31. A Migratory Fish Swimming Through Dreams—in Other Words, Poisson

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/33/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Late on the night the room had suddenly appeared next door, Saiji woke in the small hours.
He ought to have been exhausted, yet he could not get to sleep. The knowledge that the room lay just beyond the wall was probably to blame.

“What the hell is an ‘ihai,’ anyway…? And I never did make it to Ms. Mikage’s room.”

Saiji pressed a palm to his forehead and shook his head from side to side, trying to rouse his still-muddled mind.
Sakuna had been just as bad. She had gone out of her way to come to him for advice, only to leave hand in hand with Toka the moment the other girl appeared.
In the end, Sakuna must have had those inclinations all along and merely been confused because she had recognized her own feelings for the first time.

“… Girls together. Disgusting. God, what a turnoff.”

Once his eyes were fully open, he found it difficult to fall asleep a second time.
Saiji sat up, intending to drink some water and change his mood.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch—

Then he heard a strange sound.
It was as though something were scraping at the wall.

“Maybe there’s a bug in here…”

Running a hand through his disheveled hair, Saiji poured water from the waiting thermos into a glass and drained it at once.
It was not especially hot, but sleep inevitably left a person dehydrated.
As he felt the water spread through his body, he exhaled. “Whew.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch…

All the while, the strange sound continued without pause.
It was quiet in itself, but its endless repetition soon became irritating.

“If that’s some mating call, go do it somewhere else. Damn it.”

As if taking out his mounting frustration, Saiji punched the wall in the direction of the sound.
At that moment, he realized something.
What lay beyond this wall—was that not the room with the ihai?

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Saiji’s expression stiffened.
The only word ihai brought to mind was a single Japanese one: a mortuary tablet.
Of course, this was another world, and there was no reason the same word should exist here. But once the association had occurred to him, he could not erase the image.
Sakuna had behaved as though the room had always been next door. An auditory hallucination would have been one thing, but there was no possible way he could be mistaken about that.
His room had unquestionably been the last one at the end of the hall.
There had never been another room beside it.
That being so, Saiji’s suspicion that neither the neighboring room nor the object called an ihai was anything normal was almost certainly correct.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch—scratch… scratch, scratch—

The rhythm changed from time to time, and the sound went on as though a living person were carving at the wall.
Saiji swallowed, cold sweat beading on his brow as he glared at it.
Should he go?
No. It could still be nothing more than an insect. There was no need to force himself to learn the truth.
Fear outweighed everything else, enough to make him despise himself as a coward.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to call the feeling a survival instinct.
Yes. That had to be it.
Repeating that to himself, he crawled back into bed.
He pulled the covers over his face, trying to shut out as much of the sound as possible.
The scratching continued until dawn, as though it were calling to Saiji.

◇◇◇

In the end, Saiji barely slept at all.
Even so, morning arrived. That alone made him feel as though he had been saved.
He had never realized just how much reassurance light could offer.

“Good morning, Lord Saiji.”

Even without specific instructions, a maid always brought his breakfast of her own accord.
Saiji abruptly questioned the woman setting the meal on his table.

“I haven’t seen you before.”
“Yes. I only arrived recently.”
“Your name?”
“Ellis… that is my name.”
“Huh…”

She was a fair-skinned beauty with a modest air.
If she was a maid, Saiji assumed she would submit if he asked—yet even that thought failed to interest him this morning.
His friend Taka called him obsessed with women, yet somehow his desire had vanished of its own accord.
The change made Saiji keenly aware of just how badly cornered he had become.
What had triggered it? When had it begun?
No matter how he searched his memory, he could think of nothing.

“Then, if you will excuse… me.”

Ellis bowed deeply and left the room.
The food on the table was an entirely ordinary breakfast by the standards of this world.
The sight of it reassured him.

“Could I have dinner brought here too, if I asked…?”

