I Felt Pain
I felt pain.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of a brain being eaten and entrails torn open.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of a human eating a human.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of robots made by humankind ruling the world.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of being left alone, dying through the long years.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of a self that was not me standing in my place.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of flesh pared away, atom by atom.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of entering a game staked on my life and being toyed with from the first moment to the last.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of being forgotten.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of a meteor falling, of dying before I could so much as lift a hand.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of the people I had killed, killing me.
I felt pain.
I felt the pain of giving up on thought itself.
I felt pain.
Pain…….
Pain….
Pai…….
Experiences of every kind. A trial of the imagination. The tedium of time.
I take a deck of magician's cards in hand and shuffle. I draw the top card. An ox, a man's four limbs bound, hauling them apart. Dismemberment. A mild one has come up. I throw the card. The pain will be carried out exactly as the card decrees, and the shuffle begins again. Until this shuffle ends, there will be no new pain.
"Pain... isn't anything special."
I let whatever thought rises simply fall out of my mouth.
"If it hurts, if it's hard, that's pain. Does it really need a meaning?"
A trial? Hardship? An ordeal? People wrap those words up nicely. They are not the same as pain.
"Any living thing hates to hurt. That's only natural."
Who enjoys bleeding and bruising? Who enjoys a heart worn down to nothing? Who enjoys a mind coming apart?
"And yet, strangely enough, we can't do without pain."
On the large scale it is bound directly to a creature's survival, and on the small it reaches all the way down to the lessons we learn. If it had never been necessary, wouldn't it have vanished long before human beings had any say?
"Well. I was born into a house where my back stayed warm and I could act as spoiled as I liked, so it feels a little rich for me to be saying this."
To anyone truly living a hard life, my words must sound like pretense. Like hypocrisy.
"Let's leave the discussion of pain to philosophers and historians. I'm an ordinary phantom thief. I don't care for complicated things."
Piercing a shield that absolutely cannot be pierced is one thing. A riddle like this, with no answer in it at all, isn't worth considering.
I draw a card. A man, cutting off his own arm and eating it. I throw the card. As it is drawn, so let it be done.
"Shall we toss the tiresome business aside and talk about something a little more constructive?"
Shrine maiden of Amaterasu.
She shakes. I look down at the shrine maiden who has buried her face against my knee. Tears and snot have made a mess of her, and she looks wretched for it—yet the original is so beautiful that even this becomes a picture.
"P-please spare me."
The shrine maiden drives her head into the floor. So that is a dogeza, straight from the homeland.
"I-I'll do whatever you tell me. Please, I beg you, spare me."
Flick. Flick. Flick. I shuffle the cards and watch a man eat his very last leg. There still seems to be time enough before he has to pull the heart out and eat that too.
"Why the sudden change of attitude? Where has all that dignity gone?"
"I-I was stupid. I failed to recognize an exalted one. Th-that's why."
"An exalted one..."
Flick. Flick. Flick. Every time the sound rings out, the shrine maiden's shoulders flinch, and her voice comes apart in a sob.
"E-exalted one—I was wrong! A g-god! I'm truly sorry for failing to recognize a god!"
Flick.
"Lift your head."
She moves a neck that creaks. Tears pour from her eyes like a waterfall.
"I am not a god."
"Yes! You are not a god!"
"Nor an exalted one."
"Yes! You're not!"
"Then what am I."
I fling the card I've drawn at a pair of gums clacking on empty air, every tooth already eaten away. The picture is a figure bound to a cross and burned. A witch hunt.
"Nothing more than an ordinary phantom thief, the kind you can find anywhere."
"Y-yes! O great Phantom Thief!"
"I'm not great, though..."
At the words I let fall quietly, the shrine maiden's eyes twist out of shape.
"Then please, grant me death!"
"Enough."
There is simply no talking to her.
Flick. Flick. Flick.
The conversation breaks off. Between the shrine maiden and me, only the sound of cards being shuffled remains.
"I..."
Unable to bear the silence, she carefully opens her mouth.
"Speak."
"Wh-what is going to happen to me?"
An unexpected question. I'm surprised by how low it sits.
"That is a very strange question."
"Pardon?"
I look into the shrine maiden's eyes.
"Have you earned the right to be curious?"
"............I..."
"I thought you were simply frightened. Apparently not."
Because she's Japanese, perhaps. The art of hiding what one truly thinks is first-rate.
"No! I harbor absolutely no impure thoughts!"
"Is that so?"
For all that, she seems to have something she's counting on...
Did I strike the nerve?
The shrine maiden's eyes waver.
"You didn't come alone, did you? Where are the rest of the small fry?"
"..............."
Her teeth knock together.
"And here you were, carrying on as if you'd hand over liver and gall both..."
Tok.
I drop a card at the shrine maiden's feet.
"Eek!"
