The Me Who Was Left Behind
When I opened my eyes, I found myself back in the room once more, dressed in a thick cloth dress well suited to hiding scars.
Rather than launching into a litany of complaints, I walked over to the desk, pulled a notebook from the drawer underneath, flipped it open to a random page, and wrote.
gas
I slid the notebook back into the drawer and looked around the room. Someone had come in and given the place a cursory cleaning, but yellow powder still clung here and there. The acrid, stale air made it feel as though my breath had lodged itself beneath my sternum.
Something itched. I touched the area around my stomach and found a hole large enough to fit three fingers — filling in, little by little. The drugs hadn't worn off yet, apparently. I couldn't feel any pain. That wasn't so bad, in its own way.
I'd be quite happy if only this wall in front of me weren't here.
I drove my fist into it. All I felt was a uselessly soft give. And feeling that softness, a jumble of emotions I had no reason to feel — pointless pride, jealousy, wretchedness — tangled together until they curdled into resentment toward the protagonist.
If that kid had never existed in the first place, "I" wouldn't have ended up this miserable, and Yu Harin — which is to say, me — wouldn't have become quite so unhappy. If I so much as whispered a thought like that out loud, I felt like my lips would split and fall right off.
When you think about it, the numbers just don't add up. How the fuck is this world supposed to be a novel? Every single person here has their own personality, their own story — and the so-called protagonist hasn't shown his face even once. My parents wasted away and died. The house and the money we had were stripped away by the local gang. I became a girl with no one left to help her, who'd given up on everything — all because I'd been reading a fantasy novel. That's just too absurd.
This isn't a novel after all.
Then what am I? The ramblings of some discarded girl who got used as a lab animal until she finally lost her mind? For that, I've still got quite a few memories of my own. Not Yu Harin's memories. Mine. The real me.
I don't hate cramped rooms — I find them cozy. Toward my childhood friend, I don't feel longing or tenderness so much as a sliver of hatred, and the thought that I'd like him to show his face just once. Because if it were him, he could get me out of here.
Anyway, what happens to me if things stay like this? I die, I suppose. Dying is the only part I remember. I mean, what reader is going to be devastated because some childhood friend who got a single throwaway line ended up dead? They'd just think, oh, so that's why the protagonist is so angry, and move right along.
That's how worthless I am in this world. It wasn't always like that — but the fact that not a single person has come to rescue me from the Research Lab says otherwise. The protagonist, the one people would risk their lives to save after nothing more than a passing brush of sleeves — half a year has passed, and he's left me rotting here like garbage and forgotten I exist.
Some of us crawled into a place like this wanting to become just like you.
That's how little I must be worth remembering.
Whenever I think like this, my own face always blurs. Even when I look in the mirror, I can't see the me with bleached-white hair and red eyes. Just a terribly faint reflection. Maybe what's showing is the me who prefers coffee from a disposable capsule over the milkshakes I used to drink with my childhood friend.
If I had to fall into a world like this, I wish I'd at least been given something. Probably not. No. If there were something, they would've left it somewhere I could see it from the start. The power to burn this wretched building to the ground in a single stroke, or to send me back to before I fell this far. Or maybe if I'd been an Awakened overflowing with self-assurance. That might've been something.
I want coffee. Not just espresso — something like a dolce latte or an Einspänner. Or I wish there were at least a piano in this room. Instead of the pleasure that comes flooding in from the drugs, I want to feel joy while listening to something beautiful.
It's a bit grand to call it rage. It's just some childish, petulant thing. I'm probably angry, though. I just don't know at whom.
I clutched my throbbing head and rolled around on the floor for a long while, until the drugs surged back stronger and seemed to melt the headache away. Drooling, face planted in the floor — that wasn't so bad either, in its own way. Especially since it meant I didn't have to think.
I was basking in that quiet, faintly trembling, unpleasant kind of pleasure when a voice shattered the stillness.
Two guards were walking down the hallway, snickering, cheap instant coffee in their hands. One of them was a face I didn't recognize. A new hire, probably.
