Source
https://kakuyomu.jp/works/16817139558323866579/episodes/16817330669175350710
When that person was dissatisfied, they often cried and took it out on objects.
Rather than hitting or beating things and leaving marks, which would be troublesome, they would instead destroy things around them.
They expressed how hurt and angry they were by destroying things.
They believed that if there were no direct injuries, it wasn’t violence.
Well, maybe they knew and just pretended not to see it.
As soon as I opened my eyes, I realized it was a dream.
The layout of the room was the apartment I lived in as a child, that person was lying on the futon, my body was much smaller, and I had a knife in my hand.
Since the day I silently put the knife back, I often have this dream.
In the real world, that person was sleeping without noticing anything.
In the dream, they wake up while I’m fumbling around.
Then they jump on me, straddle me, and choke me, and I usually wake up because it’s too painful.
To be clear, the real person never thought about killing me.
Sure, they might have thought it would be nice if I died, but that would only be in a situation where it was clearly an accident with no fault on their part.
If it were an accident, or if she killed me for a reason that was her fault, she would become the perpetrator herself.
Perhaps she might even try to play the victim after killing me. But society wouldn’t tolerate that, and above all, someone like her, who tries to protect her own heart, couldn’t endure such treatment.
To her, the perpetrator is me. I’ve always been the only one at fault, and I must remain the only one at fault.
If I had a child, I should have been able to get married, and if I had gotten married, I should have been able to be happy, but because I was born, everything became impossible.
I endured the pain of giving birth to a child as a means to regain happiness, but the child did not make me happy.
Therefore, the one at fault is the child, which is me, and the one who should be punished is me. Just because I am a parent, I must bear that responsibility. How pitiful I am, I truly pitied myself.
Whenever there was news about child abuse, that person would drag me in front of the TV.
Then, in a slightly spoiled tone, they would whisper, “Mom is doing her best, right?”
[Sometimes, there are those terrible women who abandon or kill their babies, right? Mom isn’t like that. She’s raising xxx properly, isn’t she? She’s being a good mother, isn’t she? There are children in this world who are suffering much more than xxx. Compare xxx to those unfortunate children. xxx has food to eat, a place to sleep, and isn’t left out in the cold. See? Mom is doing her job properly.
Mom is going through a lot every day for xxx. So xxx has to endure it for Mom’s sake.”
That was certainly one side of the truth. For someone who couldn’t rely on anyone else, who lacked the strength to live on their own, who was fragile and easily broken, yet still had to be a mother alone, it must have been unbearably painful.
To begin with, she didn’t choose to have me. She had me because I was the child of someone she loved, and as a result, she mistakenly believed that person was her true love, which led to a terrible outcome.
Because of me, the person she loved left her, and since I wasn’t worth having, he didn’t come back, leaving her to endure unnecessary hardships alone.
So, in the end, it’s my fault. Not me as a person, but my very existence is to blame.
Since my impression started off negative, I should have at least tried to make it neutral—not positive, but at least neutral.
Of course, that’s impossible. Someone who annoys you just by breathing will only make you more annoyed no matter what they do while breathing.
But. Though I thought it was always like that, that person occasionally pampered me with a kindness that made me shiver.
If I were to put into words the uneasy feeling I used to have, it was that she occasionally seemed to connect the feeling of “being a proper mother” to self-affirmation.
By defining me as a ‘cute child,’ she was trying to convince herself that “I, who has a cute child, am happy.”
[xxx, it’s your birthday today, isn’t it? I bought a delicious cake, so let’s eat it together.]
She turned a day that had nothing to do with my birthday into my birthday and cut the cake.
She was always smiling, and I think something must have happened in her social life, but it was beyond my understanding. Still, I knew that asking favors at such times sometimes worked, so I ate the cake I didn’t even like as happily as possible.
I was able to go to high school because I asked her on the day she bought my birthday cake. Still, I think I was truly happy back then.
Maybe this will continue from tomorrow onward, I foolishly hoped.
In the end, the leftover cake, too big for the two of us to finish, was stuffed into the refrigerator and left there day after day. Eventually, with nothing else to eat, I reluctantly finished the remaining cake, and like waking from a dream, I came back to my senses.
By the way, when will this dream finally end?
As a child, I stood there with a knife in my hand, staring at that person who was still asleep.
There was a sense that it wouldn’t end until she woke up. If things were as they had been before, she would wake up on their own if I waited, but she remained asleep no matter how much time passed.
Her sleeping face was deceptively peaceful. Nothing had changed since then.
