Irreversible Sadism (GL) - Chapter 2

I became aware of my abnormality when I was in the first grade of elementary school.

After failing to jump over the vaulting horse and hitting my stomach hard, I felt a sharp pain that made my breathing shallow and rapid.

I often watched anime where girls fought against bad guys. The girls in those shows always lost to the villains. Cornered, they would cough up bl00d, become covered in wounds, and be tormented by their enemies when they could no longer stand.

I watched those scenes with a gaze full of envy.

I wanted to experience something like that.

Among all the scenarios, I particularly liked the ones where they were slammed against walls or had their necks and bodies constricted.

I found it strange that I liked such things, but the moment I hit my stomach on the vaulting horse, it felt as if all the severed wires inside me had suddenly connected.

I liked pain.

On my way home from school, I would always throw myself onto the road. Imagining being struck by lightning or shot from a blind spot, I would pretend to die. In those moments, my bl00d would boil, and my breaths would become ragged.

I would rub my cheek against the ground to create wounds. I wore a skirt on purpose to scrape my knees. I even pretended to lose consciousness by slamming my body against a nearby wall.

Like the girls in the anime I watched, I would be overwhelmed by an insurmountable force, succumbing and feeling a thrill at the thought that this was happening to me.

When I lay on the road, sometimes a passerby would ask, “Are you okay!?” In those moments, my excitement would wane, and I would run away without saying a word.

To those who called out to me, I must have looked like a cicada at the end of summer. A person who had been lying there suddenly stood up and ran away. It was utterly abnormal.

Yes, I was abnormal.

I liked pain, and I liked suffering. The moment I collapsed without strength sent shivers down my spine. I enjoyed both prolonged suffering and the bliss of instant death without understanding. I liked piercing blows. However, I didn’t like being slapped in the face. It wasn’t just about the pain.

I didn’t know why. Perhaps the anime I watched simply didn’t depict such things.

That’s why Ruri-chan, who provided me with the perfect pain, was like a savior.

Ruri-chan would torment me almost every day. The violence she inflicted, alternating between suffering and pain as if she understood my peculiarities, felt as comforting as sleeping wrapped in feathers.

So I played my role properly. “It hurts, stop, please.” Even as I pleaded, there was no way she would listen. In front of me stood someone whose will was unyielding, someone who harbored hostility toward me. Just that alone excited me to the point of drooling.

When I had a fever and couldn’t go to school, I would wait for my mother to leave and tie my hands and feet with rope, or I would throw myself down the stairs. Yet, for some reason, it felt insufficient.

After all, it had to be Ruri-chan.

No matter how much I suffered or screamed, Ruri-chan never loosened her grip. Her relentless onslaught was endearing. I wanted more. I wanted her to teach me various kinds of pain. No one else could do it.

Only Ruri-chan could fulfill me.

It was after my eye was crushed and I was taken away in an ambulance that Ruri-chan fell silent.

The mechanical pencil that had stabbed into my eyeball was rendered useless and removed after surgery. They stitched me up and disinfected the area, and a few days later, I was to receive a prosthetic eye.

On the night of the surgery, my teacher, Ruri-chan, and Ruri-chan’s mother came to my house. My mother thought I had simply fallen and accidentally stabbed myself with the pencil, so she was very surprised when she heard the teacher’s explanation.

As a result of this incident, everything Ruri-chan had done to me was revealed to the teacher. One of her followers spilled the beans. The other followers apparently colluded to shift the blame, saying, “Ruri-chan forced me to do it.”

In the end, Ruri-chan was deemed the main culprit and came to my house to apologize.

Ruri-chan’s eyes were swollen and red. She might have already been scolded by the teacher and her mother. With a trembling voice, Ruri-chan bowed her head and said, “I’m sorry.”

Then Ruri-chan’s mother struck her head hard, saying, “You can’t just say sorry and be forgiven!” My mother, still bewildered, stepped in to calm the situation.

When I explained that my right eye, where the pencil had pierced, was already blind and that the eyeball had been removed, Ruri-chan’s mother began to cry. I didn’t understand the meaning of her tears, but they didn’t seem to be filled with sympathy for me; rather, they seemed to carry a sense of self-preservation.

