A Cheeky Junior Denied Me My Entire Life, so I Tested What Would Happen if I Jumped off a Rooftop to Vent My Anger
“Boy, have you ever had a drink?”
A large man in black asks me such an inconsequential question while staring at me with holey eyes. I take a wary step back and observe the man in front of me.
“…………”
He is a big guy. He may be taller than Rengo. And what can I say, he’s intimidating. Different from Asama-san, an intimidating sense of being crushed.
If Asama-san is a monster in human form, this man is a superhuman who has mastered martial arts. I’m not a match for him, either way, I’m not athletically inclined.
I shook my head and said.
“…… I’m still a minor. I’ve never had a drink.”
“Then how about cigarettes?”
Without a pause, the man asks again. I shake my head again.
“No.”
“Then what about women?”
I hesitate for a moment and exhale.
“None……”
“I see. …… I see. Your world is still full of unknowns. I envy you. I really envy you, boy.”
The man nods in an exaggerated manner. I’m not sure what …… this man is trying to say, but I take another step away so that I can respond to whatever he does.
The man said, in a well-defined voice.
“I am Shiga Routen. I am one of the defeaters who specialise in killing immortals. It was none other than I who sent the doll to you earlier.”
“…… Immortal killers, eh? There are such things, aren’t there?”
Vampires and the vampire hunters who hunt them, you might say. An old man much older than me is saying words that would have made me laugh a while ago.
But I can’t laugh it off anymore. The big man, who calls himself…… Shiga, looks at me with colourless eyes.
“Hope is the unknown, boy. When I was your age, I used to believe that drinking would change the world. I believed that if I smoked, if I had a woman, if I had a family, this world would change forever.”
The man slowly approaches me. The man’s voice echoes heavily in the back alley at night when it is not crowded.
“But nothing like that changed my world. Many times I wondered if this is what I was meant to be. Don’t get me wrong, they were never …… boring. But the world was much more beautiful when I was dreaming.”
“……So, what’s the point?”
“Death is something that must be unknown. It is the last hope left to us, the human race. Immortals …… your existence is a desecration of death. You are trampling on the end that must be unknown, just by being alive. Therefore, you must be eliminated.”
The man reaches out his hand towards me. A very slow, sluggish movement. I don’t know what the …… killing intent is, but I can somehow sense that there is no hostility.
Still, I took my distance as if to run away. …… I didn’t intend to let my guard down in the slightest. Even if this man suddenly pulled out a knife like the doll from earlier, I was prepared to deal with it.
“Ah, bad.”
……, there is still a difference in experience. This man was obviously used to killing people. I had never even imagined that such a person lived in the same world, and I may have taken it lightly somewhere.
In other words, it was a perfect surprise.
“……!”
A big dog appeared from behind me. …… It was, on closer inspection, nothing more than a badly made toy. But there were so many of them, not ten or twenty.
“Damn ……!”
The dog, a toy, does not bark. They just perform their prescribed movements in a solemn manner. So if there were only one or two of them, I could manage on my own.
But unfortunately, the number of toy dogs is increasing at a rate that fills the back alleys. I wasn’t a monster to be able to handle such a large number of dogs, no matter how many toys they were.
“….. let go of me!”
I resist desperately. …… but it’s no use. It ate my leg. I fall to the ground. I quickly try to shake off the dog biting my leg, but this time it eats my arm.
“……!”
And finally, to make sure I can’t even speak, it bites me on the neck. …… there is no pain. If there had been, I would have gone mad long ago.
The man tells me, matter-of-factly.
“There are several ways to kill an immortal, but the easiest is to keep wounding them faster than they regenerate. The newly formed are particularly overconfident in their abilities. Therefore, they are easy to devour. …… What do you think? Boy.
How does it feel to be dog food? What unknowns are out there?”
I hear a man’s voice. But it’s only really audible, not the slightest bit heartbreaking. I’m being eaten by a dog, and for some reason I’m thinking about something else entirely.
I had just died, stabbed in the heart. And maybe I died when I jumped off the roof. I’ve already died twice. But I still can’t clearly remember when I jumped off the roof, and I couldn’t even recognise that I was dead because the stab wound to the heart was instantaneous.
