Ex8-1. What I Need in Order to Love This World Completely

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/67/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

According to what I learned from an acquaintance, Mother currently lives in this shabby two-story apartment building.
It is about a twenty-minute walk from the station.
The distance, and the apparent age of the building, mean the rent ought to be reasonably cheap.
Turning over thoughts of Mother’s present life, I climbed the rusted stairs and made for room 203, two doors along.
I stood before the door, pressed a button that was oddly stiff, and rang the intercom.
The sound of someone moving inside came only after a slight delay.
Even a mother who abandoned me makes me a little nervous, when it has been so long.
She surely had no wish to see my face, but settling accounts does not allow for that.
The door opened with a rattle, and the air of the room spilled out in a muggy wave.
I could not help frowning at the vulgar smell of tobacco mixed with perfume.

“Ah… Who is it, at this hour.”

An irritated, rasping voice.
Whether she had just woken or not, Mother raked a hand through her unkempt brown hair and glared at me, a crease between her brows.
She looked more haggard than the woman in my memory. Was it the shadows under her eyes, or had she actually grown thinner?
The time was a little past four in the afternoon.
I had heard as much, but seeing that her days and nights were thoroughly reversed, it seemed to be true that she worked nights.
Even so, I thought she had slept too much—though with the shop where she worked closed temporarily because of the recent incidents, it could not be helped.

“…Who are you, really?”

For someone who looked so much like me, she did not at first realize who I was.
Then, as if a blurred field of vision were clearing, she stared at my face for a while and seemed at last to notice that I was her daughter.

“Wait. Don’t tell me you’re…”

Her eyes went wide with shock.
The last time we met I had still been eight, and I had still been human then, so I will be lenient this time, on the grounds that she noticed quickly.

“It has been a long time, Mother.”
“Ugh, it really is Chigusa. So Ryotaro can’t even keep a hold on his own kid… tch.”

The moment I bowed my head respectfully, I heard her click her tongue.
What a greeting.

“Haa… It’s been a while, Chigusa. So what do you want? If it’s money, you can see I can’t help you.”

Words as careless as if this were not a daughter she had not seen in eight years.
Even so, I did not change my expression.
I had known from the beginning that this would be the reaction.

“Does a daughter need a reason to visit her mother? I simply found myself missing you, that is all.”

Mother seemed to find me suspicious.
Indeed, if a daughter who had not come in eight years appeared suddenly, wariness was only natural.
And besides—she had surely heard that I had gone missing.

“Please don’t worry. I have already told Father.”
“…Haa. Just come in for now.”
“Yes. Excuse me.”

She was clearly not eager, but she invited me in.
I removed my shoes in the cramped entrance, passed down a hallway littered with bags of empty beer cans, and entered the living room, the source of the smell.
Garbage was scattered there as in the hall; the ashtray was heaped with butts.
The gaudy clothes she presumably used for work, on the other hand, hung on the wall in clean condition.
As I observed the room with interest, Mother spoke irritably.

“Could you not stare like that? And if you have business, sit down and talk already. When you’re done, you leave.”

Apparently she did not want me lingering.
That would not do. My purpose was to spend as much time with her as possible.

“I came intending to stay the night. Is that a bother?”
“Haaaah!? No way, no way. You can see that just by looking!”

“Just by looking” presumably meant that there was only one bed.
I moved to the bed, sat on the edge, and reached for the box beside the pillow.
The contents were condoms, about half gone.
Tissues had been placed beside them, most considerately.

“You usually use this with two people, don’t you?”

At my words, the muscles of Mother’s face twitched.

“So you’re saying two people can sleep here? Are you… actually serious?”
“I don’t mind. If I can spend time with you, Mother, nothing else matters.”

Mother looked at me with an expression full of disgust, a cold gaze as if she were looking at some unidentified creature.
I think the mother who had an affair, produced a child, and then foisted that daughter off on the father is far more unidentified.

