The birth of a human involves many factors.
Ideally, it would be the pure product of passionate love between a man and a woman, but reality isn't quite that fairy-tale-like.
My life was no different.
I was born from the careless lust of a drunk man and woman.
My so-called father ran away before I was even born, and my mother raised me on her own.
That doesn't mean she was a good person.
She couldn't afford an abortion, and she bragged in her drunken haze that she kept me around just for the government welfare checks for a single mother. How could I see her as a parent in a positive light?
She'd sometimes bring a new boyfriend home, and whether they beat me up or not, she'd just laugh and watch.
I was born to trash parents and raised in a trash environment.
No wonder my life turned out to be a mess.
Nothing ever went right for me, and I'd lash out at people with just a slap, easily hurting them.
When I realized how disgusting I'd become, I felt a strange relief that at least my conscience was working better than my parents' ever did.
I never asked to be born, and I certainly didn't ask to just drift through life. If that was the case, I wanted at least the right to die when I chose.
So I threw myself off a cliff.
But it seems I'm an idiot who can't even die properly.
Mid-fall, I hit a protruding branch, and that changed everything.
The branch sliced open my abdomen, spilling my entrails like confetti, yet maybe because it cushioned my fall a bit, I didn't die on the spot.
My fate to die later from blood loss and shock was certain, but I'd have to stay conscious and suffer until then. It was a truly horrifying thought. It would have been better to smash my head clean off and die instantly.
In the end, I was an idiot who couldn't even finish killing myself.
I glared resentfully at the night sky beyond the cliff and cursed the meaning of my birth.
That's when I sensed someone's presence.
"…I've never seen a case like this before."
It was unexpected.
To appear in an outer forest where I thought I'd die in secret—someone was here.
A young man with a large guitar case slung over his shoulder.
He looked at my blood-soaked body lying on the ground, then shifted his gaze to the chunks of my entrails hanging from the branch.
"Tried and failed suicide, huh? Your guts are spilling out and you're on your way out."
Most sane people would have turned away at such a gruesome sight, but he calmly assessed the situation.
He was certainly shocked, but it was strange that he had no other reaction.
He carefully stepped around the scattered entrails so as not to crush them and approached me.
Hovering close to my ragged breathing, he asked:
"Can you still talk? It looks too late to save you, but if you want to live, I can call an ambulance."
He held his phone in one hand, ready to dial the moment I uttered a positive response.
I had no idea why this random man had shown up out of nowhere, but I decided to answer anyway.
"…No…need…"
I'd reached the point where I no longer felt pain.
It was too late to turn things around this far in, and even if I could survive, I didn't want to.
The man watched me for a moment, then, as if to respect my choice, lowered his phone.
Then he simply sat down right there.
Just sat silently.
Was he planning to watch me die?
I wondered why this man had come all the way into a forest that no one but a suicidal person would visit.
At least he didn't look like someone who also wanted to kill himself. And he certainly wasn't there to play guitar.
"Well, it's awkward to say this to someone who's dying…"
The man, staring up at the night sky with me, scratched his cheek awkwardly and spoke.
"Usually, you just harvest from a corpse that's already dead. You take permission afterward, or bring your own prayers. This is different, but I guess it's still right to do things properly."
"…?"
He turned back to me and said something even more confusing.
"Hey, man, what do you think about your body becoming someone's food after you die?"
"…W-What?"
My mouth barely moved as I asked back.
He scratched the back of his head, as if wondering how to explain, and continued.
"It's a bit complicated. I have a little girl, and she can't eat normal food. Or she can, but she won't get the nutrients she needs from it. The problem is, those nutrients are found in the human body. So she needs human flesh to survive."
What the hell was that?
I'd never heard of such a bizarre condition…
…No, actually I had.
A grotesque monster rumored to live somewhere in the city, hiding among humans and feeding on them to survive.
The danger is real and there are actual reported cases, but many people treat it like an urban legend since most have never seen one.
"A ghoul…?"
Unless someone was a cannibalistic pervert, that was the only thing that came to mind.
The man didn't deny it. He nodded, as if he didn't need to hide it from someone who was about to die in just a few minutes.
"But you look… human."
"Yeah."
"Why would a human be food for a ghoul…"
"She's my daughter."
"..."
I was speechless.
I thought this man had gone mad to calmly call a flesh-eating monster his daughter.
But it was too severe to call him insane—his eyes were steady.
As if he felt no distance at all calling her his daughter.
"Ah, ha, ha!"
I couldn't help but laugh.
I'd lived the most painful life imaginable and was about to end it in agony. It was a kind of escape.
But suddenly, that escape felt ridiculously trivial.
Raising a monster that must eat humans as family!
Here was a man living that life, and I'd chosen to flee over a fraction of my pain. He looked calm, but I couldn't imagine the horror he was enduring.
I'd bet my remaining entrails that something unseen was eating away at him, even in this moment.
Even right now…
Cough!Cough!
I coughed. My diaphragm barely moved.
Using the little strength I had left to laugh was foolish, I realized—and at that moment the man spoke again.
"You're going to die anyway. Rather than having your body sewn into the earth to rot or torn apart by starving beasts, wouldn't it be better to bring a big smile to a little girl's face?"
"..."
I thought my life, born from trash, lived in garbage, would end miserably. Just a pathetic death I couldn't even finish.
Yet apparently, even someone like me could do something.
I squeezed out my last ounce of strength and asked him a lame question.
"Your daughter…is she…pretty…?"
"She's unbelievably cute. Like you could put her in your eye and it wouldn't hurt."
"If I disappeared as nourishment for that little girl…that would be…an honor…."
With those words, my breath slipped away.
It felt like sinking into darkness. Even the stars in the night sky were too bright now.
I wanted to close my eyes, but my body wouldn't obey.
Then the man's voice covered my eyelids like a lullaby, or perhaps a prayer, soothingly resonant.
"May your body remain as nourishment for another, and may your soul find peace."