Dark Past (3)
Nothing fazed me. Not the pain that felt like a thin, writhing centipede burrowing just beneath my skin. Not the sharp curses and stones occasionally hurled our way. Not the bone-deep chill. Not the hunger gnawing at my stomach. Not the crushing weight of exhaustion. Compared to the murky despair of being abandoned once more, all of it was nothing.
Back when my younger sibling was still too little to understand much, they used to ask me about Mother and Father—what kind of people our parents had been. Every time, I would brush it off, claiming the memories were too old and hazy. But that was a blatant lie.
I remembered everything clearly. When and why they cried or laughed. What foods they liked. How they passed their idle hours. The way they used to look at us. And the exact words and expressions on their faces the moment they shook off my hand—I could recall them as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.
I’ll definitely come back for you.
Now I know those words were nothing but cheap lies. Or rather, even back then my head had understood the truth, but I simply hadn’t been able to accept the cold reality.
Someone once said that to a child, parents are the entire world. It sounded plausible enough. After all, in that instant, my world had essentially been erased. The overwhelming sense of collapse—as though the very ground I stood on had vanished beneath my feet—had stolen so much from me, only to toss back a few worthless scraps of realization before fading away with a smug little chuckle.
Don’t expect anything. Don’t hope for anything. Don’t reach for someone else’s gentle hand to cradle your weakness. Become strong. Strong enough that you never need to lean on anything. Strong enough to stand on your own without clutching anyone’s hand. In this unfair world, there is no god who will look upon your misery with pity.
When I first learned that my name—Triana Abigail—contained the meaning “God’s joy,” the words that slipped out were, “What a load of bullshit.”
If this wretched life of mine was nothing more than the deliberate shaping of some being we call god, and if it was merely one of his pastimes to relieve his boredom, then he had one hell of a hobby. As one of his creations, I felt like cursing him out loud.
Even so, I could no longer withdraw the hand I had once extended in search of help.
“N… Na…”
“It’s all right, Victim. Uncle… Uncle will come for us soon…”
My sibling still didn’t know. I wished they never would. The pain of being cast aside by someone you relied on. The loneliness of being left alone in the world. Unlike me, whose old wounds had already festered and burst open long ago, I wanted my sibling to be spared that agony.
“Uncle’s just busy right now and can’t contact us, that’s all.”
A lie.
“He sends letters every single day! He’ll bring a priest who can cure us and come all the way here!”
A blatant lie.
“Uncle didn’t abandon us.”
A cheap lie.
The sight of me endlessly spinning lies to reassure my sibling had, at some point, become eerily similar to the way our parents had looked when they abandoned us. That disgusting habit of blurting out sweet words I could never fulfill must have been repulsive to behold. It was almost fortunate that my sibling, whose curse and illness had spread to their eyelids, couldn’t see me in that state.
Scratch, scratch. Lulled by the peculiar sound of ink mixed with water being scribbled onto crumpled paper scavenged from the trash, my sibling would drift off to sleep. That had been our daily routine roughly a year after Uncle cut off his support, right after the two of us had been struck by an unknown curse and plague.
In truth, I had already resigned myself to everything long before. I had come to believe that Uncle had completely abandoned us. The letters I wrote every day without fail were nothing more than a means to keep my sibling at ease. I didn’t feel resentment or disappointment. Plenty of people might toss scraps to a stray cat, but very few would ever bring the filthy creature into their own home. Someone had simply come and gone without a word.
Maybe he ran out of money. Maybe some unavoidable circumstance arose. Or perhaps he simply grew tired of us. Even if I wanted to guess the reason, there was no evidence to go on, so the blank white space could only be filled with imagination. After all, ours had been a relationship that exchanged nothing but money—an entirely one-sided connection with not even a single proper reply.
I thought this hollow ending was only natural.
“Cough, cough!”
Black blood spilled out with the cough and ruined the precious letter paper I had managed to obtain, yet I felt nothing. Chewing on the heavy silence, I simply stared at the paper as it darkened.
Swish. I carefully unfolded the old note I always carried in my bosom like a talisman.
[Happy Birthday]
Whenever things grew difficult or painful, looking at this note would give me a little strength. But now—
“Hic, hic… Ugh…”
Instead of strength, only uncontrollable sobs came flooding out.
Rip. Rip. Before long, I tore the note to shreds.
Thud.
Right after that, a suspicious sound came from my sibling’s bedroom.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The decrepit church stood far from the orphanage. It was the place where my sibling and I, afflicted by plague and curse, had been quarantined—the final “reward” the director had tossed our way as thanks for everything she had earned from us. The village children called it “the coffin,” a grim name that wasn’t entirely wrong. Large holes gaped in the walls, mold and rats swarmed everywhere, and the stench of death hung in the air.
Still, small and foul-smelling as it was, it had beds and blankets. Edible herbs grew here and there. It was just barely livable for two children whose appetites had shrunk from illness—nothing more, nothing less.
It was cold on cold days, hot on hot days, and flooded whenever it rained, but it was still far better than sleeping in a cave crawling with wild animals. Those flaws were tolerable.
The one flaw that couldn’t be ignored was its lack of security. Thieves could occasionally break in, and we were far too powerless to stop them. Yet I had thought there was no need to worry—surely no fool would willingly step into a space inhabited by the cursed and diseased.
Yes. I had thought so.
“Wh-who’s there?!”
Gripping the rust-covered herb-gathering knife tightly, I stared anxiously at the unidentified light leaking from the bedroom where my sibling slept. The shape of the shadow rippling along the light’s edge. Judging by its size, there was no doubt a sturdy adult had entered the house.
“I-I have to protect them! I have to protect them!”
I wanted to grip the knife handle properly with both hands, but half my body refused to obey because of the curse. No matter how desperately I poured strength into my trembling hands, all I could manage was not to drop the small blade.
“Hah, hah…! Hah…!”
A sudden intruder in a crumbling church. Someone who clearly hadn’t come for money. What they might do to a half-paralyzed child was obvious. The conclusion that followed that dreadful suspicion was terrifyingly violent.
“K-kill… I have to kill…! I have to kill…!”
It was heavy. The knife itself weighed no more than it had when I used it to cut herbs, yet the moment I let my guard down even slightly, it felt as though my wrist would snap like a twig under the crushing weight pressing on my mind.
My breathing grew ragged, my mouth dried out, and my once-clear vision narrowed, blurred by sweat or tears—I couldn’t tell which.
“Hic, hic! S-someone… someone please… ngh! H-help me…”
It was a pathetic sight. I was pleading for help in a voice so small that no one could possibly hear it. I wanted to run. To drop the knife, turn my back, flee, and find some reliable adult who could protect us from this sudden threat.
But abandoned children have no adults they can rely on. That cold truth seeped deeper into my consciousness, violently urging my fear-frozen body forward.
The moment I saw the silhouette of someone groping my sibling’s body through the gap in the door, my legs—rooted to the floor—suddenly kicked off as though an arrow had been loosed from a drawn bow.
“Who are you?! What the hell are you doing to my sibling right now?!”
Shouting to bolster my courage, I swung the knife. The clumsy slash aimed straight for the intruder’s neck.
But I missed. The blade buried itself not in the neck, but in the back of the hand.
Thud. The unpleasant sensation of iron crushing flesh traveled up my palm. The moment blood splattered across my face, my vision was swallowed by sticky crimson. Every sense felt distant and hazy—not because my emotions were raging, but because my entire consciousness had locked onto the single, shocking image before my eyes.
He was crying.