Chapter 2: My Father’s Back

Abel looked around the scenery with interest.

The road was unpaved.

Beyond the woods lay farmland.

A crop that looked like wheat…no, it could only be barley and it was being cultivated across vast fields.

Farmers were at work, holding plows and sickles.

When they noticed Abel and his father, they bowed to them.

Along the way, they encountered three other similar groups of people, all of whom greeted them politely.

Abel looked up at his father.

His lower garment was shaped like trousers, seemingly woven from a hemp-like material.

It was dyed a pale green.

The upper garment seemed to be silk.

A metallic glint shone on his middle finger. It was a gold ring.

On his wrist was a silver bracelet, not a wristwatch.

His feet were clad in leather sandals.

No socks.

Abel’s own clothes were of a similar make to his father’s.

As they walked, he thought:

—So reincarnation really does exist.

That magic that healed his wounds…

That was definitely no illusion.

And yet, he could barely understand the language here…

Judging from his height and build, he was about three or four years old.

If these people were similar to Earth humans, he should be at an age where he could speak simple words.

If he suddenly couldn’t speak at all, his parents would surely be shocked.

And if he started babbling incomprehensible words, things could only get worse.

It would definitely make the situation more complicated.

Better to stay quiet for now, even if it made him seem suspicious.

That’s what the man at Abel’s core thought. But there was an even deeper problem.

—I’ve always hated family… and parents most of all.

A new father and mother. A household.

This was nothing less than a new hell that had been given to him.

And this man who seemed to be his father…

Would he end up killing his father again…?

The more he thought about it, the colder he felt inside.

A heavy weight settled in his gut.

As a result, Abel’s pace slowed and the fatigue added to his lethargy.

While he was shuffling along, his father crouched down in front of him with his back turned.

At first, Abel didn’t understand his intent, but it seemed he meant for Abel to climb on.

Hesitant, Abel clung to his back.

His father’s back…

Abel remembered.

As a child, he had never once been carried on his father’s back.

The man had been short in stature.

Always drunk, muttering complaints.

He had no memories at all of playing together.

When Abel gripped his shoulders, his father stood up.

The view suddenly opened up.

It was only that his line of sight had risen, but to a child, the world seemed to change completely.

The sensation of entrusting his body to a guardian. This was something he had never experienced before…

Before long, they arrived at what looked like a village.

Most of the buildings were single-story wooden structures.

The roofs were either tiled or thatched with straw for the most part.

The roads were still unpaved.

There were no streetlights. A close look at the houses revealed the state of the civilization.

There was no such thing as window glass.

Only wooden shutters….either open or shut.

Some doors bore plaques that looked like nameplates.

Unfamiliar characters were written on them.

Some houses displayed decorative patterns instead.

Abel tried to gauge the size of the settlement.

Perhaps around a hundred houses.

If each house held five people, the population would be roughly five hundred.

Farmsteads were scattered around the outskirts as well.

Within a radius of about ten kilometers, perhaps several thousand people lived here.

To Abel who knew what a great city looked like, it seemed nothing but a remote rural area, but perhaps in this world, this counted as a thriving place.

At last, still on his father’s back, they arrived at a particular house.

It was made of stone unlike the others.

Its roof was solid-looking tile.

It was still a single story but seemed roughly twice the size of the other homes.

He began to suspect that perhaps his family was rather well-off.

Upon entering the house, they proceeded deeper inside without removing their shoes.

Since there was no shoe rack, it seemed this was not a culture where people removed their shoes indoors.

Someone appeared. It was a young and beautiful woman.

Her flowing golden hair reached down to her waist.

Her eyes were the color of a clear blue sky.

Her facial features were perfectly proportioned.

Her skin was a healthy sun-kissed bronze.

Firm, smooth, and radiant.

She had the beauty of an actress, yet wore no trace of makeup.

She was dressed in what appeared to be a simple white cotton dress.

The neckline was open, revealing a deep, full cleavage.

The woman seemed to instantly sense that something was wrong.

She hurried over in small steps, examined Abel’s torn clothing, and upon noticing the bloodstains, she let out a small gasp.

Then she grew flustered and began speaking to Abel, who was still being carried on his father’s back.

“■■■■■■■, ■■■?”

Of course, he didn’t understand the words, but her concern was clear.

She was most likely his mother.

Abel’s father set him down in a chair and began discussing something with her.

Abel simply sat there quietly, saying nothing.

With nothing else to do, he began observing the room.

It was about eight tatami mats in size.

A wooden table. Six chairs. A single shelf.

Dishes and other items were neatly stored away.

Naturally, there was no electricity, so there wasn’t a single electrical appliance.

Even a single plate revealed something about the culture.

Wooden plates and sturdy, unglazed earthenware cups.

They had a texture reminiscent of Bizen ware. Not a single piece of porcelain.

Was this the parents’ personal taste, or did they simply lack the ceramic techniques for glazing…?

After that, his mother began undressing him.