He did not want to see anyone.
Surely he would feel better if he shut himself away in his own little world.
At the same time, that would solve nothing.
It was only a suspicion, but the situation seemed to be worsening with every passing moment.
Even Sakuna, who had seemed sane, had been swallowed by it. That meant Saiji was now the only sane person left.
He alone could change the situation.

“Ha! So I’m the hero setting out to challenge the Demon King? Even though I don’t even know where the Demon King is—or who.”

Saiji laughed bitterly at himself as he rolled a sausage-like morsel around his plate with a fork.

◇◇◇

“Hey, Saiji! You’re in there, aren’t you? Answer me!”

Taka spoke while pounding roughly on the door.
It was nearing evening when Taka and Oya came to fetch Saiji.
He had not wanted to answer, but their persistence finally made him call through the door.

“What do you want?”
“Oh, so you finally answered. Food, man. Food.”
“It’s too early for dinner.”
“… There’s supposed to be a show in the dining hall. A fish-carving show, they say.”

Hearing that reminded Saiji of the tuna-carving exhibitions held in Japan.
Apparently this world had a similar custom.

“Nothing good comes from hiding in your room. I don’t know what happened, but come watch it with us.”

Saiji did not want to visit the dining hall.
But Taka was right: nothing would change if he remained shut inside his room.
Still reluctant, Saiji nevertheless left his room.
Through the door, talking to them had felt like speaking with something inhuman. Yet the sight of their smiles brought him an unexpected sense of relief.

“… Am I thinking too much about all this?”
“What’s with you, Saiji? You’re gloomy as hell.”
“Yeah, sorry. All right, let’s go see this carving show.”

The three of them set off for the dining hall.
When he thought about it, Taka and Oya had not actually said anything strange the day before.
They simply had not heard the screams.
The room containing the ihai was unquestionably unnatural, but the previous day’s screaming might still have been an auditory hallucination.
Ignore it, and everything would be as it had always been.
Saiji was trying to persuade himself of that when, only a short distance from the dining hall, they ran into Sakuna.
Toka was with her.
The two girls stood some distance away down the corridor, their faces close as they leaned in toward each other.

“Those two really get along.”
“… Especially since we came here.”

Taka and Oya remained perfectly calm.
Even when the girls kissed and clung tightly to each other, the boys described them only as “close.”

“So anyway, I figured I ought to train once in a while, and I gave it a shot.”
“Serious effort from you? That’s unusual, Taka.”
“Right? But that instructor said he was busy and made me do it alone. Weird, isn’t it? Don’t you agree, Saiji?”
“Y-Yeah…”

They walked right past as though nothing had happened, continuing their idle conversation.
For their part, Sakuna and Toka paid no attention whatsoever to Saiji and the others, absorbed entirely in each other.
Ignore it, and everything would be as it had always been.
No matter how desperately Saiji wanted to believe that, reality stood in his way.

◇◇◇

“‘Jack Meunière’…”

Saiji murmured as he read the sign outside the dining hall.
Was Jack the name of a fish?
It sounded remarkably human. Could it truly be a fish?
Many soldiers had already gathered inside.
And as usual, beautiful women occupied the seats at the back—more of them than there had been the day before.
They watched the male soldiers working themselves up, smirking all the while.

“With this many people here already, we might get something even better than we expected.”

Taka spoke with eager anticipation, but the scene filled Saiji with nothing but questions.
Why were all these soldiers here instead of training or working?
It was nearly evening, but ordinarily some of them would still have been on duty.
Yet the crowd clearly included nearly everyone.

“… What is it, Saiji? Come on.”

Oya called to Saiji when he stopped.
The three moved to a place from which they could see the carving show.
The “fish” appeared to be suspended from the ceiling, though at first only the rope was visible.
Its full form emerged when they pushed past the soldiers to the front.

“… Ha.”

