eye—pale, human, dead calm—was leaking something thick and dark red. A single tear of pure blood, sliding down to hang right at the edge of her jaw. She didn’t even bother to wipe it off.

I froze. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t listen.

Then she just sighed, slapped the twitching side of the mask like an annoying bug, and snapped at me: “What are you staring at? Never seen rejection symptoms before? Keep looking and it’ll bite.”

She was surprisingly short-tempered. I stammered, asking if I should call an ambulance, but she just sat down on the curb and ruffled her violet hair. She told me the thing was called a Trace—a symbiont meant to shoulder someone else’s dying regrets. Someone who meant the world to her had passed away, leaving behind a lifetime of unspoken sorrow. A weight so heavy that without someone living to bear half of it, their soul would shatter on the way out.

She said she was always the reckless type, so she took on the burden without a second thought. The mask’s side was living and bleeding for the dead, chewing through their bitter leftovers. The tear running down her human cheek wasn't her crying; it was that borrowed grief overflowing through her own veins.

I asked her how long she’d have to keep wearing it.

She stood up, dusted off her skirt, and looked back at me under the streetlight. Her human face pulled into this completely careless, cocky grin, even while that ethereal beast eye burned with cold cyan light.

“Whenever I stop remembering all his stupid habits,” she said. “Whenever these tears finally turn back into water, it’ll fall off on its own. What’s the rush? I’m young. I can take it.”

Then she shoved her hands into her pockets and vanished into the dark alley.

I stood there for a long time, watching that empty road. And I couldn’t stop wondering... just how desperately do you have to love someone, to willingly take the grief they couldn’t swallow, and stitch it straight into your own flesh?