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liljplibrary · 1 year ago

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Patchwork Humanimal (Yasumi Kobayashi)

My first JP-Eng translation on this blog! A short horror story written by Yasumi Kobayashi (names presented in Western order) which presents an interesting twist on the 'mad scientist' narrative. All content warnings are in the tags.

Patchwork Humanimal

By Yasumi Kobayashi (小林泰三)

Originally titled 「人獣細工」*, published in the anthology of the same name

“The Dowager Empress then had Concubine Qi's limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue, cut off her nose, cut off her ears, forced her to drink a potion that made her mute, made her dumb with toxins, and locked her in the pigsty, and called her a human swine.”

- Records of the Grand Historian, Volume 9. On Empress Lü.

For a year after my father’s death, I felt almost nothing whatsoever. While it might sound like I couldn’t bear the deep affection I had for my father, I wouldn’t say that was the case. On the contrary, with my father’s death I let go of many years worth of resentment and became emotionally spent.

However, now that a year has passed, I am able to look back on the relationship between myself and my father objectively.

Though, in the eyes of society, my father’s affection for me was something exceptionally strong, I don’t think so whatsoever. Of course, the unfortunate truth is that if you ask me if I know how other households father’s really look after their children, I’d be hard pressed to answer. However, at the very least, based on what I’ve seen when I’d visited my friend’s homes to play or in soap operas and so forth, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how father’s generally behave towards their children.

I never felt any affection from my father.

If I ever said that, undoubtedly the people who knew my father would object.

“Your Father loved you very much. He was always talking about you whenever the topic allowed, and whenever he was on a business trip finding the perfect souvenir for you was always his top priority. You probably don’t remember this because you were still so young, but whenever I visited your home, you were sat upon your Father’s lap. Couldn’t the reason you don’t feel like your Father had any affection for you be because he was always wearing a gloomy expression around you, concerned as he was with your frail health? I feel sorry for your deceased Father, hearing you say such things.”

It’s natural they’d say that. Certainly, that’s how my father acted. And, certainly, I also remember that I always used to sit in my father’s lap when I was small.

Even so, sure enough, they were under a severe misunderstanding. They only saw my father’s conduct and heard his words. Even though they saw nothing more than the surface-level, they were under the mistaken impression that they knew the depths of his heart. What idiots they are. They were all fooled by my father’s performance.

It wasn’t that my father beat me when no-one was watching. If anything, his performance was even more over-the-top when it was just the two of us.

My father wanted the people around him, myself included, to believe that he loved me. After all, what my father did to my body would never have been permitted unless it was out of love.

People who only saw my father infrequently were easily fooled, but for me who spent every moment living with him, I was sensitive to how my father’s words and actions were all for show.

Similarly, at the times when I was sat upon my father’s lap, I could feel a palpable sense of tension from him on my back. What possible reason could a father have to feel so tense while sitting his beloved three-year old child on his lap?

The times where I couldn’t bear the way my father would tense up so tightly and leapt off his lap were numerous. At those times, without fail, my father would put me back and stroke my hair as he spoke.

“What’s wrong, Yuka? Do you dislike Daddy’s lap? Is the way Daddy’s holding you uncomfortable? Come sit in Daddy’s lap once more. Your Dad would really love for his darling daughter to come back and sit with him.” My father would force a laugh.

From the faint glimmer of sweat on his forehead as he made the expression, I was able to grasp my father’s true feelings. If I could, he wanted me to refuse to sit in his lap, by my own volition. I couldn’t stand the uncomfortable situation, either.

“Yuka wants to sit in a chair of her own. A much big, bigger one!” I remember I also joined in the performance.

My father was a physician. He was the head of his own clinic, as well as being employed as a lecturer at a university. My father’s specialty was organ transplants. Furthermore, I was my father’s patient.

His scalpel had cut into every inch of my body, from tip to toe. Due to a hereditary illness, almost all of my internal organs — including my heart and lungs — had defects in them. Since shortly after my birth, I’ve undergone numerous organ transplant surgeries. Ever since I gained consciousness, my memories have been almost nothing but a string of surgeries. My bedroom also serves as an infirmary. There’s a writing desk directly next to the bed which I work at while sitting on the bed as if it was a desk chair. There are always nurses and doctors coming to and from my room, so there’s no privacy to speak of whatsoever.