“You needn’t look at me as if I were a monster. I am the child you gave birth to.”
“He’s the one who raised you.”
“But you are the only person I can call a parent. If I am rejected by the only mother I am related to by blood, whom am I supposed to rely on? Or will you tell me where my real father is?”

Each time I drove a fact home, Mother’s temper worsened by the moment.
Truly… truly this person dropped me into this rotten world and has not the slightest interest in me.
I already knew that, but considering it again, it is thoroughly selfish.

Mother, Chiaki Hinata, and Father, Ryotaro Hinata, are still carrying on a love affair with me as their pretext.
I will not, for the moment, call them Mother and Father.
Neither of them managed, to the end, to become parents. They remained an immature couple.

“…I can’t give you money, you know.”

At this late hour, does she still think that is what I want?
No… she does think so, I suppose. Since the divorce she has been steeped in that kind of world.

“I have no need of such a thing.”
“Oh. So you’re doing fine financially, then? In that case, in exchange for letting you stay, would you run a little errand for me?”
“If that is the condition.”

She put on a fake smile and listed item names one after another.

“First, cigarettes. The same brand as these. If you go out and keep going straight to the right, there’s a stall run by an old lady. Even you should be able to buy them there, Chigusa. That place is sloppy about it.”

She said this while rattling the box on the table, then tossed it toward me.
I have never smoked, so I examined what I had caught with some care.

“You can get beer at the same place. Let’s see… well, you’re treating anyway, right? Buy the most expensive one. I want to splurge once in a while.”
“Understood. Is that all?”
“Of course it isn’t. That was just a bonus. After that, detergent, ingredients for dinner, that kind of thing. Thinking of a menu is a pain, so just buy some prepared food or frozen stuff, whatever.”

A reunion meal of ready-made food is rather flavorless, but come to think of it, it had been like that at home just before the divorce as well.
She had abandoned most of the housework, and Father had looked after me—though Father’s care had always come with an ulterior motive.
While I memorized the requests Mother announced one after another, I was remembering the past.
The memories of an unfinished family, beyond saving, that had never managed to become parent and child no matter how far they went.

 

◇◇◇

 

I left Mother’s room, went down the stairs, came out onto the road, and headed for the shop she had indicated, going straight to the right.
I walked over old asphalt whose white lines had worn away, and now and then looked up at the gray sky.
Perhaps because of the dim coloring that wrapped this world, the winter wind, already cold, felt still harsher.
It seemed a road with little foot traffic; aside from the occasional car, there was almost no one.
The silence only cooled the heart further.

Along the way I stopped abruptly and stepped onto the grounds of a private house I was passing.
The unpleasant smell of blood filled the area.
A corpse they had forgotten to tidy away had been left behind. I would have to swallow it with my shadows at once and clean up.

I had, as a precaution, finished turning the area into Demi-Vamps and eliminating the men before I went to see Mother, and I had cleaned as well, but there had apparently been a gap in the check.
Moreover, I could still sense human presence here and there.
Some people had likely been out and had come home.
Some, noticing the anomaly, might already have fled outside.
But there was no need to worry about that.
Even if I did not take the trouble myself, the companions into whom I had poured affection would carry out the appropriate processing.

Even now, if I only pricked up my ears a little, small moans could be heard from the houses around.
Knowing there were companions nearby was enough to make me feel at ease.
That trust in others could be such a stout thing—when I was human it had been no part of my life, but once I had it in my hands, it was a good thing.
If all women could understand one another like this, tragedies of the sort I was once caught in ought to vanish from the world.

But unlike them, I had not been able to forget everything.
Having become a Demi-Vamp not by being drunk from, but by becoming one with Camilla, I can be completely saved only by erasing those things from the world.
The classmates and teachers who tormented me in the classroom.
Father, and Mother.

That is settling accounts.
Salvation by me, for me.
Or else—

“Welcome. What’s the matter, miss? Making such a frightening face.”

