Pygmalion Is Planting Seeds - Chapter 6

On the night I met Erisa, I was roaming around town.

After I had spent a long night lost in thought, I was finally able to conclude that ‘continuing to deceive myself’ was no longer possible.

As I wished from the very beginning, I wanted to revive Misaki to her perfect shape, and in order to make this happen, cutting up a corpse and extracting its flesh was necessary. I left the idea of offering her my fingers as a plan B.

However, having no idea about a way to accomplish such an unachievable mission, I just kept wandering around without any actual plan.

In the first place, a human corpse is not something you conveniently find rolling on the road, nor is it something that is sold in public. There’s no way a miracle, like some sort of serial murderer visiting my house and offering me a corpse as a present, would occur either.

Even if I was lucky enough to witness a murder or an accident while passing by, I would not even been able to take the body away before the police or an ambulance arrived, much less without anyone seeing me.

A person’s death was usually concealed in the end though. Not really something you publicize.

I chose to circle silent alleyways and abandoned buildings with less traffic, but far from finding a corpse, I didn’t even notice a single finger lying around. [Ad: Seriously? =.=]

I tried moving according to Erisa’s advice and followed the railway, checking if anything unexpected could be found, but again, it was all in vain.

I recalled the talk about the ‘Dangle’ shirt man picking up a suicide victim near an abandoned  building in the outskirts and went excitedly went, to give it a try too, however, all that I found was a large patch of land, full of overgrown grass with not even a single rat roaming around.

“As I thought, there’s no way I could find a dead body just lying around.”

Losing all hope, I went to a lonely public park located between two buildings, and sat on its swing.

The park’s dazzling lamp lights illuminated this worn out place. A bit further away from this light circle, I noticed a group of crude residences, made from pipes and blue sheeting. It’s probably the community of homeless people, separated from the town area. And this park as well, is nothing but a single part of this community.

A loose sigh passed my lips.

I wonder how I ended up here. Searching for a dead body with no strategy or knowledge is like I’m searching for a sunken ship in the middle of a desert.

My fruitless effort resulted in a languid feeling hanging on my back.

Whenever I got the urge to throw away everything and give up, I remembered Misaki inside my closet. [Pr: Totally not creepy.] [Ad: Lol.]

If I give up, Misaki will stay in this shape forever.

She doesn’t have the ability to revive herself alone after being given a chance to come back to this world.

It is my duty to accomplish this mission.  I’m the only person who could grab her hand and pull her up from the darkness and allow her to continue clinging onto that the small chance at life.

However, what am I supposed to do to achieve this?

My five senses which were driven by irrationality, had suddenly sharpened

.

I felt something inside the copse, near the park.

It is kind of difficult to describe this feeling. Maybe something like a sixth sense would be appropriate to say. [Pr: A spider sense?] [Ad: It’s tingling!]

The only thing I had was a premonition, telling me that I will reach my goal if I went there.

And as if I was reeling in an invisible thread, I slowly drew closer to where that feeling stemmed from.

Far away from the light emanating from the roadway, I advanced inside the darkly lit forest, always being careful not to trip on tree roots jutting out from the earth.

After my eyes gradually became accustomed to the darkness, I noticed someone’s shadowy figure a few meters away.

The figure’s outline was quite strange.

It was floating in the air and not moving at all.

By taking a closer look, the obscured figure became apparent.

A head, hung up, a rope tied at the neck. The body dangled from a branch.

A hung man.

My mind fractured. Instinct pushed me to turn back, but reason seized me.

I wasn’t going to achieve anything if I ran away. “Just recall what you were doing just now,” I told myself. “I was roaming around town at night, searching for a corpse, right? I couldn’t find anything and was about to give up, right? And when I decided to enter this forest on a whim, I discovered an unexpected corpse hanging in front of my eyes! Divine grace, a once in a lifetime chance has descended upon me. There’s no way I would let it go. All right, let’s draw out some courage! Right?”

Forcing myself to look at it, it was then that I saw several other figures nearby.

There were five of them at most, all short in height and strewn in tattered clothes. But as for seeing anymore detail, I couldn’t from where I was..

No, actually they were six of them. The last one climbed the tree like some monkey, and was cutting the dangling rope.

All of them were standing still under the dangling body, seemingly wary of my movements.

I could hear the sound of the knife as it cut into the rope.

Twang!

The body fell.

The figures below caught it five other figures instantly caught it.

One of them took out a bag from his pocket and they quickly put it inside.

And just like that, they left. Gone from sight.

