What's Left of Me
After I opened my eyes in this place, the first thing I did was deny reality. Of course I did.
But the girl's memories and emotions still lingering in my head, the novel I'd been reading in my room only moments before, the tiny cell surrounding me and the mirror on the wall—all of it dragged me back down soon enough. When days pass and you still can't leave the room, when you keep staring at the only reflection you have, acceptance stops being a choice.
Anyway. This is a place where people live, at least. Assuming I still count as a person. What I mean is, it's livable enough, in its own way.
I'm locked up, sure, but as long as it isn't something dangerous, they'll try to get me whatever I ask for, and sometimes they even serve special meals. The list of things I hate has gotten a bit longer, though. Memories. This cramped little room. Affection. The iron door bolted to my wall. Recollections. Syringe needles. Promises. Sharp things. Love. Blades. Electric current... and myself, too. Though I'm not sure I can still call this me.
I tried smiling at the mirror. My face isn't there. Sometimes—very rarely—I catch a glimpse of how I used to look.
I gave my head a little shake to clear out the useless thoughts and got up from the bed. Whenever I think about the old days, my skull starts throbbing, a dull ache blooming behind my eyes. And more often than not, it isn't even my face I see. Like a little girl—me, or rather, the little girl whose body this is—running through a snow-covered village with a mischievous-looking kid, laughing so brightly.
I look at the mirror. I pull a slight pout, and the girl pouts back. I made that face. Then I smile, and the girl breaks into the brightest smile—the kind of beautiful smile that could make anyone fall in love. At the very least, I don't think I was ever someone who could smile like that.
Hair so white it might as well have been boiled in bleach spills over her shoulders and falls all the way to her waist. Her slightly cooled eyes have a dried-out quality to them. They're stained red, yes, but there's not a trace of life in them—like someone dumped a heap of red watercolor onto a palette and left it sitting there for months. Shriveled. Desiccated. Eyes that feel nothing at all.
She's around middle-school age, I think. Withered as she is, the face underneath is reasonably beautiful. What was her name again. It doesn't match the look at all—Yu Harin. No. Subject 11.
I'd been staring into the mirror for quite a while when I realized someone was outside the door. Our eyes met through the glass, and a voice came through.
"Subject 11."
The sound came from the speaker mounted on the ceiling, of course.
"You pulled this yesterday too. Have you decided to just ignore me now?"
"If you'd like to talk, wouldn't it be nicer to come inside and share a cup of coffee while we chat?"
"I don't have a hobby of committing suicide."
What does she think a starved, withered little girl who can barely eat could possibly do to her.
"How's your condition today?"
"Not particularly good, as always."
"I'll send in the cuffs like always, so put them on and come out. If you try anything stupid, it won't end with just starving you like last time. Consider yourself warned."
"......"
From somewhere in the ceiling, a pair of restraints shaped like a square box dropped down with a thud. Cuffs that lock automatically the moment you put your hands in the holes. I pretended to slip my hands in, then hurled the whole thing at the iron door.
"Oh, and today's a durability test."
"...Couldn't I have even a single day off?"
The woman watching me through the small acrylic window set in the iron door merely offered a lukewarm smile.
"I'm sorry, but when you refuse to cooperate like this, our hands are tied. Regulations, you understand."
With that, a loud hissing filled the room as it began to flood with a bright yellow gas. I couldn't breathe. My entire throat felt like it was burning. I shoved my hands into the box as fast as I could, then raised them high so she could see them clearly.
"Th-they're on, see?!"
And then I started screaming. There aren't many things as horrible as the feeling of suffocating.
"Ghhhk—eckk..! They're on, f-fuck, they're already on, aaaagh! So just—this—please!"
I twisted my whole body, desperate to suck in even a scrap of air, but the world in front of me was slowly going dark.
