Hate Me Once More (1)
I tried arguing that my body was perfectly fine, but under Emerald's iron insistence I found myself half-forcibly admitted to the hospital.
Oh no. My Tamako. My despair...!
Maybe because I'd been feeding on magical girls' despair so often lately, the despair I could sense from the hospital alone just wasn't enough.
Grrrrooowl—
I'm hungry. So hungry…
Emerald had bought me all sorts of things, sure, but those were human foods through and through. That kind of stuff could never fill me up.
Ugh. Starving.
Like a child who has finally learned what it feels like to be full and never wants to go hungry again, I no longer wanted to settle for rinsing my mouth with ordinary human despair.
This won't do.
I sat bolt upright and slipped quietly toward the window. It was two in the morning—the dead of night, when every human was asleep.
…Time for a midnight snack.
I wasn't sure anything would still be left—no, of course it would still be there.
I eased the window open and paused for a moment, weighing my options. There was only one place worth going: the Underground Lab I'd adventured through not long ago.
"…Huh?"
Just as I was about to leap out the window, I narrowed my eyes at a faint silhouette. A human? No—didn't seem like one. No human would be wandering around fearlessly at an hour like this.
Who the hell—
I focused hard on the figure, and something like a square sketchbook came into view. The moment I slowly read the large letters scrawled across it in red, my narrowed eyes snapped wide open.
Hate Me Once More
"…No way. Is that actually—?"
I was so thrown that the words wouldn't come out properly. Wait—hadn't she run off and disappeared somewhere after that?
Shock hit me so hard my body moved before my mouth did. I braced a hand on the windowsill and launched myself out; the other person's eyes went round as saucers.
"Didn't you leave me and run away?"
"Th-that is… th-that was an accident!"
"Accident? What accident."
She had just gone whoosh and vanished, plain as day. I stared down through the top of her head—she was a good deal shorter than me—until she started glancing around uncomfortably. She'd abandoned me so coldly when she fled, and now this? Hate Me Once More?
"I-it was a joke! Just a joke! You of all people should understand my heart perfectly, Monster Girl!"
"I do have a name, you know. It's Akari."
"…What is that completely mismatched name."
Fair enough—naming a monster after light was a little weird. The funniest part, though, was that my name hadn't actually come from "light" at all. Could anyone even imagine that I'd started to say "Apocalypse" to Emerald, panicked mid-word, and ended up as A—kari—?
"Anyway, help me, Monster Girl! No—Akari!"
"I don't want to."
"Wh-why not?!"
That mad-scientist face of hers finally looked a little easier on the eyes. The venom that used to flood her gaze had drained away—no, it had drained completely. At my knife-edged refusal she peered up at me with watery, pleading eyes, and I let the corner of my mouth curl.
"Magical girls were coming and you ditched me like that, and now you show up asking for help?"
"Th-that's…"
"There's something you're supposed to say first, you know. Between us."
I folded my arms and put on a face that said I wasn't letting her off the hook. To anyone watching it would have looked like I was the adult and she was the child—which only made the reverse reality funnier.
"I-I'm sorry…"
"Louder."
"I'm sorry…!"
"It has to be loud enough to move my heart at the very least. Louder!"
"I'm really sorry…!!!"
Under my pressure-that-wasn't-quite-pressure, the Doctor clenched both fists, squeezed her eyes shut, and shouted. That prideful Doctor, apologizing to me. Honestly, I'd figured she would never apologize at all, right up to the end.
"Who the hell is making noise at this hour?! Keep it down!!!!"
"U-ugh…"
Well, her voice had gotten pretty loud. One of the humans who'd heard her grand apology threw open a window and bellowed. Honestly, that person was way louder.
Anyway.
"T-to think I'd have to listen to that from a mere human… Khh, I'm furious. So furious I could die… Hic…"
"…Are you crying?"
No, for real? That Doctor, crying? Actually?
I had no idea what she'd been through, but seeing the vicious monster from the original story standing there with tears rolling down her face was…
"Ugh-huh…"
…pretty satisfying, actually.
Yes—cry more, cry harder! The Doctor bawling her eyes out after getting scolded by a human. Something I'd never even imagined was happening right in front of me, and my mouth curled up on its own.
