Irreversible Sadism (GL) - Chapter 19

I learned that I was born not in a hospital, but in a toilet, the night before my parents told me they were getting a divorce. I overheard my father talking about it in the living room.

He must have said something like, “If you give birth, you have to raise the child.” At the time, I didn’t understand what was wrong with being born in a toilet, but gradually I realized it wasn’t normal.

Was it because I didn’t have a typical birth that I couldn’t become a normal person? If I had been born in a hospital, would I have been able to maintain a proper form and spread my wings?

However, my mother was raising me properly. There was always food when I got home, and I knew that my allowance was several times more than that of the other kids.

I was aware that I was being spoiled. My mother was kind. I had never experienced hardship in life.

“I’ll call a service to install rehabilitation equipment at home before you’re discharged. I talked to the doctor and summarized the exercises you can do alone in this notebook. If you don’t understand, just read this.”

I lay on the bed in the hospital room.

The hospital was filled with white everywhere, and every breath I took filled my lungs with the scent of ammonia. It was not very comfortable, and I felt that I would rather have been born in a toilet.

“My mother has to go back now, so there’s nothing else you don’t understand, right?”

“Yeah. Thank you, Mom.”

My mother, dressed in a red dress, seemed to float in the hospital room. The colors and the scent of roses felt like a singularity piercing through the world.

Three days had passed since I was hospitalized.

After I fell from the window, I was taken to the hospital.

By the time I woke up, I was already connected to an IV. According to the attending physician, my injuries would take two weeks to heal. I had a head injury with bleeding, but no significant abnormalities were found on the MRI, though I needed to stay in the hospital for a month for observation.

I had hit my neck hard when I fell, and they told me there might be some paralysis in my limbs.

As the doctor explained, I had some paralysis in my right leg. It wasn’t enough to prevent me from walking, but I often stumbled because my foot wouldn’t lift at unexpected moments. The paralysis might remain for life, but rehabilitation could allow me to walk as I had before. However, since the muscle mass in my right leg was likely to decrease compared to my left, which still had sensation, daily massages were necessary.

My mother summarized the rehabilitation exercises, including how to do the massages, in a notebook. Her face was serious as she listened to the doctor, asking questions repeatedly to ensure she didn’t miss anything.

A week into my hospitalization, my homeroom teacher and classmates came to visit me. Since it was already summer vacation, everyone was in casual clothes.

“I’m sorry for making you worry. I was careless.”

“You were way too careless! When Asami fell, I thought my heart would stop!”

Their voices echoed in the quiet hospital room, but the nurses turned a blind eye. Once they learned that I wasn’t in serious condition, my classmates left, relieved, leaving behind a bouquet of flowers.

“Thank you for coming, Ruri.”

Among the classmates who visited, only Ruri hadn’t said a word. When our eyes met as I lay on the hospital bed, her gaze was clouded like frosted glass.

Ruri seemed to want to say something, but when a classmate called her from the hallway, her trembling lips closed again.

On the day of my discharge, summer vacation had already ended, and the cicadas’ cries were beginning to fade. My mother, who was supposed to pick me up, was busy with work, so I headed home alone.

Even though I had continued rehabilitation during my hospitalization, the sensation in my right leg, especially around my thigh, was still vague, and I sometimes felt like I might fall.

As I wobbled home, I glanced at the road.

After falling from the window, I realized something.

It seemed that I didn’t want just any kind of pain that could make me lose consciousness. The sensation of nerves being burned away by gravity was intense, but it didn’t bring joy to the depths of my heart.

Perhaps it had to be something that involved human hands.

The sight of a body scattering in vain, the unreasonable situation where pleas went unheard, the feeling of submission while my head was pressed down, bl00d spilling from my mouth as my body was brutally hurt—if the pain didn’t come with those experiences, my empty spaces wouldn’t be filled.

Waiting for the light to turn green, I suddenly dashed into the road.

