Boiled was surprised, and he quickly clasped both his hands over the mouse to try and keep him warm. He tried to be as gentle as he could.
Boiled could feel the mouse pressing his tiny body up against the wall created by his palms.
The warmth from Boiled’s hands seemed to melt into the faint glow of the body heat from the mouse.
Boiled had never felt anything like this before—and he thought he never would again.
Eventually the mouse’s face emerged from the gap between Boiled’s fingers. The mouse stared closely at him.
He sounded just like a talking animal on a children’s television show. And, for a moment, Boiled felt like a child again. A warm glow filled him, driving away for a moment the terrible, terrible memories of war and slaughter and guilt and shame.
The mouse spoke with a clear, high-pitched tone—it was incredible to think how young he’d sounded back then.
When Boiled’s parents left this world, his commanders in the army had filled the gap they left behind. Amid the close-knit, spartan conditions of training, the commanders became the natural receptacles for both love and hate for the recruits, just as in a real family. Boiled had vaguely imagined that one day he too would end up becoming one of those commanders.
That was before he lost everything and was disposed of as a soldier to be thrown to the wolves in Paradise.
And it was there in Paradise that Boiled stood, numbly holding the little creature in his hands.
The faint glow of warmth in his hands at that moment was more precious than anything Boiled had ever experienced before. The vulnerable little creature, so feeble that Boiled could have crushed him with the slightest squeeze, pierced Boiled’s heart more vividly than anything he had witnessed in battle.
Boiled had been assigned to Paradise to right a wrong, to redeem himself. Those were his orders, and it was what he wanted. But what was it that Boiled had
That was what the mouse had asked, in his high, childish voice. Boiled didn’t understand what he was saying at first.
Finally, Boiled understood that he was being asked if he was in pain.
He also understood why the mouse was asking him.
“No… I’m not hurt,” said Boiled, but inside he was deeply moved.
The mouse seemed to understand why people cried.
Boiled was crying. He cried as he felt the warm bundle of life in the palms of his hands, and he cried as he apologized in the depths of his heart to the friends and comrades that he had killed. He cried as he desperately sought forgiveness, as he discovered the one fragment of redemption in the dark abyss where his soul had been plunged.
That was the moment he vowed to himself that he would overcome his addiction.
He was going to wipe the slate clean. Wipe his life clean. This would be his new purpose.
Boiled handled his duties at Paradise with aplomb.
Or to put it another way, Boiled survived what Paradise subjected him to. Many of the other experimental candidates ended up crippled, permanently disfigured, but Boiled endured what Paradise threw at him—and made it his own.
He did so because of the existence of Oeufcoque. While Boiled was in Paradise, Oeufcoque developed at an astonishing rate, and before long he was able to converse with Boiled as an equal.
Years passed, and Boiled survived. All traces of the aftereffects of the drugs had been purged from his body —along with a number of other things.
Of the things that he had lost, some were plain for all to see. Others, only he knew about.
One of them was
His brain and metabolic system had been altered so that he could survive on meager rations and no sleep. A new breed of soldier was born, and Boiled was hailed as the first of a wonderful new species.
But though the operation was repeated successfully on monkeys and some reptiles, it just wouldn’t seem to
Then the monkeys and reptiles all started showing a similar set of tendencies.
The monkeys that had been subjects started wringing the necks of control-group monkeys. They didn’t particularly seem to hate their targets. They just wanted
The killer monkeys seemed to be able to work out that the best time to attack was while the others were asleep.
As far as monkeys went, this was abnormally aggressive, deviant behavior.
The asomniatic monkeys didn’t even bother to try threatening the other monkeys, to intimidate them into giving them more space, like a normal monkey would do to increase his territory.
The killer monkeys just
Quite how this sort of behavior was linked to sleeplessness was never explained, despite the scientists’ best efforts.
A number of monkeys had successfully undergone the operation, and they all seemed outwardly normal. Except that they showed no inclination to form any sort of pack. It was as if they deliberately wanted to cut themselves off from the world, to survive as islands unto themselves.
Just as the subject monkeys stopped feeling pain or sorrow, Boiled’s heart too was gradually filled by a vast, vague
The experimental subjects—the monkeys and Boiled—were always in good spirits and, illnesses excepted, in great health.
Body and mind unchangingly healthy. Thus there were none of the natural fluctuations in emotional states— no ups, no downs—and gradually emotion, feelings, withered away, unused.
“Oeufcoque…”
Boiled let go of the steering wheel with his right hand and stared at his palm.
The memory of the golden mouse that was once in his palm came flowing back to him—the only part that he could no longer remember was the feeling of warmth that he had felt when Oeufcoque was in his hands.
The warmth that he had definitely felt when the mouse was first in his hand—the warmth that had welled up from inside his chest and spread out across his entire body—he felt nothing of this now; he was just an empty husk, a discarded carapace of an insect.
Being so near and yet so far—remembering the contours, but none of the substance—only served to emphasize more keenly just what Boiled had lost.
“I don’t need a reason to hold you…” Boiled murmured to himself, then put his right hand back on the steering wheel. “I need you back in these hands.”
He needed to wipe the slate clean. To wipe out his failures—to drive out the flashbacks, once and for all. To annihilate his past so that he could start anew, painting a new life on a blank canvas.
“And if I can’t have you back, then all there is left to do is to destroy you…as something I never needed in the first place.”
