Fremd Torturchen - Volume 7 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue, as well as Their Prologue

Down at the bottom of the well, Sara Yuuki had a dream.

Her frail arms were covered in cigarette burns, her broken fingers were stiff from how they’d knit, the right half of her body was crushed from when she’d been thrown down there, and her eyeballs were clouded over. It was unlikely that her body would ever be found. Her fourth father and her mother, who was head over heels for him, would probably just claim she’d run off.

Just like how Alice had gone off to Wonderland.

They’d say she’d gone far, far away.

As the pain continued weighing heavily on her, she gazed up hazily at the sky. The falling rain clogged up her throat. By that point, she couldn’t even tell if bugs were crawling into her mouth or not anymore. For a moment, the thought I don’t want to die flashed through her mind, but the young girl wasn’t even sure if it had been caused by a legitimate attachment to life or merely by fear.

Sara Yuuki’s life was fading away. But instead of infinite blackness, she saw a dancing light.

It was almost like her life was flashing before her eyes, like in stories.

But this was something else entirely, something sinister.

There were corpses of some strange creatures as far as the eye could see.

Tons and tons and tons of some part-lizard, part-dog, part-human creatures had been cast aside. All of them were dead. Their chests had been torn open, and their limbs had been ripped off. Their eyes, ears, teeth, and tongues were all missing. Each of them lacked so much as a shred of basic dignity.

Someone was weeping before the mountain of corpses. He tenderly stroked each one as he wailed.

The man’s face was shockingly ugly. Its right half was reptilian, and its left half was human. However, both sides were filled with a profound grief. It made his face look much more human than either of Sara’s parents’ had. The weeping continued for a long, long time.

Suddenly, though, he stopped, as though he had no tears left to shed.

He turned his golden eyes toward Sara. She gasped.

It was clear from his expression that he was a victim.

No, his eyes burned with malice and rage, and there was a warped smile plastered across his face. Sara could tell—that man was broken. And just like her, someone had broken him.

Then an overpowering voice filled the air.

“—God and Diablo failed to bring down the hammer.

“—So I must do it in their stead.”

And then with a firm thump, Sara Yuuki’s heart stopped as though the bell signaling the end had been rung.

Sara Yuuki, the girl who should have been dead, opened her eyes once more. The light of a bonfire filled her gaze. She appeared to be in a dimly lit stone room. She blinked. Standing in front of her was the man from before. Now, though, he was wearing a mask that had been cut in half.

His visible eye had none of the passion she’d seen in it earlier. Now it was empty and hollow.

All of a sudden, the man in black parted his thin lips, looked straight at Sara, and spoke.

“O Sinless Soul, stricken down in a manner most foul—from this day forth, you will live as our weapon.”

His tone left no room for refusal. However, Sara didn’t understand what he meant. She was simply confused. Then the man in black shook his head. He began murmuring like a man possessed.

“No, no. That’s not it. You finally came… I was finally able to call you, O wounded soul, O pure being from another world, O beacon of our hope, O answer to our prayers, O key to our revolution of the world.”

The man in black knelt before her. That was when Sara realized.

The man was trembling so hard that he couldn’t stop. He was crying. Tears were rolling down his emotionless face. He launched into a desperate plea without so much as explaining the situation.

“You’ll help us, won’t you? You’ll become our hope? Become our joy? I’ve been waiting for you—I’ve been waiting for you for so, so long. O reincarnation from another world. O limitless vessel.”

I’m truly happy I got to meet you.

That was what the man in black was saying.

And for Sara Yuuki, that was enough.

* * *

She gently reached out her hands. Then Sara—no, now she was nobody, just a dead girl—embraced the man tight. He went stiff. The girl whispered affectionately so as to wipe away his sorrow.

“You did call me, didn’t you? You invited me to Wonderland… All right, then, very well. From now on, I’ll live for your sake. I’ll be your hope, your joy, and anything else you want me to be. But I have one request, if I may.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about weapons, so if it’s okay, I’d like to be your daughter instead.”

The girl smiled. “Of course,” the man replied.

That marked the moment of their meeting—the meeting between the solitary girl and the solitary monster.

It’s time for a story. I hope you’ll be kind enough to remember it.

No matter what may come, please remember this truth.

It’s a story of a girl who was brutally killed by a human, and a story of a monster who was cruelly killed by a human.

Or perhaps it’s a story of a child who was abandoned by her parents, and an avenger who decided to destroy the world.

A story of nothing more—

—than repentance, dreams, and hatred.

A story of salvation.