Honestly, I'm a little pissed off. At first I denied it—the fact that I'd fallen into a novel. That my gender had suddenly changed. That I was being called by a number instead of a proper name. And most of all, I hated that I'd been living in this fucked-up place for almost half a year and was slowly getting used to it. Used to it enough to make small talk with a researcher, just like I did a moment ago.
Come to think of it, I never wrote "gas" in my notebook of things I hate. If I make it through today, I'll find a way to squeeze it onto that already-packed list.
In my fading vision, the mirror showed me crying from only my right eye.
A ceiling I know all too well—the same goddamn ceiling—fills my vision. The distinctive multi-bulb surgical lamp of an operating room was shining down on me. After opening my eyes, I looked around and saw two humans in blue surgical gowns.
"She's finally awake. Team Leader Ju, didn't I tell you to wake her up if possible when you bring her in?"
The woman called Team Leader Ju let out a sigh as she answered.
"She was refusing to come. What was I supposed to do, Department Head?"
"She's still a child. You should treat her kindly."
The man approached me and reached a hand behind him without looking. The woman, as if well-practiced, took several sharp needles with wires attached from a prep table piled with surgical instruments and handed them over.
"What was our Subject 11's name again?"
"......"
I kept my mouth shut, the memory of the gas flooding my lungs and my whole body going rigid still too fresh.
"Doesn't matter if I don't get an answer. The drugs are pretty strong, after all."
The man casually stuck the needles he'd been handed into various parts of my body. Both arms until they looked like a porcupine. Two in my head. One in my forehead. Several more in my thighs. Then he told the woman to flip the switch.
And before long, a bone-chilling current began to course through my entire body. At first, it was bearable. They call it a durability test, but it's torture by any other name—and it didn't take long for the screams to tear out of me.
The woman called Team Leader Ju started jabbing a sharp spear into my thighs and around my shoulders.
"...Ghhk, gyaaaaaaah!!!"
Thrashing and screaming didn't mean a thing. No matter how hard I strained, I wasn't getting off this operating table, and there was no one coming to save me no matter how loud I screamed. The only thing I could do was stick out my tongue. Whenever it feels like I'm about to die, they have me stick out my tongue here. Because then they'll give me anything. Painkillers, narcotics, whatever it takes.
After I stuck my tongue out again and again, the man stopped sending electricity through my body, pulled the sword out of my stomach, and came over to check my eyes, the inside of my nose, my mouth—every opening he could find.
"Team Leader Ju! Did you actually give her the codeine?"
"Ah, I forgot. I knocked her out to bring her here."
"Put a gag in her mouth and hook her up with morphine too. I don't like watching a kid suffer."
"That said, I'd call this experiment a success."
The two of them, speaking so casually in gowns so soaked with blood you could barely call them white anymore, looked thoroughly grotesque. But here, this was everyday life. When there are people who shoot fire from their hands, fire lasers from their eyes, or bring someone whose entire body has burst apart back from the brink of death in an instant—this much is just routine. Probably.
In any case, people with those kinds of abilities were vanishingly few. So few that the moment the government found them, they'd either dump them in the military or forcibly ship them off to a school filled with nothing but kids like that.
The protagonist—my friend—was that kind of person. And I was not.
I should have just felt a little disappointed about that and been content with the fact that I'd at least been childhood friends with someone that special. It's funny saying it out loud, though. It's not like we completely split up. It's not like we'd never see each other again. We could've just texted. I could've visited the school during breaks, or just dropped by now and then.
But I guess the old me couldn't be satisfied with just that—wanted to stay by the protagonist's side badly enough to become a lab animal. She probably never imagined the experiments would be like this, though.
Still, she must have felt it—that gradual neglect. Day after day, every time she went to visit. He's the protagonist, after all. Swept up in every incident imaginable, with people throwing themselves at him because they like him. Someone like me wouldn't even register. If he'd come to see me first even three or four times a year, maybe I wouldn't be here like this right now.
"Nnh."
A strangely floating sensation washed over me. The pain vanished, and drowsiness began to pull me under.