CHAPTER 2

What is a child to their parents?

Is it a form of their affection? A symbol of intimacy? A child, born of their unrivaled love for each other?

Love, such a bullshit thing.

I digress, a child is merely an accident, if not a burden. Love has little to do with it. It is simply the parents wanting something to exploit for money so their lives would become more lavish. Or maybe something to hit while they’re bored. Either way, my point still stands. Children, more often than not, are just convenient burdens for their parents to twist into something useful. At least, that’s how it was for me.

I suppose it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. You have to gnaw at everything to survive, after all.

That was what my own father taught me.

“If only you weren’t born.”

The man in front of me was my father. He had been sitting on a hospital bed for a few months now, dying. In those past months, I never said a word to him and only came here when the doctors said his time was nearing. I didn't really want to bother looking after him, but I went anyway. I’ve been sitting across his bed for a few hours, this was the only time he regarded me.

He lowered the book he was reading and turned his eyes towards me.

“You and that mother of yours. That whore. You being born was a mistake, and I changed that mistake. Well, does it matter? You make money, and I take it. Look at you now. Wearing a suit, like a functioning member of society. If only those monkeys knew how much I had to endure to make you into this.”

If there was a word that could describe him thoroughly, then it would be ‘monster’. Then, by this metric, shouldn’t I be stabbing him with a ‘short-sword’? Perhaps even with that useless mind of his, I can still gain ‘exp’ from him.

Ahhh. I’m getting lost in thought.

“I could have drowned you, but I didn’t. In doing so, you're alive and living a prosperous life. Be grateful. You’re nothing without me. Remember that.”

He said that in a plain tone as if he was noting the weather. I couldn’t care less about whatever went out of his mouth as it came in one ear and passed through the other.

“Father.”

I opened my mouth. They were dry from not being able to drink water in the past day or so due to working sleeplessly. Flakes from my lips tore due to dehydration as I continued.

“You finally opened your mouth. I thought you might have gone mute or perhaps deaf.”

“......”

“Well? Keep talking.”

There was a slight frown from his otherwise emotionless face.

“I will leave.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“And here I was thinking something important would come out of that useless mouth of yours.”

I stood up.

“Be sure to die quietly.”

My father didn’t reply and only went back to reading the book. I left the hospital that day with an unimaginable amount of bitterness in my mouth.

A small part of me still wondered...... why? What did it have to do with him nearly drowning an innocent child? I became adept at analyzing systems of thought and psychology to comprehend why a monster like him existed, yet I could not find answers. My father truly is one self-serving bastard who was only good at snorting money up his asshole that even with my experience dealing with countless hideously self-centered customers, I couldn't find a single person remotely like him.

Pathetic.

Disgusting.

Pardon my language, I should be watching how I think, it may come out of my mouth.

Even at his funeral, my opinion of him didn’t change.

As I stared at his pale face beyond the coffin, I felt a tick on my heart—an unnerving feeling of regret. I should have made him suffer. I am rather dumb for not being able to feel this way sooner. That, I will say sorry about. I shouldn’t have let him die such a peaceful death. Now he lies in a bed, devoid of regret or responsibility. He died knowing what he did was justifiable, that he was supposed to, and that all he did was for the better.

An irredeemable monster.

It was your fault that I’ve become like this.

“I should have been the one drowning you.”

. . .

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