Daughter (II)

Daughter (II)

Everyone reacted differently to unbearable pain.

Clearly, Toji's response was to escape. Of all the options available, his brain had chosen the simplest and most common way out.

After he finished his crooked signature, the metal door opened again. This time, they wheeled out Yuanyin's body.

The doctor looked troubled. "Little girl, I can stake my career on this: everything I'm about to tell you is something I've witnessed myself. Not everyone needs to see a loved one's body one last time. It leaves a lasting scar on many people, and you're so young."

"Don't worry. I want to see her." Yuanli was adamant, with a resolve unlike a child's, but no one could overlook her tiny frame, barely over a meter tall.

The doctor looked at Toji, silently seeking the parent's permission.

But Toji lowered his head.

The moment they wheeled Yuanyin out, his brain activated its emergency defenses. The first command was: don't look.

So he quickly lowered his head.

Unable to get an answer from him, the doctor could only lift the white sheet as Yuanli had requested.

Toji registered every sound around him in agonizing detail, unable to stop himself.

The voices, the rustle of clothing as feet shifted, and the sound of the white sheet being lifted.

The former Sorcerer Killer had seen plenty of corpses and turned plenty of living people into corpses with his blade. No one knew better than he did what a corpse looked like.

Those he threw into the water to drown would swell grotesquely. Those whose throats he slit would wear twisted expressions before turning pale and sunken. Those who died of disease would...

Yuanyin's face surfaced in his mind, smiling as she approached him. Out of habit, he reached out to touch the cheek that should have been warm. But his hand met cold, as though he were touching a block of ice. Then her face began to change...

People who died of cancer underwent many rounds of chemotherapy before death, and chemotherapy made their hair fall out little by little.

Yuanyin's hair slipped through his fingers in handfuls.

Chemotherapy made their cheeks hollow...

Yuanyin's face...

"Toji! We're going home."

Just as he teetered on the brink of collapse, Yuanli's voice pulled him back, but only a single small step from the edge of that abyss.

Afterward, he moved like a walking corpse while his daughter arranged for him to get into a car outside the hospital.

The engine started, and the car drove away. He drifted in a fog, unaware of what was happening. The driver looked familiar, but he didn't want to remember. He sank into numbness, completely losing the ability to think.

He had no idea how much time passed before someone helped him out of the car and supported him back into what was supposedly his home.

Back in familiar surroundings, he ignored the baby's cries and stumbled toward the bed he shared with his wife, ready to sink into sleep again.

Before he fell asleep, his mind began working.

[Mr. Zenin... you can't... leave... a little girl... alone... crematorium.]

The fragments of conversation from the car looped through his mind over and over.

Alone? Crematorium?

A little girl!

His daughter hadn't come home with him!

Toji scrambled out of bed and ran outside barefoot, without even putting on his shoes. The old apartment building had no elevator, and he practically jumped down the stairs. Once outside, he wanted to hail a cab, but it was nearly midnight. There wasn't even a pedestrian in sight, let alone a car.

He remembered that phone number. Hastily, he pulled his phone from his pocket, but he couldn't press the call button. As though it were broken, or as though he could fool himself into believing it was.

But could he?

In the end, for the daughter he believed hated him, he overcame a little of his urge to escape. Just as he was about to make the call, his phone rang. It wasn't the number saved as the crematorium, but an unfamiliar string of digits.

Now he found the courage to answer.

[Hello, Toji. It's me, Yuanli.]

He heard himself murmur a reply, unaware that Yuanli hadn't heard anything at all on the other end.

[I'll keep this short. You don't need to worry about me. Just take care of yourself. If you have time, give your so... Megumi! Get Megumi something to eat.]

Toji sat down at the foot of the stairs and murmured another reply before the call ended.

He had wanted to ask why she was calling from an unfamiliar number, how an eight-year-old had made it to the crematorium, and how she planned to get home so late.

Toji had wanted to ask all of that, but he hesitated too long. Or perhaps she had hung up too quickly.

He didn't go upstairs. He just sat barefoot at the foot of the stairs, suppressing every thought and letting that hangover-like dizziness take over his nerves.

Then he forgot. He tried to forget his own existence, forget that he was still alive, and wait as though he were dead.

Deep into the night, when he could no longer hear the baby crying from downstairs, a hearse pulled up outside his building.

A little girl got out of the passenger seat. After politely saying goodbye to the person behind the wheel, she walked toward him with a paper bag in her arms.

"Come on. Upstairs." Yuanli was like a programmer issuing commands, and he was a rigid AI capable only of following them.

He went ahead, slowly climbing the stairs. Yuanli followed behind, resting a hand lightly against his lower back as though guarding against his falling.

They reached their floor and went inside. He stood blankly in the living room, looking at everything his wife had arranged around him. All sleepiness had vanished, leaving only grief and helplessness.

Faintly, he heard a tiny sigh.

"Toji, go wash up." After giving him a direction, Yuanli put her things in her room and went into the kitchen.

He entered the bathroom without even turning on the hot water. He showered beneath water so cold it seemed to pierce his flesh. The cold brought him back to his senses a little.

But the clearer his mind became, the more he hurt. Where Yuanli couldn't see him, he leaned against the tiles and wept silently.

No one in this world would ever love him the way Yuanyin had.

For someone who had never known familial love, suddenly receiving it was like a gift falling from the heavens. Yet it had been taken away before he could truly savor it. That hurt far more than never having it at all, leaving him utterly devastated.

Cold water kept pounding against his hair and body. At that moment, Toji Zenin wanted to die.

