In the Dark (1)
I love animals.
Not for any grand reason—not because they never scheme the way people do, or because they show you their hearts without filter.
I simply loved that they were always there beside me.
The soft fur of a dog curling gently around my fingertips. The rough, tiny scrape of a cat's tongue. A lizard basking in the sun with the dumbest look on its face. The cool coil of a snake that somehow found its way around my neck while I slept.
Mornings started with a cat walking straight across my solar plexus. Evenings ended with the soft rustle of them waiting beyond the front door, and I would smile for no good reason at all.
I really did love them.
"—It's pancreatic cancer."
I had loved them.
"Unfortunately, multiple metastases have already spread to the liver and peritoneum, so I can't promise you a favorable prognosis… Still, you're young. We can attempt surgery. The procedure itself will be extremely dangerous, however…"
So once my cause of death was decided, I sent them all away.
I had no family. If I left first, those children would only die alone in a freezing house with nothing left but my corpse.
Mine had been a life where the bonds I'd made with animals far outnumbered the ones I'd made with people.
I settled every animal in the house, left the empty rooms behind, and climbed onto the operating table.
"All right, we're starting the anesthesia. Take a deep breath and count backward from ten for me."
Gas began to seep in through the mask.
Ten… nine…
Eight.
Before I could even form the next number in my mind, the world switched off like a power cut—and everything went black.
"Hello?"
When I opened my eyes again, what waited for me was a space so white it hurt to look at.
Not the fluorescent lights of a post-op ward. Not a doctor's face. Just white, and nothing else.
I was still staring blankly when a woman appeared in front of me—white wings, a halo, the sort of design that belonged in some pretty-girl gacha game.
Something about her felt faintly airheaded. She peered at my face, then closed the distance without warning.
"You lived a good life, didn't you?"
"…Excuse me?"
I stepped back on reflex from the face suddenly in mine, and she only smiled, sheepish and bright.
"When a person dies, we reincarnate them into the place they shared the deepest bonds with in their previous life. People who made a lot of bad blood drop into nests of their enemies. But you…"
Pop!
She clapped once, lightly, and dozens of soft, glowing orbs blossomed into the air.
"One, two… ten… twenty… What? You've got so many connections. And every last one of them is soft and warm! You must have lived so kindly."
She smiled and held out her hand.
"All right. Special treatment for you. Tell me one thing you want."
One thing I wanted.
What flickered through my mind were memories of the animals.
Whether the food I gave them had truly tasted good. Why they had hidden their pain and walked around fine in front of me until the end.
Whether the love I gave them had been real love to them, too.
I had always wondered. And I had always been sorry.
"…Their hearts."
"Hm? Hearts? You mean like mind control—telepathy so you can push people around?"
"No. I want to know… the hearts of animals."
For a moment she looked blank. Then a very gentle smile settled over her face.
"All right. I'll let you hear the voices of everything you ever loved."
Clap.
She clapped once more, and my vision flooded with black.
"Ian! Ian, wake up already!"
A frantic voice and a pair of hands shaking my shoulders hard jolted my eyes open.
Through the blur I saw a little girl's face, freckles everywhere.
Ian. Ah. Ian.
Even after ten years of hearing it, my new name still sat a little strangely on my tongue. I rubbed my eyes and turned the word over in my mind.
"Mm…"
I stretched, slow and lazy, and pushed my heavy body up. The straw bedding on the floor rustled pleasantly under me.
"Hurry!! You and I are on dawn duty today. I don't want Sister Martha tanning my backside!"
"Okay, okay. I'm up, Lucy."
She still didn't trust me. Only after she'd watched me get all the way to my feet did Lucy bustle out of the room in a flurry.
I yawned wide and looked around.
It was still before dawn. A faint blue light was seeping through the cracked old wooden window frame, soft enough that it looked ready to shatter.
Below it, packed into the narrow room, a dozen or so children slept in a tight cluster—snoring in one corner, mumbling and shifting in another—wearing the same rough, worn clothes as me.
This was the orphanage attached to a monastery on a hill above a country village.
My new home.
"Ah. Lucy's going to get mad again."
I shook off the daze, pulled on an outer layer from long habit, and stepped outside.
"Ah, Ian! Honestly…"
The moment I was out the door, I ruffled Lucy's red hair—already whining, just as expected—and walked to the mossy well in the middle of the yard. I lowered the old wooden bucket.
