"I didn't choose to become a mutant."
Monger said resentfully,
Jeanne merely tilted her head, seeming unwilling to listen to Monger.
Monger's expression twitched sharply.
"Was becoming mutants our fault?"
His voice was somewhat hoarse as he said:
"Before my brother and I were seven or eight, we looked like normal humans. We lived ordinary lives in the lower hive."
"I've forgotten what my father looked like. I only remember that he was a minor factory overseer, which made him fairly well-off in the lower hive."
"But my mother left a deep impression on me. When our scalps started bleeding for no reason and swelling with lumps, she anxiously applied medicine to us."
Monger drew a deep breath.
"But when those lumps burst and beastlike horns began growing out one by one, my mother was terrified."
"She tried filing our horns down, chopping them off with a cleaver, and in the end even tried pulling them out with iron pincers."
"My brother protected me, but our terrified mother smashed his head bloody. Those broken horns on his head came from that."
"When my mother realized she couldn't get rid of the horns on our heads, she finally went completely mad."
"She dragged us outside and stuffed us into the sewers before Father returned. If my brother and I hadn't been so lucky, we would have died long ago."
Monger's expression twisted slightly as he seemed to pound the ground in hatred.
"Maybe it was unpurified water, maybe poisonous food or air, or perhaps the poisonous light of the stars. But no matter what triggered our mutation, what did we do wrong?"
"We were only seven- or eight-year-old children then. Even now, we're still doing this for all of Asford."
As Jeanne listened to Monger, she merely shifted lightly, putting even