The Long Road Ahead
The protagonist of No Longer Human apparently had terrible hearing. Even after I yelled at him to run, he just stood there frozen like an idiot. Only once I pulled out the bat and raised it did he finally stumble over himself, barely managing to open the door and bolt outside. Whether I'd scared him half to death or whether it was because the only exercise he'd ever gotten in his life was jerking off, his running form was painfully awkward.
"You've got a long way to go."
That was the day it started. It appeared like a ghost, terrified like a goblin, and flickered like a shadow—a mysterious something that existed everywhere and nowhere at once.
I was constantly anxious and on edge, always glancing around, sometimes gripped by paranoid terror that someone was watching me. At times it would open the window to my second-floor boarding room on its own and appear, forcing me to swallow a pill it called "Sapuri" along with a thick beverage. (From its frequent visits and the fragments of speech it uttered, I eventually learned that the pill was "Sapuri" and the drink was "Purochin.") Sometimes it would show up at the teahouse, snatch every drop of the alcohol I'd ordered and drink it all before vanishing without a trace. Even when I asked the waitress if she'd seen a large man, it seemed no one else could see him.
There was always a supply of those "Sapuri" pills in my pocket without my knowledge. Once I threw one away instead of taking it. Before I knew it I had fallen asleep and woken beneath a bridge, where a goblin making the sound "Shibaru" tormented me by forcing me to sit and stand, lie down and stand up, over and over. I call these "goblin dreams." It is a truly bizarre experience—suddenly waking in a deserted place, suffering the goblin's harassment, being forced to run, only to realize at some point that the dream has become reality.
The goblin can clearly hear. (When it appeared in my room, it heard the landlord's daughter climbing the stairs to the second floor and casually slipped back out the window. I then had to earnestly invent an excuse when she asked why I had left the window open on such a cold day.) Yet it doesn't seem to understand language. No matter how often I asked why it was tormenting me, or what Sapuri and Purochin were, it only awkwardly mimicked human speech and issued commands: Eat. Run. Sit. Stand. Lie down.
It was unmistakably like being plagued by an evil spirit, yet strangely the fear was fading. Perhaps this is the principle behind being unable to escape someone who treats you harshly. I believe it is because I sensed no malice from the goblin. Unlike humans who carry monsters inside, a monster on the outside might, so to speak, simply be compatible with me.
This guy is finally starting to put on some weight. Once again proving that most health problems boil down to proper nutrition and decent sleep. This is the first time in my life I've ever taken care of someone to this extent. I jumped into No Longer Human with the casual idea that a few good beatings would awaken his sense of manhood, but I'm beginning to regret it.
Thwack—!
Night had fallen and the protagonist was still awake, messing around with something instead of sleeping, so I knocked him out and pulled the blanket over him. He had school tomorrow. I checked what he'd been looking at instead of resting and found it was just a book. Naturally it was all in Japanese packed with kanji, so I couldn't read a word, but there were occasional illustrations of weird tigers, burly men, and tall wooden totem-like figures. Looked like a book on Joseon's youkai and legends.
I hadn't known the guy was into this kind of study.
"Well, anyway. Physical health is sorted, so now it's time for mental health."
This bastard used to gasp for air after running just ten steps. Now his escape speed is getting pretty decent. A guy who'd never exercised in his life has quit drinking, started eating properly, and even moves his body a little from time to time. The results are showing fast.
Still, I can't keep babysitting him until he dies of old age... Why did he lose focus on his studies and fall into a life of pleasure again...
"Ah."