All that was left, were the dense trees and thick overgrown grass, blending into the night, with me who was showing a stupefied expression, standing alone, the sound of a passing breeze rustling the branches.

I turned and ran, hoping to leave as fast as possible.

I was enraptured, feeling as though those people were pursuing me, and I ran through the abandoned buildings, left behind the homeless community and chose a road with the most traffic and people.

Leaving aside me feeling victimized by having the corpse snatched from me, all I thought about was my good luck in not attracting their attention.

When I finally regained my reason, I had already gotten on a train cramped with the people, warm bodies and the sound of breathing all around.

By the time I got down at the nearest station, my fear had considerably reduced. However, I couldn’t help but feel downhearted. For the first time, the obscene scenery of the flower district felt kind and gentle as if it was welcoming my cowardly self back.

I went back home, directly entered the living room and layed down on the sofa.

Recalling the earlier event which I was no longer capable of distinguishing from a dream, my heart started to break up.

I had no idea about who those people were, nor what were they wanted to do with that corpse, but there was one thing on my mind for sure, and that was the fervent wish to never meet them again. [Ad: With how many people vanish a year, it makes you wonder.] [Pr: CONSPIRACY?!]

A sigh passed my lips. I was a coward.

“I don’t know what happened but, don’t let it get to you. Eat something to raise your spirits!” A Japanese woman named Rosari seemed to notice my dejection, and tried to cheer me up. She was an average looking woman with darkish skin. I was hard calling her beautiful since she looked like a crossbred between a frog and a pigeon, if there was such a thing. [Pr: Low blow dude, low blow.]

However, her culinary skills were high class. I hadn’t yet seized the standards Haruhito was using to choose a woman to cook for me before her, which made the risk way too big, but this time it seemed he picked the right person.

Haruhito went for a trip to collect information two days ago. Thanks to that, I can now freely wander anywhere anytime I feel like it. However, Haruhito will eventually come back, and I need to consider what to do at that time. I can’t let anybody discover the grown up Misaki in my room.

While eating the hamburger steak Rosari made for me, the TV news was talking about a parent and child who were rejected by a welfare (or livelihood) program, passing away from hunger. It was said that when they discovered the bodies, no essential utensils were around and all that was inside the refrigerator was some oxidized mayonnaise.

In this country, more than ten million tons of food, are disposed of, before even reaching the dinner table. Even so, people who don’t obtain a single piece of bread and starve to death still exist. How ridiculous.

“If the father was hungry, he could’ve just eaten the kid,” said Rosari who was sitting in front of me at the table. She looked unconcerned at what just came out of her mouth, but maybe it was because she didn’t see the shock on my face.

“Does such a disturbing habit exist in your home country?”

“Selling blood, selling hair, selling internal organs because of poverty is normal. But no, eating a child, God would not allow it!”

“Then why did you say he should eat the child then?”

“Do not kill him. If he die alone, he can eat him. If he can stay alive by eating him, God will permit it”

Hearing Rosari’s opinion full of hand gestures, I remembered the accident of the plane with forty passengers that crashed in the mountains on the route to South America. Sixteen of them returned alive after surviving a long journey through an extreme situation in the high mountains, depending on only small provisions for food. However, it was confirmed that they resorted to eating the diseased flesh of their own to make it that far. An incident that confused the whole world. There was even a devoted Christian among them who said, ‘their souls have already separated from their bodies and are departing towards God. Their remains are nothing but  mere flesh’.

“And after confessing their act to a Catholic church, the answer was, ‘If no different measures existed to survive, except for eating a dead  person’s flesh, then nobody would blame you for that conduct, and there is no need to worry about it’.”

In other words, the church’s opinion implied that there was no necessity to ask for God’s forgiveness.

Perhaps this is what Rosari was trying to say even though I was entirely against it. Despite it being an indispensable act to remain alive, human flesh is still human flesh.

Erisa considered ‘cannibalism’ as something to not deeply analyze and judge. But I still, think there’s a certain line that a person shouldn’t cross.

“There are people who eat human meat in Japan. There are even people who make others eat their own meat.”

“Making others eat their own flesh?” I asked, my mouth agape.

“It’s a story about when I still was in Yokohama…,” she began.

Back then, she was working in a brothel. Her job was to receive the order from customers, head to the appointed room and offer them a sexual service. I recall Haruhito mentioning something about it being established in some places unknown to ordinary people. A type of occupation that doesn’t cause of trouble for the customers.

