There are many factors involved in a human being’s birth.
Ideally, a child would simply come into the world as the result of passionate love between a man and a woman, but reality is rarely such a fairy tale.
My life was no different.
I was the product of a drunken fling between two people who were completely wasted.
The man who was supposed to be my father ran off before I was even born, leaving my mother to raise me alone.
That doesn’t mean my mother was a good person, either.
She didn’t have the money for an abortion, and she would drunkenly brag that she only kept me around for the single-mother subsidies. How could anyone look at a person like that and see a decent parent?
Every so often, she’d bring some new boyfriend home. Whether they beat me senseless or not, she would just sit there, giggling as she watched.
I was born to trash parents and raised in a trash environment.
It was only natural that my life turned out to be a mess.
No matter what I did, nothing ever worked out, and I found it far too easy to lash out and hurt others.
When I suddenly caught myself doing so and felt a wave of disgust, I felt a strange sense of relief—at least my conscience was functioning, unlike my parents'.
I had been born into this world without wanting to be, and I lived without wanting to. If that was my fate, then at the very least, I wanted to be able to die when I chose to.
So, I threw myself off a cliff.
But it seemed I was an idiot who couldn’t even die properly.
On the way down, I slammed straight into a branch that had grown out from the cliffside. My abdomen was torn open, my innards spilling out and scattering everywhere like the colorful strips of a firework. Yet, because the branch had broken my fall, I didn't die instantly.
It was horrifying. I knew I would eventually bleed out or die from shock, but until then, I had to endure the agony with a clear head. It would have been better to smash my head in and die cleanly.
In the end, I really was an idiot who couldn’t even die right.
I glared resentfully at the night sky beyond the cliff, wondering what the point of my birth had ever been.
That was when I sensed someone’s presence.
“...This is a first.”
It was unexpected.
Someone had appeared in the remote woods where I had come to die in secret.
It was a young man with a large guitar case slung over his shoulder.
He looked at my blood-soaked body sprawled on the ground, then shifted his gaze to the pieces of my organs caught on a branch along the cliff.
“Tried to kill yourself and failed, huh. Your insides are all spilled out, and you’re dying.”
For an ordinary person, it was a sight that would make them recoil in horror, but the man only calmly assessed the situation.
He was clearly surprised, but there was nothing beyond that, which was strange.
He carefully stepped over the scattered innards and approached me.
Then, leaning in close to my ragged breathing, he asked, “Can you still talk? It looks like it’s too late to save you, but if you still want to live, I’ll call an ambulance.”
The man held a phone in one hand, ready to make the call the instant I gave him a yes.
I had no idea why this stranger had suddenly appeared or why he was doing this, but I decided to answer.
“...No... need...”
I had already reached the point where I could barely feel the pain anymore.
It was too late to turn back, and even if I could be saved, I didn’t want to live.
The man looked at me for a moment, then put his phone away as if respecting my choice.
Then, he simply sat down beside me.
He just sat there quietly.
Was he planning to watch me draw my last breath?
I wondered why he had come to a forest that only those who had given up on life ever visited.
He didn’t look like a suicide candidate. And he certainly hadn’t come here just to play the guitar.
“Well, it feels a little odd to say this to someone who’s dying, but...”
The man, looking up at the night sky along with me, scratched his cheek awkwardly and spoke.
“Usually, I just offer prayers over dead bodies without permission, or I ask for permission before taking what I need. This is a bit different from my usual routine, but I suppose it's only right to do this properly.”
“...?”
The man, spouting nonsense I couldn’t comprehend, turned to me and said something even more baffling.
“Mister, what do you think about your body becoming someone else’s food after you die?”
“...W-what?”
I managed to ask back with lips that barely moved.
The man scratched the back of his head as if debating how to explain, then continued.
“I’ve got a bit of a situation. There’s a little girl, and she can’t eat ordinary food. Well, she can eat it, but she doesn’t get the nutrients she needs. The problem is that those nutrients are only found inside the human body. So, human flesh is a necessity for her.”
What the hell was that?
I’d never heard of such a grotesque condition before...
...No, wait.
I had.
The inhuman monsters said to live hidden in the city.
They survive by blending in with humans and feeding on them.
Their danger is immense, and there are real cases of victims, but because most people go their whole lives without ever meeting one, they are treated as little more than urban legends.
“A Ghoul...?”
Unless he was some depraved freak with a taste for human flesh, that was the only thing that fit.
The man didn’t deny it. He simply nodded, as if he saw no reason to hide the truth from someone who would be dead in a few minutes anyway.
“But you... look human...”
“That’s right.”
“Why would a human... feed a Ghoul...?”
“She’s my daughter.”
“...”
I was at a loss for words.
I thought this man, who casually called a human-eating monster his daughter, had to be completely insane.
But if he was insane, his eyes were far too steady.
There wasn’t a single trace of hesitation in his voice when he called that child his daughter.
“Ah, ha, ha!”
For some reason, laughter burst out of me.
Up until now, I’d lived the most painful life imaginable, and I figured the future would be just as miserable, so I had thrown my life away. It was a kind of escape.
And yet, that escape suddenly felt absurdly ridiculous.
Raising a monster that must eat humans as family!
There was a man living that kind of life, and I had chosen to run away over pain that was only this bad? The man wore a calm expression, but I couldn’t even imagine how horrifying the price of that calm must be.
I’d bet the rest of my ruined insides that something unseen was gnawing away at him.
Maybe even at this very moment, while he was facing me...
Cough, cough.
I started coughing. My diaphragm barely moved.
Just as I was thinking I was foolish for wasting my final strength on laughter, the man spoke again.
“You’re going to die anyway, Mister. Wouldn’t it be better to make a little girl smile brightly than to be buried in the dirt to rot, or get torn apart by hungry beasts?”
“...”
I’d been born from trash roots, lived a trash life, and thought I’d die a miserable death without even managing to do that properly.
But it seemed even someone like me could still do something.
With the last of my strength, I squeezed out a pointless question.
“Your daughter... is she cute...?”
“She’s ridiculously cute. Cute enough that I wouldn’t mind if she bit my eye out.”
“If I can disappear as food for such a girl... that’d be... an honor...”
With those words, my breath drifted away.
It felt like sinking into darkness. Even the stars in the night sky seemed blindingly bright.
I wanted to close my eyes, but my body no longer moved.
The man’s voice covered my eyelids for me instead, calm and gentle like a lullaby, or a prayer.
“May your body remain as someone’s sustenance, and may your soul reach rest.”
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register