"I told you—I am not your kid's son!"
"Kitsune. The fox spirit."
"I'm not that either! And I'll never let you drink my—" She shook off her hands and shut her eyes tight. The thought of it was enough to repulse her.
"Then who are you?" I said. "My life was ruined since the day we met. Look at this! If this is not a product of a curse, then what the hell do you think it is?"
She paused for a moment. I already knew what she was going to ask me next, so I went ahead and explained to her:
"These are bite marks, from things that I cannot see. Apparently, they only come to me in my sleep."
The indignant expression she'd had on her before was soon replaced by a mixture of disgust and morbid curiosity, much like the doctors at the hospital and my family when I showed them the wound. You just couldn't look away from a car accident.
I then explained to her what had happened and how my situation had led me to this point.
"So someone put a curse on you."
"Don't play dumb. If you're the one behind this. I'm begging you. Remove the curse, and I'll give you anything you want. I won't press charges. We'll never have to meet again. I'm only asking you to tell them to stop eating my—godforsaken leg!"
Remembering that I was talking to a teenager, I decided to hold back on the profanity.
"You'll give me anything I want?"
"Yes! How—"
"Ten billion dollars."
I pretended I didn't hear what she said.
"A thousand? Ten thousand? I'm just a regular blue-collar worker. I'm not rich, but I can take loans so you can have the money."
"How nice…" She crossed her arms and looked at the ceiling. "To be honest, when a poor guy gives you free cash, it's means a lot more than when a rich guy does it. But you draw houses for a living, you can't be that poor."
"How did you know that?"
"I could be wrong, but I noticed a few things here and there, like how you can't stop staring at the houses when we were in the taxi, or those callouses at the bottom of your palm." She pointed at my hand, her gaze eventually set on me.
After a pause, she said, "A photographer, artist, or even a house enthusiast would have been interested in one or two buildings, but your eyes were glued to the car window the whole time, like you didn't want to miss out on a single house we passed by." She was smirking. I guessed she was really proud of whatever she'd just said. House enthusiast? What even was that? Did she mean homeless people? Or people who couldn't yet afford a house and had to rent? I figured I'd be pretty hyped about houses too if I hadn't had roof over my head.
"What were you looking for?" she asked me. "Their flaws?"
"What?"
"You were sizing up your competition."
"Just enjoying the scenery. What, I'm not allowed to—"
"It would've been different, then. You were looking a little too long, especially the antique ones."
Those were impressive. Had I been staring at those buildings that much? The cab was running pretty fast, too. But even if I'd had my eyes on each house for too long like she said, it must've been less than two seconds at most.
"So, how much do you have? Be honest. If you tell me how much you really own, I'll only take a modest fraction of 97%. You should be able to live pretty comfortably on that 3% alone."
Not in this economy.
Was that her idea of a joke? Was she trying to mess with me?
And what if I lied? That's what I wanted to ask her. I was being robbed by a high schooler.
"Wait a minute. You blocked my number!" I shouldn't have said it with so much confidence, as if it was something to brag about. "What if I haven't figured out you're the one who held the cure, and bled to death? How were you even going to reach out to me?"
She sat against the moldy green wall next to a pile of books in the corner. We were at her tiny, run-down apartment that she was renting. Maybe she was also a house enthusiast.
"Unfortunately, I'm not the Shaman you were hoping to see," she said. "I also don't have the cure. The whole thing about your 98% was a joke, by the way."
Thank goodness—
Did it just go up by one percent?
"Are you trying to be funny? Do you have any idea what it's like to have your body mutilated every single day, not knowing what causes it, or why—"
"Relax, o** m*n. I know what it feels like to be bitten by sewer rats. Anyway, let's patch up that wound again. You're bleeding."
I swore she'd just called me something again, even though a small part of me was convinced I was hallucinating.
I looked down and saw that the gauze had gotten soggy from pus and blood. All the running had made it dirty, as my whole leg was caked with mud and sand.
