Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori OST – Shoujo no Uta

Where Are You?

He couldn’t remember how or when really, but before he knew it, Ravi found himself standing in the middle of an art gallery of sorts. The room was long and narrow; the walls were painted pure white, and the floors were made of marblewood. Along the center of the room were a couple soft, velvet, red benches; and there, sitting so calmly on one in the far side of the room, was Hyuk.

Ravi began walking towards the young man, his footsteps echoing loudly around the room. Hyuk should have known that other was coming: Ravi could have awoken the dead if he wanted to. But the boy continued to stare thoughtfully at a painting in front of him. Curious, Ravi glanced at several paintings hanging on the pure white walls.

All of the paintings were eerily sinister: one portrayed a gruesome scene of a witch burned at the stake, the colours muted except for the vibrant, fiery reds of the blaze and her burning flesh. Another was a bloody war that raged between what appeared to be the living and the undead; the battlefield was littered with silver weaponry, severed body parts, and oddly broken bones. And the last one frightened him the most:  it was one of a young but miserable looking man, lying on a small bed in a greying room: a dark, brooding figure loomed over him: Death himself perhaps?  

Ravi looked away; the paintings were unsettling and were goose bumps running up his arms despite how warm the room was. He stopped in front of Hyuk, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Hyuk,” Ravi asked, “Where is everyone else? What happened?”

The boy didn’t answer and continued to stare at a painting in front of him contemplatively. Ravi growled in annoyance and sat down next to Hyuk, smacking him on the arm.

“Yah, listen to me when I am talking to you!”

Hyuk slowly turned his head, his eyes still glued to the painting. He blinked once, flicking his eyes over to look his elder at only the last second.

“Isn’t it a lovely painting, Wonsik-Hyung?” Hyuk asked with a skewed grin. Ravi felt his eyes narrow in confusion and the beginnings of irritation.

“I am not looking at another painting; all of them are so creepy.”

“Just one look,” Hyuk pleaded, nodding at the painting with a mischievous grin, as if daring Ravi. The elder, sighed, but he did turn to give the painting a glance – just one glance.

It was a portrait, a portrait that looked so out of place on the wall because it was…beautiful.

It was a woman; her skin was fair and smooth as porcelain, the apples of her cheeks flushed a soft red.  Her small lips were tinted a pale pink and her bright green eyes were framed by long dark eyelashes. Her shimmering black hair was piled atop her head in complex braids and twists, with several locks of her hair left to frame her face and neck. She wore a gown in soft blue and white, her heavy, silk skirts folding and creasing along her form, disappearing beneath the edges of the picture. There was a small panel underneath the intricate golden frame.

The Selene

Artist: Unknown

1843

“She’s stunning isn’t she?” Hyuk asked standing and jamming his hands into his pockets. He lazily turned his head back to the sitting Ravi. “The painting was named after the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene. It was said that the woman had skin as white as the moon, hair as dark and silky as the night sky, and eyes that shined brighter than the stars. They say that she was the most beautiful woman in all the land.”

Ravi was drawn to her, like a sailor spellbound by a siren. His heart sped up and he noticed just how content he was staring at the portrait. The woman sat on the edge of a stone bench underneath a blossoming apple blossom tree, her fingers resting in her lap. Her head turned towards the left side and her soft green eyes focused on something beyond. Her pale pink lips were slightly parted, as if the artist caught her in a moment of deep contemplation and found it to the most exquisite depiction of her.  

“She’ll beguile you with just once glance.” Hyuk whispered, “Suitors frocked from across the world to shower her with gifts, ask for her hand in marriage, or just catch a glimpse of her fabled beauty.”

Ravi stood, reaching out towards the painting with unsure and shaking fingers, he had to know – he had to see if her skin felt as soft as it looked.

“The woman grew to revel in the attention and wealth her beauty gave her,” Hyuk continued, “but, with age, her beauty diminished and so did her power. So she made a deal with the devil: for the price of her soul she gained everlasting youth and beauty – captured forever by paint and canvas. You see, Wonsik-hyung, she is still alive.”