Before I knew it I had arrived at the designated stall and was facing an old woman.
I hurriedly composed my expression and smiled, and she said this:

“You shouldn’t force yourself. You’re still young.”
“Thank you. But I am all right.”

I am not forcing myself. I can state that with certainty.
Because I have long since arrived at the conclusion that I will not pretend to be someone else.

 

◇◇◇

 

“I’m back.”

I set a white plastic bag packed with food and alcohol on the table, and Mother began rummaging through it without so much as a “welcome home.”

“Oh-ho, you really did buy the expensive beer. With my income this kind of luxury is tough. Well, well. What you need is a daughter with money, honestly.”

I let the theatrical remark pass and handed her the cigarettes and the drinks.
Then I moved to the refrigerator to put away the prepared food for dinner, opened it—and found only a few bottles of beer inside.
The freezer likewise held two bags of frozen edamame.
Glancing at the floor of the kitchen, I saw unopened cup noodles stacked there.
From that alone it was easy to imagine what her daily meals were like.
Ah… she really is a theatrical person.

In silence I packed what I had bought into the refrigerator, took the emptied plastic bag to the kitchen, and began putting into it the garbage scattered in the sink and on the floor.
After that I reached for the used dishes that had been piled up, rinsed them lightly, and began washing them with a soapy sponge.

“You’ll even do the dishes. Ryotaro trained you well.”
“When the kitchen was dirty he would get angry and often hit me.”
“…I-I see.”

For the first time, Mother showed a sign of being shaken.
Does she not know that I was abused?
She has surely not been in contact with Father himself for a long time, and even if they met occasionally, he would never have brought it up himself, so perhaps it is only natural that she does not know.
After all, that man always behaved as if he were the one more wounded, every time he wounded me.
A thoroughly tiresome story.

“Hey, Chigusa.”
“Yes?”

Mother addressed me with a faint sweetness in her voice.

“What kind of life did you have with Ryotaro?”

She shows no interest in me, yet the moment the talk turns to Father she bites.

“What kind, how?”

Toward such a mother… jealousy? No. A blacker, thicker feeling welled up, and I could not help strengthening my tone.
But my change of feeling was of no concern to her. She showed not the slightest sign of being cowed.

“Conversation, meals… Did he get thinner? Or fatter?”

In principle, the health of a husband she divorced for incompatibility ought to be of no interest.

“He was thin. After you left, Mother, he seemed to be driven into a corner, little by little, mentally.”
“Driven into a corner… Ryotaro, because I was gone…”

She looked as if she were downcast, and yet somehow as if a little gladness were mixed in.
I can more or less tell what Mother is thinking.
She is worried that Father is thin, but perhaps he still loves her, and that makes her glad.
That is what you are thinking, isn’t it?

“There wasn’t any talk of remarriage?”
“Of course there wasn’t. You know that better than anyone, Mother.”
“…Well. Yes.”

Please do not color your cheeks. And please do not smirk. It is disgusting.

“But you ran away from home, didn’t you. When you came back, Ryotaro didn’t get angry?”

Not where I had gone when I ran away—she only wants to hear Father’s reaction as well.
You really do not change.
Not at all. Not even a little.
That is why I hated you both. That is why I hated the world, and prayed that the world would be wrapped in love.
Because of you.
Thanks to you.
I put the pack of simmered food I had bought at the supermarket into the microwave, operated the switch, and sighed, “Fuu.”

“You still love Father, after all.”
“Ha?”
“You want to be at Father’s side. But you are a whore who committed adultery, so you do not measure up to him. You are trash, base, a human being beyond saving—you have dressed yourself as a villain only so you can keep repeating that excuse.”
“What are you talking about…”

Even then Mother pretended not to know, and I could not suppress my irritation.

“But that way of thinking only holds because the true feeling underneath is, ‘I am not really a villain. I am a pure person who loves Ryotaro with a single heart.’”

I set down the prepared food I had been about to pick up and turned my whole body toward Mother as I went on.

