He was dreaming.
It was a dream he’d had more times than he could count over many years. So even asleep, he instantly recognized it as a dream.
It was a dream about that darkness, where he and children in similar situations to him had killed one another.
They didn’t all kill one another, though. He quieted his breathing, waiting for it to stop. He’d be killed, too, eventually, but that would be at the end. Everyone else would kill each other, and then the survivor would kill him. Then everything would be over.
That’s how it was supposed to be. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.
Ah, Ukihiko.
I’d never imagined you’d be the one to survive until the end.
I’d never imagined you’d ask me to kill you.
Even though this is just a dream, no matter how many times I kill you, I still can’t stand it.
There’s just one other person besides you, Ukihiko, who I regret laying my hands on.
Riona Takarai. Big sister Rio.
“Do you intend to kill Father no matter what?” Rio asked him, her book face down on her lap. She looked so fragile that it seemed like just the weight of the book could break her like a twig.
“It’s bad luck for family to kill each other,” she continued.
“I’ve already decided.”
The lace curtains swayed. The window was open slightly.
Rio was sitting quietly with her back resting against a stack of cushions on her bed.
“Why are you protecting Father, big sister Rio?”
“Because he’s family.”
“Think about what he’s done to us.”
“It was rough, wasn’t it, Sousei?”
Wasn’t that obvious? It didn’t need to be said.
He attacked his sister in a fit of rage. When he pinned her on the ground and looked down at her, she was smiling. It was a terribly sad smile. Her younger brother was going to kill her, but that wasn’t why she was sad. She pitied her brother.
“I love you,” she said, reaching out her paper-thin hands and stroking his cheek with her bony fingertips. “I love Touka and father, too. We’re family.”
“I don’t understand, Rio.”
“I guess it can’t be helped,” she said, and closed her eyes.
Sousei had planned to strangle her, but her neck was too thin. So thin that it seemed like his hands would easily crush it. He didn’t have the guts to kill his sister that way. He inevitably picked up a cushion and pressed it against his sister’s face. She couldn’t breathe. Sousei, similarly, stopped being able to breathe. His sister was a katashiro, and the daughter of a renowned priestess by their father. Anyone who harmed her would be harmed in turn. If his sister suffered, he suffered the same way. If she died, he died as well.
“It can’t be helped.”
“It can’t be helped.”
“It can’t be helped.”
Those words echo repeatedly.
Their father, Venenoza, was the king of poison. His very existence was a poison that killed people. His bodily fluids were toxic, and even his breath was extremely dangerous. Venenoza was well acquainted with every kind of poison known to man. He used these poisons on Sousei, causing him to sweat abnormally, vomit, get headaches and stomachaches, become dizzy, have respiratory problems, spasm, and made his internal organs fail, killing him over and over again. Fourteen times. Yes—fourteen times. Venenoza tormented his son to his heart’s content, killing him fourteen times. During that time, Sousei heard his sister’s words over and over. “It can’t be helped.” “It can’t be helped.”
“It’s because you dare to defy me, imbecile. Learn your place,” his father sneered.
The words his sister left him with felt heavier to Sousei than the ridicule from his father. So it didn’t bother him. The fourteen deaths his father dealt him were nothing compared to the one time he died for killing his sister. Even when his father finally made a mistake that he’d never made before, there was no joy in it for Sousei. Not in the slightest. It simply felt as if things went according to plan.
“You looked, didn’t you, Father?”
Sousei’s other sister had been waiting for an opportune moment.
She had been aiming for the time when their father was repeatedly killing her younger brother—when her brother was being killed over and over by their father. That had been their plan. Perhaps the ever-cautious Venenoza was overconfident, careless, not paying attention, or getting bored of poisoning his son to death. He looked directly at Sousei’s sister, who suddenly appeared in front of him.
He looked directly into Touka Takarai’s eyes.
“Aaagh!” their father cried. Venenoza really did scream quite nicely.
Sousei also heard Rio’s voice. “It can’t be helped.”
Just a second was enough. Just looking at each other for a fraction of a second was enough to make him crumble. Touka’s eyes made him shatter into smithereens. They didn’t turn people to stone, like the three Gorgon sisters in Greek mythology. She was born with some kind of extraordinary evil power dwelling in her eyes. It crushed the psyche of anyone who met her gaze. People called it the “evil eye,” or the “malevolent stare.”
“Aaagh! Aaah!”
“It can’t be helped.”
“Raah! Aaagh!”
“It can’t be helped.”
His father screamed, and his sister Rio’s voice echoed, even though she was supposed to be dead. Even though Sousei killed her with his own hands. Sousei’s father tore at his face with his hands, covered in his son’s blood and the poisons secreting from his own body. He thrust the fingers on his right hand into his nostrils and churned them around. He tore off his lips with his left hand. He lurched backward and thrashed about. He shoves his fist into the back of his throat while trying to bite off his wrist.
“It can’t be helped,” “It can’t be helped,” Rio was saying somewhere. It can’t be helped. She’s right: It can’t be helped.
Aha-ha! Ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Touka was cackling. She laughed wildly. She laughed while digging her fingers into her own eye sockets for some unknown reason. Roaring with laughter, she tried to gouge out her own eyes. The ultimate weapon she was born with. The eyes that frightened even Venenoza.
Sis?
Big sister Touka?
What are you doing, big sis Touka?
“Raaaaaaaaaaaghhh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhh!”
“Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah! Aha-ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!”
“It can’t be helped.”
Why? Big sister Rio? Why…?
“Because we’re family,” Rio whispered clearly into his ear. Even though he killed her with his own hands.
Is she here? Big sister Rio?
He looked for her but couldn’t see her anywhere. The only people there were his father, who was losing his mind and trying to suffocate himself, his other sister, laughing with amusement and proudly holding up the two eyeballs she gouged out of herself, and Sousei.
But he could still hear her voice.
“…It’s bad luck for family to kill each other.”