Having fallen from a cliff, his clothes were soiled and torn in several places.

His father brought over a bucket filled with water and began chanting something like an incantation.

He could feel an unseen presence stirring in the air. He couldn’t see it but he knew it was there.

Soon, steam began to rise from the water.

Magic… incredible!

How does it work?

Could I learn to use it, too…?

His mother dipped a clean-looking white cloth into the hot water, wrung it out, and began gently wiping Abel down. Her every motion was filled with a mother’s tender care.

Abel felt uneasy.

He had never been good with family.

These people too would surely change their attitude before long…

Don’t let your guard down.

They must never learn who I really am.

That was all he could think about.

After changing his clothes, he was led to what appeared to be a bedroom.

There was a bed neatly made with a clean sheet.

Following their gentle prompting, Abel lay down.

He was utterly exhausted.

In no time at all, his consciousness began to fade.

The next thing he knew, someone was shaking him, and he realized he had been in a deep sleep.

His mother was there, smiling warmly.

Abel sat up from the bed and stepped out of the bedroom. On the table in the living room, several dishes had been set out.

A pot of steaming soup sat at the center.

There was something resembling flat naan bread.

On another wooden plate lay some kind of meat, along with potatoes and vegetables.

Abel took a seat at the place where the smallest portion had been served.

As his parents sat down, they both spoke a word in unison.

—That’s probably their version of “Itadakimasu (let’s eat)”.

Abel clumsily tried to imitate the phrase.

His parents exchanged glances and smiled warmly.

They began speaking to him about various things, but since he couldn’t understand a word, he simply focused on eating.

There was a metal knife and fork and a spoon as well.

He was relieved they didn’t eat with their hands.

The meat tasted like lamb…no, it was lamb.

The potatoes tasted like taro, and the vegetables were almost identical to cabbage.

The soup had a milk base, with chicken and a root vegetable similar to turnip or radish.

The flavor suited his taste perfectly.

There was no sign of pepper or strong spices.

The seasoning was mainly salt and herbs.

It tasted purely homemade. It was natural in every way.

—Huh?

…When was the last time someone cooked for me? Must be decades…

Maybe this is the first time ever.

Abel felt strangely out of place.

Like he didn’t belong here, yet here he was.

Perhaps the word for this was “an intruder”.

His father and mother talked together. There was no hint of discord between them.

In fact, they seemed very close.

They repeatedly tried to include Abel in their conversation.

All he could do was smile vaguely, shake his head now and then… nothing more.

He resigned himself to the situation.

He decided that, whether it was a spoon or a piece of meat, he would simply point at each thing and ask for its name.

His parents quickly realized that something was wrong with their son, Abel.

The father pointed to himself and said, “Daada, Walter.”

Next, he pointed to his wife and pronounced, “Maa, Ayla.”

Abel assumed those were names. Walter sounded unmistakably masculine.

Maa brought to mind the meaning of “mother”.

And Ayla fit perfectly as a woman’s name.

Walter was concerned for his son who spoke slowly.

He had seen with his own eyes how Abel’s skull had been shattered and his brain deformed. He believed the severe injury had left behind something akin to memory loss.

In truth, to save his child, he had used the most powerful healing magic he knew.

That was how deep his son’s wounds had been. They were without question fatal and he was moments away from death.

The magic he cast was called Life Essence Extraction.

It was a forbidden spell. A secret art of last resort.

Literally, it was a spell that used one’s own body and life force. It was magic reserved only for the most desperate emergencies.

This magic was powerful enough to revive someone on the brink of death, someone who could not be saved even by the highest-grade healing spells.

However, it had a fatal drawback: when used on someone with no blood relation to the caster, its success rate dropped drastically.

Conversely, between blood relatives, the effect could be expected to be strong.

Life Essence Extraction came with one tremendous cost.

The caster, without exception, would age prematurely and have years off their lifespan cut off.

It was said that one could use it no more than twice in a lifetime.

The first time left only symptoms like lingering fatigue. But the second… even a young person would instantly become like an old man.

Walter hadn’t told his wife Ayla that he had used the forbidden spell.

He had no intention of telling anyone.

And he had no regrets.

For the sake of his child, he would gladly wear down his own life. That went without saying.

“As long as you grow up safe and healthy, I wish for nothing else.”

Walter spoke to him, but Abel still couldn’t understand the meaning.

Abel felt a strange sensation.

In his father’s eyes, he sensed something he had never known before.

He couldn’t tell what it was… but it was there.

At night, the three of them—father, mother, and son—slept together in a large bed, lined up like the strokes of the kanji for “川”.

For Abel, the whole thing felt strange.

In his previous life, as far back as he could remember, he had never once slept together with his family.

He had lived alone in a small apartment room.

And in that solitude, he had died alone.

What he remembered most was the father he had killed.

Walter and Ayla slept peacefully beside him.

The man at Abel’s core began to replay the memories of his past life.

***

My parents were the worst.

No matter what anyone says, they were the worst.