Rosari’s appointed client at the time was a wealthy man in the prime of life. He was wearing some high-end clothes and held a kind personality in public. He was indeed a gentleman. The man was pleased with Rosari and began visiting her every, fifteen days.

On the fifth appointment, he instead called her to his mansion rather than the usual hotel…

“It was very wide and very pretty. I felt jealous and thought ‘if only I lived in such a lovely place,” she described it.

When she was washing his body in the bathroom, the man got together his resolve and asked, “Today, can you eat me?” [Pr: This novel is just a carnival of weirdos] [Ad: It’s a novel for those of *cough* particular interests, apparently. This does not reflect those that love Tokyo Ghoul.] [Pr: lol]

Tokyo Ghoul.

“I was surprised. I told him no, blood would come out. ‘It’s okay,’ he had said, ‘I will call a doctor.’ And he pointed out a razor in the bathroom.”

In front of Rosari who was firmly denying his request, the man took the razor and started slicing off the flesh of his palm. While letting out a cold sweat and continuously groaning.  He proudly raised his bloodstained hand towards Rosari afterwards and showed a cut off a piece of his palm.

‘Do you want it to be sauteed? Or maybe you prefer it completely fried?’ The man was trying his best to bring out a smile while hiding the pain and the exposed bone in the deep wound of his hand. Without answering nor wiping her body, Rosari left the shower,and quickly wore her clothes, running from the mansion. [Ad: Finally, someone with some sense! Though she should have ran the moment he asked her to eat him] [Pr: I’m pretty sure she was still in shock then]

‘Do you want it to be sauteed? Or maybe you prefer it completely fried?’

“After that, he called me very often, but I told the staff at the agency, no. I did not want to see or hear from him anymore.

“It’s weird. What is good about making someone eat your meat? What’s so enjoyable in making painful memories? If he only asked me to eat beef or pork, I’d happily answer yes!”

Looking at Rosari, filled with a passion in her reverie, a large sensation of envy overwhelmed me

I earnestly wished for someone to do the same.  [Pr: At this point I’m disappointed in myself for still getting surprised at his behavior]

That night, because of Rosari’s story, I had a weird dream.

I was sitting at the kitchen table. Not in the old geisha house, mind you. It was the house where I used to live with my parents. My mother made a dish and lined up several plates on the table.

The main dish was a hamburger steak along with cheese on top of it. My mother’s special recipe.

But when I was about to reach for the steak, I noticed something.

“Hey mom, where’s your right arm?” I called out.

“Hey mom, where’s your right arm?”

She just looked at me weirdly. “You told me you want to eat a hamburger.”

“You told me you want to eat a hamburger.”

And with her gentle smile, I was satisfied at that answer.

That evening, my mom and I had a lovely chat. The hamburger was so sweet and its flavor remained on my tongue. [Pr: …] [ Ad: There’s no way I’m voting for this novel, on my site or no.]

“Meh, Mom, this hamburger is too sweet.”

“Meh, Mom, this hamburger is too sweet.”

“Did I perhaps put too much sugar?”

“Did I perhaps put too much sugar?”

“You forget things easily, don’t you mom?”

“You forget things easily, don’t you mom?”

My mother just smiled, “I do forget things easily, your mother is ashamed of herself.”

I do forget things easily, your mother is ashamed of herself.”

“I was confused and used Kuuya’s hand instead of mine in this hamburger after all.”

“I was confused and used Kuuya’s hand instead of mine in this hamburger after all.”

The fork I was holding with my right hand fell off.

After waking up, I kept lying in bed for a while reflecting on this dream.

Was that really just a dream?

The memory had an awfully déjà vu kind of feeling.

The times where we were eating at the same table, and having a friendly chat, but of course, both of us weren’t one handed.

Those blessed, brief moments full of happiness that I shared with my mother remained for as long as I could remember. However, at the same time, something in my mind screamed that that never happened.

Thinking back again, I recall that my mother was very cold towards me when I was a child. Whenever I just wanted to be spoiled and drew near her, she would cruelly brush me away. For me, my mother wasn’t someone who was gentle. She was an existence who didn’t bring me anything but pain and loneliness. My mother loathed me. I became aware of that fact not very long after I was born. Frankly, I didn’t understand why she directed such emotions towards me until she passed away.

No, I still don’t know even after she passed away.

My dream mother filled me with her gentle smile to the point that calling it a simple vision would be easy.

But when did she ever  direct such a smile towards me? Was her smile beautiful? Was she really that gentle?

As I thought. I can’t even remember her face.