CHAPTER 2- The Distant cry of Humanity

"Reality and Idealism are entities of contrasting nature. Living in Idealism is counter productive. Living in Reality is stagnant. Living in Reality, and working towards Idealism is happiness."

-Shiroyama Seniichi, The AoF storyteller

Part 1

[16th of December, 1997; 00:53 hrs]

[Private Orphanage "Children's Hope", Taketomi, Okinawa Prefecture]

"MARIKA-SENSEI!!! PLEASE STOP!!!! I don't want to do this!!! Khhhh......sob.......p-please, just drop it......."

Misaki sure screams loudly, doesn't she? This scream is a representation of the SHAME and DISCOMFORT inside you, right? Humans tend to let out their unwanted emotions in the form of unwanted excretions, haha. Often these excretions, whether scream or tears, are accompanied by a response of consideration and pity from the other party, right? Though this is not a fact, but a situational fact. To assume that your tears will always be responded with a pat on your back and wordings brimming with kindness, is a deficiency in thinking on your own part. Well, there are people who make this assumption. And they are the same ones who are then betrayed by this assumption of theirs. They think that their "excretionable" emotions are a shield of diamond, which actually are boats of paper. They learn it the hard way, just like me, the foolish person called Tomoe Marika.

"Misaki-san ~ , come on......did I tell you to stop? Are you acting spoiled? No, no, no....it is not a good thing to disobey your adults, you know....."

Oho! I see that Makoto is crying even harder than her. Well, being on the receiving end is certainly more embarrassing, right? In the right corner, I can feel the terrified gazes of Tomoya and Kirika. They are making quite the faces! Their shrunken foreheads, lips tightened and teeth clamped together like a crocodile mouth, are enough to show their terror. How relieving!! How fantastic!! How addictive!! Talking about Yuika, who is cuddled up into a ball in front of me is shivering like a cornered cat, with her whole body almost resonating with terrified convulsions. Well, it's natural if you think of it. After all, it was her turn just yesterday, so her feelings of terror and sympathy towards Makoto are rather well placed and within the expectations.

"Come, on, Misaki-san! What are you doing, standing there aimlessly. Can you not see Makoto-san lying on his butt in front of you? All I told you is TO STRIP HIM....."

"Marika-sensei.....sob.....why, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?? Makoto and Misaki are clearly uncomfortable!! Why do you keep threatening us into doing these DEPRAVED THINGS TO EACH OTHER??? What have we done to you?? For all these years...... " shouts out Tomoya with a sudden switch in expression. So the terror inside of you bent down and gave its position to anger, huh? Not like it is going to harm me or solve anything, you know? The anger of the lion on the rabbit is devastating for the rabbit, the anger of the rabbit on the lion is also devastating for the rabbit. In other words, your anger cannot get in my way, because it will remain bottled up inside of you for eternity, and bottled up emotions do more harm to one's own self rather than to the surroundings.

"Tomoya-san, 'For all these years'? You are the oldest kid here, right? You should not teach your juniors to lie, you know.....Neither should you feed them with false information. Saying it that way almost seems like I have been ordering you for a century or something.....it has just been two years, right? And this is not a threat or anything, it is just a way for us to have fun.......just a way for me and you all to have fun..."

What I say is of course, far from truth. Having fun is not even the faintest of my purposes for doing what I am doing. The reason is to relieve myself. To relieve myself of the fact that I am not the only one, to relieve myself of the fact that there are people, there are kids, who are and will be seeing and suffering through the same tragedy as myself. Contrary to belief, humans are not bright creatures. Instead, they are quite dark ones. Darker than the moonless night. Darker than the bottomless abyss. Darker than the dusk in the woods. When they go through a happy fate, they want others of their kind to notice them, to praise them, to envy them. They want their attention, and the only way they can warrant that is by making sure that the so called happy fate they are going through, has a unique identity. The kind of unique fate, one of a kind happiness that is exclusive to their own selves, which they can brag about to others. They pray, they hope, that other humans around them would not be blessed by that kind of happiness, so that they keep up the feeling of envy directed at them.

Exact opposite happens when these same people are subjected to sad fate or tragedy. This time, as opposed to the case of happy fate, they actually do not want to be noticed. They try to hide themselves, they try to wish upon similar tragedy on others. They wish the others to go through the same pain, same sufferings, same adversities and same abominations they themselves once faced, all of it to make themselves feel relieved. And this philosophy of mine is the basis of my actions. It might be depraved if we look at it from the "good" people perspective, but......bad luck. All people are not good. Some are bad. And some are made bad.