She scrabbles backward, away from the card, as if she has seen a cockroach.
"The theatrics..."
I pick up the fallen card and hold it before her eyes. A four-character idiom is written there.
Tap. Tap. I rap the card.
"This is your heart, isn't it? So just tell me everything."
"............"
The shrine maiden bites her lip. Terror is eating her whole, and still her will to live is something fierce.
"I-if I tell you all of it, will you spare me?"
"Right to the end, then."
I shake my head. I draw a card—a body roasted whole. I fling it aside like trash and seize the shrine maiden by the head.
"Drag the time out all you like. It means nothing."
This is only the second page. An encyclopedia usually runs to several hundred, doesn't it?
"Until I've read every last one."
You and I will have to get along even better, won't we?
"I'm curious."
You, who do nothing but watch. How far can you hold?
"Feels like someone else's problem, doesn't it?"
You think you'll be different from that one?
"Go ahead. Try."
Try it.
"I won't lay a finger on you."
I'll ignore you.
"Few things are as meaningless as a quarrel over feelings."
You hardly ever see one.
"I still—"
—haven't let it go.
"So."
Let's each keep to our own time.
"W-wait! I-I was wrong!"
I turn my back. Sensing that something has gone badly wrong, the shrine maiden crawls after me. She cannot catch hold of me. However she crawls, the distance refuses to close.
"————!!!"
Scream as she will. Spit curses as she will. Howl in terror as she will. Nothing changes.
"I'm lacking, too."
To think I failed to capture my audience. As a phantom thief, one point off.
"But I did reflect."
One point on. The sum, therefore, is zero.
"I'll have to try harder."
The deck bursts from my hand with a pop, and a thick book appears in its place.
Rustle. I turn the first page. The second page lies open. Blank. A page without a stain. And what will ornament it is, as ever, mine to decide.
"What would I have to do—"
—for word to get around that I'd done well...
Uh. Ngh.
I can see the moon. Not pain. The moon.
"Ngh... huh?"
The words won't come out. No—they can't. Somewhere along the way, language stopped rising at all.
Haha. Why am I alive? It would have been easier if I'd died... I can't die, and so I will suffer forever.
"Not forever."
The moon is blotted out.
"Ngh! Ngh! Ngh!"
A mask. The Smiling Mask. I'm afraid. My body shakes. I have to get away from that thing. I don't know why. I simply—instinct screams it. If you want this to end, get away!
"And where do you think you're going? One ought to hear a person out to the end."
Clack. My body stops.
"Ngh! Ngh!"
"Eleventh Apostle. You held out admirably."
The mask opens the book. Flutter.
"You experienced pain spanning no fewer than ten pages. A new record."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"Endure only nine hundred and ninety pages more. And if you last through the afterword as well—"
You will be free.
How many pages...? Hahaha. ...It doesn't end. ...It can never end.
I cling to the mask's leg.
"Ki... ll... me."
Kill me. I'm begging you. If you want my soul, I'll sell it. If you want me locked in purgatory forever, I'll stay. I'll do anything. Anything. Please. Please. Kill this pain. Kill me...
The moon tilts, slowly, to one side, drawing an arc. The mask whispers.
"You want to be at peace?"
I nod. I nod.
"You want to die?"
I nod. I nod.
"Hmm..."
Whatever shall I do.
"There's still so much left..."
The mask flaps the book.
"And it would be such a waste..."
I hear a sigh.
No...
"Ki... ll... me...!"
I beg you. I pray to you like this!
"Truly?"
I nod, I nod!
"Then it can't be helped."
Snap. A rope takes shape in the empty air. And a chair.
"It was a fine meeting, Eleventh Apostle."
May the next life be an even better one.
The mask vanishes as if it had never been there. I crawl. Toward the chair. That is my oasis.
Thud. I scrape together every strength I have and every strength I don't, and climb onto the chair. I wind the rope around my neck. A crude, rough texture cinches my throat.
"Heh..."
Thud! I kick the chair away.
"Gk! Gk!"
I'm happy. I'm in ecstasy. Tears of joy stream down, and I throw my arms wide.
"Gk! Gk! Gk!"
It breaks. It severs. Little by little, it grows distant. My eyes close. An absolute utopia without pain draws near.
"Gk...!"
The moon disappears. Slack and dangling, my hands and feet come into view.
Hehe.
...Now.
It's o—
Snip.
"Now that I think of it, I really shouldn't cross the line."
—ver?
"Huh?"
"Regrettably, as a matter of simple human decency, I could not permit that choice."
I'm sorry.
A cold touch against my cheek. Utopia recedes.
No... Come back...!
The mask applauds.
The afterword? Eh. I'll knock that off, free of charge.
The mask laughs. The moon laughs. The dark laughs.
...I felt pain.
The pain of the world sneering at me.
I felt pain.
Ngh………
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"