A breath like a laugh escaped Saiji’s lips.
… Somehow, he had expected this.
Still, he had hoped it would prove a dream. He had prayed that he was imagining things.
But it was not a fish hanging before him. It was a man—“Jack”—and everyone had convinced themselves that the man was a fish.
Everyone except the cook holding a massive kitchen knife and the women seated at the back of the room.

Jack’s face had turned a dark, livid red, suggesting that he had already hung there for a long time.
Even so, he smiled as though proud to become an ingredient.
The cook raised her keenly sharpened knife and brought it down, first taking off one of his arms.

“Ih… gyaaaaaaaaaah!”

Jack screamed.
The audience erupted in excitement.

“Whoa, amazing! I can’t believe it came off in one blow!”
“… Looks nice and fatty. Delicious.”

Taka and Oya spoke happily as they regarded the spray of blood and the gruesome cross-section of the wound.
The cook severed Jack’s other arm and arranged both limbs on a platter.
Blood streamed steadily into a container placed below him.
Apparently, she meant to use that in the cooking as well.

With the obstructing arms removed, she began the work of skinning him.
First she scorched his entire body with something like a magically powered burner.
Once the skin began to separate, she seized it and stripped it away in a single motion.
Jack was still alive.
Each time he released another hoarse scream, the soldiers who had once been his comrades roared with laughter.
In truth, if the sole purpose had been to cook him, the cook should have taken his head first.
She had deliberately waited until after the skinning because she was staging a show.
An enormous quantity of blood poured from the stump of his neck.
The cook lifted the severed head from the floor by its hair, displayed it to the audience, and spoke as though performing ventriloquism.

“Everyone, I had such a painful time, so eat me all up, okay?”

The soldiers, Taka, and Oya burst out laughing. So did Sakuna and Toka, who had entered the dining hall at some point.
The whole room became a whirlpool of laughter.
Saiji, too, gave a feeble laugh.
There was nothing else he could do.

The butchering continued.
After taking the head, the cook waited for the blood to drain before carving away the flesh.
All the while, she discussed which sections were sinewy, which were rich with fat, which were best roasted, and which would taste good stewed—

“Not that I would ever eat any of it. Human men are smelly and filthy. By all means, the rest of you can indulge in cannibalism.”

From time to time, she inserted such jokes and drew fresh laughter.
Was it funny?
No—it surely must have been.
Everyone was laughing, after all.
They were right, and Saiji was the one who was wrong.
That had to be it. It had to.
But even so—

“Ha… ha ha…”

Before Saiji realized it, his body was retreating one step at a time.
No matter how firmly the crowd declared itself correct, some things remained impossible to accept.
Even the pressure to conform had its limits.
His instincts cried out.
This was wrong.
Nothing like this should be allowed to happen.

“Ha… ha… aaah… aaaaah… uwaaaaaaaaaaah!”

At last, he reached his limit.
Screaming, Saiji fled the dining hall.
He could not watch any longer. As if that thing could ever have been a fish.
It was a human being—unquestionably a living human being.
Eating him, turning him into food—everyone had lost their minds.
Drenched in cold sweat, Saiji ran through the barracks in an ugly, broken stride.
On the way, he encountered one of the few soldiers who had not gone to the dining hall.
Perhaps this soldier had not yet gone mad.
Clinging to that hope, Saiji approached and called out to him.

“H-Hey, sorry—please, help me! Everyone’s gone insane! Something is terribly wrong!”
“I… I…”
“Hey, are you listening? You can hear me, can’t you?”
“Sad… I’m so sad…”

Without reacting to Saiji at all, the soldier slowly approached the wall and began slamming his head against it again and again.

“H-Hey! What are you doing?”
“So sad… Ah, ngh… No… It should have been my turn…!”
“Stop! I said stop!”

Blood soon ran from the man’s forehead, and even his skull began to cave in, but he showed no sign of stopping.