"Fun???? How is this fun????" Misaki takes the stage, "For these two years, whenever Shiori-sensei and Shishio-sensei are out, you FORCE US TO STRIP EACH OTHER, TELL US TO TOUCH EACH OTHER AT WRONG PLACES, DO DIRTY AND PAINFUL THINGS!!!!!!! And you call it fun??? T-t-t-this is too much.......I cannot do something like this to my friends....."

"Okay....I see...so it is like that. You do not want to do this. All right. Then, why don't you go and tell Shiori-san or Shishio-san?"

"Ugh......."

As I glared at them, they let out a desperate and terrified sigh, as if they were told to walk on a road which is blocked ahead. But of course, I am playing around. There is no practicality in that solution. Kakeru's foot-nail which was "accidentally" scraped off, Kirika's thighs which got unfortunate "accidental" burns, Tomoya's "accidental" hand injury, Misaki getting "accidentally" locked up in the store for a day without food, Aoi "accidentally" eating laxatives meant to slow down rodents......all of these "accidents" have been rather common. Does God not want them to tell about our secret little "game of relief" to Shiori-san? Maybe they only want us to play it? If that is the case, then you all should respect God's wishes, you know? They don't not take lightly to naughty kids who cannot even keep a secret intact, okay? Who knows, what he might do in his anger if you all keep up that self destructive attitude.

"You......What you are doing is really, really disgusting......." Yuika finally opens her mouth. Oh, the shy girl can utter such words too! I am surprised! Her enthusiasm is driven by her terror, but still, it is enthusiasm, which she lacks in front of outsiders. Am I not a great help to you? Isn't this game educational? Well, what I want to see is the dark nature of humanity. I have seen it before, I have inherited it against my will and now when I see that very darkness eating away at me like maggots to a carcass, I don't want to be left alone. I want some comrades, some successors, who are just as dark as I am, who will show their dirty personalities painted with charcoal as and when they get the chance. That is why, I have taken a job. A job to paint these kids black. A job to darken the deepest depths of their souls, and then, tell myself – "Look Marika, you were not the only one." Everyone has darkness inside of them, and that darkness can easily dominate their personalities. And when it does, the result is an opportunistic monster, a depraved human, a soulless creature.

"To think that Yashiro-sensei and Tamako-sensei raised you...."

Thud....

"TOMOYA!!!!!!!!" Kirika cried out as I delivered a full powered kick aimed at Tomoya's stomach. It seems that the kick is quite effective, evident from his heavy coughing and weeping.

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT!!!! YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!!! DON'T YOU BRATS DARE TO TELL ME ABOUT VIRTUES.......AND DON'T TAKE THAT COUPLE'S NAME IN FRONT OF ME!!!! HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I NEED TO TELL YOU THAT!!!"

I cannot control my intense fury as I bang through the items kept in the room, and my foot slamming on the wooden floor, making a continuous but unpleasant cracking noise. I did not really plan on getting violent. BUT DON'T TAKE THAT FOR GRANTED, you fucking twerps. Don't just utter random shit from your mouth as if it is a universal fact!!

I suddenly get reminded of people that were talking near the orphanage as I was cleaning the store.

'Tamako-san was such a nice person'........Lie.

'Yashiro-san was truly kind'..........Lie.

'The couple were truly saviors of left out children'.......White Lie.

'They were apostles of humanity'............Bullshit.

Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies!

Complete bullshit!

These ignorant fools, who know nothing of the past, spew threads of baseless assumptions, pointless fairy tales which are far from reality. I remember the day clearly as a crystal. The day of August 4, 1978, when I saw the true nature of these wild animals, called the Kogasaki – Kogasaki Tamako and Kogasaki Yashiro. I had been feeling uncomfortable in my sleep on the morning of that day, as if something was grabbing me, something was trying to gulp me in. As I woke up thinking of it as a dream, and feeling relieved, I froze in horror.

The kind soul of humanity, the protector of children and the father of Shiori and Shishio, Kogasaki Yashiro was sleeping beside the four year old me in the same bed, his hands grabbing and touching at every inappropriate place possible. Kogasaki Tamako was sitting on her chair, sewing a sweater for her still-to-be born kid. Its not like I suspected them out of thin air. It's not like I did not assure myself by thinking – "His hand must have moved in sleep." It's not like I then and there murdered all my trust in these people. It's definitely not like that. I tried, and I tried really hard, to make my mind believe that it was a mistake. That he was just moving in his sleep. That she was so busy with her about-to-be born kid that she could not look at us to see the position we were sleeping in. IT IS JUST THAT, MY MIND WAS SCREAMING TO ALL MY BODY – "TOMOE MARIKA!!! DANGER AHEAD."