The girl suddenly stood up, went to the kitchen and returned with new dressings. I put out my hand to take them but she reflexively stepped back, gesturing that she'd be the one to change out the gauze.
Sitting idly in the corner, I took the occasion to look around her place. The only way I could describe the apartment was that it was spartan—not a single desk, chair, or television in sight.
There was nothing.
Sullied, mat green tiles composed the empty floor that connected four corners of damp, dilapidated walls of a matching color. I couldn't find a single window around me. A literal box with a green-coated tungsten door as the sole entrance. It reminded me of a similar project I'd done a few years prior—although that house didn't have a main door. The neon light tube under the ceiling of her apartment flickered faintly like it was about to die. I was sitting inside a haunted house—no, an abandoned prison.
Was she really renting this place? Because it almost seemed like she was just squatting here for the night.
If there was any consolation, she did have a tiny pot of cactus inside the moldy, untiled toilet—the only other "room" in her apartment. The walls were pitch black on all sides—under the half-broken sink.
A client once requested that I should plant some cacti in his home because they were said to bring good luck to their owners. I wondered whether she'd bought it for the same reason. But then again, why did she decide to put the cactus in the toilet, of all places?
In one corner sat a pile of schoolbooks on subjects like math, science, geology, history, and so on, spanning third through ninth grade. I thought that we'd usually throw these away after we were done with the exams.
"Can't you at least use a desk or something instead of leaving them on the ground like that?" I motioned at the unstable pyramid of books beside me.
"They're inefficient. They'll get in the way."
"Of what??"
"You ask too many questions. Are you always like this?"
"Huh?"
"Do you always scoff at your clients like that whenever they show you their photo references, tell you what they want their house to look like?"
"... No. I mean I didn't want to judge. I just wanted to know why you do things."
"Why? You wouldn't understand."
She probably didn't want to tell me not so much because I wouldn't be able to understand, but she just didn't want to admit that she thought a desk would be a waste of money, or that it was something she couldn't afford.
I wanted to ask her why she kept those books, but decided not to; she was one of those types who liked to keep things to themselves. These questions seemed rather innocuous, from where I stood, but maybe she didn't feel the same way.
We didn't talk for a while. She was very meticulous about the dressings on my ankle because she kept unwinding and rewinding them after every two rounds—she was also very intense about it. For someone who'd probably never given first aid, she'd been very determined to take charge, insisting that she'd be the one to do it because "she'd got this". I'd tried several times to take over but she simply wouldn't let me.
Neither of us said a word after that. The traffic outside was now barely audible, which only intensified the ringing in my ears.
It was getting quiet.
The girl was the first to break the silence. "You always lived around here?"
"Please let me drink your urine."
"All right, I'm done!" She slapped the rest of the cotton swath against my shin. "Get out of my house—I have school tomorrow."
"You have to help me. The doctors couldn't do anything about it. They threatened to cut it off even though that is not going to do anything!"
"Their medicines didn't cure your messed up leg, but my urine can do it?"
"Why do you have to make such a big deal out of this? You can literally go to the back and put some of it in a cup and give it to me." I held up my cup-shaped hand and pointed at it. "If this works, you're effectively saving someone's life, you know? Why would you let someone suffer even though you know full well you can help them without having to lift a finger."
"..."
"That's just cruel." I told her. "You already said you weren't the one who placed the curse on me, and I'm willing to take your word for it. But the fact you keep refusing this one simple request is just unbelievably cruel. Remember that you started all of this. If I die, my blood is on your hands, and karma will get back to you sooner or later."
"Karma." Her volume suddenly dropped as she said quietly. "I haven't heard that word in a while."
I wasn't really the type to fall for superstitions. If a thing such as karma existed there wouldn't be evil in the world. Then again, a large number of people seemed to believe in the philosophy; I was counting on the chance that she might listen to me if I pulled the 'K' card on her.