His wandering gaze landed on the Inventory Curse Worm on the bathroom counter. Without hesitation, he pulled a long blade from its belly. It wasn't any sort of Special Grade Cursed Tool. After getting married and having a daughter, he had never touched these things again.

Ending his own life was simple. All he had to do was drive the blade into his temple, and the pain would be gone.

Toji was a man of action. The blade was already pressed against his temple. He didn't even hesitate, but just as he was about to do it, a knock at the door stopped him.

"Toji, come out when you're done." This was a command he would obey before anything else.

He stuffed the blade back into the Inventory Curse Worm's belly, grabbed a tissue, and carelessly wiped the blood from his face. His body would heal a wound this small in no time.

He got dressed and left the bathroom.

Yuanli sat in the living room with Megumi Zenin in her arms. She glanced at Toji's head.

Her gaze was pointed enough that Toji actually felt guilty. Awkwardly, he rubbed at his face again. He didn't realize that his face was now covered in blood.

Yuanli ignored him. Instead, she patted Megumi Zenin awake-he had cried himself hoarse-and fed him with a bottle, her movements practiced.

Soft-cheeked and adorable, Megumi Zenin reached out for a cuddle when he saw someone familiar. But Yuanli moved away.

After feeding Megumi Zenin and putting him back in his room, she poured a cup of hot milk in the kitchen and handed it to Toji.

"Toji, drink this. Then sleep."

Toji tipped back his head and finished the milk, which didn't taste quite right. The moment he finished it, a heavy, dizzy drowsiness washed over him.

He didn't even make it back to his room. He collapsed onto the sofa and fell asleep.

[Toji... I did something wrong... hurt... Yuanli.]

[What? Yuanyin, what are you saying?]

[No... stay away... please... Yuanli.]

[What do you want to stay away from?]

[... Stay away from Yuanli...]

Another dream.

When Toji sat up on the sofa, he heard the door closing. He hurriedly got up, put on his shoes, and chased after her.

"Where are you going?" he asked his daughter, who was already almost at the stairs.

"The hospital. Stay home and rest, Toji." Yuanli turned and left after saying that, carrying a flower basket.

Without a second thought, Toji followed.

Two hours in a car, then three hours on foot. Unlike the other times, Yuanli crouched by the roadside to pick flowers.

Pansies, Yuanyin's favorite flowers. They used to grow them on the balcony at home, too, but by now they were probably dead.

Toji lowered his eyes to watch Yuanli, but his thoughts were on what Yuanyin had said.

[Stay away from Yuanli.]

She had really done it. Before she died, Yuanyin refused to see their daughter even once. Even though Yuanli brought flowers every day, enduring a ten-hour round trip, she was never allowed into the ward. Those pansies had never been brought inside, either.

Suddenly, Toji felt agitated. For no reason he could explain, a scene came to mind.

The setting sun painted the corridor orange. Thin little Yuanli sat alone on a waiting bench outside the ward with wilted flowers in her arms, waiting with lonely, unwavering patience for someone who wouldn't see her.

Toji had come to see his wife that day, too, but in the end, he hadn't gone inside. He couldn't enter that ward in front of Yuanli. He was afraid he would look down and see the hurt in her eyes. After that, they came at different times. But even now, he couldn't forget what he had seen that day.

As though Yuanli had been abandoned.

His agitation robbed him of reason. He trampled the flowers, telling his daughter over and over a truth he himself refused to accept.

People were strange sometimes. They couldn't escape their own grief, yet they still worried about others.

For once, he made Yuanli angry.

Eight-year-old Yuanli expressed her anger by walking briskly ahead without a word, as though she meant to leave him behind. Yet she still waited at intersections for him to catch up.

They reached the hospital again, one ahead of the other. Toji didn't go inside. He truly couldn't. It would make him remember, and he was afraid to remember.

Yuanli went inside alone, then soon came back out and told him,

"For the last journey, let's start from the hospital. I'll pick Yuanyin up from the funeral home in a couple of days."

He said nothing, but for the first time, the thought occurred to him that perhaps he could accompany her to the funeral home.

In reality, he overslept that day. He was supposed to leave with Yuanli at eleven in the morning, but when he woke from his nightmare, it was already afternoon.

He rushed to the hospital, only to arrive at sunset.

Little Yuanli sat at the hospital entrance with an urn half her height in her arms, waiting with the same patient concentration she had shown countless times outside Yuanyin's ward.

Waiting for him, her incompetent father, to walk the last stretch of his wife's journey together.

Guilt mingled with pain. Just seeing the urn, without even seeing the ashes, chilled his whole body and made him tremble uncontrollably.

In the end, Toji walked over to Yuanli and stood before his daughter. He wanted to apologize, but damn it, he couldn't get the words out again.

He hated himself so much. He couldn't understand why someone named Toji Zenin had to exist in this world. Wouldn't it have been better if he had died from the start? Couldn't he have died the day those scum declared that he had no cursed energy?

"Toji," Yuanli called.

His desperate avoidance and self-loathing made it difficult even to look at his own daughter.

"Toji, look at me."

He still obeyed the command and raised his head.

"Don't cry anymore. Yuanyin would forgive you. I understand you, so I'll forgive you, too."

Those softly spoken words struck Toji's heart with the weight of the sky collapsing.

He crouched on the ground and broke into uncontrollable, silent sobs. Yuanli placed the urn in his arms, then gently patted his shoulder.

At that moment, Toji Zenin felt as though he had been saved.

He was like a glass bottle accidentally knocked off a table and shattered, and now his daughter was picking him up, piece by piece, unafraid of cutting herself.