I got up, walked over to the iron door, and spoke to them.
"Excuse me."
"Ignore her and keep walking."
The familiar-faced man said it with a look of barely contained tension, trying to hurry past.
"Excuse me, sir. Could you perhaps bring me a cup of coffee as well?"
The new one reacted to that. I barely managed to keep the corners of my mouth from lifting.
"She's just a kid, though. A drink wouldn't hurt..."
"At times like this you shut up, don't look, and walk. They told you never to make contact with the test subjects."
So frantic. I'm rather frantic myself.
"It's all right if you just give me the one you're drinking. Being locked in a cramped place like this every day, I find myself wanting to chat, even just a little."
At that, the new hire holding the coffee looked at me. The moment our eyes met, his face went blank, and he nodded.
"Rookie, no matter what you hear, don't go over th— ah, fuck."
And then the little hatch — the one that only opened when they handed out special meals — swung open. Apparently that tiny opening didn't have a lock on it.
It isn't as though all I've done here is get tortured. This place isn't even that kind of irrational human experimentation facility, to begin with. This is a research lab for creating Awakened individuals artificially. It's a fucked-up place that has orphans who don't know any better stamp a form and then drags them in to use as lab animals — but it's still affiliated with a reasonably legitimate research institution.
And I was, in my own way, a successful test subject. Severe self-loathing and a slightly impulsive streak, sure — but those were minor side effects. The fact that I'd awakened an ability was certain. Which meant I was too successful a specimen to dispose of just for killing a few guards or some clumsy new researchers. I at least had the kind of ability that could put down several ordinary humans in an instant.
I shoved my fingers into the bleeding wound and tore it open. Fresh blood welled from the hole, then surged through the little meal hatch in a sudden, violent jet — and in an instant, punched straight through the rookie's skull.
He hung there limply in midair, impaled on a thread of red, and I thought he looked rather ridiculous.
The familiar face didn't scream or reach for the gun at his hip. Instead he flipped on the radio at his chest and started screaming about sealing off Sector A, this and that. I shot a jet of blood like a bullet and smashed the radio, but the message had probably already gone through.
Meanwhile, the rookie staggered, pulled a keycard from his jacket, and held it up to the door's lock. I watched the door open with that distinctive electronic beep, stretched long and slow, and stepped out.
The whole time, the man had been clutching the shattered radio and screaming — one of the test subjects had smashed through the door and crawled out of her room, he was saying. He stared blankly at the radio that had been reduced to dust, then looked at me, drew the pistol from his hip, aimed with surprising composure, and pulled the trigger.
It only grazed the skin, though. That was all. He'd drawn blood, at least. That counted for something, didn't it?
Muttering something under his breath, he threw the pistol — pointless as it was to keep holding it — at my face. Honestly, that hurt more. I don't know why, but it seems I can absorb the impact of something flying at high speed, yet I can't stop something that comes slowly, or something that stabs.
"What the hell is so great about this monster that they still...!"
"You know perfectly well why they keep me alive. Incidentally, I wonder what punishment I'll receive this time. I'll try, of course, but I suspect I'll be caught halfway through."
"Fucking lab rat..."
"Hmm."
I couldn't understand, with a mind like mine, how someone could say something so cruel. So after bursting the rookie, I gave his head a little poke with a spear of blood. I rummaged around inside his skull for a while, but all I could feel was emotion. A little disappointing.
Anyway, getting your head poked doesn't kill you right away. You just stagger around unnaturally, like an ant being puppeted by a parasite. He'll burst and die on his own soon enough, just like the rookie.
A sensation I hadn't felt in a long time made my fingertips tingle. Excitement, I suppose you'd call it. Aside from this, I can't think of a single good thing that's come from changing genders.
Anyway, with a sound like a balloon popping, the staggering man burst apart as well.
I looked around. A long red corridor. White fluorescent light. And my own body — clean, jarringly so, against the scenery. And from far off, the sound of a siren.
I was only throwing a little tantrum. I was on drugs, too, so that's diminished capacity, isn't it? They'll take that into consideration, surely.
Probably.