Unwanted Overnight Stay (1)
...I think I said something I shouldn't have.
I held my breath as best I could, fighting down the nausea rising from deep inside. Holding my breath didn't keep the smell of hope from reaching me, but if I didn't do at least this much, I felt like I was going to vomit despair all over everything.
Did that girl have some special talent for pissing monsters off?
An indescribable surge of revulsion rose up, and my head turned away on pure reflex.
I never thought she'd fall into despair just because I said we weren't friends. Tch.
What did "friend" even mean to Emerald, anyway? Wasn't her bar for friendship way too low to begin with? At first she'd glared at me like she wanted me dead and treated me with nothing but suspicion. And now, just because I'd nursed her a little, she was calling me a friend?
Still, Emerald in despair made for a pretty fine meal. Saying I'd think about it because her despair had put me in a good mood—that had been my first mistake.
She despairs when I say we're not friends, then gets her hopes up when I say I'll consider it? What kind of kid is she?
Well, she was a magical girl, so she was a kid, technically. Ah, right. She was a kid. At that age you cry and laugh over the word "friend," don't you? And magical girls tended to be all about "love, friendship, peace~" and that whole vibe anyway.
"I'll, um, do my best."
...I don't really think you need to try that hard.
Whatever effort Emerald put in would no doubt be stuffed full of dreams and hope. Honestly, becoming friends with me wasn't that hard for her. If she wanted to get close to me, all she had to do was regularly dump a whole pile of despair in front of me.
In that sense, Tamako is a friend. A real friend.
I wasn't sure whether Tamako thought of me as a friend, but to me, Tamako was a truly precious one. I nursed Tamako, and Tamako gave me despair—a symbiotic relationship, you could say. And I'd even rescued her from that vile Doctor's laboratory, hadn't I?
"Ah, and there's one more thing I'd like to ask."
"...What is it?"
I narrowed my eyes at Emerald as she carefully broached the subject. What else was she about to say? After everything she'd already said, I wasn't inclined to look on her kindly.
"Um, would it be possible for you to leave the house empty for a day tomorrow?"
"...What?"
Suddenly? Why? Did I do something wrong? How come? Was she sulking over that one little "we're not friends" and kicking me out?
Is this her way of saying, "Go experience just how comfortable my house was, you monster!"?
"Th-then, maybe Tamako could come with—"
"Tamako is a patient."
"How could you..."
My food storage! Even for a monster, this was too much! Appetite was one of the three fundamental human desires, and she was taking my food away from me? This was going way too far. It was tyranny, pure and simple—a horrific oppression.
"I'll book a hotel room for you separately. I can't explain it properly, but I really do need the house empty for about a day tomorrow."
"...Fine, whatever."
It wasn't even my house to begin with, so I didn't have much choice. I was a monster who gave up surprisingly easily, after all.
"Don't cry while I'm gone."
"Don't worry. I'll tough it out."
Yeah, better that way. I'd rather she held it in and then bawled her eyes out and sprayed despair all over me later than waste perfectly good despair sobbing somewhere I couldn't see her.
Looking on the bright side, a day away might not be so bad...
Since things had turned out this way, I might as well head back to the Underground Lab I hadn't fully explored last time. Those human-monster hybrids had given me that uncanny-valley feeling, like the insect-people I'd seen in my past life, but feeling that every now and then might even help with stress relief.
If I get the chance, I should look for that little girl's mother too.
I thought of the card key tucked against my chest and let the corner of my mouth curl up. If I ran into her, it'd be nice if she despaired plenty for me.
"This is disinfectant, this is fever medicine, these are bandages—"
"What is this, packing a kid off on an overseas trip?"
I clucked my tongue at Emerald, who was stuffing me with luggage for what was only a single day out. I didn't even need medicine in the first place. A little spit and any wound would heal, so why bother? I had no use for the kind of things frail humans needed.
"I'm heading out."
"Take care, Akari. Look after yourself."
"Worry about yourself instead of me."
Judging by the dark circles that had sunk all the way under her eyes, she hadn't slept properly last night. Anyone looking would think she was a panda. Tch.
