Chapter 30: Unwanted Overnight Stay

…I think I said something unnecessary.

I held my breath as much as I could, suppressing the nausea rising inside me.

It wasn’t that holding my breath didn’t stop me from smelling hopeful, but if I didn’t do this, I felt like I would vomit out all my despair.

Does that guy have some kind of talent for making monsters angry?

I instinctively turned my head away in response to the indescribable disgust.

‘I didn’t think she’d despair because I told her she wasn’t my friend, tsk.

What was a friend to Emerald?

In the first place, wasn’t the hurdle of friendship too low?

At first, Emerald acted like she was going to kill me and gave me suspicious looks, but she would call me a friend just because I nursed her a little.

Still, Emerald’s despair was pretty gourmet.

It was a mistake to say that she would think about it because she felt better at Emerald’s despair.

‘Despairing because she was told she wasn’t my friend, and finding hope because she thought about her friend?

What kind of kid is that?’

She was a magical girl, so she was definitely a kid.

Oh, right. She was a kid.

At this age, I would cry and laugh at the word friend.

Even most magical girls had a strong feeling of ‘love, friendship, peace~!

“I’ll try.”

I don’t think I need to try hard.’

If it’s Emerald’s effort, it must be filled with dreams and hopes.

Honestly, it wasn’t that hard for Emerald to become friends with me.

If she wanted to be friends with me, she just had to periodically sprinkle despair in front of me.

‘In that sense, Tamako is a friend, a friend.

I’m not sure if Tamako thinks of me as a friend, but to me, Tamako was a really precious friend.

I take care of Tamako, and Tamako gives me despair, so to speak, it’s a symbiotic relationship.

I even saved her from that evil doctor’s lab, right?

“Oh, and there’s one more thing I want to say!”

“… What is it?”

I narrowed my eyes as I watched Emerald carefully speaking.

What are you going to say now?

After all the things she’s said so far, she didn’t seem all that nice.

“Uh, could you possibly leave the house for a little while tomorrow?”

“… Yes?”

Suddenly? Why?

Did I do something wrong?

How come?

You really got upset because I told you we weren’t friends and you’re acting like this?

Is it something like, ‘You should experience for yourself how comfortable my home is, monster!”?

“Uh, then Tamako too…”

“Tamako’s a patient.”

“No way…”

My food storage!

Even for a monster, this is just too much!

Appetite is one of the three basic human desires, and yet you take food away from someone?

This was just too much.

It was literally tyranny and terrible oppression.

“Instead, I’ll get you a separate hotel room. I can’t explain it properly, but I think you really need to be out of the house for a day or so tomorrow.”

“…Well, fine.”

It’s not my house anyway, so what can I do?

The monster that is me is a monster that gives up faster than you think.

“Don’t cry when I’m not around.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll overcome it bravely.”

Yeah, that’s better.

Rather than wasting your despair by crying when I’m not around, you should hold it in and cry in front of me and let out your despair.

‘If I think positively, it doesn’t seem so bad for a day or so…’

Since it’s come to this, I should go back to the underground research lab that I couldn’t completely conquer back then.

The mixture of monsters and humans felt like the uncanny valley I’d seen in my past life, but I thought that feeling that way occasionally would help relieve my stress.

‘If I get the chance, I should go look for that kid’s mother too.’

I thought of the card key he was hiding in his arms and raised the corners of my mouth.

If we ever meet, it would be nice if you despaired deeply.

“This is disinfectant, this is a fever reducer, and this is a band-aid-“

“What kind of kid are you sending on an overseas trip?”

I clicked my tongue at Emerald, who packed my bags so carefully for me when I was only going for a day.

I never needed medicine in the first place.

Wounds can all be cured with saliva, so why?

I don’t need things that only weak humans would use, that’s all.

“I’ll be back.”

“Have a good night, Akari. Take care.”

“Worry about yourself instead of worrying about me.”

You didn’t sleep well last night because the dark circles are all the way under your eyes.

If someone saw you, they’d think you were a panda, tsk tsk.

“Haa…”

After saying a brief farewell to Emerald, I let out a sigh as soon as I stepped out onto the street.