"Some lunatic suddenly barged into my lab and chased me like she wanted me dead… sniff, damn it!"
"A lunatic, you say?"
The most lunatic lunatic of them all was standing right in front of me. I looked at the Doctor with exactly that meaning in my eyes; she caught the look and her face went blank for a second.
"Aargh!! I-I am not that crazy! Not to that degree! At the very least I never became a magical girl! Khh…!!"
"You were going to become a magical girl?"
The Doctor as a magical girl… kind of kills the mood. No—wait, it might suit her better than I thought? Her outward appearance, at least, was no different from any other human girl. There were even people who liked the Doctor for that look, yeah.
"No, that was only a metaphor! Tch, she turned from a human into a monster out of nowhere and then what? 'Shouldn't you pay the price for ruining my laboratory?' she says? Tch, tch, tch!!!"
"…"
I had a pretty good idea who that was. It would be weirder if I didn't. Curse—I never imagined he was that petty, but apparently he was exactly that petty. Putting a hole through someone's chest wasn't enough for him, so he went after the mother of the person he'd put a hole in and tore the whole household apart?
Well, it's a parent who abandoned and a child who was abandoned, so maybe it doesn't really matter.
"So help me, Monster Girl!"
"…Monster Girl?"
"No—Akari! Just thinking about that bastard makes me so mad I throw up every bit of despair I eat!"
Still fuming, the Doctor stomped the ground over and over. I looked at the dirt—only the faintest footprints left, not very monster-like—and snickered. I was starting to understand why she'd come to me. Her lab had been completely cleaned out by a human she'd looked down on, she was too weak to handle it herself, so she'd sought out the most promising option: me.
"If you're coming to ask someone for a favor, you need to show some sincerity. Sincerity."
"…Sincerity? You're saying an apology alone isn't enough?"
"You thought you could settle it with an apology? How shameless of you."
Did she not understand the situation—who needed whom right now? She was the one in need. If she wanted my help, she could at least show up carrying a magical girl's despair. The most important part of any deal was confirming that you actually had what the other person wanted.
Well, she's the Doctor, so she should at least have some magical girl despair on her.
I couldn't particularly sense any magical girl despair from her, though.
I couldn't particularly sense any magical girl despair from her, though.
It was important, so I said it twice.
"What do you want. If it's something I can do, I'll do anything."
"Give me a magical girl's despair. The fact that you stole and ate my share still shows up in my dreams, you know?"
"What—I didn't steal it! That was my share from the beginning!"
"…Is that so?"
Meaning she had nothing left to give me, then? She was the one who'd created me, casually ordered me to fight magical girls, and then hadn't charged me up with a single drop of despair? And after all that she had the nerve to come find me—idiot Doctor. Her talent as a researcher was enormous, but her social skills and everything else were a complete disaster. No—the disaster among disasters.
"I see…"
"W-wait, no? You're not dumping me, right? I-I went through so much just to escape all the way here… You're not going to refuse to help, right? Right? Riiight? Right?!"
"Hmmm…"
Did a Doctor with no magical girl despair have any value? The answer was no.
"Can't be helped, I suppose."
"Then you'll help—"
"I think our relationship ends here, Doctor."
"Why?!"
The fact that she genuinely didn't understand why was already an automatic out. Hearing my firm refusal, she started clinging, and she was so clingy it was ridiculous. I brushed her arm off with a little irritation; she went limp and toppled away. If I'd still had human sensibilities I might have felt sorry for her, but all I felt toward the Doctor right then was pure annoyance.
"I-I made you! So you should help me at least once!"
Apparently peeling her off once wasn't enough. I looked down at the Doctor, who was now latching onto me out of pure stubbornness, and heaved sigh after sigh. This was not going to end easily. At least it was the middle of the night; if she'd shown up during the day and run into Emerald, it would have been an absolute catastrophe.
"You could just make another one of me, couldn't you? Does it have to be me?"
"…Can't."
"…Doctor?"
At my words she hung her head and started trembling. I called out to her at the tiny sound of her voice, and she suddenly lifted her face. The face she raised was a complete mess of tears.
"I can't! I said I can't! I used my own Despair Core to make you! Waaaaah…"
"…Excuse me?"
Wait. What?
Um… sorry to ask, but… how are you even alive right now?