….. So when I heard about immortals from Asama san, my first thought was the obvious question: what happens when I die?
I always wanted to try death. But It’s not that I …… wanted to die.
All I wanted was to be saved. I wanted forgiveness. I wanted to be pampered. I wanted you to tell me that it was okay. I just wanted to escape from the unpleasant reality in front of me.
But I don’t know the words, so I assumed it was a death wish and jumped off the roof. A series of bad things happened, and Kamiya-san’s words triggered me to jump off the roof that day.
I thought that if I died ……, I would understand how my father and mother felt.
So I didn’t want to die, but I always wanted to try
I wondered if my father and mother, who died because of me, hated me. I wonder if they have forgiven me. I wonder if they are still up there in the sky, just like they used to be, worrying about me. ……
I thought that if I died, I would understand that, and then I would be able to paint again like I used to. I believed that if I died, I would escape this world of excuses and regrets and see a new world.
I believed that. ……
“—–You’re not good enough.”
A moment later, the botched dog fizzles out. I can hear the thumping, thumping, thumping of the heart. …… I don’t know what I did to myself. I just felt depressed. I just couldn’t stand it. The next thing I knew, my body was back to normal and the dog that tried to devour me had disappeared somewhere.
“…… I see.”
The man still didn’t seem upset, and told me his words in a matter-of-fact manner.
“Does that mean that there is something that the Grim Reaper cares about? That regenerative power is not something that already exists. If so, why don’t you also make a suitable move?”
The man takes out a small doll from his pocket. I laughed.
“Try it, you dead branch. Don’t act like you’re the one who’s dead and you’re the loser who’s talking about the unknown!”
I was elated. …… What’s this feeling? A burning sensation in the core of my head, different even from when I was drawing. I want to kill more and more with this man. If I do, I might be able to see a completely different world. Such a premonition.
“—Quit it.”
But then, as if to put a damper on things, a cold voice rang out. When I turned my gaze, I saw a blonde girl standing behind the man. Natural blonde hair, different from Usa’s, who dyes her hair. For a moment, his eyes were drawn to her.
The girl said.
“Shiga. I told you not to be selfish, didn’t I? I had heard that the Japanese are hardworking, but to ignore orders to do your job is an insult to your superiors.
…… be reasonable.”
“Well, well, well, Lustice-sama. It is a great honour for you to visit us yourself”
The man bowed deliberately. The girl let out a small breath.
“…… I just came by on my way back from hunting, that’s all. I told you, didn’t I? The Grim Reaper will take a backseat. It won’t move on its own. The crows are running rampant right now. I’ll do it first. That’s it.”
“Roger that, My Master. ….., boy. See you soon.”
With that, the man leaves. The remaining girl looked at me with a face like a girl before …… confession, which I don’t understand, but she walked away without saying anything in particular.
“Ah, I’m tired.”
As it is, I hang there. I’m a …… wreck. My body is already without a scratch, but my clothes are in tatters and have a lot of blood on them. I liked these clothes, but I won’t be able to wear them again. It was a waste of time.
“If I fall down in a place like this, I’ll be reported.”
But I can’t move my body. No wounds, but I was just sleepy. …… No good, I can’t resist. A pleasant sleepiness comes over me. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m going to get a good night’s sleep.
“…… Well, that’s okay. If someone finds me, I’ll think about it then.”
I couldn’t stand the sleepiness and just fell asleep there.
◇
Usa Ririka was in a foul mood.
“Aaahh mou, that’s so irritating.”
After being told off by Asama Ion. Ririka went home and played the game to take it out on her, but she didn’t feel better at all. In the end, she wandered the night streets looking for Aoi Susumu again today.
─ ─ What are you going to say when you find Aoi-kun?
What She recall are such words of Ion. …… surely that, she doesn’t know. Ririka understood that she had done something to betray Susumu. But still, she …….
“That woman can’t understand my feelings.”
Then, as if drawn by something, Ririka stepped into an alleyway she would never normally pass through.
“…… eh?”
There, she finds Susumu’s bloodied and collapsed figure.
[TLN : Eh, it has become an action novel?]