"You probably don't believe in it either," I said. "But that's fine. After all, you don't need to believe in something for it to exist."
The girl put a finger on a corner of her thin, pursing lips, "Karma is like a force of nature that punishes you for consciously hurting others," she said. "You're saying I'm exercising evil by actively refusing to help. But tell me this: which thought in my brain should be held accountable—the one telling me not to give you what you want so you can continue to rot, day after day?"
"What are you implying?"
"What if someone else is thinking that thought for me? Then should I, in this body and this mind, be responsible?"
"What, you can't think your own thoughts? Don't philosophize your way out of this. If you're fine with the idea of hurting innocent people, at least grow a spine and own up to it."
"I could say the same about you. You keep calling me names, saying I'm evil this, cruel that. But what if those things you're thinking about me are not your own, but belong something else?"
What was even the point of this argument? That she had no control over her own thoughts, and had no ownership over her own actions?
Free will was relative. Of course it's not real. We were just animals subject to our own conditioning. But at the same time, direct experience told you otherwise. If I paid attention to what I was thinking right now, I'd be able to confirm to myself quite easily that I existed.
Of course these thoughts were mine. Right?
Right?
"You can call me what you want," the girl said softly. "Witch, demon, scum, criminal. I won't deny it. I'm not a good person. I've never been a good person." Her voice became quieter. "No one is. No one."
"..."
"Not even Karma itself. But I've had enough of all this. I only went on a tangent because you brought up that word yourself. If Karma is real, we're living in hell."
Those words completely took me by surprise.
I'd somehow forgotten that I'd been talking to a kid. It was like I was talking to one of my colleagues or my mother. "We're living in hell." To arrive at such a conclusion at the age of sixteen—she also owned up to the idea, without a hint of hesitation, that she didn't want to be, or at least to be perceived, as a "good person", after denying her own free will.
From the position of an adult, I knew I was supposed to tell her off for being a pessimist, that she "should live life to the fullest and do her best" so that she wouldn't have to regret her life choices later on. But to say something like that to someone who straight up denied their own doership would be the equivalent of talking to a brick wall.
No one was perfect, but to claim that you had no control over evil wasn't going to do any good, either; it just meant you'd given up before you even started.
If you ever had to kill someone out of necessity, would you use that line of thinking to justify yourself?
Suddenly the girl stood up.
"Anyway, I can't help you not because I don't want to, but it's because I really cannot help you."
She pulled down her black leggings that were smeared with muck and sand. She pulled everything all the way to her knees. The skin on her crotch was visible. Just skin. There was no reproductive organ characteristic of a woman in sight, nor was there any anal cavity. Just a patch of skin between her shaven thighs. I was looking at a living mannequin.
"I'm sorry," she said.
At least now I could rest assured that Kitsune were a real thing, though I didn't know what they were, and neither did she.
What I also learned was that she couldn't use the toilet like a regular person. She told me she ate and drank like we do, but after about six hours the half-digested food would just come back up through the esophagus again, and she'd "empty" her bowels the same way we would throw up, essentially.
She told me her metabolism was identical to a human, if a little weaker, so she had to eat twice as much as we do to get enough nutrients for the day—I'd said that the food she ate was 'half-digested' because her digestive tracts were completely defunct.
Actually, the intestines were functional. It's just that the colon was not connected to the anal tract, so she'd have to time her vomit session approximately four hours after every meal so she wouldn't throw up fecal matter if the food got to the large and small intestines. Four hours would only be a rough approximation, of course. On days digestion worked faster than normal, some traces of feces were unavoidable.
She'd do the same thing after drinking water, though I had no idea how the liquid was able to come back out after it entered the bladder—or rather, I preferred not to know.
How she didn't get any side effects from constant acid reflux was beyond me. Her voice seemed fine, and the same with her teeth.