And those horrors were proved correct. At that time, I was the only kid present with them. I was the first toy they ever found. The man Yashiro used to shower his lust on me, to spew all his sexual desires on my very soul, and the woman, Tamako, used to watch. She used to watch, and when I used to look into her eyes, I always saw comfort. She loved to see this. She encouraged the pedophilic tendencies of her husband. She wanted Yashiro to throw up his desires onto little kids. Of course, this was the case when the victims were girls. When the victims were boys, nothing different happened. It was the same filthy treatment, the same execution of disgusting lust. Only thing that changed in that situation was the identity of observer and direct offender – this time Yashiro watched as Tamako defiled. This was their cycle, which took place two days every week. All the kids coming after me were also subjected to this lust, in this filthy den of pedophiles.

This is the reality of the Kogasaki household. This is the history of this dreaded "Children's Hope".

I did take revenge, though only partial. Nobody can blame me for wanting revenge. But partial revenge is not relieving. Until my revenge is completed, the desire for it will keep flaring inside of my soul. It will keep crawling all over my body, it will keep giving me chills, it will keep on provoking me to the extremes. I cried a lot at Yashiro's death. The reason was sadness, of course not for that wretched human's death, but for the fact THAT I WAS NOT ABLE TO END HIM WITH MY OWN HANDS.

But I did not make the same mistake with Tamako. She had been suffering with stage III pancreatic cancer, a deadly disease with no cure. Maybe God really exists. They may not save anyone, but they definitely pass punishment. They make offenders cry, but at the same time, they also let victims suffer. If God does this, what does the Devil do?

Coming back to topic, it is a basic medical fact that cancer cells grown in an acidic environment. To add up to that, pancreatic cancer is the fastest growing kind of cancer, and often undetectable until it reaches the later stages, often called as a silent killer. Of course, if I had just let Tamako be on her own, she would have still died sooner or later. But, there would not have been my role in bringing about her death, and that would have been fate, not revenge. So I made sure to serve her diets which would be slow poison to her – white meat or pork as some examples. This simple measure allowed me to push her towards her end without being suspected in any way. This was made possible due to her uneducated background and Shiori still being immature enough to know what was going on. Every morsel that human trash slipped down her throat was a poison, a silent and slow poison, eating away at that wretched body of hers silently, without a sign. I could not control my LAUGHTER AT HER FUNERAL, SO I SHUT MYSELF INSIDE OF MY ROOM, not coming out until I had my fair share of laughter.

Of course, the revenge is still continuing.

Following Yashiro and Tamako will be their own children, and THAT, WOULD BE MY REVENGE.

Following me would be these kids, who will have to become just like I was made to become by those people, and THAT, WOULD BE MY INHERITANCE.

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[ "Was Marika-san justified in her actions, Shiroyama –san?"

"Who am to judge an alive human, XX-san? What right do I have to judge them?"

"Haha....can't you at least give your view on that?"

"My view, huh? Pfft....my view is of a quite low significance, you know. The words coming out from the corpse are dead themselves, and being lifeless, they cannot change anything. But still, I don't think Marika-san was wrong."

"Y-You don't think that she was wrong??"

"Not only her, even Tamako-san and Yashiro-san were not wrong."

"Huh??"

"THEIR ACTIONS WERE WRONG. NOT THEY THEMSELVES. THEIR UNDESTANDING WAS ERRED, IT GOT INFECTED WITH UNREASONABLE CAUSES. Was it their mistake for letting themselves be caught up by darkness? No. It was not their mistake, it was their misfortune."

"But still, this feels like a statement which is sympathizing with the offenders."

"Offenders? Who?"

"Marika-san, Tamako-san and Yashiro-san.....and THOSE KIDS TOO"

"Haha....I see....So why was Marika-san an offender?"

"Because she hurt you all to a great extent."

"I see. Very interesting. And why was Tamako-san and Yashiro-san offenders?"

"Because they hurt the kids too, including Marika-san."

"Understood. Then, XX-san, why were the kids offenders?"

"Because of what they did to you."

"Don't you notice an inheritance here?"

"Huh??"

"THE OFFENCE, XX-SAN, THE OFFENCE! I am talking about the true culprit – the offence, the intent. It was just passed on from Tamako-san and Yashiro-san to Marika-san and then from her to the other kids. But the justice was not able to detect that culprit. That culprit evaded the eyes of the observers, which includes you too. Can you say for certain that something misfortunate would not have happened to Tamako-san and Yashiro-san to make them do what they did?"

"That might be true. But it does not change the fact that what they did was wrong."

"Haha.....Your goal, is it to prove their guilt or to make sure that something like that does not get repeated in the future?"

"I-if you say it like that......."

"XX-san, the goal is not only to help the victims, not only to save them from harm. The art of saving victims is called heroism. The art of ASSISTING both the victim and the offender is called humanity. There is a difference between heroism and humanity, a major one."

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