There are many factors involved in a human being's birth.
Ideally, a child would simply come into the world as the result of passionate love between a man and a woman, but reality is not nearly so much like a fairy tale.
My life was no different.
I was the product of a drunken fling between a man and a woman who were both completely wasted.
The man who was supposed to be my father ran off before I was even born, and in the end my mother raised me alone.
That doesn't mean my mother was a good person, either.
She didn't have the money to get an abortion, and she would drunkenly brag that she kept me around because of the subsidy paid to single mothers. How could anyone look at that and think of her as a decent parent?
Every so often she'd bring some new boyfriend home, and whether they beat me senseless or not, she'd just sit there laughing and watching.
I was born to trash parents and raised in a trash environment.
It was only natural that my life turned out to be a mess.
No matter what I did, nothing ever worked out, and I found it far too easy to lash out and hurt other people.
When I suddenly caught myself doing that and felt disgusted, I even felt a little relieved that at least my conscience was functioning properly, unlike my parents'.
I'd been born into this world without wanting to be, and I'd lived without wanting to, either. If that was how it had to be, then at the very least I wanted to be able to die when I chose to.
So I threw myself off a cliff.
But it seemed I was an idiot who couldn't even die properly.
On the way down, I slammed straight into a branch that had grown out partway down the cliff. My abdomen was torn open by the branch, my innards spilling out and scattering everywhere like strips of paper from a firework, yet because the fall had been broken even a little, I hadn't died.
It was horrifying to know I'd probably bleed out and die from shock before long, but until then I'd have to endure the pain with a clear head. Honestly, it would have been better to smash my head in and die cleanly.
In the end, I really was an idiot who couldn't even die right.
I glared resentfully at the night sky beyond the cliff, wondering what the point of my birth had been.
That was when I sensed someone's presence.
"...This is a first."
It was unexpected.
Someone had shown up in the remote woods where I'd come to die in secret.
It was a young man with a large guitar case slung over his shoulder.
He looked at my blood-soaked body sprawled on the ground, then shifted his gaze to the pieces of my organs caught on a branch along the cliff.
"Tried to kill yourself and failed, huh. Your insides are all spilled out, and you're dying."
For an ordinary person, it was the kind of sight that would make them want to look away, but the man only calmly assessed the situation.
He was clearly startled, but what was strange was that there was nothing beyond that.
He carefully stepped over the scattered innards and approached me.
Then he leaned in close to my ragged breathing and asked, "Can you still talk? It looks like it's too late to save you, but if you still want to live, I'll call an ambulance."
The man held a phone in one hand, ready to call the ambulance the instant I gave him a yes.
I had no idea why this stranger had suddenly appeared and was doing this, but I decided to answer him for now.
"...No... need..."
I was already at the point where I could barely feel pain anymore.
It was too late to turn back now, and even if I could be saved, I didn't want to live anymore.
The man looked at me for a moment, then put his phone away as if respecting my choice.
Then he sat down right there.
Just sat there quietly.
Was he planning to watch me die?
I wondered why this man had come to a forest that only people who had given up on life ever visited.
At the very least, he didn't look like someone who wanted to die. And he certainly hadn't come here to play the guitar.
"Well, it feels a little odd to say this to someone who's dying, but..."
The man, who had been looking up at the night sky along with me, scratched his cheek awkwardly and spoke.
"Usually I just offer prayers over dead bodies without permission, or ask for permission and take what I need. This is a little different from usual, but I suppose I should still do this properly."
"...?"
The man, spouting nonsense I couldn't understand, turned to me and said something even more incomprehensible.
"Mister, what do you think about your body becoming someone else's food after you die?"
"...W-what?"
I asked back with lips that barely moved.
The man scratched the back of his head as if thinking about how to explain, then continued.
"I've got a bit of a situation. There's a little girl, and she can't eat ordinary food. Well, she can eat it, but she doesn't get the nutrients she needs from it. The problem is that those nutrients are inside the human body. So she absolutely needs human flesh."
What the hell was that?
I'd never heard of such a grotesque constitution before...
...No, wait.
I had.
The inhuman monsters said to live hidden somewhere in the city.
They survive by hiding among humans and feeding on them.
Their danger is immense, and there are real cases of victims, but because many people go through life without ever meeting one, they're treated as little more than urban legends.
"A Ghoul...?"
Unless he was some depraved freak with a taste for human flesh, that was the only thing I could think of.
The man didn't deny it. He simply nodded, as if he saw no reason to hide it from someone who would naturally be dead in a few minutes anyway.
"But you... look human..."
"That's right."
"Why would a human be feeding a Ghoul...?"
"She's my daughter."
"..."
I was at a loss for words.
I thought this man, who casually called a monster that devoured humans his daughter, had to be completely insane.
But if he was insane, his eyes were far too steady.
As if there wasn't a single trace of hesitation in calling that child his daughter.
"Ah, ha, ha!"
For some reason, laughter burst out of me.
Up until now, I'd lived the most painful life in the world, and I figured I'd keep living the most painful life in the world, so I'd thrown my own life away here. It was a kind of escape.
And yet that escape suddenly felt absurdly ridiculous.
Raising a monster that had to eat human flesh as family!
There was a man living that kind of life, and I had chosen to run away over pain that was only this bad? The man wore a calm expression, but I couldn't even imagine how horrifying the price of that calm must be.
I'd bet the rest of my ruined insides that something unseen was gnawing away at him.
Maybe even at this very moment, while he was standing there facing me...
Cough, cough.
I started coughing. My diaphragm barely moved.
Just when I was thinking I was foolish for wasting the little strength I had left on laughter, the man went on.
"You're going to die anyway, Mister. Wouldn't it be better to make a little girl smile brightly than to be buried in dirt and rot, or get torn apart and eaten by hungry beasts?"
"..."
I'd been born from trash roots, lived a trash life, and thought I'd die a miserable death without even managing that properly.
But it seemed even someone like me could still do something.
With the last of my strength, I squeezed out a pointless question.
"Your daughter... is she cute...?"
"She's ridiculously cute. Cute enough that I wouldn't mind if she bit my eye out."
"If I can disappear as food for such a girl... that'd be... an honor..."
With those words, my breath drifted away.
It felt like sinking into darkness. Even the stars in the night sky seemed blindingly bright.
I wanted to close my eyes, but my body no longer moved.
The man's voice covered my eyelids for me instead, calm and gentle like a lullaby, or a prayer.
"May your body remain as someone's sustenance, and may your soul reach rest."