CH 42

Main Story 42

Author’s Note: Depictions of landslide disaster included. Please be warned.

The landlady’s lover was my father, Kujouin Tooru.

“Stop it, Tooru-san. Reiko-chan’s sick. She has a cold and is running a fever.”

The landlady stood in front of my father, as if to shield me from him.

In response, my father grabbed the landlady’s waist.

“Setsu, I told you, didn’t I? To properly exact revenge on they who had spoiled the truth that is our love. And for our children too, didn’t I tell you?”

“Tooru-san! I don’t wish for such a thing! Besides, Yamada Fuki has already struck Reiko-chan a deep blow! There’s no room for me to butt in.”

What are they talking about? What revenge?

I can’t breathe. My head is spinning.

Just then, a low rumbling sound resounded from somewhere.

A terrible, horrifying rumbling. A sound that resounds inside you.

“There’s a rumbling! Landlady, quickly run away!”

I promptly tried to let the landlady escape. It’s dangerous for her to be here.

I tried to take hold of the landlady’s hand, but my father brushed my hand aside. He took the landlady’s hand and went out of the house with her. I sat there dumbfounded, stuck to the ground while watching the two of them go.

I tried to get up and run away too, but it was too late. In a flash, several different kinds of sounds flooded into my ears. The sound of boulders and stones clashing against one another, the sound of trees breaking, such sounds all became one with the sound of landslide and travelled through the air.

This sound, so overwhelmingly loud as such that I’ve never heard before, came with the landslide and buried the house.

It was all over within mere moments.

Mari-sama’s piano had fallen sideways and formed a space between itself and the wall. I was miraculously protected under this structure. Though I will probably not make it if I don’t somehow get out of here with my own strength now.

The landslide had just occurred. There is still the possibility of a follow up. Rescue won’t come until the situation has stabilized.

My left arm and left leg hurt. The bones there are probably broken.

Debris might flow into this space coincidentally created between the piano and the wall too. Or maybe the wall collapsing will come before that? Either way, I will be buried alive.

I felt eerily calm.

My birth father had been exacting revenge on me for a reason I don’t know. And now, as if as a last form of revenge, I will be buried alive.

What is with that man!

What did I do!

Just what did I do?

Is my existence itself wrong?

If so, then why did he let my mother give birth to me?

Though under such a situation, I find myself recalling a scene from Barefoot Gen. A scene where Gen’s father, older sister, and younger brother were stuck in their house after the atomic bomb had fallen, and they burned to death there.

Gen’s father shouted to Gen and his mother to run. But the mother went crazy from the sight of her husband and children being burned to death. Gen desperately tried to pull his mother away. In the end, Boku-san saved them.

I will die killed by my father.

I honor Gen, but being now in such a situation, I came to envy him. Gen was loved. By his father, by his mother, by his older sister, and by his younger brother.

I will die without being loved by anyone.

What did my life mean.

Something that feels like cold mud touched my foot. This space will soon be filled with debris too. And I will be crushed under it with the piano.

I don’t want to accept the fact that I will die killed by my father. I don’t want to be killed by him. I crawled out with all my might. It’s a tight space. My chest was wounded by various things. I was bathed in mud. Ah, what an unpleasant smell. But still I have to persist, towards the direction from which sunlight slips in.

Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more and I will be out of this collapsed house.

I was finally able to crawl my way out. I can’t stand. A bone in my leg is broken. I slowly creep forward, little by little.

My pajamas had gotten stuck in the middle of the way, became torn to pieces, and ended up falling off somewhere. Mud and gravel were stuck all throughout my body.

I must evacuate somewhere farther.

I took a look at the landslide. It had flown down while more or less keeping its original shape.

I crawled in a direction perpendicular to the flow. I wonder how much time has passed.

It’s still before twilight.

Thank goodness. I will not be able to see anything had it been nighttime.

I should probably move a bit farther away, but I have run out of energy. With the fever I’m running and the pain I’m feeling, I’ve reached my limit.

I lost consciousness.