"Haa..."
After a brief farewell with Emerald, I stepped out onto the street and let out a long sigh. My Tamako... my despair... Just thinking about it filled me with a sense of injustice. I mean, Tamako was mine—I'd rescued her. Would it really have been so bad to take her along a little? If she'd been discharged, that meant she was well enough to walk around outside, right?
Complaining about it is pointless, I guess...
Think positive. Think positive. Instead of thinking I'd been robbed of my despair fountain and forcibly kicked out, it was far better to think I'd seized my freedom from a magical girl and hit the streets to suck up human despair to my heart's content. Even a despair-eating monster needed positive thinking from time to time. Especially in moments like this.
I'm a little hungry, so maybe I should grab a snack first.
The surest way to fill my stomach was a magical girl's despair, but ordinary human despair could serve as a palate cleanser at least. It didn't really fill me up, but it made my body feel like it had eaten something—tricking my stomach into thinking it was satisfied.
Hospital, or the national cemetery...
If I had to name the top despair gourmet spots, those two would come first without question. Hospital? National cemetery? Both were appealing options, and while I was deliberating, the thought of that unpleasant narrow-eyed doctor flashed through my mind and settled the matter in an instant. National cemetery it was.
"So the way is..."
Ah, right—I'd gotten a phone from Emerald too. It seemed a bit much for just one day out, but she'd said I could keep using it from now on and had it ready in no time. I never imagined shipping and activation would take less than half a day.
Right turn here—
Thud—
"Ah..."
"Ugh...?!"
I was checking the map on my phone on the way to the national cemetery when it happened. The moment I rounded the corner, I collided with someone. I was confident I wouldn't budge against an ordinary human, so I was only startled for a second—but the other party went flying backward in a thoroughly undignified sprawl. Should I apologize? It was their fault for walking into me.
"You..."
"What? Are you following me? Or are you watching me?"
I hadn't planned on apologizing to begin with, but seeing that face made me even less inclined. How was I supposed to apologize to that narrow-eyed mug? This guy was blacker inside than any monster, more disgusting than any other human. If the abominations in the Underground Lab had been repulsive because of their half-human, half-monster exteriors, the human in front of me was just plain disgusting as a human being.
This is why the original world got destroyed.
Even if Apocalypse hadn't existed, wouldn't people like this have created something just like her? I felt like bug guts had gotten on me and brushed at my clothes for no real reason. Ugh. I should never have spoken to him. Time spent on this human was wasted, so I hurried to walk away. Or rather, I was about to.
"Aren't you hungry?"
"..."
"I believe I could solve your hunger. What do you say?"
It was a tempting offer. I was already hungry, and if I followed this guy, I might get to feast on plenty of despair. Fresh magical girl despair, for example.
But still...
Who would believe something like that? I wasn't a child. And this human reeked of something similar to the Doctor. If you asked me how, well, they were completely different overall—but they both gave off that mad-scientist vibe. A monster who used magical girls as experimental materials, and a human who used monsters as experimental materials. Anyone could see they were similar, right? Of course, the Doctor was far superior.
"No thanks."
"...What?"
"If you've got nothing else to say, I'm leaving."
I ignored the human staring at me with a hollow expression and hurried on my way. Surely he wouldn't follow me? Just in case, I ducked into a nearby alley instead of sticking to the main road. No particular reason—except that if he did follow me in, I might just twist his neck a little.
Someone like him wouldn't approach with pure intentions, after all.
I'd worked so hard on my positive thinking and mind control, and meeting this human had immediately ruined my mood. How had I run into him the second I left Emerald's house? No matter how I looked at it, he had to be using some means to keep tabs on me. Didn't he have anything better to do? No one else to watch, so he was surveilling a perfectly innocent monster like me?
"Disgusting..."
A small but definite second goal had formed. I swore that someday I would devour that narrow-eyed doctor's despair until I was stuffed. I didn't know when that day would come, but I honestly didn't think it would take long. A human who poked at a sleeping monster's despair wasn't going to live very long.