So in the end, I didn’t know what to do in front of this person who didn’t get angry or scream, so I made up excuses and went back.
But maybe it would have been better to kill her.
If I were to judge them based on my own arbitrary standards, she was probably not suited for life.
Maybe killing her would have been better for her. Maybe even before I was born. Before I was even conceived.
Perhaps I made the wrong choice at that time.
“Ah.”
After thrusting the blade into her chest, I thought blankly, “What am I doing?”
There was no reason for me to kill her, so why was I doing this?
If she wasn’t suited for life, there were ways to take responsibility for it, but it’s not exactly something you’d call taking responsibility, but it’s not like being alive is wonderful either. You just have to live because you were born, and I didn’t want to be born, and I don’t want to live, but I don’t want to die either, so I’m trying my best to make an effort and not get in the way of others, but this person wants to live even if it means getting in my way, and there’s no reason for me to kill someone like that.
There might be a motive, but why do I have to do such a thing?
I wish she’d die somewhere I don’t know about. I’d rather not even know she died. Or I’d rather she’d never existed in the first place. But that’s impossible. If this person weren’t here, I wouldn’t have been born in the first place, so there wouldn’t be a me to perceive that this person is gone.
In that case, the conclusion would be that I didn’t want to be born, but that’s just me playing the victim.
There are countless people in the world who have it worse than me. They are living much more nobly than I am.
What a terrible dream, I thought.
As always. Especially this time.
I prayed to something somewhere to wake me up quickly, when suddenly, our eyes met.
The person who was supposed to be asleep suddenly sat up and grabbed me.
“How could you kill your mother? You’re such a terrible child.”
With a knife thrust into her chest, she coughed up blood from her throat and managed to string together the words.
It was a distorted sound. I don’t even remember if that’s what her voice sounded like.
After meeting her, my head always hurts, and I can’t remember much. Mostly, they’re always screaming or crying, so their normal voice doesn’t stick in my memory either.
Come to think of it, my head hasn’t hurt lately, I thought as I was being beaten. That person doesn’t hit me, so this must be some kind of emotional fiction I’ve created.
I didn’t want to think about what it was. Apparently, when facing oneself, one must know the emotions one holds, but I don’t even want to face myself.
Even though my neck is being squeezed, I don’t wake up. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t hurt. I don’t even know why it doesn’t hurt.
That person was shouting something while spitting.
Well, it’s probably the usual stuff.
Why do I keep causing my mother so much trouble? Why should I be happier? Why do I have to suffer so much? Why doesn’t anyone help me? I should repay the debt of gratitude for being raised, and so on.
My brain refuses to listen, so I’m piecing together the words I’ve heard before to make predictions.
It’s just a dream, so that’s how it should be, but then my ears picked up an unfamiliar word.
“You, get out of there. xxx sama won’t see you.”
I blinked slowly.
What was that?
I definitely heard it, but it was a sound that didn’t form in my head.
“Your mother is going to be happy from now on, because xxx promised it. Children are born to make their parents happy, so you have to make me happy.”
This was supposed to be just my dream.
So it must be that I’m just replaying the things I’ve been told and the things I don’t want to hear.
But I’ve never heard the name xxx before, and even though I just heard it, I couldn’t remember it properly.
Something was off.
But I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong.
“xxx is a good child, so you can listen to your mother, right? Your mother wants to think that she’s glad she gave birth to you. She wants to be happy that you were born. So get out of there quickly.”
There.
That probably refers to that apartment building.
This person shouldn’t know that I live in that apartment building. At least, if they knew, they would have come right away.
If this is just a dream I’m having, then it’s not surprising that this person is talking about things only I know, since it’s a reconstruction of my memories.
But if this isn’t just a dream, then these words must have a clear intention.
Whose? If asked, probably xxx’s. And this person’s own.
“Hey, xxx.”
At that moment, a surprisingly sweet voice rang out.
The doorbell rang.
It was a short, old-fashioned bell sound.
The hand that had been strangling my neck loosened. I looked up and saw the front door.
I turned my head and looked in that direction.
The doorbell rang again.
There was a small window next to the front door. It was pitch black outside, and there was not a sound.
It was not because it was nighttime; both I and this person knew that.
Perhaps because there was no response, this time there was a knock.
Even then, there was no answer—unable to answer—when a voice came from the other side of the door.
“Takahiro, let’s play.”
It was a very carefree, drawn-out voice.
The voice is a little different, but it’s her.
As I listened blankly, a strange, strained sound like a failed breath escaped from her.
