I Am Nothing But Dirty Trash
Late at night.
Right in front of the convenience store.
There was a spell on the green plastic chairs.
Once you sat down, you never came back the same.
Especially if you were a little drunk, or if you had someone to open your heart to—the spell only grew stronger.
Whether it was the mana in the moonlight hanging high in the night sky, or whether the plastic chairs themselves really were enchanted…
I stared up at the black, billowing clouds with eyes looser than usual.
"Tastes good?"
[Yeah! / Delicious! / Hwaaah…! / It's chilly and feels so nice!]
Inside the cloud.
The mint-chocolate ice cream I'd cracked open earlier was slowly being gnawed away.
The flavor seemed novel and to their liking; tiny sparks occasionally crackled, and the cloud would shrink in on itself before swelling back up in amusing little reactions.
Hecate was exactly like that at first.
She'd tried it out of pure curiosity—"What's mint chocolate?"—and now it had become her undisputed number-one pick. For the record, pineapple pizza was second. She'd always liked plain pizza, but apparently that unique sweet-and-savory kick was irresistible.
"Haaaaah…"
A soft sigh slipped out.
I rested my chin in my hand and kept watching the clouds.
"What do I do now…"
[……]
The cloud that had been diligently chewing on the mint chocolate suddenly froze.
Even without visible eyes, every bit of its attention locked onto me.
The way it trembled with the fear that it might be abandoned again reminded me of far too many things.
"I'm not throwing you away. Not unless you leave on your own."
[…Nyam.]
It went back to nibbling the ice cream.
Still tentative, still watching for cues.
At this rate I couldn't even tell if it was going into a mouth or a nose.
Of course, since it didn't seem to have either, maybe it didn't matter where it went.
"It's nothing. No—it's not nothing, but…"
It had nothing to do with them.
This was purely my own problem.
Which meant I had to face it myself.
"Alright. Where should I start."
I slowly laid a hand over my chest.
The mana hole was still locked up tight, like something was blocking it at every turn.
Compared to when I'd been at the hospital, though, it had loosened considerably.
I knew exactly what that meant.
"Sss… haaah."
Ugly thoughts kept rising.
The aftershock of the mana hole dyed black. Mana steeped in will was naturally beginning to color my own will as well.
Normally I would have resisted the way I had with Hecate.
This time I didn't. I simply let the emotion take me.
A gamble that should never have been allowed. But instinct was screaming at me.
This was a stroke of fortune. An opportunity.
The fact that the mana hole had loosened even a little after I accepted "this" was proof enough.
I quietly released the tension in my mana and let the darkness sink deep into my heart.
The mana hole staining black. Will staining black.
"────Ah."
Black light.
A heart beginning to be swallowed by pitch-black darkness finally forced a single buried phrase past my lips.
"Fuck. Seriously."
A raw, vulgar curse.
Criticism. Condemnation. Out of nowhere. For no reason.
Rising from the deepest part of my lungs.
Sticky. Filthy.
"Why… why the hell did I…"
I shaped the emotions that kept spilling out into words.
Why. For what reason?
No.
Something a little different from that.
The words I actually wanted—needed—to say.
"…I"
Probably.
"I don't think I ever wanted to heal Nari."
That was it, wasn't it.
The sentence I finally dragged out. The one that slipped free before I even realized it.
At the same time something in my chest settled a fraction, and the corners of my eyes stung.
"…Am I a piece of shit?"
Not a thought a person should have.
Not a thought a human being should have.
Livestock.
An animal.
The kind of thought only a beast that had lost its morals would entertain.
"Your friend is suffering and you don't even want to help her—what the fuck kind of garbage is that."
I denied myself.
And then—
"But is she even a friend? A teammate, sure, but…"
I denied myself again.
"Don't say weird shit. Nari is a teammate. A friend from academy days."
"Friends come in different grades. Who the hell calls a girl who sells her body and does drugs a friend?"
"That's because of her boyfriend. Nari wasn't originally like that."
"True. But that doesn't erase the things she did in the past."
"Judging someone's present and future by their past isn't right."
"Isn't right."
Not moral.
Not good—closer to evil, if you had to put a label on it.
"…Really?"
Sometimes it was chillingly realistic.
"You already know it's not."
Realistic enough to throw idealism straight into the trash.
"For someone who claims the past doesn't matter."
It dragged reality in front of me with brutal honesty.
"Covered in tattoos from head to toe."
"Drug addiction. Alcohol addiction."
"Dopamine addiction. Active prostitution. Hell, just earlier she was threatening to sell herself again."
"No matter how you look at it, trash that can't even be recycled——ugh, ahh…!"
My stomach churned.
My mind filled with negatives.
Emotions swept me under; my thoughts went hazy.
The mana hole heaved. Mana surged.
…This is dangerous.
Going any deeper would be bad.
Especially for a Spirit Contractor—if I fell into this state, the spirits could rampage right along with me.
I calmly forced the emotions down and tried to sort my thoughts—sort, my ass, you fucking—
"…………"
It wasn't an emotion I'd never felt before.
Bad moods. Unpleasant feelings. I'd felt those plenty of times.
But I'd never sunk this deep.
Because before I could ever look straight at the darkness inside me, I'd half-run away and decided to live only looking at the light.
Back then I'd thought that was the right choice.
Looking at it now…
[You okay?]
"…Huh?"
Strength drained from my entire body in an instant.
The surging mana hole went quiet as if someone had flipped a switch.
A strange sensation. Not like I'd calmed it with my own will—more like someone had forcibly put it to sleep.
"…Was that you?"
[You looked like you were having a hard time… Was that not okay?]
"No. You did good."
[Really? Hee. Heeheehee!]
It giggled, clearly pleased.