“You have held down the wish to see Father by putting yourself down. It is touching, isn’t it. Ah, truly, just like the heroine of a romance drama. Which means the ending is Father coming to fetch you for a dramatic happy ending? A poisonous woman of your age, who abandoned her own husband and daughter for an affair, is dreaming of that? Is your head all right?”

She is nearly forty, and she still cannot see reality.

“Th-that’s not it! I don’t care about a boring man like that! I’m not—!”

She still will not admit it. A poor loser.
If she had simply brazened it out, I would have felt easier myself.
You paper it over, you dress it up, you play at being “mother” and “family” on the surface, and you do not understand that all the distortion of that falls on me.

“Then why did your eyes shine so when you were listening to talk of Father? Why were your cheeks so red? You looked just like a girl in love. Being shown my own mother’s third-rate tragedy-heroine play only makes me want to vomit, though.”
“You…”

No concrete rebuttal came back.
A bull’s-eye, I suppose.
Mother stood with anger seeping into her expression and closed in on me.
Then she seized me by the collar and glared at me like some cheap thug.

“What do you know…!”
“I am the daughter of a poisonous woman, after all. I understand more or less.”
“You don’t understand anything! You—someone like you could never understand me and Ryotaro!”

How can she say that so absolutely, when I am supposed to be family related to both of them by blood.
There are all sorts of shapes of family in the world, and some understand one another, and some cannot but still try to understand, and somewhere there ought to have been an effort, large or small, to close the distance.

—And yet, why.

Every time I saw peaceful families, that feeling swelled inside me.
Every time I dealt with Ellis and Mya-nee as family, the strangeness of my own was thrown into relief.

—Why could my parents and I never become a family, to this degree.

The answer to the question was found fairly quickly.
It was because the two of them were lovers.
Even after they married they remained lovers rather than a married couple, and even after I was born, because I was not their child, they could not quite become a married couple.
Not a tragedy. Merely a comedy.
The cause is obvious.
It lies in Mother having an affair and making a child there.
The one who ought originally to have borne the responsibility is Mother; if that was impossible, Father.
But the two of them turned their faces from responsibility and made me carry all of it.

“How can you say so absolutely that I do not understand? I am the daughter who watched from beside you the whole time.”

Mother answered my question at once.
Without hesitation, in a loud voice, shouting, she declared it.

“A child born the way you were could never understand a human heart!”

Without hesitation, Mother said it.
See. Irredeemable.
I had known, but when it is thrust this close, even a convenient fantasy becomes impossible to hold.
Once, when I was small, Father and Mother and I went to the local amusement park. Only once.
At the time the three of us held hands, and I felt we had managed, more or less, to play at being a happy family.
Looking back now, even that may have been nothing more than my being an accessory to Father and Mother’s date.
I closed my eyes and took my leave of the last memory that had remained as the sole scrap of goodwill toward her.
Then I opened my crimson eyes, put a smile at the corner of my mouth, and said:

“That may well be so. I do not understand human hearts. I have no wish to understand the heart of the mother who abandoned me, or the heart of the father who lusted after me. Being dyed into something other than human is just about right.”
“Hah!? Don’t talk nonsense—”

I overlapped her words, cutting off the crude abuse.

“Father is dead, you know.”
“Ha…?”

Mother’s vigorous words were wiped out by that single sentence of mine, and silence filled the room.
The hand that had been gripping my chest trembled; her pupils shook as well.

“Ha… haha. You say something like that out of nowhere, and you think I’ll believe you?”
“Do you think I came here to tell a worthless lie like that? It is a fact. That man is dead.”
“Impossible. That’s—there’s no way that’s possible!”

—He would never leave me and go.
That was the moment her groundless confidence crumbled.

“Even as a joke that’s in poor taste. Say it’s a lie. Hey… hey!”
“It is the truth. He hanged himself with a rope. I watched his face turn blue and the fluids run from his whole body, quite thoroughly.”

