Shiki Novel Translations 3.16.6

[sinnesspiel]

Ohkawa Atsushi opened his eyes within a dark room. A room he didn't recognize at all.

For a time he lost all sense of scrutiny, dumbfounded. He didn't know what was going on. But when his senses came back to him and he took in his surroundings, he confirmed two things. One was that he was locked in. The dread that he'd been taken prisoner--and the rage that fired up in response lead him to throw punch at the door with all of his might. He threw himself wholly into a kick and body slammed the door again and again, until the frame split where it held the bold and the door opened.

He burst from the room but the hallway was again tightly sealed. Atsushi grabbed anything he could get his hands on and screamed. Atsushi wasn't particularly aware of the fact that he was screaming so much as his angry shouts happened to spew forth.

In the room next to where he was held captive was another door, and it seemed to have a padlock on it, but there was a key hanging beside the door. Opening the lock, Atsushi stepped inside. In the room sealed in with a prison like grid crouched a single old woman.

That old woman looked to Atsushi and shrunk down as if in fear. She pawed at the ground as if to escape but crouched down in the corner of her cell, there was no place else for her to tun.

"Oi, where is this?" Atsushi bellowed, but the old woman only cowered. Only letting out a voice tinged with terror, she didn't even try to answer Atsushi. Atsushi opened the cafe and stepped inside. Atsushi was confused and terrifying. To tell the truth, he was relieved to have found somebody else, and since that person was trapped in like himself, he felt something akin to solidarity. With that he stepped inside, but the old woman wailed and tried to flee. Atsushi wanted to clear up her dismayed panic towards himself, to convey a sense of ease, but the old woman was the one to earnestly try to flee him, and Atsushi could only take that as a rejection.

"The hell is this?"

When asked she screamed and crawled to try to get away.

"What's with the cage. Maybe you got captured too?"

"Stop. Please spare meee!"

"I won't do nothin'. More important, answer me. Where the hell is this!"

The old woman was afraid of Atsushi's huge frame and booming voice. Closed up in the darkness, there was only a large man's presence. Atsushi could see the old woman's state in the darkness but the old woman could not see him, and Atsushi didn't know that she couldn't.

"Naa, Oi."

"Just stop it!"

The old woman heaved with sobs, scurrying to try to escape. Atsushi lost his patience. She couldn't tell him what he wanted to know. With the old woman going into a panic, Atsushi was going into even more of one.

"Oi, stop runnin'!"

He caught the old woman's arm. The old woman twisted to try and escape, wailing. Atsushi leaned over her not to let her escape, and the old woman floundered all the more. She struggled to flee for her life.

Her fear and panic, the woman's overreaction drove Atsushi himself into dismay. Frustration at things not working out, and in response to his own fear the anger was pushing Atsushi, who was already prone to snapping, past his limits.

"What the fuck is with you!"

Atsushi seied the woman's arm and shook her, pushing and pinning her to the wall as she tried to flee. Wanting to stop her resistance to him and thinking of nothing beyond that, he struck her indiscriminately, put his hands on her to force her down when the old woman became quiet.

Her terrified screams had stopped and at last Atsushi had calmed down if only a little. As he tried to take a deep breath, the woman's forehead was split and she had gone completely limp.

Atsushi let go of her in confusion. The old woman was strewn out more like an object than a person, without any signs of movement. He shook her in a panic, but there was no response. He smacked her but she let out no groans. He covered her mouth but didn't feel any breath.

Atsushi let out a shriek.

---He killed her.

"This's gotta be a joke. I..."

Didn't intend to do that. The words didn't make it past his throat. It was because she was going so wild about it. Because she wouldn't listen to him. Because she tried to run away desperately, like Atsushi was some kind of monster.

Stupefied, he suddenly came to his senses. This was a big deal. He had to get out of here. When he tried to force his lower body, which had suddenly lost their power to move to let him stand up again, he heard someone's voice. Atsushi froze. The impulse that he had to get away was too strong, to the point where he couldn't move at all.

A young man stood at the front of several men who appeared now in the doorway. They looked at Atsushi, seeming to be frozen in astonishment at what they were watching.

"N-No. I didn't mean for it to be like this. I just tried to ask her some things, then this...."

The young man only raised his brows and came into the cage. If it was only one, he might have been able to ram past him and get out. But there were several opponents forming a human wall at the doorway. Feeling about to cry, Atsushi could only watch as the young man walked towards the old woman, observing the sin he himself had committed.

"......She's dead, isn't she?"

"I---I..."

"Tatsumi-san, what's happened?" The group in the doorway called. It seemed the young man was called Tatsumi. Tatsumi turned to face Atsushi.

"You killed her then, mm?"

"I didn't mean to!" Atsushi tried to explain the situation with his tongue feeling tied. He didn't mean for it to be this way, the old woman wasn't taking it in. So he tried to pin her down, just wanted to talk to her.

Akira waved a hand to interrupt him before he started.

"Ah well," he said turning towards the group in the doorway. "Carry her out. This's no good. You can just bury her now."

Atsushi was fixated on Tatsumi. Tatsumi smiled easily.

"You don't need to be that worked up. Since we'd prepared her for your sake, either way."

The men came into the cage and scooped up the dead body with disinterest. Nobody mourned the old woman or casted a reproachful eye towards him. In fact, one of them looked at him seemingly impressed or surprised with him.

"You're the first who's ever attacked without being told to attack them. Balls of steel on this one!" Tatsumi snickered with a smile. "You're just full of potential. Really, you are."

"......Inn't she dead?"

"She is dead, isn't she. But people all die at some point. Am I wrong?"

Atsushi at last understood. He understood that nobody would blame him. And furthermore, that it wasn't that they took a guess at Atsushi's circumstances. Nobody was concerned with whether the old woman lived or died to start with. So the old woman was dead, nobody spared a thought to it.

"Now. No point in staying in here. There's a room next door for you. For a while, we'll need to have you stay in there but it seems you'll be leaving here soon enough."

"I---"

"I know you have some things you don't know all about yet. I'll teach you what you need to know. Everything."

Atsushi was urged out of the cage by Tatsumi. Even further past the cage was a snug room with clothing laid out, which finally made him realize he was wearing a white burial kimono. Atsushi received an explanation from Tatsumi about what had happened to him. But the reality of it didn't settle with him. He asked about it but it wasn't convincing him. His confusion only grew more violently.

"I'm not dead. I'm right here, like this."

"But you are here indeed. However, you are already dead. You've become something else."

"But." As he started to speak, a young voice was heard. A woman peeped into the small room. That young, glamorous look was a sight Atsushi remembered seeing before.

"You rose up, didn't you!" The woman smiled. Tatsumi exhaled.

"It seems he's still confused."

"It's because you explain it all in so much tedious detail," the woman laughed, eyeing Atsushi over. "Do you remember me?"

Atsushi shook his head. While it felt like he did remember her, it also felt like he didn't.

"Oh? That's fine, you will soon enough."

"I---"

"If it's about whatever happened, it doesn't matter. You and I, we're going to have fun from now on, isn't that right?"

Atsushi was flabbergasted, and that's all it took for him to nod. Atsushi only understood one single thing. And that was that he had obtained the special right to slaughter.

--Revenge.

Atsushi shouted for joy.

From now on he'd show every single one of the people who had made a fool of him.