They said the small town life was the best and she did nothing to disagree. No, she agreed wholeheartedly. Everyone knew everyone else, people were friendly, and there was no dearth of help or support when things went wrong or even right.

Maybe that’s how the name spread – Red. She was Red all around town, famous for the flaming red hair that flowed down her shoulders like a trail of fire. Red wasn’t one of the town’s beauties with the typical fair skin and large doe eyes that was considered the epitome of beauty. No, she had her own appearance of small almond shaped piercing eyes, button nose, skin dusted with a light tan and endless waves of hair whose ends were coloured a bright red.

Things were average for her at most, she did the things that teenagers usually did – she went to college, she had her group of friends, she had a part time job. Red was absolutely normal in every way.

In fact she even had a regular name – Lee Hyeji, one of those common names that people often forgot. Lee Hyeji was the daughter of the town’s green grocer and kindergarten teacher, she was the delivery girl for village next to the town, and she was the girl with the flaming red hair. Lee Hyeji was everyone, but in the end, she was herself.

“Red,” her head shot up off the counter as she looked up at her boss who held up a package. She smiled reaching for it to read the address scrawled over it “you’ll need to deliver that by tonight along with these two parcels. You can deliver them together.”

Hyeji shifted from her cramped seat in the shop tugging the other two packages towards her. Her feet tapped on the hardwood floor as she grinned. “You finally let me go to the village after ages!”

“Red, this could be a wolf, it’s not safe. Knowing you, you won’t take the roundabout route to the village but rather right through the woods which is shorter, but dangerous.” Her boss reminded her, leaning against the counter with a no-nonsense face as Hyeji shrugged.

“They haven’t found anything in the woods, so I’m sure it’s just a sham. You should let me take the route through the woods, I could do more work that way.”

“And for good reason, you know that there has been suspicious activity in the woods.” Her boss was stubborn as hell, just like everyone else in town. The woods had been scanned through multiple times and there had been no instances of any suspicious activities, just some change in animal movement and a few campers. Nothing which could cause much worry, or so Hyeji believed.

She stood up, carefully placing the parcels one on top of the other “I’ll just get to work delivering these anyway.” Her boss watched as his employee picked of the parcels and marched out of the shop, he sighed.

“Stay away from the woods and stay away from the wolves.”

Hyeji rolled her eyes as she piled the parcels in her bicycle basket. The woods were a peaceful place and the roundabout ‘safe’ route was simply too time consuming. She’d get a nice peaceful bike ride as well as her work done in half the time. The conclusion was obvious, she felt as she pedaled towards the town limits, greeting the familiar faces she passed.

The woods crept upon her suddenly. She wasn’t surprised, she was used to it in fact. A smile spread across her lips as she pedaled on. The route was rougher as it dipped and rose, a path of mud and stones. The dark cover of trees, the smell of decaying wood as well as the lush greenery. Her hair a stark contrast to it all – like a forest fire travelling between the green. It was quite deep in the woods, but she wasn’t too worried. She knew this place like the back of her hand, well, at least she knew the route well enough.

A twig broke somewhere in the path ahead as her head shot up to meet eyes of a peculiar shade.

Red.

These are going to be short chapters which I will write whenever I find the time.

Please comment and let me know what you think :)

-Ryukai