The Female
"...Ah."
Iseo opened her eyes and drew her brow into a faint crease.
Even in summer, five or six in the morning should have left the world outside still steeped in blue. What filled the room now was the full, heavy light of a sun already well risen. Seven o'clock at the earliest.
Overslept.
The realization hit her like a bucket of ice water.
"Ah, shit...!"
She bolted upright, the thin blanket fluttering off her body. She folded it in a rush, shoved it into the corner, and headed for the kitchen.
"I'm sorry!"
The apology leapt out of her by habit. If she was lucky, it would end with a single slap across the face. If she wasn't — she might not make it to school at all. She might even have to call her teacher. She didn't want that. School wasn't exactly comfortable, but she at least wanted to see her teacher's face.
"...?"
But nothing came back. No blow. No shouting.
Tap-tap-tap-tap...
What reached her instead was the sound of a knife on a cutting board — regular, almost cheerful. The girl froze where she stood and looked ahead.
A woman stood with her back turned. The sight of that apron-tied figure was unfamiliar. The only times that person had ever shown Iseo her back was when she was dead drunk and sprawled across the floor. Awake, she had always stared the boy — no, the girl — down with bloodshot eyes. The violence and the verbal abuse had always come as a set.
...Ah.
Only then did she understand. Today was the day after she'd been discharged. And in this house, there was no longer a "mom."
Iseo thought back to that night a week ago. The day she'd opened her eyes in the hospital.
One week earlier. Night.
The girl who woke from a vicious nightmare found herself face to face with its protagonist.
Thud!
"Ghk—!"
Stars exploded across her vision. She'd thrown herself backward, forgetting the wall at the head of the bed. Even as her sight swam, Iseo kept her guard up, watching what stood in front of her.
"..."
"Mother" was there. Expressionless. Neither laughing nor sneering. Simply dry.
"What a pity."
The voice dropped, quiet and flat. A remark with no beginning and no end. Then it added the rest.
"They say humans often lose their memories when they suffer a great shock."
"...!"
She shoved herself further into the corner. Had it been hoping she'd come down with amnesia? And if she had — what then? In the midst of those questions, last night's scene flashed through her mind.
The wet crack of bone. The grinding snap. Limbs folding at impossible angles. A gaunt body convulsing in midair like a dead rat. And a massive red mass, undulating at will, forcing itself inside.
Me too...
Was she going to be eaten? The thought, once it landed, actually settled her. Death. It would be a lie to say she wasn't afraid. But what terrified her more was pain. For him, for her — life had been hell either way. She didn't want to hurt.
No.
But another thought followed close behind. If it was only her being eaten, that would almost be better. She could just close her eyes and wait for death to come. But would that thing stop there? Of course it wouldn't. Eating was something you did because hunger came. A natural instinct.
It'll look for the next meal.
This monster had already eaten her mother. The moment it left this room, there was no guarantee anyone else would be safe. Faces flickered past. Every one of them had reached out a hand to her. Among them, a doctor's face. A nurse's.
A crack of sensation. Feeling returned to fingertips that fear had paralyzed. The nightstand beside the bed. A glint of silver resting there. The hand that closed around the fruit knife pointed it forward.
I have to kill it.
The instant that will crystallized in her fingertips—
Thud.
"Nngh...?"
A strangled sound leaked out. Iseo blinked. When she lifted her head, her body was already face-down on the bed. The knife was still in her grip. The thought was still there, too — a desperate, all-or-nothing killing intent, the vow that even if she died, she would take that thing with her. But her body would not obey. She couldn't make sense of it.
Then her shoulders locked.
"How interesting."
"Mother" had her head tilted, and she was smiling. A faint, beautiful, utterly unfamiliar smile. An expression Iseo had never seen, hanging on a face she knew by heart. A smiling mother. The sight he — she — had craved for so long was right there.
Iseo bit her lip. She wanted to be held. She wanted to be the reason for that expression. For her only family. Her wish had been to hear that she made someone happy just by existing. But her mother was already gone. All that remained was a red-eyed monster wearing her face. An irreversible fact.
"Even this afraid," it said, reaching out, "and you still try to strike me down."