Some might say that killing is an unforgivable sin…. especially killing your own parent.

They might tell you never to justify murder.

But that kind of talk only comes from people who had decent parents.

Since I was little, my father would get drunk and mutter complaints under his breath, then hit me over the smallest things. If, for example, there was a scrap of paper on the floor.

One time, I saw a receipt lying around and threw it away. Turned out it was one he needed. He beat me and lectured me for it. For two or three hours, maybe.

My mother either stayed silent and indifferent or took my father’s side. And that went on day after day after day.

Bruises often marked my arms and cheeks.

My parents’ marriage was a disaster. They barely spoke, and I never once saw them laugh together. My mother openly said she only gave birth to me because she had no choice after getting pregnant.

I wasn’t smart. Memorization, especially, was my weakness.

I wasn’t good at sports, and I wasn’t tall.

My face… well, it was plain, to put it kindly. My grades were always below average. Then one day my father started demanding that I get into the University of Tokyo. He insisted that because he was paying my tuition and living expenses, nothing less would do. Even though both he and my mother were only high school graduates.

He ignored his own shortcomings but demanded the best from his child.

A truly abnormal man.

I drifted unnoticed through the halls of a bottom-rung rural high school until I graduated. I worked part-time while attending a prep school. My grades never improved; how could they? Even when I managed to memorize something, I’d forget it in a few months. No matter how many times I repeated the process, the things I couldn’t remember stayed forgotten.

My father’s violence and his crazy lectures never stopped.

He’d go on for hours over the most trivial things.

And if he didn’t like something, the beatings and kicking would follow as a matter of course.

After three years of failing the entrance exams, I quietly took the test for a third-rate university and barely made it in as a waitlisted candidate.

I thought it was the luck of a lifetime. It wasn’t ability.

It was pure chance. Some of the multiple-choice answers I’d guessed had just happened to be right.

But my father wouldn’t allow me to enroll. There was no money for the entrance fee or tuition. He refused to act as my guarantor for a scholarship. My father was such a twisted man that he had cut ties with all our relatives, so there wasn’t a single family member I could turn to.

I was completely trapped.

And that night, it began again.

The usual lecture.

Why are you so stupid?

Why are you so weak?

No matter what you do, you’re below average.

You’re an idiot living a worthless life.

Why on earth are you my child…?

Each word scraped away at my soul.

Reason slipped away.

I snapped.

I should have just run away and found work somewhere, but in that moment my rage had completely shut down my ability to think.

I smashed a sake bottle over my father’s head.

Then I kicked his head as he lay collapsed.

And for the first time, I felt a deep, genuine sense of relief.

I left home.

I had about two hundred thousand yen saved up, but I figured I could manage somehow if I worked part-time.

I felt exhilarated.

My spirits had never been so high.

Life had been hard until now, but I thought I could start fresh from here.

Work hard, meet a kind-hearted girlfriend someday… build a happy family unlike his…

That vague dream ended abruptly the next day at the station.

A police officer appeared and arrested me.

In the back of the patrol car, they told me my father was dead.

I was a murderer. I had killed my father.

I don’t remember much about the questioning or the trial.

No matter how I tried to explain that I hadn’t meant to kill him, it sounded like a lie.

Even I wasn’t sure if I’d truly had no intent to kill.

I had always, always wished he were dead.

I hadn’t meant to kill him, but I had the will to kill… it was a contradiction that made no sense.

I simply told the lawyer and the judge about my life in a calm, matter-of-fact way.

Apparently, the sentence included what they call “extenuating circumstances”.

Ten years in prison.

As it was my first offense and I was a model prisoner, I was released just before I turned thirty.

I worked in many different places.

I learned about various kinds of jobs.

Of course, most of the places that would hire an ex-convict were awful, exploitative jobs.

Sometimes I quit when I felt I was at my breaking point; other times, even if I was fitting in, I left in a hurry when people found out I had killed my father.

Come to think of it, about two years before I coughed up blood and died, my stomach had started hurting badly. When I took stomach medicine or drank cold water, the dull ache would ease a little.

I didn’t want to go to a hospital, and I was too busy with work to have the time anyway.

That’s how I managed to get through the discomfort. Until that night, when the pain was worse than ever and I vomited a large amount of blood.

A miserable life…

What I came to understand, through and through, is that there’s no such thing as starting over in life.

Everything I lost was something I could never get back.

And, in the first place, most of it was something I could never have obtained at all.

The idea that you can turn suffering into strength and move forward is nothing but the idle talk of those who have only known mild hardship.

Hatred, resentment, joy. Those are things you must truly forget.

If you can’t forget, you’re forced to live carrying that burning feeling for as long as you breathe, dragging it behind you.

That is what trauma is.

This is hell. Of course it is.

Never let your guard down.

Doubt.

To trust is to be deceived.

This is no convenient cycle of reincarnation.

This is no second chance.

You cannot start over in life.

Not even if you’re born again.

The man at the core of Abel drifted into sleep.