“Takahiro, hey, let’s play.”
Was she reaching out her arm? The knocking sound echoed from an unusually high position.
The person, who had completely stopped moving, tensed her body every time she knocked on the door, letting out a voice like the fragment of a scream.
The unclear sound was clearly calling someone’s name.
The sound of someone clinging to the name ‘xxx sama’ repeated, sounding dry and cracked.
When the words “Please save me” were mixed in, a calm voice echoed from the other side of the door.
“Tamagus won’t come.”
This time, a clear scream rose. It was a familiar, high-pitched, unpleasant sound.
Drawn by the scream, I looked at her face and immediately regretted it.
From her mouth, stained bright red, an absurd amount of blood was overflowing.
In an instant, her abdomen was dyed red, and still, the blood continued to flow uncontrollably.
As I couldn’t look away, I realized that the contents…were probably increasing.
First, the abdomen swelled up, then the blood flowed toward the limbs as if searching for an escape route. The skin stretched awkwardly in all directions, the limbs swelled to twice their original thickness, only the face remained normal, gradually buried in flesh, and then the person swelled to about three times their usual size before bursting.
With a loud bang, like a water-filled balloon popping.
The contents that had swollen and burst contained no bones or internal organs.
Everything had melted and mixed together inside, leaving only a thick, murky red liquid that scattered everywhere.
Naturally, I, who was below, was almost completely covered in it.
I reflexively closed my eyes, so nothing entered them.
After wiping the warm liquid off my arms, I cautiously opened my eyes.
Leaning on my elbows, I half-sat up and slowly felt around with my hands.
Unfortunately, my vision was crystal clear. However, my brain refused to process any of the information entering through my eyes.
Not a single bit of it made sense.
However, as a simple fact, or merely a string of words, the phrase “a flesh-filled sack shaped like a mother swelled up and exploded” kept popping into my head.
The body I had intended to lift was now kneeling on the ground.
I wanted to vomit, but there was nothing in my stomach to expel. Only air escaped with an unpleasant sound, and the back of my tongue felt uncomfortably tight.
After coughing repeatedly for a while, I finally stood up with slow movements.
Dazed, I turned my gaze toward the entrance as if in a half-conscious gesture.
From beyond the door, the same carefree voice echoed.
“Takahiro, let’s play !”
“………”
I couldn’t say, ‘Sure.’ Nothing was okay.
My whole body felt unusually hot, yet my hands and feet were oddly cold, and I was sweating uncomfortably.
My throat felt dry. Without thinking, I muttered, ‘Water’ and headed toward the dilapidated sink.
I turned the faucet, but nothing came out. Bloodstains remained on my fingers, but they couldn’t be washed away either.
She was calling me from the other side of the door. Was there a reason she wasn’t coming in?
I didn’t know. I really didn’t understand anything. There was no point in thinking about things I didn’t understand.
Hearing her call my name, Takahiro, I approached the front door.
The knocking continued intermittently.
“…What do you mean by ‘play’? What are we going to do?”
“Tag.”
“……Are you the ‘it’?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I don’t want to.”
A dull thud echoed, as if to convey some kind of dissatisfaction. The vibration from the door being knocked shook my hand, which was resting on it.
Still, I didn’t want to do it, so I had no intention of giving in.
“Who is Tamagus?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought there was no way I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to press the issue, so I asked a different question instead.
“…Is that person alive?”
“Which is better?”
“…Don’t answer a question with a question.”
“Which is better?”
“……………….”
As I fell silent, my neighbor continued slowly.
“Julina has already been caught, so she’s fine. Tamagus is stubborn, so there’s nothing we can do. Tamagus will take charge, because it’s Tamagus who’s bad, so it’s ridiculous to complain. If you do something bad, you’ll get scolded, so there’s nothing we can do. I’m just enduring it.”
Her voice sounded like he was forcing together scraps of something to make a single piece of cloth.
Whether it was because her emotions were in turmoil or because the location was bad, the words she spoke had an unusually clumsy ring to them. As I listened, I realized that what had happened earlier was really that person, that this was a dream but not a dream, and that it must have turned out very badly.
If that’s the case, then there must be a reason why this is inside a room.
She was outside. Even a human could break the flimsy lock of an old apartment building if they wanted to.
“Besides, Julina is already done for.”
“…Why is she done for?”
“She overused it.”
“What?”
“Humans aren’t that well-made, so she’s already done for.”
The voice that echoed had lost all interest. It was a matter-of-fact tone, stating only the facts.
