It's Not My Fault
I couldn't say how much time had passed.
The clothes that had once been stark white were soaked through with blood, rotting into black, and below the thighs there was nothing left that could even be called fabric. The smell stabbed at my nose.
I was keeping up a remarkably composed appearance, but only one thought kept circulating through my mind: that I wanted to get out of here, and soon.
In whatever form that took.
That day, too, I was probably watching Team Leader Ju the same as always—raking a live electric prod through my skull, then taking an axe to my thighs. I knew that speaking would only make the pain unspeakably worse, but the words slipped out before I could stop them.
"Having fun?"
"Yeah. A lot. Makes me feel like my life has meaning, you know? Satisfies the revenge. Kills the stress."
"Your boyfriend—was he that new guy?"
He'd been fairly handsome, I think. Hard to remember, though, after he exploded.
"No. An older guy. Chain-smoker, only ever drank instant mix coffee, always nagging me to quit my job and just get married. Said he'd raise the kids himself, so I should just keep working."
"You should've. Then you wouldn't have ended up de—ghk, hh—"
With a wet chop, the blade sank into my right thigh again. I kept talking even as the axe-head fell toward my leg over and over. I ought to have been used to it by now.
"Yeah. I should've. And you—what was that name again. Anyway, you should've tried harder with that childhood friend of yours. Hung on however you could. Thrown yourself at him. Played cute. The whole routine."
Then she pressed the severed faces back together, and with a squelching sound they began to knit themselves shut again.
How did it come to this. A little electricity through the head shouldn't have been enough to turn someone into this.
"You two were together that long, and you still ended up a freak like this. No wonder you got dumped."
I don't think I'm the freak. I think this basement made me this way. I've always had a thoroughly composed and gentlemanly disposition, after all. Though calling myself a gentleman feels a little hollow, given what's missing down below.
So is there really no one out there who'll come pull me out of here. If they just got me out, I'd lick the mud right off their boots. Though they might find that too filthy and refuse.
"So I really was abandoned, then."
"Don't worry about it. You're never getting out of here anyway. When you die, they won't even bury you. They'll just take you apart and pass the samples around."
I'd been thinking I wanted to get out of here somehow, but hearing something like that, I couldn't help thinking I didn't want to die like this.
"That's... a pretty fucked-up thing to say."
She snorted at that, then shoved the gag back into my mouth. I wanted to say something. At first I hadn't spoken because I was afraid of the pain. Now I couldn't speak no matter what they did.
"You should have read the contract more carefully. All we received was the right to do as we please with your body. Whatever takes place in this laboratory constitutes research."
I figured she'd ramble on like a lunatic again today and then get back to sawing, so I stared at the ceiling and let it go in one ear and out the other. But today, besides the metallic scrape of tools against floor and wall, besides the wet, sticky sound of her footsteps, a rather new sound reached me. New, especially, in that it wasn't my own screaming—a sound like the building itself coming down.
"And that childhood friend of yours won't even know you're de—huh..?"
The wall shuddered for a long while, then suddenly melted away. Like lava, quite literally. The molten iron met the blood pooled across the floor, and the room filled with that distinctive raw stench unique to blood.
I turned my head and saw a person wearing a Rabbit Mask.
"See? I told you there weren't any more kids. It's a lab, sure, but these are kids with no abilities at all. There's no reason to lock them up in a basement like this......hmm."
In her hand was a pistol with rather ornate decorations. Our eyes met. Ordinary black eyes, faintly upturned. They looked strangely full of life. Like someone carrying a mission.
"Looks like you were right. I'll clean up a bit and come right up."
Watching the eyes behind the mask flicker, a thousand thoughts ran through my head, but the conclusion was simple. No matter how the situation changed, I was going to get out of here.
Team Leader Ju stood frozen for a long time with a slack, stunned look on her face, but the moment she grasped what was happening she gripped the axe and charged the Rabbit Mask. Two small gunshots later, she clutched her legs and went down. It was a more pathetic sight than I'd expected.
"Researchers are fine to just kill, right?"
