"Pleasant, Beauty, Lazy, Sparky..."
In the living room, a cartoon was playing on the television, and a child sat on the sofa, watching with rapt attention.
In the cartoon, Beauty caught the Antelope Prince as he was about to fall and asked with a concerned look.
"Daijoubu?"
The Antelope Prince scratched his head sheepishly and thanked her.
"Arigatou, Beauty-san."
Nearby, Sparky saw this and repeated the words in a mocking tone, his face full of disdain.
"Arigatou, Beauty-san~~"
"Wow, I want to be Sparky when I grow up!"
Seeing Sparky in the cartoon, the child's little face lit up with admiration.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something strange about his dad in the kitchen. He vaguely saw a long tongue curl around the ribs on the cutting board and slowly draw them into his mouth.
So cool! Dad's tongue can get longer!
Suddenly, the man turned his head. A smile spread across his face, stretching almost to his ears. His hideous expression was horrifying.
The child had never seen anything like it and burst into tears.
"Crying... always crying. What I hate... hate most is your crying. From... from now on... I'll never... never have to hear that grating voice of yours again. Hehehe!"
The man's voice sounded as though something thick and sticky was lodged in his throat. His speech was bizarre, nothing like a human's.
He walked into the living room like a shambling corpse, tearing away his clothes in strips as though peeling off skin. Beneath them were scales, coated in slime and utterly disgusting!
He moved slowly as he shed his skin, tottering with every step like a newborn baby.
If not for that, the child would already have been dead.
Just as his claws were about to touch the child,