Kẻ nói dối và nữ thần chó sói

"Do not go near the forest at dusk."
My father often warned me of this.
But I could not stop myself from wandering aimlessly near the forest like this. Coming to this place at the foot of the mountain where I can see all the way to the horizon, my heart somehow grows calm... no, perhaps the truth is actually the opposite. My usual self—my heart, consciously ashen—seems to be filled with a restless, incomprehensible elation. Is it because of the forest, or because of the eerie red of the sunset? I cannot tell. Even a cheap fluorescent rubber ball left behind by some child looks as if it were shining like a jewel. I picked up the rubber ball and tried tossing it up a few times, but soon grew bored, and set off walking again.
Sweat seeps from the hand gripping my cane. Coming to this place so far from home, the joints all over my body always ache.
To an ordinary person, it is a trivial distance. But for these legs of mine, left crippled by an accident I cannot even remember, this outing of only a few kilometers is something special—like a small child's running away from home after making a great resolve, like a little journey. In the mornings and evenings, a fair number of cars carrying people to the city center pass by, but now it is utterly quiet. I stroll along the road, breathing in the forest air to my heart's content.
—Just then.
"...What is this?"
Red liquid drips bit by bit onto the road. Blood...? The still-wet dark red liquid, bathed in the sunset, gives off an eerie glow.
And then—the stench of a beast. The rank smell given off by a wild animal, so vivid I can almost hear it along with its breathing. Probably an oni—a being called an "oni." Spirits, yokai, and all ogres with horns—my father called them all by that name. Beings I have never been able to see or sense since childhood. Yet, almost by intuition, I understood that this was an "oni."
—Do not go near the forest at dusk.
There is also the possibility of a dog or cat unlucky enough to be run over by a car. But something other than reason denied that possibility.
Without even finding a reason myself, as if following the trail of blood, I could not stop my steps from carrying me into the forest against my will.