I tried speaking to the Rabbit Mask, who was walking toward the fallen Team Leader Ju while still on a call.
"Ghk, nngh...hh."
Right. I was still wearing the gag. The thought hit me mid-sentence and I couldn't help laughing. Whether she heard the laugh or not, the mask finally turned to look at me. I could only see the eyes, but I was sure the expression behind them was one of shock.
The woman kicked Team Leader Ju in the head, then came over to me and tried to undo the straps on my arms and legs. When they wouldn't come loose, she pulled out a knife and cut them. These people had never intended to let me go in the first place. It wasn't a buckle system—they'd just taken thick leather straps and nailed them in while I was asleep.
"How could they do this to kids......"
It had been a while since I'd had anything to drink. Either they'd laid the chair back and poured water into my nose, or they'd punched a hole in my throat and poured it in that way. That was all. I wish they'd at least used bottled water. Instead they'd sprayed me with tap water that had that distinctive rusty smell, from a hose.
Being alive with nothing entering your mouth is a fairly horrible feeling. Give it about a week and it's probably far worse than having your legs chopped off with an axe.
Anyway, I cleared my throat, but it wouldn't loosen at all. Like something had dried out and twisted itself into knots. I grabbed my shredded right leg, pulled a bottle of water from the fridge where Team Leader Ju kept her drinks, and chugged it like a madwoman.
Meanwhile the mask seemed to be on the phone with a colleague. She kept glancing over at me.
"...I found one, just like you said."
There was a hint of tears in her voice, and anger too.
"Looks like they were experimenting on her in here. It's cutting it a little close, but I'll calm her down and bring her out right away."
She even snapped at the colleague on the other end.
"Shut up. You think you can just pull someone out of a place like this and they'll be fine?!"
It wasn't even something that had happened to her. Maybe it was how I looked. I was probably a fairly gruesome sight. Right leg hanging in tatters, the stench of rot rising off my whole body, and those two red eyes that had died a long time ago looking even more lifeless than a butterfly rotting in a spider's web.
The biggest factor was probably that I looked young. But I'd always been this way. If you asked me what "always" even meant, I'd be a little stuck—but at least the reason I ended up locked in here was that I'd been abandoned. By the world. By myself. And by my one and only friend.
The woman finished her call, came over, and pulled me into a tight hug, patting my back. It felt remarkably warm. Probably because her chest was pressed against me.
I didn't suddenly start sobbing in her arms or anything. I wasn't the age for that, and besides, a little too much had happened. Whatever sentiment I'd had left had dried up completely. I was going to save my tears. I'd already shed so many since being locked in here that my eyes might have just gone dry. Those red eyes that used to be so full of life had rotted away like this, after all.
Anyway, with various words of comfort—and the insistence that we needed to get out of here quickly—the woman scooped me up and stood. The stench of rot must have been overwhelming, but she held me without the slightest hesitation. It was rather moving.
What she did next, I was less fond of.
The woman pulled the pistol from her hip again and aimed it at Team Leader Ju's head. And I drew up as much of the blood on the floor as I could and blasted the gun away. The mask looked at me with startled eyes. I wish I could have seen the whole expression, but all I could see were the eyes.
"I appreciate you untying me, but this is something I have to do myself."
Two bullets in the legs and she can't think, can't speak, just whimpers and begs to be spared? So that's all the love she had for that old guy amounted to. Even when I was writhing around before my arms and legs had grown back, I'd been thinking about my childhood friend.
I had malice to spare, but I simply packed her ears full of blood and climbed down from the woman's arms. I wanted to see her on her knees, begging. The moment that thought crossed my mind, she clutched her aching thighs and started rubbing her hands together at me in desperate apology—and then her head swelled up and went pop, bursting apart.
The blood clinging to the ceiling began to fall, at first like rain, then drop by drop.
"Ha."
More hollow than I expected. Looking at this woman's face, I'd thought revenge would feel satisfying. Maybe I had the wrong target.
In the end, I don't know why I ended up suffering like this. Whose fault is it.
At any rate, it is absolutely not my fault.
Even if it is. Absolutely not.