Reincarnated as the Protagonist of a Legendary Depressing Eroge – I Paired Up My Two Childhood Friend Heroines to Avoid the Bad End, But Their Possessiveness Completely Broke Through the Limits - Episode 04: My Memory / Winter ★

Episode 04: My Memory / Winter ★

I wonder when it started.

The air inside the house got heavy and damp.

Coming home from school, I climb the shared iron stairs of the apartment building.

Step by step, the creaking sound squeezes my heart a little tighter.

Before I open the front door, I always hold my breath for just a second.

With a click, I turn the key and peek through the gap.

What I see isn’t just my shoes and Mom’s.

There are muddy, rugged leather shoes.

Worn-down heels on cheap business shoes.

Or flashy sneakers.

A stranger’s shoes sit there in our entrance like they belong.

The moment I notice them, a smell hits my nose—rotten eggs mixed with cigarette smoke and cheap perfume, the kind that makes the back of my throat burn.

No matter how hard Mom runs the exhaust fan or sprays air freshener, that “man smell” sticks to the walls like a stain and won’t go away.

“…I’m home, Mom.”

I force the words out. Then Mom comes out from the back room.

The gentle, slightly tired but still beautiful face she used to have is buried under all that makeup now.

Glossy lipstick. Skin that’s unnaturally white. Eyes that have lost their light, like a dead fish.

“Welcome back, Iyo. Sorry, I’m in the middle of work right now. Go to your room, okay?”

Mom won’t look me in the eye.

Deep inside my chest, I hear something crumbling and falling apart.

I don’t know how many times this has happened.

The real reason Mom does “work” — I’ve actually known for a long time.

My school fees.

The monthly cram school payments.

My new uniform.

So I can stay “normal.”

So I can stay inside the “sunlight.”

Mom is dirtying her pure white fingers, tearing her heart apart, and handing her own body over to strangers.

Maybe the ones dirtying Mom aren’t the owners of those shoes.

—It’s me.

My very existence is what pushed Mom into this hell.

Inside my body flows the blood of some “someone” whose name I don’t even know.

The hateful seed of the man who broke Mom.

I’m a child who shouldn’t have been born — someone who hurts Mom just by being alive.

It happened after Mom had collapsed from overwork and fallen into a deep sleep.

While I was looking for something, I accidentally found an old brown envelope.

Deep inside the cabinet.

Tucked away with the apartment renewal papers, like Mom was trying to hide something filthy — old records from the past.

I saw it.

Mom’s university expulsion notice.

And a faded letter from a lawyer.

Inside were official documents about “an incident” that happened at the university in the winter of the year I was born.

If I counted backward from my birthday, it was impossible not to understand.

After that, I searched for news articles about the incident on the city library computer.

I’m not the child of the man Mom loved.

I’m the “evil” seed that stole Mom’s future, destroyed her dreams, and slammed her life into the mud.

Half of me carries the dirty blood of the men who broke Mom.

I close the door to my room, pull the futon over my head, and curl into a ball.

But from the other side of the thin wall, sounds I don’t want to hear leak through.

The creaking of the bed.

A man’s crude, rough breathing.

And then.

Mom’s voice — something I’ve never heard before, unnaturally sweet and sad.

“…No.”

Even when I cover my ears, the sounds go straight into my brain.

I can hear Mom’s dignity being scraped away, second by second.

With trembling hands, I take out the small capsule toy kalimba I’d hidden deep in my study desk drawer.

The one we used to play together late at night, laughing.

A cheap four-hundred-yen toy.

But back then, that sound was everything to us.

Plink.

I press the keys with my thumb like I’m praying.

I want to drown out the man’s laughter coming through the wall.

I want to pretend I can’t hear Mom’s gasping cries.

Plink, plink. Plink plink plink.

I just keep striking it desperately with my thumbnail.

The sound that used to be as gentle as raindrops is now the only thing standing in for my scream that feels like it’s about to tear me apart.

It’s such a small sound.

Way too weak and delicate to cover up those disgusting noises.

Still, I can’t stop playing.

Because while I’m playing, I feel like I can stay inside those beautiful memories from when I was three, when it was just Mom and me.

My nail splits, and blood slowly seeps into my fingertip.

Even so, I don’t let go of the kalimba.

Every time the shaking from the next room gets stronger, I strike the little metal pieces harder and harder.

—I can’t take it anymore.

To protect me, Mom has already stopped thinking of herself as human.

In that case, I—

I should take her place.

My blood was dirty from the start anyway.

I’m still young and worth more than a woman over thirty who gets treated like an “auntie” and slapped around.

I should be the one selling myself so I can take Mom out of this room, out of this town.

“Hey, Mom… You don’t have to try so hard anymore, okay?”

In the gaps between the kalimba notes, I whisper words no one else can hear.

There is no exit from this darkness.

God abandoned us from the very beginning.

And if there really is a god, he must be some kid with a twisted smile on his face, enjoying the show.