I did something bad.
My first bad deed was sneaking out of the house without listening to Dad and secretly eavesdropping on his conversation with his friend.
At first, I couldn't really tell what they were talking about.
"Anti-anxiety medication"? "Panic attack"?
The words were difficult, but one thing was certain: Dad was sick right now.
I knew he didn't want to show me how hard things were for him. But I had no way of knowing how serious it was.
Mr. Hitokawa's reaction told me what I wanted to know. His voice was tangled with confusion, tension, worry, and anger.
A reaction that came from knowing Dad's condition. It was already beyond what I could understand.
"A guy who hates troublesome things is raising a kid while throwing away his whole youth..."
Even the muttered words from Mr. Hitokawa reached me clearly.
I knew he meant no harm. He was just saying what he felt because he was frustrated.
But I couldn't brush it off.
To borrow the way a novel I read once put it, those words became a dagger and pierced my heart exactly.
Ah. So it's because of me.
It's because he's raising me.
Dad has gotten this sick because of me.
That was my second bad deed.
I was ruining Dad. So slowly that no one would notice unless they said it out loud.
It was my fault. It had been my fault.
Even while Dad was seeing his friend off and coming back up to the house, I had trouble keeping my expression under control.
No, if I keep this up, he'll notice. I'll make things harder for Dad.
I hurriedly looked in the mirror and practiced my usual expression and tone of voice. It went better than I expected, and I managed to get through it without arousing Dad's suspicion.
My third bad deed was lying to Dad so I could go out.
I couldn't stay like this.
I had to do something.
I didn't need some excuse that said I was a child, so I didn't have to feel responsible.
If I was the one making Dad suffer, then I had to lighten that burden.
So I decided to commit my fourth bad deed.
If Dad caught me, it wouldn't end with just getting my butt smacked... but I still went through with it.
I searched Dad's room.
It didn't take long to find the map he always kept with him when he secretly left the house at dawn.
When I unfolded it, I saw red X marks scattered all over it.
Here.
The place Dad went to for me, only to come back with his heart in pieces.
The place where that thing called "death" was waiting, the thing that was gnawing away at Dad...
I put on the bag Dad had bought me for picnics before.
And for the first time, I went out alone without Dad.
I didn't have much time. At the very least, I had to get home before Dad finished work and came back.
In Koma's case, he moved around by bicycle, but Eto didn't have anything like that.
Right now I had about 4,670 yen on me. It was a lot for a five-year-old to have, but Eto still couldn't clearly tell the value of money, so I had no choice but to gather up all the cash I could find after searching the house.
When I first got outside, Eto was thrown into confusion. It was the first time I'd ever gone somewhere farther than the playground without Dad, so I was nervous too.
Eto knew far too little about the world, and even the common sense I did have was incomplete, something I'd only picked up from books. I lacked the practical experience that really mattered.
For someone like Eto, who couldn't even read bus timetables or train routes, finding a suicide spot alone seemed basically impossible.
But there was one fact that couldn't be overlooked.
Eto was clever.
"How do I get there?"
At the bus stop, I got on a bus and asked the driver.
I didn't know much about timetables or routes, but a professional in the field would.
The bus driver, who had been about to take on passengers, looked flustered when a child suddenly held out a map and asked how to get there, but he soon explained kindly.
"I don't know why you'd want to go down some empty mountain road... but there's a bus stop nearby. Wait here and take the number 22 bus. And then..."
I remembered what the driver told me and got on the number 22 bus when it arrived ten minutes later.
But then that driver asked, "Where are your parents?" and I didn't know how to answer, so I bolted.
After that, I wandered around the stop like a predator waiting for prey.
Then I saw a woman with two children board the number 22 bus, so I casually slipped in behind them.
The woman paid the fare for her children, and I, sticking right behind her, paid mine too.
