No Longer Human
I lived a life steeped in shame. For as long as I can remember, I wore the mask of a clown, terrified of the unknown that lurked beneath the skin of what it meant to be human. From the time I was a child, women toyed with me, threatened me. I hid my true feelings behind frantic antics, kissing and sinning my way through the days. I painted a single, goblin-like picture of gloom.
Before others I played the fool, but inside my heart lived only disgust. No one else knew, but I was a creature stitched together from repulsive, loathsome guts. Skipping high school, lounging around my boarding house like a good-for-nothing, sending nothing but letters begging my older brother and sister for money—that was my daily routine when I met her.
She was the first person to plant the seed of love in my chest. Together we decided to die. We were two people bound by the kinship of the worthless, utterly exhausted with trying to live as humans in this world.
At the beach in Kamakura, she placed the sash she’d borrowed from a friend on a rock. I folded my cloak neatly beside it. We were walking toward the sea when I saw it.
A dark night ocean. A silhouette standing with the moonlight at its back. I couldn’t possibly think of it as human. There was no way I could have missed a person standing stock-still right in the middle of the sand, directly ahead of us.
Even when I looked away for a moment, the figure remained hazy, as if it might vanish, yet its presence was undeniable. Overwhelmed by that ghostly being, Tsuneko and I forgot how to breathe. We could only stop in our tracks.
The instant our eyes met the shadow’s, terror gripped my heart like ice. It knew my filthy true nature. We had merely locked gazes, but my soul understood with perfect clarity that the monster was staring straight at the disgust rotting inside me.
The flickering shadow held something glowing in one hand…
Stun Bat
Non-lethal aluminum bat. Inflicts no physical harm but instantly knocks out any target with a sufficiently strong impact.
Obviously I have no intention of killing the protagonist. He may be an idiot who keeps ruining his own life, but he isn’t exactly a bad person. Besides, I have zero desire to commit murder. Sure, I killed that talking pig, but that was an animal, not a person, right?
Still… watching the women whose lives he wrecks alongside his own makes me think he really is a piece of shit. He looks down on everyone like he’s somehow special, living with that pathetic mindset of “Ah, they could never understand me. They could never understand the real me behind this smiling mask.”
They sent him to Tokyo to study, and instead he becomes a regular at the brothels while drinking with delinquents. He blows through the living expenses his father sends in just a few days, then mopes around like he’s the tragic hero of some novel. I can’t stand it anymore.
“You little bastard. Time to beat some sense into that empty skull of yours.”
The life of No Longer Human ends today. Until you become A Man Worthy of Being Human, I’ll haunt your ass like a goddamn ghost.
I sprinted at full speed toward the still-frozen couple.
First, knock out the woman beside him.
I didn’t even need to swing hard. As I dashed past, I tapped the bat once against her forehead, then used the rebound to spin once and lightly tap the back of her head. Thud.
The dazed protagonist didn’t move an inch even as the woman he loved collapsed right in front of him. Come to think of it, later in the novel this guy runs to the rooftop and cries while his wife is being raped. Fine. While I’m at it, I’ll make him into a man worthy of being called a man, too.
I swung the bat at the idiot standing there like a scarecrow. My target wasn’t his head—it was his thigh.
Thwack!
“Itaaaah!!!”
Only after getting hit did the protagonist finally regain his senses. He screamed and crumpled to the ground.
Now that I think about it, I don’t actually speak Japanese. From anime I know “nigero” means run away, but that’s not the kind of thing I want to say to this guy.
> Thought Transmission Lv.1 activated
> Your intentions will now be conveyed more clearly to the target.
Whatever. With the Thought Transmission skill, he should understand me somehow.
“Get up, protagonist. You’re a man, aren’t you? Fight back.”