Ravi’s fingers brushed the painting, caressing the woman’s cheek tenderly, but alas, disappointment flooded him as he dropped his hand. Her skin felt exactly like it should: like rough canvas underneath a layer of oil paints. He turned around.

“What do you mean she’s alive? The painting dates almost 200 years ago, how can she still be alive?” Ravi asked with a scoff.

But Hyuk replied with only a shrug and an innocent smile – something that used to suit him so well, but now looked oddly sinister, “She waits for someone who is willing to join her for eternity.”

“What does that – Gah!” Ravi yelled, jumping back from the painting. He had turned around, intending to admire the painting just once more but instead, he was greeted by the woman staring right at him, her green eyes staring him down with greedy desire. He turned around, about to ask the younger if he just saw that too.

“Hyuk – d-did you see that –”

But Hyuk was gone. Ravi turned in a full circle, expecting the boy to jump out from behind him and scream ‘boo’. But nothing came. Ravi glanced at The Selene, taking a deep breath to calm his frightened heart: the woman’s eyes were back where they should be, staring at something in the distance. Ravi quickly tossed the image of the woman’s green eyes staring at him away, it was his just his eyes playing tricks on him.  

He scowled, muttering under his breath as he searched for the younger man. There was another room connected to this one, probably the second half of the gallery. Hyuk probably ran into there. Ravi rolled his eyes, Hyuk loved to play tricks, of course this is probably another one of his playful jokes: scare the hell out of Ravi by telling him a creepy story about a painting.  

“Han Sanghyuk – yah! This isn’t funny! We have to go find the others!” Ravi yelled, stomping furiously over to the next room, only to find it…strangely… empty. Could the boy be on the other side of the wall panel? So Ravi searched, going around the other side, checking to see if the young man was hiding because Hyuk couldn’t have gone out the door without making some sort of sound.  

The paintings in this room were not as horrific as most on the other side, but no less creepy.  Most were all portraits, but being alone in this creepy old house, he couldn’t help but think that the eyes were following him. He moved cautiously, focusing on the sounds of his footsteps on the hardwood floor and the sound of his slow, forced breaths. 

He tried not to look at the paintings; he thought that they were following him, staring right at him, waiting for the right time to strike. But the instinct of self-preservation wouldn’t let him stare at the ground, so his eyes flicker to them.

Nothing.

The hairs stood up against the back of his neck and scalp; there was always a portrait in his line of sight, always a portrait behind him. His instincts screamed to run and never, ever turn back because there will be something – or someone chasing after him.

Ravi shook his head, and glared at a painting.  It was a large portraiture of a man with wild greying hair and a stern look of his elderly features. He wore a dark grey suit and a bright red ascot tie; in his hands were a pencil and paper.

The man in the painting did not look menacing, but it still felt wrong. Ravi glowered at the man, daring him to move.

Crash!

The sound echoed throughout the large space. Ravi jumped, whipping his head towards the sound. He ran to the sound, believing that he caught Hyuk trying to scare him. His heart beat furiously in his chest, expecting something to come out at him, but nothing. It seemed that the sound came from the other side of the room?

So Ravi stepped into the room, and saw no one there. Nothing seemed out of place, the terrifying paintings were still there perfectly straight in their frames, the door was still closed, and the bench wasn’t up turned –

But the painting of the woman was gone, missing completely.

Now he was terrified, he felt his stomach drop painfully, and his mouth grew dry. The room somehow also got colder. 

How could a painting just go missing all of a sudden?

There was no one in the room. No, there was probably a hidden door behind that painting – that’s how Hyuk escaped. This was his house afterall. 

He took a step towards the now empty white wall, searching for some sort of mechanism or line in the solid panels. But in his haste, he never realized that there was something just below his feet, something that grabbed a hold of his left ankle and yanked hard.

Ravi let out a shout in surprise as his foot flew out from underneath him, his other leg crumpling underneath his weight as he went crashing into the ground with a loud thump. Profanities slipped from his lips he felt his right knee bend the wrong way.  He struggled to right himself, breathing through the pain as he trying to see what grabbed him.

But what he turned to greet was something that he never expected to see.