“How can I get there? It shouldn’t have been Jack. It should have been me. Then… yes. If I’d made myself an ingredient from the start… an ingredient, for atonement… heh, uh, ah ha ha! Hee hee, heh heh…”

He struck his head against the wall over and over. He continued even after the light vanished from his eyes and his skull lost its shape.
If he had been human, he should already have been dead.
Still he smashed his bloody head into the wall with wet, pulpy thuds.
He was not sane either.
Abandoning him, Saiji ran on.

“God… hah… haa… Isn’t there anyone sane left in this whole castle?”

Saiji gave up on the castle and headed for the castle town.
Surely he would find normal people there.
He would ask them for help—or better yet, leave the town entirely and flee somewhere far away, somewhere beyond the reach of those people, whoever they were.
Gasping for breath and nearly falling time after time, he ran on and on, wondering whether the castle had always been so vast. At last, he reached the exit.
He threw open the door and rushed outside—

“Welcome home.”

The female cook stood directly before him, smiling.
Of course, she still held that vicious kitchen knife, its blade as long as her arm.
He was not outside.
He was in the dining hall.
He had unquestionably gone out, yet somehow Saiji was back in the blood-reeking dining hall, laid out on the central table.

“Welcome home, Saiji.”
“Welcome home, Saiji.”
“Heh heh heh. Saiji finally came home, huh?”
“… I’ve been waiting.”

Sakuna, Toka, Taka, and Oya each held down one of Saiji’s limbs.
Because of that, he could not move at all.

“We were a little short of meat, so we must obtain more.”

The cook smiled.

“Saiji’s skinny and probably stringy. He might be tough unless we cook him for a long time.”

Taka looked delighted.

“… Appreciating the toughness has its own charm. After all, this is our chance to savor a friend’s flavor.”

Oya imagined the taste.

“Mr. Jack’s meat was tender and delicious. I wonder what Saiji will taste like—I can’t wait!”

Sakuna exclaimed with innocent excitement.

“It’s all right. Becoming an ingredient is something to celebrate, because it’s atonement. Do you understand? You’re making up for your sins.”

Toka spoke with her red eyes opened wide.
Of course, Saiji did not understand.
He genuinely wondered whether he had ever committed any sin that demanded atonement.
And so, of course, punishment descended on him.
This was not atonement.
It was punishment for having forgotten his sins.

Whoosh—thwack.

The blonde cook’s hair swayed as she brought down the knife, severing Saiji’s thigh.
One perfect stroke divided it.

“Ah… gah… aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Of course Saiji screamed.
The pain had not yet arrived, but the alien sensation and terror left him capable of nothing else.
An instant later, the agony he feared struck him.
At first, it was only heat.
But gradually that heat acquired shape, becoming a distinct, searing pain like countless needles driven into his brain.

“Hih—hiiii! Stop, stoh—agiiiiii!”

Even as Saiji screamed and thrashed, no one released his remaining limbs.
His friends roared with laughter at the sight of his suffering.
Then the knife came down again.
This time, it took his other leg.

“Hagyagh!”

Next came his right arm.

“Giiii!”

Finally, his left.

“Ih… gaaaaaaaah!”

Deprived of all four limbs, he jerked and bounced across the table using the muscles of his torso.
His friends laughed again.
Nor were they alone. The surrounding soldiers, the cook, and the women at the back of the room were all laughing.
He was in pain. He was suffering. He was dying. Why were they laughing at him?
This was wrong. All of it was wrong. He alone was right.
The world was insane, everything in it was wrong, and the truth—
—existed only inside himself.
He fixed that certainty deep in his heart.
He would never trust anyone again.
He had to believe only what he himself saw and felt. He should have done so from the beginning.

—Ah, but it was already too late.

The cook raised the knife once more.
His vision was beginning to blur, but he could still see her smile with perfect clarity.
The blow was aimed at his neck.

Thwuck.

The knife sheared through flesh and bone, separating his head from his body.
His head bounced and rolled beneath the table.
Having lost the brain that commanded it, his torso’s muscles convulsed reflexively and twitched.
As Saiji’s vision faded, he watched his friends point at his head and laugh.