The woman didn't seem to notice Eto following her, and the driver saw Eto paying separately but didn't seem to care much. He probably just thought I was the woman's well-behaved daughter who wanted to pay her own fare.
After getting off at the stop I wanted, Eto looked at the map and walked up the road leading into the mountains.
If the map was right, the suicide spot was at the end of this road, on a sheer cliff.
Would there be anyone there? There had to be...
With a heart full of worry and tension, Eto finally reached that cliff after a long walk.
And... there was.
An old car, battered and worn in places. A guardrail rusted from wind and rain. Beyond it, a dizzying cliff with no end in sight. And there, as if it wasn't frightening at all—or maybe just because she enjoyed the thrill—a woman sat casually on the guardrail, looking down over the edge.
"Haaah..."
With a long sigh that sounded like nothing but exhaustion, a cloud of pale smoke spilled from the woman's mouth.
From the angle, Eto couldn't see it, but there was a nearly burned-down cigarette between the woman's fingers.
Eto's nose was sensitive, and she hated the smell of cigarettes, but she still forced herself to walk toward the woman.
"Hm?"
Sensing someone, the woman turned around.
She looked to be in her late twenties. Heavy makeup, a piercing in one ear. Her eyes were sharp as razor blades, but the languid air over them made her seem less frightening than she might have otherwise.
Her hair, dyed a deep crimson, fell all the way to around her hips and brushed the guardrail she was sitting on. She wore tight jeans and a tank top that left her navel completely exposed.
Seeing Eto in a place like this, the woman tilted her head and asked in surprise,
"Kid, are you lost?"
Her husky voice, roughened by years of smoking, reached Eto's ears.
"No. I'm not lost."
I've come to the place I wanted. I swallowed the rest.
The woman looked at Eto for a while, then seemed to lose interest and took out a fresh cigarette, lighting it.
She took a deep drag and let it out with an even longer sigh than before.
"...Go home already. This isn't a place for a kid like you."
"Is it okay for an auntie to be here?"
"Auntie? Listen to your mouth. I'm only 26."
"You're older than my dad."
"...Is that so. Then call me whatever you want."
Maybe she had nothing to say after that, because the woman didn't correct the way I addressed her anymore.
Eto walked up beside her, put a hand on the guardrail, and looked beyond it. The height was so dizzying it almost made me groan out loud.
"Kid. It's dangerous if you lean on that."
"Why are you trying to die, auntie?"
At Eto's words, spoken without taking my eyes off the cliff, the woman's eyes widened in surprise.
Maybe she hadn't expected to hear that from Eto, who looked like a clueless little brat.
"Die...? I'm just hesitating over whether I should die or not."
"Why?"
Eto turned away from the cliff and looked at the woman.
The woman seemed to wonder if she should seriously answer this child, because she stayed silent for a moment, chewing on her cigarette, then spun around on the guardrail.
"Life's not exactly full of good things, you know. It makes you think maybe dying would be better. So you come looking for a place where you can die for sure. ...But it turns out dying takes more courage than you'd think."
"If you die, won't anyone be sad?"
"Who knows. Maybe a few people would be... But even so, a human dying is still something you can't help."
Haaah...
The pale smoke stretched out long, then vanished without a trace. The woman stared blankly at it. It looked as if she were saying that humans were ultimately just like that smoke—gone in an instant.
Then, snapping back to reality, she scratched her head hard and complained to herself.
"What am I even hoping for, saying this kind of crap to a little kid... Anyway, what are you doing here? You come here to die too?"
"No. I came to watch you die."
"...What?"
The woman blinked, then rubbed at her ear as if she couldn't believe what she'd just heard.
Eto stepped back a few paces from the guardrail and faced her.
Should I say it? I should.
I can't hesitate now that I've come this far. If I'm going to hesitate, then I'll corner myself first.
Eto took a deep breath.
And to drive myself into a corner, to force myself to move,
I put the word Dad had warned me never, ever to say into my mouth.
"I'm a Ghoul."