The Selene.

Alive and real, and clutching his left foot in both her arms.

She looked just as real as she did in the portrait, just as beautiful. Her dress spilled out of the frame she dragged behind her, her green eyes glinting with crazed longing.

“He said you are my love.” She whispered, holding his ankle tightly to her chest, her voice sounding raspy and papery, “You will spend the rest of eternity with me.”

Ravi screamed and out of raw reflex, the pain of his injured knee lost in the rush of adrenaline as he lifted his free foot and kicked the woman’s hands away, pushing her back as her picture frame scraped against floor. She shrieked, scrambling to grab a hold of him again.

“No wait! Come back!” she yelled.

 Ravi fought get to his feet and limped as quickly as he could to the door, he had no idea what she meant by ‘spending the rest of eternity with her’ but he was not eager to find out. Behind him, he could hear coming after her, crawling towards him, pulling her frame with her. He slammed against the door, panting as he rattled the doorknob: locked.

Locked.

“You will be with me always,” she vowed. He let out a frustrated cry before turning around and headed for the other room; he prayed that there was a door there, a door that he missed during his first inspection. He thanked the gods that the woman was only able to crawl and the weight of her heavy wooden frame dragged her down and even in his injured state, he was twice as fast as her.

He crashed into the corner, using it as support to calm his desperate heart before he continued. He stumbled around the wall to the other side of the room, pressing his back against it as he attempted to gain several seconds of reprieve.

“Where are you, my love!” she called after him. “I promise to be gentle! You will not feel a thing.”

Ravi pressed a hand against his mouth, trying to reign in his horrified scream. But then he felt something wrap around his neck from behind and pulled him off the ground.

A loud scream fell from his lips, resonating through the room. It was an arm, a thin arm garbed in a grey sweater. From the corner of his eye, Ravi saw a tuff of dark brown hair. It was Hyuk, leaning out from a painting and strangling him. Ravi grabbed the arm, trying to pull it away from his throat as he struggled to breathe, but the boy would not relent. Ravi flailed his legs, shouting and yelling loudly.

“I’m sorry,” Hyuk hissed in Ravi’s ear, tightening his hold around the other’s neck, “But I did promise dear Selene.” Ravi’s screams turned into chocked sobs and he began to see pins and needles in the corner of his vision.

Something latched onto his foot again.

“Ah, Selene,” Hyuk called with a smile in his voice, “fret not, he’ll be all yours in a moment.”

The woman murmured, brushing her cheek against the suffocating man’s leg, “We will be together, forever.”

Ravi’s limbs began to grow weak from the lack of oxygen and his struggles grew less and less fierce. His arms dropped from the man’s hold and his vision swirled into a mass of colours. Hyuk released him unceremoniously, and he crumpled to the ground. But the damage was done: any second now and he would be unconscious.

The ringing in his ears dimmed as he heard the scrapping of the woman’s painting. Something touched his face, caressing his cheek softly.

“Hush, it’ll all be over soon, my love. It will be okay.”  The woman whispered, as his vision faded to black. “I will love you for all of eternity.”

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All was quite in the art gallery, as Hyuk re-entered the room. He took the time to admire each work, brushing his fingers against each frame. His feet took him to a fallen, misplaced picture. He smirked, picking up the intricate wooden frame and returning it to its rightful place on the wall. He sighed, crossing his arms and staring thoughtfully at the painting.

There was a new addition to the painting besides the woman herself. A young man lay stretched out on the stone bench beside her, his right leg bent at an unnatural angle, and  his head lying in her lap as she ran a hand through his hair tenderly, smiling softly as she watched him sleep.

Ravi.

Hyuk nodded to himself, and pulled a pen out from his pocket, bending over and scribbling several more words on the panel below the frame.  

The Selene and Endymion

Artist: Ha-Na

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There was a myth once told about the Greek Goddess of the Moon. Selene, who fell in love with a mortal man named Endymion.

She loved the way Endymion looked when he slept so she begged that Zeus may keep him forever that way.

Zeus granted her wish and put dear Endymion into an eternal sleep. 

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