Long fingers took hold of her chin. The touch was gentle. And yet she could not pull away. The smell stabbed into her nose — the perfume her mother had only ever worn when she left the house for an important contract. And beneath it, a ferrous, bloody stink. The monster's scent.
"Tell me. Why?"
It whispered, low. In the center of those pitch-black irises, a scarlet light flickered.
"Because I don't want that."
Her lips, her tongue, her throat moved without any say from her will.
"Don't want what."
"The doctor. Everyone... being eaten."
The words poured out in a rush. That it ate people. That she couldn't just sit still, knowing the people who'd reached out to her might die. That they were people who shouldn't have to die.
"Even if it means you die?"
Iseo nodded, as if spellbound. And in that moment, the monster's eyes curved into a strange arc.
"Mother's" voice had warped into something grotesque. More precisely — she was not speaking a human language at all. It was the sound of dozens of snakes screaming at once. The chewing of a massive predator grinding through rebar. A sound no one should have been able to understand — and yet its meaning stamped itself into her mind of its own accord.
...Huh?
The color drained from Iseo's face. She had no idea why she'd just spilled all of that without a shred of resistance.
"What did you... what did you do to me."
Her voice cracked with tension and incomprehension. The monster propped its chin on one hand and answered.
"Which are you asking about. Turning you into a female? Or restoring you?"
It was hard to believe. While the girl stared blankly, the woman took the fruit knife from Iseo's hand and set it on the nightstand.
...Come to think of it.
In her unsteady vision, a tray on the nightstand came into focus. An apple, sliced so neatly it was almost pretty — she had no idea when it had been cut. Why was it even here?
It speared a piece of the fruit with a plastic fork and went on.
"Making you female was not intentional. It was a side effect. While I was putting you back together as you were dying, remnants of your mother flowed into you."
"...What?"
"A part of your mother turned you into a female. That's what I'm saying."
Iseo couldn't get her bearings. Why had this monster healed her? That a piece of her mother had turned her into a girl was equally impossible to accept. It made no sense by any ordinary logic. Putting in blood or flesh didn't change someone's sex.
The monster spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"You were dying. Body and mind. Even the basest desire that keeps a human human — the will to survive. So I tore off a piece of your mother and filled you with it."
The girl bit her lip. Her head was spinning, but she decided to set the thoughts aside. The being in front of her was already beyond comprehension. Clinging to the incomprehensible would get her nowhere. Right now, she needed to hear what she needed to hear.
And yet one thing snagged.
Why is it telling me all of this?
Come to think of it — this monster ate humans. No one sat a finished roast pig down and explained themselves to it.
"...So what are you going to do with me."
"Nothing."
An answer without a sliver of hesitation. It stroked its own cheek — the skin of the woman who had been Iseo's mother — and whispered.
Daughter.
The word seemed to settle somewhere inside her. It meant this thing would sit down in her mother's place, wearing her mother's face and voice. And no one would ever know.
The girl pressed her mouth shut. When her voice leaked out, it carried a suppressed venom.
"What if I... what if I tell everyone. What if I expose all of it?"
"..."
Silence came back. "Mother" simply stared at Iseo for a long while.
"You won't. And you wouldn't be able to, even if you wanted."
A voice so calm it was almost indifferent.
"No way."
The girl's mouth fell slightly open. That unpleasant sense of release she'd felt earlier. The truths that had spilled out without passing through her brain. She understood what all of it meant now.
I'm being... controlled.
She clenched her teeth. Her body began to tremble in fine shivers. The girl who had hated pain more than anything now knew a different kind of terror. The extinction of freedom. Not visible bonds, but the theft of will itself. Coercion that did not coerce.
She still couldn't gauge the monster's intentions...
And even if I knew, what could I do?
Nothing. There was nothing. The path had been blocked from the starting line.
A person cannot stay angry at the unreasonable for long. For a first instant, perhaps — but once they understand, they are too busy despairing. Two lives. In the last one, illness had broken him. In this one, this thing had come to bind him. Either way, nothing had ever gone as he wished.
"Ha."
Only then did the girl despair. At this situation. And she cursed herself — for having nothing at all. The last of her hope was coming apart.
"Don't worry."
To that girl, the monster whispered.
Through a blurred field of vision, beyond the tears, the monster was smiling.
Like a devil.
Or like an angel.