Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
The night was thick, like the dark, cold blood flowing from a decaying corpse, winding its way over the heavens and the earth. The moon circled alone in the sky, its light growing dimmer. Ito gripped Kaiko's hand tightly, giving her a fierce look, then lifted the collapsed Kaiko up. Kaiko seemed to still be in shock, her legs weak and her whole body limp like a pile of mud as she fell by Ito's legs, murmuring, "Help, help..."
Ito had to crouch down, his chubby hands controlling Kaiko's shoulders. It was then that Kaiko slowly looked at him, her eyes filled with tears, and she seemed to lose focus.
"Why didn't you contact me directly if you were planning to report to the police? What are you planning to do? What's going on?" Ito lowered his voice, pressing Kaiko for answers, and looked around warily, as if someone was secretly spying on them in the dark.
"I'll tell you everything, I'll tell you the truth, but... can you listen to me first and then take me to the police station?" Kaiko suddenly grabbed Ito's hand and urgently said. Ito was stunned, why did she make such a strange request. Could it be that Sagawa Shinsuke was hiding nearby, and Kaiko as his mother, actually wanted to secretly pass on information to him at night? Then why not just contact him directly by phone? Ito looked at Kaiko suspiciously, silently thinking to himself, "Alright, let's see how you explain this."
"Then tell me, what's going on." Ito dragged Kaiko to a tree by the side of the road like catching a chick. Ito's plump body leaned against the tree, hands on hips, staring straight at Kaiko.
Kaiko looked around vigilantly, her clasped hands finally relaxed, and she began to tell her story to Ito:
In 1959, Sagawa Akihide had become the president of the Awata Industrial Co., Ltd. At this moment, he was in high spirits, managing a sewage treatment company. Due to the numerous Japanese enterprises at the time, especially after the Minamata disease incident in Kumamoto Prefecture's Minamata Bay in 1951, the public pressured the government to address the significant impact of industrial wastewater pollution caused by companies. The government had to plan for the treatment of pollution caused by companies and the ecological environment. Akihide keenly identified this business opportunity. On one hand, the sewage treatment companies he established mostly adopted advanced foreign technologies, which could mitigate the impact of sewage. Additionally, he established relationships with the local government, and local companies had to pay a considerable annual governance fee. Consequently, he gradually became a wealthy and influential figure in the area.
Kaiko, on the other hand, was Akihide's only beloved wife from childhood to adulthood. Despite Akihide's newfound wealth and influence, he did not engage in extramarital affairs like other playboys. On the contrary, his feelings for Kaiko remained as strong as ever. This was partly because Kaiko had provided significant support during Akihide's entrepreneurial early days. Another crucial reason was that Kaiko's father was the head of the local environmental protection agency at the time. This relationship allowed Sagawa's sewage treatment company to thrive, and many companies and government officials were favorably disposed toward them.
In 1961, Kaiko became pregnant with Sagawa Shinsuke. Due to Kaiko's lifelong frailty and illness, she was already showing signs of illness at the time. Coupled with Akihide's single-minded focus on work, despite the attentive care of a nanny, an accident still occurred.
One afternoon, Kaiko was walking down the stairs from the second floor when her legs gave way and she fell down the stairs. Kaiko let out a scream, and the nanny rushed over to the scene. Fortunately, the hospital was notified in time, saving the lives of both mother and child. And so, Sagawa Shinsuke was born prematurely due to the accident. However, Sagawa Shinsuke's arrival brought distress to the family. Because of his premature birth, Shinsuke appeared much smaller than children of the same age. Additionally, his forehead was extremely wide, his eyes deeply set, and his appearance seemed very peculiar. This made Akemi feel dissatisfied, but due to Kaiko's increasingly frail health, they gave up on the idea of having another child.
Shinsuke grew up gradually, but his height remained stunted compared to his peers. During elementary school, his body, due to the premature birth, did not develop normally and appeared uncoordinated. He walked like a crab with a broken leg, swaying from side to side. He was extremely self-conscious and rarely spoke to his classmates, let alone had any close friends.
In theory, he was born into a well-off family and should have had confidence and superiority beyond others. But on the contrary, in the eyes of Mingxiu and Kaiko, Shinsuke appeared very introverted and isolated. This isolation became more severe as he grew older, and he firmly believed that he was one of the few sufferers of extreme isolation in the world, deeply resenting crowds from the bottom of his heart.
As he grew older, Shinsuke entered middle school. This annoying strange illness showed some signs of slowing down, but during elementary school, he was absent from school for a third of the time, claiming to be sick or recovering from illness; during middle school, he pretended to be sick for half of the year, hiding in the study, not allowing family members to enter, spending his days immersed in absurd fantasies in novels, living in a daze. Kaiko attributed all of this to her own body, blaming herself for not giving Shinsuke a good body, feeling guilty that her premature birth made her son so abnormal. Mingxiu, on the other hand, showed the decisive attitude of an entrepreneur, often educating Shinsuke in a harsh and critical manner, even resorting to insults.
This high-pressure education seemed to trigger a chemical reaction within him after he entered middle school. In addition to his isolation and sensitivity, he developed a desire and confusion about love. Once, he got out of bed without bothering the maid, and Kaiko felt extremely proud when she saw this, couldn't help but praise him happily, saying, "Oh, what a good child, such a good child!" Shinsuke, receiving the praise, felt extremely ashamed, as if there was a fire burning inside him, making him extremely uncomfortable, and inexplicably developing extreme aversion to the praiser. Furthermore, whether it was loving or being loved, or even the word "love" itself, he was extremely eager on one hand, and extremely eager to escape on the other, hating it to the point of wanting to painfully shrink his body. Perhaps this is the source of his series of abnormal and extreme emotions such as self-loathing, loathing of loved ones, and hatred of humanity. To him, he and all of humanity seemed like two completely different species. People in the world are inscrutable, thick-skinned, and blindly optimistic, which he feels unable to understand. He feels like a stranger, not belonging to this world.
Comment 0 Comment Count