The memory is still so fresh that even now that laughable face rises before my eyes.

“Why would something like that happen?!”
“Do you want to hear? You know already, Mother, even though you pretend not to.”

Mother let out a small groan—“u…”—and lost her words.
See. You did know. You had noticed.
So you ought to know what happened, and why Father died.
And she cannot blame anyone for it.

“Father embraced me when I came home after so long, pushed me down on the bed as I was, and tried to assault me.”
“S-stop it…”
“It was sudden, you know? His breathing was rough, and he was already aroused. Even remembering it makes my skin crawl.”
“Stop… I don’t want to hear it…!”
“And then he said this: ‘It’s all right, isn’t it, Chigusa-chan. You won’t abandon me. You’ll accept me, won’t you?’”
“No, no, nooo!”
“Of course I answered, ‘I don’t want to.’ Then he immediately began preparing to hang himself, and I watched—”
“Stoooop!”

A ripping voice cut my words off.
Huff, huff—Mother was breathing hard, agitated like a beast making a threat, and was coming apart.
Because you have averted your eyes from the facts like that, my existence, which sat in the very middle of them, was ignored.
In that case, however much you refuse, I cannot stop.

“Go home… just go home, go hooome!”

Mother shoved me toward the entrance.
I staggered and struck the door with my back.

“Did you come here to say that? Something like that—what for!”
“You promised I could stay. I will not go home.”
“Then… I have an idea of my own!”

She opened the cupboard under the kitchen counter without preamble and took out a kitchen knife.
She gripped it in both hands and turned the silver blade, rusted in places, toward me.

“If you say you’re staying in this room any longer… I’ll stab you. I’ll kill you!”
“Will you kill your own daughter? A daughter who only came to bring news of her father’s death.”
“Because you were there—because something like you was born, I couldn’t love Ryotaro anymore! Then Ryotaro dying is your fault too!”

Is there such a selfish logic.
The one who casually slept with a man she did not know and conceived me was this woman.

“This isn’t a threat. I’m serious. Seriously, I—!”

Mother closed in, step by scraping step.
I—extended my shadows from behind her like tentacles and bound her limbs.
At the same time I knocked the knife from her hands.

“Hih!? Wh-what, what are you… higuh!?”

I approached Mother, bound by shadows and lifted into the air.
Then I reached for her chin and stroked it with affection.

“…This… you… what are you?”
“I have not yet said why I came here today. Of course it is not to tell you that Father died. The death of a man like that is of no consequence.”
“Then why…”

I put on a full smile I had surely never shown Mother once in my life, and said:

“Revenge.”

Come to think of it, in the life I have lived so far, I had almost never moved with that as a clear purpose. I thought so as if it concerned someone else.
I had possessed neither the strength to resist nor the optimism to believe a better future waited beyond.
But the present me has both.

“Re…venge…?”

Mother tilted her head as if to say, why would you do that to me.
Indeed, what I am about to do may differ from what the world at large calls revenge.
But considering what she clings to, I think it will be quite effective.

“You did not love me, Mother. The portion that should have loved me, you directed entirely at Father. So I thought I would have you atone, starting now.”
“Love… Chigusa, you say?”
“No. You will come to love me. You will forget Father as well, and think only of me.”
“There’s no way something like that could—hya!?”

I worked my shadows, forcibly moved her body to the bed, and silenced the Mother who had been about to say it was impossible.
I straddled her as she lay thrown unprotected on the bedding, and closed in.

“Hih, hiii… wh-wh-what is this… are you really Chigusa…?”
“I am myself. The only daughter you made by sleeping with a man who was not Father.”

I buried my face in Mother’s throat and drew my tongue over the sensitive skin; she squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth.
The thought of sinking my fangs there in a little longer made me shiver.

“Now then. Let us love each other, Mother.”

Mother shook her head in silence.
I kissed her deeply, as if to fill the time we had been unable to spend as parent and child.