Gravity didn’t involve human hands. But what about a car? If a person was driving, pressing the accelerator, that process matched some of what I desired.

In the evening, when the sun was still high, a blinding light flashed before my eyes.

“Hey, that’s dangerous. What are you doing?”

The car didn’t hit me.

It stopped right in front of me, and a woman got out, looking worried about my safety.

Why wouldn’t she just press the accelerator?

This world is too kind. Kindness can’t open a hole in my world.

But perhaps that’s precisely why.

Kindness suppresses human pain. Avoiding pain is kindness, and surely, more people are driven by that.

That’s why I liked Ruri’s cruelty, which contained not a shred of kindness.

Ruri would no longer make me happy.

“Tateha!”

A voice calling my name swept past my ear like a gust of wind on the road, where the horn blared.

Hearing the voice and turning around happened almost simultaneously as I felt a hand grasp mine.

Seeing me pulled back from the road, the woman who had stopped her car returned to her vehicle, looking perplexed, and drove off.

Ruri was breathing heavily, her shoulders rising and falling audibly. I wanted to ask why she was here, but our eyes met.

Ruri slumped down, as if her legs had given way.

“Stop it.”

Her small voice blended with the pebbles that had fallen by the roadside.

“You said you’d change.”

I wanted to go home already, but Ruri wouldn’t let go of my hand. Even when I tried to shake off her trembling grip, she clung to me repeatedly.

“Why…!”

I didn’t understand the meaning of her tears. For Ruri, the biggest problem must have been that her past actions would be revealed to the class. However, that problem was easily overcome once Ruri accepted it herself.

This led to the collapse of our negotiations. Ruri would no longer bully me. In that case, our relationship should have already ended.

I didn’t need Ruri anymore. Her voice and form faded into the bustle of the town and the noise of the classroom. There was no need to keep holding onto the hands of classmates lost among the crowd.

“Say something, Tateha.”

It was already evening. The crimson sky stretched our shadows long.

“If you stick your face out of the window, it’s dangerous…”

Crows were gathered around a garbage pile in a side alley. Was it decaying food waste or some kind of carcass? Either way, it didn’t change the fact that it was lifeless.

“If you stand there, you’ll get hit by a car…”

In this world, there are creatures that seek the dead and creatures that seek the living. Who can say if there’s a hierarchy between the two?

“Let’s just stop…”

As if offering a prayer, Ruri pressed her forehead against the back of my hand. Her flowing black hair brushed against my arm repeatedly in the wind.

Ruri must have been born in a hospital.

That’s why she longs so much for the shape of a human. Even though she had crushed someone’s right eye, she was still capable of doing so. Ruri should be on the same side as me.

Why is she trying so desperately to change?

That’s why she can’t change.

Like a butterfly that couldn’t spread its wings and lived its life crawling on the ground, we, who had undergone incomplete metamorphosis, couldn’t change our forms. We couldn’t change our way of living.

Why doesn’t she realize that?

“Ruri.”

I could come up with countless fallacies. I understood what a normal way of living as a human was, even without being taught.

But what we sought was different.

That was all there was to it. It was just that I didn’t have the digestive organs to process what I could consume, but I could easily blend in.

It was just that this mimicry had a limit.

Thinking about things that would eventually decay drained my willpower. What meaning was there in postponing it?

“I can’t change.”

I had forgotten how to narrow my throat, which I always focused on when I spoke.

So, my voice came out low and flat.

“At least, I can’t.”

I pulled my hand away from Ruri, who had lost her strength, and set off on my way home.

Forgetting to look back, I glanced back at the path I had come from at the corner. Ruri had already stood up and was walking away, wiping her eyes.

Her back was small, trudging along with a feeble gait.

Why does she care about me? Ruri’s atonement should have already ended.

In the palm of my hand, where Ruri had held me, there remained a faint warmth like residual heat.

I raised my hand to try to erase it, but the September night breeze was still too warm to cool it down.