I slid away from the musty cracked wall to lie down on the cold, mat granite, the wrapped-up foot hanging in the air.
"Do you happen to know anyone who might be able to cure my leg?"
"Nope… I mean there might be," she added, noticing the disappointment settling on my face. "It's just, you came to the wrong person for that."
The bandaged leg eventually touched the ground. Liz lay next to me so I turned to face the wall like a gentleman that I was.
Too close.
She was most likely thinking the same thing because I heard her roll three solid rounds away from me.
The monster was going to find us again. I told her I'd leave when the bodyguard came. We'd reported the whole incident to the police. Liz gave me the idea to tell them a python was on the loose because they wouldn't take us seriously if we told the truth. They said they'd send patrols to the area and track down the wild animal and that was all they would do. I asked them for round-the-clock personal protection for at least a good two days but apparently no officer could afford to offer such services while on the standard paycheck.
The best I could do was to look up for a bodyguard from one of those security firms, like we were politicians in some foreign country.
This one company claimed that every single one of their staff was a certified black belt in thirty seven different martial arts—I'd no idea there were that many!—unfortunately, they charged fifty dollars per hour and they asked too many questions so I tried looking for a different service provider; I had a hard time explaining to them why the girl needed a bodyguard, even though they were only going to stay with her for two days.
The best excuse I could give was that she was a high schooler who ran up against the wrong crowd and now she was in trouble.
She told me that she worked part-time at the local groceries two blocks down where she lived. Even magical beings were not exempt from the soul-crushing grind and from paying bills, which said a lot about society. Not sure how the manager felt about letting her work for them, considering she didn't look like an adult.
This next security firm was charging only thirty-two dollars per hour, so I went with that, instead. On the website, they said they had "good self-defense skills", "shredded physique" and "outstanding morals", which were everything you ever needed. There was also the disclaimer that the crew with less than "standard fitness level" would "make up with even more outstanding morals." No idea what any of that meant but it sounded like a great deal. They also claimed that they would not exclude the use of "sharp objects", "smoke grenades" and "flash bangs" in critical situations, and they could also run really fast if needed. For thirty-two dollars per hour, this was a bargain.
It was 9 pm and no bodyguard had come to our doorstep. I'd tried calling the staff who was appointed to us but he didn't pick up. The company said he should have been here an hour ago, and that they'd try to contact him then get back to us as soon as possible.
I knew I couldn't leave until he was here. This was mainly for her. I didn't need a bodyguard. I knew how to take care of myself.
Lying on the ground, I shut my eyes to get some sleep and told her to do the same. Bodyguard or not, she did say she had school tomorrow.
Afraid that she wouldn't be able to sleep, I closed my eyes and pretended to snore softly. My wife did that to me all the time so that I wouldn't stay up all night and not be able to go to work the next day. And it worked wonders so God bless that wonderful woman. And now, I'd do the very thing my wife had done for me to this little girl.
I made sure she wouldn't see through the fact that I was faking it by going out of my way to add variations to the sound—three different pitches plus a constant rise in volume followed by a choke that made the snores quiet again. Rinse and repeat.
There was also a chance that I was a special case and the technique didn't work on children, but I just had to try. Consider this an experiment. Forgive me, kiddo.
...
And what do you know, it worked on her too! She was snoring back in response.
My wife had found the ultimate stand-in for narcotics, the final cure for all insomniacs around the world. Wait until I'd tell her about this.
The girl told me she "had been born" in this body only a few years ago. Because she came into existence as a teenager and without a childhood, she was convinced she wasn't entirely human, and that there had been a time this body used to belong to someone else.
She had no memories of what she was like before that.
She learned her own name thanks to the ID card. The notebooks also had the name of her school written on it.
The girl's name was Liz.
Imagine just living your life like usual then one day, something just started "living" for you, and you just "disappeared". I wouldn't want that to happen to me. But then again, it wasn't as if this girl willed herself into existence.