My Tamako… My despair…

Just thinking about it made me feel wronged.

No, Tamako is my property that I saved, so isn’t it okay to take her with me for a bit?

Since she’s been discharged, that means she’s free to go out.

“Is there no point in complaining about nothing.

Let’s think positively, positively.

Rather than thinking that she was forcibly kicked out after having her despair potion taken away, it’s much better to think that she’s come out onto the streets to win freedom from magical girls and suck up all the despair of humans.

Even if she’s a monster that lives off of despair, she always needs to think positively.

Especially at moments like this.

‘I’m a little hungry, so I’ll have a snack or something!

The despair of a magical girl is the most certain way to fill your stomach, but the despair of a normal human can also be a little bit of a mouthful.

Even if it doesn’t really fill you up, it makes your body feel like it’s eaten something, making you feel like you’ve eaten something.

“Should I go to the hospital or the national cemetery…

If I had to find a place to eat despair, those two would definitely be the first two I’d pick.

Hospital? National cemetery?

Both were attractive choices, so I was thinking about it, but then I suddenly remembered that annoying squinty-eyed doctor and made up my mind in an instant.

Let’s go to the national cemetery first.

“So the road…”

Oh, by the way, I also got a cell phone from Emerald.

I was only going out for a day and coming back, so I wondered what a cell phone meant, but she said I could use it for the rest of my life and prepared it for me in an instant.

I never imagined that it would take less than half a day from delivery to activation.

“Right here bang”

“Oops…”

“Ugh…?!”

As I was heading to the national cemetery while looking at the map on my cell phone, I bumped into someone the moment I turned the corner.

I was confident that I would never be pushed back by a normal human, so I was only briefly surprised, but the other person was thrown back so badly.

Should I apologize for this?

It’s the fault of the human who came and stuck it without permission.

“You…”

“What is it? Are you following me? Or are you watching me?”

I originally had no intention of apologizing, but seeing her face made me want to apologize even more.

How can I apologize to that squinty face?

The guy in front of me was darker inside than a monster, and more disgusting than any human.

If the monsters in the underground lab were disgusting because of their half-human and half-monster appearance, the human in front of me was just a disgusting human.

‘This is why the original world was destroyed.’

Even if it wasn’t the apocalypse in the first place, wouldn’t these humans have created something like the apocalypse?

I felt like I had some insect fluid on my body, so I shook my clothes off for no reason.

Ugh, I shouldn’t have even talked to him.

I felt like I was wasting my time on this human, so I hurried my steps.

No, I was about to move.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“I think I could solve your hunger. What do you think?”

It was a tempting suggestion.

I was already hungry, so if I followed this guy, I might end up eating a lot of despair.

For example, the fresh despair of magical girls and such.

‘But you know… Who would believe such words when they’re not even kids?

Even the human in front of me smelled similar to the doctor.

If you ask where they were similar, honestly, they were very different overall, but they both had a similar mad scientist vibe.

A monster that uses magical girls as experimental materials and a human that uses monsters as experimental materials.

Anyone can see that they’re similar, right?

Of course, the doctor was much better.

“I don’t like it.”

“… Huh?”

“If you don’t have anything else to say, I’ll go.”

I ignored the human who was looking at me with a blank expression and hurriedly walked.

Surely he wouldn’t follow me?

Just in case, I went into a nearby alley instead of the main road.

There was no other reason, but because I thought I’d twist his neck a little if he followed me.

“That person probably didn’t approach me with any pure intentions.”

I tried to control my mind while thinking positively, but I immediately felt bad when I met that human.

How could I run into this right after leaving the Emerald House?

No matter how much I thought about it, it was clear that he was using some kind of trick to keep watch over me.

He had nothing better to do, and no one to keep watch over, so he was keeping watch over me, a good monster?

“Disgusting…”

A small but second goal had emerged.

I vowed that I would definitely devour that cross-eyed doctor’s despair someday.

I didn’t know when that would be, but honestly, I didn’t think it would take that long.

A human who would tease the despair of a sleeping monster couldn’t survive for long.