The pulley creaked for a long time. Then came a soft plunk, and I hauled the groundwater up.
"Pwah!"
Ice-cold water slapped the sleep clean out of me.
I took Lucy, who was now outright stamping her feet, and headed for the barn behind the monastery.
Creeeak.
The door opened onto a thick wave of animal dung. It had been strange at first—but in my past life I'd come home from work trips to a house painted in pet mess more than once, so I adapted fast.
"Here. Eat up. That's it. Nice and slow."
I filled the trough with dry fodder. An old cow with a neck full of wrinkles shuffled over and worked her jaw in slow, lazy chews.
In the next stall, sheep like living cotton balls bleated a greeting.
I took up a worn pitchfork, pushed out the night's droppings, and laid down a soft bed of fresh straw. I didn't forget to slip a hand under the wary, clucking hens for warm eggs, either.
By the time we were finishing, the morning bell rang out—ding, ding.
"See? We weren't late."
"Tch… If we had been, I was going to run off by myself."
I gave her cheek a light pinch and headed for the chapel.
Twelve years now, since I first opened my eyes in this place and settled into this routine.
According to Sister Martha, I had been left on the monastery threshold on a bitterly cold winter night—wrapped in a cheap wool blanket, half-frozen to death.
That nameless scrap of a baby had grown up clinging to the nuns' skirts, earned the name Ian, and become a proper twelve-year-old boy who cleaned cow dung without flinching and herded sheep.
Of course, fragments of my past life still drifted through my head like a half-remembered dream.
Hot water at the press of a button. Lights as bright as day. Air conditioning and heating.
It would be a lie to say I never missed those modern comforts.
Winters here frostbit your toes as a matter of course, and the rye bread at meals was hard as stone; you had to soak it forever in thin soup before you could even chew it.
But people say humans are adaptable creatures, don't they?
I settled into this dust-blown life far faster than I'd expected.
Maybe I was cut out for farm work after all.
"Woof! Woof woof!"
"Yeah, yeah, you need breakfast too. Your tail's going to fall off, you little idiot."
After morning prayers I stepped out the back door, and a black border collie threw itself at my pant leg, tail thrashing.
I scrubbed the top of its head as it barreled into me. Instantly it flopped onto its back and showed its belly.
"Is it good?"
I slipped the bread heel I'd smuggled out into its bowl.
Watching it shove its nose into the food, I smiled for no real reason.
If there was one thing I regretted about this peaceful life, it was this:
I had never once heard what was inside their heads.
Maybe the woman who'd promised to grant my wish had been lying. Or maybe the whole thing had been a fever dream cooked up by the anesthesia as I died.
It stung a little… no, a lot.
Still, it didn't matter that much.
Even without hearing their hearts, this quiet, simple life wasn't half bad.
At least, that was true until a moment ago.
"Mother Superior!! Sister Martha!! S-soldiers outside…!"
A novice friar who'd been out on an errand in the village came tearing in, white as a sheet.
At the same time, the heavy thunder of hooves rolled up in front of the monastery like an earthquake.
Beyond the wall, a red banner snapped hard in the wind—a black eagle stamped across it.
The color drained from Mother Superior's face in an instant. She'd been boiling water over the pot.
"Merciful heavens. The conscription officers again…"
She snatched up her skirts and ran to the children.
"Thomas! You hide under the straw on the barn floor, right now! Jack—you've had a terrible fever since yesterday, understand? Smear charcoal on your face and keep coughing! Quickly!"
The whole monastery flipped into chaos, everyone scrambling to hide the children—and then the stamp of military boots was suddenly right on top of us.
Bang!
With a rough crash, the monastery's front gate flew open.
The first to step inside was a young woman.
Long, jet-black hair. An Imperial officer's uniform buttoned neat all the way to the throat.
What seized my eye more than anything else, though, were the sharp animal ears standing straight up from her hair—stiff and pointed, like a Doberman's.
Her eyes were cold and still. She swept them over the trembling children and the nuns.
"By order of His Imperial Majesty. We will select those who will serve the Empire's great work. Anyone who hides or resists will be treated as a traitor and executed on the spot."
A choking silence fell over the orphanage.
And then—
Haah… Do I really have to drag these little scraps of children away again?
For the first time in twelve years, I heard someone else's inner thoughts.