Countless voices—girls', boys', all mixed together—chattered and laughed. Far easier on the ears than the screams I'd heard before.
"…Yeah."
The gloomy mood was still there.
But it no longer swung wildly the way it had a moment ago.
Just a low, steady depression.
Buried in a heart as dark as the deep night sky, I faced my darkness once more.
"First… yeah."
Time for some bullshit philosophy.
A Spirit Contractor has to observe themselves carefully, so moments like this were when ideology and conviction mattered most.
Which was why I asked myself:
"Why did I help Nari."
You already said it earlier.
You didn't want to help her.
So why, even so, did you try?
Why did you inconvenience Ayoung and even strong-arm Hecate with "If you don't want to watch me die, cooperate"?
"If I say it was because it was the morally right thing… then there's no way I would've thought of her as a drug-addled whore."
A little more honestly.
A little more sincerely.
Why did I help Nari?
"That was…"
I had to say it.
I knew how hard it would be.
I knew I couldn't accept it—didn't even want to accept it.
But even so.
I placed a hand over my chest. The mana hole was steeped in deep darkness.
A mana hole was the sum of will. The fact that that will had turned black meant, in other words—
"I. Couldn't stand myself."
Simply put, that was it.
The human named Kim Sunwoo was so weak it was pathetic.
"The fact that I looked at Nari and thought she was filthy."
"The fact that for even a moment I thought she was no different from a prostitute."
"The fact that I wanted to pretend my teammate and friend was a stranger."
I hadn't wanted to admit it.
There was no way I could admit it.
"…Yeah. That was it."
I finally understood why it had been quiet with Ayoung.
Back then circumstances had tangled so badly I couldn't go see her.
So I had been able to avoid the place I "didn't want to go."
I had been able to stay honest with myself without lying.
But with Nari.
I already had the prior failure with Ayoung on my record.
So it needled at me. It bothered me more than it should have.
I forced myself to go. Forced myself to soothe my heart.
I packaged something that wasn't sincere—wasn't true—as a lie and stepped forward.
For one reason only.
"What a piece of trash…"
Because I couldn't accept the wrong version of myself.
So I forced the wrong Nari into a right package.
Only if Nari was right could I be right too.
"Trash. Just pure trash. Ugh. Ughhh!"
I spat the curses out.
Strangely, my chest felt lighter.
"But is this even my fucking problem? The real problem is the bitch who tattooed 'Black men only—open for business!' all over her body!"
"And what the hell is Awakener-exclusive AIDS? This isn't StarCraft Zerg, you piece of shit!"
"And 'If you don't look after me I'll go sell my body'—where the fuck does a human with any shame get the nerve to say that?!"
I vomited the filthy things out of my mouth.
Everything that had piled up. Everything I'd looked away from and swallowed.
"You think your whole life is gonna solve itself just because you have a pussy, you fucking bitch!!!"
I screamed with everything I had.
Screamed. Shouted out loud.
By the time my heart—and even the mana hole—felt thoroughly cleared out—
"So. What's the conclusion."
"…Hecate?"
Suddenly, as if she had been sitting there from the very beginning.
Hecate was in the seat next to me, looking up at me quietly.
"You… youuuu…!"
"It's not over yet."
"!,… Yeah. That's true."
I still hadn't decided on the answer.
It probably wouldn't be a perfect one.
But an answer that the human named Kim Sunwoo could accept for himself.
"I'm trash."
"I know."
The human named Kim Sunwoo was trash, and—
"I'm not exactly righteous either."
"I know."
I'd wanted to be righteous.
But inside that desire was a darkness I couldn't do anything about.
"And yet I can't just ignore people either, because I've got this uselessly wide meddling streak…"
"What are you trying to say."
"Hell if I know. What am I trying to say?"
"……"
Rotten eyes.
I smiled and answered.
"Probably… if something like this happens again, I'll still try to help."
"……"
"You mad?"
"There's still more to the sentence."
She would hear the rest.
At Hecate's prompt I continued.
"I thought about it for a second. What if I'd ignored Nari."
The conclusion I reached after thinking it through.
I would probably regret that too.
"I could have helped, but I didn't—something like that."
"You met her, she was filthy, and you could've just never seen her again."
"I'm not finished talking yet?"
"…I shouldn't have said there was more."
She pouted.
Well, that was part of being human too.
So. That was it, Hecate.
"I'm not going to be stubborn the way I used to."
"What does that mean."
"A properly functioning PC needs good receptivity, after all!"
I knew I was dirty.
I knew you were dirty too.
So there was no need to force your rightness onto me, or force my rightness onto you.
I simply do it because I want to. I help because I want to help.
And so—
"If it starts looking like shit, I cut ties! If it pisses me off, I cut ties! If I don't like it, I stop—why the hell do I have to keep going? What! Fuck! I'm a person too, a person! Why do I have to keep giving everything away like some retarded sucker!"
"Haa?"
"No. Fine. I'll admit I'm a sucker. But that doesn't mean I have to accept being treated like a sucker, you hear meuuuuu!!!"
"…Have you lost it."
A little?
Convenience-store plastic chairs had a way of driving people crazy, after all.
I flailed my arms and legs like a man having a fit and shouted.
The kind of behavior that looked completely insane.
But—
"…That's very Sunwoo of you."
"Huh?"
"Especially with the sucker part included."
"……"
Hecate gave me a barely passing grade.
And somehow that made her look incredibly cute. Made me feel grateful.
"Hecate…!"
"…I'll forgive you just this once."
I moved toward her.
Spread both arms and pulled her into a hug—
"Sir. You can't do that here."
"…Ehk."
We got reported for disorderly conduct and public indecency.
When using the convenience store, please do so quietly and cleanly.