Author: Torimaru Hiyoko	Original Source: Syosetu
Translator: Mab	English Source: Re:Library

Project GB is an official initiative by Re:Library.

A light rain falls in the forest at night. Through the gaps in the rainclouds, swept aside by the wind, a pale blue moon peeks out.

Relying only on the faint moonlight, a small figure walks through the cold forest.

Treading over damp leaves with unsteady steps, the figure moves along the muddy path.

From time to time, the figure stops and glances over her shoulder, then continues on, blending in with the undergrowth as she walks.

A particularly strong gust of wind drives the clouds away, and the moon reveals its full face.

Bathed in its light, the figure is revealed to be two young girls. They appear to be around six or seven years old. Both have dirty, ash-gray hair, large triangular ears covered in fur that resemble a wolf’s, and fluffy tails that sway behind them.

One girl carries the other on her back, her small legs straining as she trudges forward.

From time to time, the girl doing the carrying looks anxiously behind her. Her lips are pressed tightly together, on the verge of tears.

The girl being carried hangs limp, unconscious, swaying with each step.

The girls’ faces are strikingly alike, as though they were mirror images of each other.

“Just a little farther, Alice.”

The staggering girl speaks to the one on her back. Then she fixes her eyes ahead, where the forest stretches on, cloaked in deep, dark night.

Crushed by fear tightening in her small chest, she continues to whisper encouragement to the little sister shivering on her back.

“Just a little farther… please… hang in there…”

Cold droplets, gathered along the thick leaves above, fall onto dirt-smeared skin. The relentless drizzle continues to sap the body heat from the unmoving little sister. If things go on like this, the girl who had come down with a fever during their escape won’t survive.

No one understood that better than the older sister carrying her. She had been looking after her frail sister—born with a weak body—ever since she could remember.

At the same time, the little sister understood too. She knew her time was short.

Rocked gently on her older sister’s back, she exhaled faintly through pale lips, finally lifting her gaze to the sky. Above, the blue moon floated, hazy behind the falling rain.

A strange-colored moon that appeared only a few times a year. It is said that the blue moon is home to the ancestor of the wolves, the Divine Beast of the Moon who watches over the world from beyond the void.

The wolf girl pressed her lips together and offered up a prayer to the moon.

The wolf girl, burning with fever, looked up at the moon and poured her wish into it.

—Please… save my little sister.
—Please… if anyone, let my big sister be saved.

From the far edge of the cold, rain-soaked sky, the drifting blue moon gazed quietly down upon the two girls.

The merciless rain, thin and chill, showed no sign of letting up.

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