I didn't know how to feel about it. If I was going through life as usual, then suddenly I ceased to exist and someone else took up my body—it'd be a sad end for me.
Even if she said she had lost her memory, a small part of me was wondering.
How old was she?
Would it be rude to ask a girl her real age?
But what if she's two-hundred years old?
That's old.
Some things were simply meant to never be discovered.
I tried turning around without moving my wrapped-up leg.
Liz was huddled up against the book pile, scribbling away under the faint golden light of her desk lamp. So those seven-grade math and physics books were for her, after all.
What's so good about schools, anyway? Sure, they taught you to read and do calculus, but anything beyond that was a total waste of time. I couldn't for the life of me remember a single thing I'd learned throughout those twelve years in middle and high school.
"Why do you read them?"
"Sleep."
"Just curious."
"Because I want to."
"You might as well study for the GED and apply to a university, instead."
"I'm not going to college."
Now I was really confused. I thought she wanted to get a college degree.
I said after a long pause, "So you're going through the subjects just for the sake of it."
"Mm-hm."
"No sane person would ever get any enjoyment from reading those books. You're either lying or there's something seriously wrong here, no offense."
"Don't be so cynical. Kids these days are learning some fascinating stuff."
"Like what?"
"Did you know that trees turn carbohydrates into oxygen in the daytime, which cuts down on pollution?"
"That's just common sense."
"But then at night time, trees do the opposite and take away oxygen in the air, so don't leave too many plants in your bedroom or you'll suffocate to death in your sleep."
"If you're trying to impress me with trivia every third grader in the country knows about, it's working, I tell you that."
"In my literature book, there's this story that ends with a dude brutally stabbing his landlord and disemboweling himself."
"It's definitely working!"
I take it back!
"Another story is about an orphan girl who's mistreated by her adoptive family so horribly that, in the end, she kills the mother, cooks her into a stew then feeds it to her siblings."
"..."
Kids these days were pretty hardcore. And people said that video games caused violence when they taught stuff like this at school.
"But seriously, why are you reading those books?"
She didn't say anything for a while.
"I don't know. I just feel like reading them."
That couldn't be right.
What was it?
She was back to her book again, her face buried between the pages. I must have been staring into blank space and looking like an idiot. Pulling out my phone which had cracked in the front from the incident at the park, I pretended to preoccupy myself by moving the app icons around in my home screen.
Was it guilt?
How would I feel if I was suddenly charged with the murder of someone I didn't even know, by taking over their body and living life for them?
A little kid, no less.
It wasn't her fault, right?
As cruel as this might sound, I doubted that the other girl would've missed her high school years. Maybe if you wanted to compensate for her loss, you'd be better off doing something more meaningful like learning a trade.
Children were like adults, because we all wanted to be happy, no matter how old we got. Nothing would make a child happier than money and status. I'm sorry, Liz, but I doubt these dumb books would bring her happiness.
The flashy covers on the heap of books to her right were starting to get my attention. When she turned the pages, different hues of blues and oranges bounced off the walls. For a quick second, the reflections on the glass paper coverings illuminated the shadows hiding in the room corners and surrounding both of us.
I was starting to catch onto the real reason why she might be doing this.
Even when I was two meters away from the girl, I could smell the pages in her hands—fresh paper. The odor of wood pulp, adhesives and petroleum all mixed together which evoked a sensation that was hard to describe.
"Hey..." I was about to say something I might regret. "What do y—"
Bang, bang.
Someone was battering on the metal door.
I held my breath. Liz quietly crawled away from the chair and reached for the kitchen knife under the bathroom sink.
"Who is it?" I shouted as I sat upright.
"We're from the security firm." The voice resounded behind the thin tungsten door.
I looked at Liz—she was already by the bathroom entrance, with the knife on her hand. Her face was pale.
I turned around.
I tried to turn around.
I couldn't turn around.
Something had stabbed me on my back.