Then, in a slightly exasperated voice, he muttered.
“Also, relying on Tamagus is no good either way.”
“So, who is Tamagus?”
“The one who deceived Miyoko.”
“Who is Miyoko?”
“Hayato’s grandmother”
I closed my eyes for a moment as a clear escape from reality. The fact is, this place isn’t real at all.
I’ve never told this person about Hayato. But I’ve never told her about that person either, so it’s all irrelevant now.
I felt terribly tired and sat down on the spot.
I didn’t feel uncomfortable even though my clothes were filthy, probably because this was a dream.
I kept my eyes closed for a while, but there was no sign of waking up, nor any sign of falling asleep.
From the scattered pieces of information, it seems that person had consulted a fortune-teller named Tamagus. I don’t know when that started. Unlike Hayato’s grandmother, that person was just plain odd, but they didn’t impose any strange rules on me.
Perhaps they had come to find me using some supernatural method as well.
Well, the method doesn’t matter to me. What matters is what happens from here on out. That’s all.
That person told me to leave this place. So, I’ll just do the opposite.
“…I don’t really get it, but as long as I stay in the apartment, that person won’t come, right?”
“If you call them, they’ll come”
“But you won’t call them, right?”
“Yeah.”
I thought that wasn’t a lie.
Maybe I just want to believe that, but since I’m the one taking responsibility for believing it, there’s no problem.
Besides, if “they can come if you call them” isn’t a lie, then you can call them, and at least they’re alive.
If they die somewhere I don’t know, that’s fine. That’s better. It’s the best option.
Because when I saw that person explode right in front of me, I was definitely scared. It wasn’t because humans die by swelling up like balloons, or because their internal organs melt into liquid and cover everything.
It was because I was happy about the fact that that person was thinking, “I’m glad I gave birth to you.”
It seems that even now, I’m still happy. I want to be told that I’m useful and that it was good that I was born.
Even now, if that person brought me a cake, I would pretend to be happy and eat it. And in my brain, half-submerged in fantasy, I’m probably genuinely happy.
I was so desperate to jump off right then that I was glad this wasn’t an apartment building.
Even if I gave in to the impulse, it wouldn’t change anything. Anyway.
“Hey, Takahiro, let’s play.”
“……..Then let’s play word chain.”
“Hmm……..? Hmm…..Okay.”
Is that okay?
I just suggested it in a half-hearted way.
“Then, risotto.”
“Torinukeri.”
“What?”
“Torinukeri.”
“……Ring.”
“Gomafujinomesari.”
“……Rythm.”
“Mayo.”
“……Let’s just play Jenga or something.”
“Jenga?”
“Don’t you know Jenga? You build a tower by stacking blocks like building blocks, and then you pull one out and put it on top.”
“Huh? ….Hmm? Um, what’s so interesting about that?”
“Well, I don’t really understand what’s interesting about it…the thrill of it collapsing? But then again, if we do it on the balcony, the fun will be gone…”
Thinking that I would have to listen to words I didn’t know until the word chain game ended, I wanted to change the game.
I didn’t know the words well enough to judge, and besides, I felt like he was quietly starting to attack from the beginning.
What a guy. I can’t respond to words I don’t know, so I’m definitely going to lose.
I decided to interrupt the game for now, made a promise to bring something next time, and managed to avoid the situation for the moment.
“By the way, this isn’t something that’ll keep me here forever, right?”
“No, but you can stay if you want.”
“No, I want to get up and eat the food I bought. Besides, this place is dirty.”
It wasn’t an excuse to escape; it was a straightforward opinion.
I turned around and looked back.
The dimly lit, narrow room was covered in a reddish-black liquid, with my footprints and handprints stuck to the walls here and there. It was a terrible sight, to say the least.
I couldn’t remember what the room had looked like when it was still intact. If it ever appeared in my dreams, it would probably be this one.
“You could have stayed until the seventh…”
My neighbor said something terrifying, but reluctantly saw me off. I think. I don’t really understand. I don’t want to understand.
And then.
When I realized it, I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
It was still dark outside, visible through the gap in the curtains, and my smartphone said it was four in the morning.
I checked again, but there was no blood on my body, and there were no strange marks on my neck. The dream was just a dream, it seemed.
However, a strange sense of fatigue remained. It might be more mental than physical.
Whether it was a dream or not, meeting that person would still leave me utterly exhausted.
I should just go back to sleep for now. I’ll think about it later.
As I crawled back under the blankets, I let out a big sigh.
“…….Is this my first dream of the year?”
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