Ruri-chan looked pale as she stared at me. Unsure of how to react, I lowered my face.

After that, the teacher and my mother discussed money matters. Perhaps only Ruri-chan and I didn’t understand.

The next day, when I went to school, I saw Ruri-chan watching me from a distance.

I hoped she would take me to the bathroom soon, but Ruri-chan remained seated at her desk, not moving at all.

I had even worn a swimsuit underneath.

Would she no longer submerge me in water?

Would she no longer stab me with a pencil?

“Tateha, you must not associate with Ruri-chan anymore.”

My mother condemned what Ruri-chan had done to me as bullying and told Ruri-chan herself, “Stay away from Tateha from now on.”

Ruri-chan’s followers quickly spread the word about the incident. By the time it had circulated throughout the school that Ruri-chan had stabbed my eye with a pencil, she was all alone.

During recess and when going home, there was no one around Ruri-chan.

When Ruri-chan started to show more bruises on her body, I heard through the grapevine that she was being abused by her parents. Apparently, after school, Ruri-chan would spend her time at a nearby shrine instead of going home.

Once, I went to see for myself. Ruri-chan was sitting alone in a squat in the dense woods of the shrine. A stray cat that lived in the grounds approached her curiously, but it seemed to lose interest when she didn’t react and wandered off. Several large flies landed on Ruri-chan’s arms. Still, she remained motionless, lost in thought.

From a distance, she looked so lifeless that I could have mistaken her for a corpse.

After that, Ruri-chan and I drifted apart, and we entered middle school without speaking to each other at all.

I enrolled in the nearby middle school according to the integrated system, but Ruri-chan was not there. She had transferred to a different school.

Peace and silence are similar yet different, and normalcy and boredom are quite close in nature. Each day solidified into a grayness like cement smoothed over with a roller, devoid of contours or colors.

The pleasure of writhing in dull pain and the delight of grimacing at sharp pain completely vanished.

Growth is about refining oneself. Just as a gem is polished to regain its original brilliance, we become adults by removing unnecessary parts.

I felt lonely. In the end, I hadn’t truly obtained what I wanted, but that was fine. As those around me straightened their backs, I too held my head high. Even if bits of eraser fell from my head, I wouldn’t pick them up. Everyone was no longer there.

Thus, I lived a middle school life that was neither poison nor medicine.

And now.

At the entrance ceremony of high school. The first homeroom in a new class.

As we took turns introducing ourselves, one girl stood up energetically and responded.

“My name is Miyama Ruri! I often listen to music! I really like going to CD shops, so I’d be super happy if someone could go with me! Nice to meet you!”

Ruri-chan, with a smile that seemed to have cleansed her past, looked quite different from the Ruri-chan I remembered from elementary school.

The last time I saw her, she had looked like a corpse, but the Ruri-chan in front of me now was cheerful, her voice bright, and after finishing her introduction, she turned to the girl behind her and said, “I was so nervous!”

Her hair had grown from a short cut to long, reaching her shoulder blades. Every time Ruri-chan moved, her hair swayed like sand dunes, reflecting the classroom lights as it spread and closed.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say she was the most beautiful girl in the class. Surely, among the boys, there were already those who had taken notice of Ruri-chan.

And then, Ruri-chan noticed me.

Her face turned pale in an instant.

I, too, had changed since elementary school.

I kept my hair short and no longer wore my favorite butterfly hairpin.

However, there were parts of me that hadn’t changed. The gaping hole that could not be altered.

Ruri-chan’s gaze was fixed on my right eye, which could no longer see light.

At that moment, I thought.

Ruri-chan and I would surely never be able to part.

If we were just friends, our relationship would eventually fade away like smoke when schools or environments changed. With time, we would forget each other’s faces and memories, and we wouldn’t even notice each other if we passed on the street.

But Ruri-chan, for the next ten, twenty years, until the end of our lives, would never forget me.

If we passed each other on the street, she would stop, look into my eyes, and then despair.

We are bound by a bond that transcends friendship, love, and family.

Every time Ruri-chan looks at this right eye.

As long as one of us is alive.

We are permanently connected.