The organ transplants continued frequently until my late teens. Ever since elementary school, I’ve had to take a lot of time off. However, my father contributed hefty donations to the private schools I attended so I was able to graduate from high school without dropping out.

I became conscious of the people around me around the time I began puberty. Because I attended an all girls school, when it came time for P.E. class, we didn’t use a changing room. We just changed our clothes in a room cordoned off with a curtain. I always sat on the sidelines so I never had to change my clothes, but my classmate’s youthful skin which I despised was burned into my vision all the same. Of course, they weren’t completely naked nor were they ostentatiously showing off their bodies, but the smooth skin that showed in the spaces between their underwear was nothing like mine. My skin was rough, patchy and riddled with discoloured blemishes. The area from my neck and the area up to the tip of my wrists was fine, but everything my clothes covered was hideous. Ever since I realised that, I’ve worn long sleeved clothes even in the dead of summer. At first, my teacher’s tried to get me to wear the summer uniform in summer, but I had my father ask the school to make an exception for me and it was promptly accepted.

I wear tinted glasses, too. Wherever possible, I try to avoid exposing my skin; including my face. I wear my bangs loosely over my face and, though I don’t have a cold, I often wear a face mask. The bathroom in my house is furnished with a large mirror. That the mirror existed at all spoke volumes of my fathers lack of affection towards me. Against my will, my eyes are forced to look upon the indecipherable scars left behind by surgery that litter my entire body. My father was an incredibly skilled at performing transplants, but his talent for plastic surgery was dubious. The surgery scars he left on me were both haphazardly made and sewn up carelessly. I thought that the cuts are meant to follow the natural creases of the skin but you can clearly see that the skin on either side of the stitches is misaligned and overlapping. It also looks like no effort was made to hide the stitching. If anything, rather than a mistake, it’s as if they were stitched together tightly on purpose. This isn’t how you would treat someone you held affection for.

Of course, I don’t think my father had any ill will. In order to make sure the wounds didn’t reopen, he simply put effort into sewing them up as tightly as he possibly could. However, if he really loved me, don’t you think he’d have unconsciously made an effort to preserve my beauty?

I fear mirrors. But for some inexplicable reason my eyes are still drawn to them. I can’t tear my eyes away from the mishmash naked body of the someone reflected in the mirror. I forget how to even blink and continue to stare at the horrific scars in misery.

A patchwork girl. That’s right. The patchwork girl is me.

There are organs that don’t belong to me buried beneath these scars. Looking at the scars I can see through them to the organs underneath; the organs are soft and pulsating and from them I can see liquid seeping and oozing out. These organs aren’t mine. These organs aren’t even human.

They’re the organs of a pig.

When I was born, there were two major obstacles to transplants.

One was the problem of immunisation. The bodies of animals, humans included, are furnished with immune systems which fight off foreign body. Once the immune system judges something as a foreign body, it’ll attack without fail, even though the foreign body is an organ absolutely crucial for continued survival. This is known as transplant rejection. The methods to avoid this are to either wait until you can use an organ which is as close to the patient’s own HLA-cells as possible, or to use immunosuppressants. When it comes to HLA-cells, barring identical twins, even parents and siblings aren’t guaranteed to be perfect matches, let alone someone unrelated, so the chances of a match are exceedingly low. On the other hand, when it comes to immunosuppressants, the person becomes immunodeficient as a result so it’s natural to expect significant side effects. As a result, in reality, both methods are combined in an effort to make up for the weaknesses of the other.

The other problem was the deficit in donors. In comparison to strangers, if it’s the patient’s parents or sibling, there’s a high probability their HLA-cells will be compatible. That being said, you can’t force someone to sacrifice themselves for the sake of a blood relative. However, realistically speaking, you don’t necessarily need to be someone’s child or sibling; when it comes to health issues, in day-to-day life there’s already an unconscious pressure placed on those who are healthy by the people and society around them to donate their organs. It’s a clear-cut violation of human rights. Having said that, it’s almost unthinkable to imagine a person who would willingly donate their body parts — excluding things like bone marrow which are renewable — while they’re still alive to a complete and utter stranger. In that case, the only plausible donors are corpses. However, even though a corpse is an object without any will, the fact is that the deceased’s family can’t see it as simply another object. This, too, is probably human nature; the family wouldn’t accept the deceased’s organs being forcefully harvested. Furthermore, organs like the heart, the lungs or the liver which die if stopped for even a short period of time, a corpse’s are less than desirable. But obviously, you can’t take out organs like the heart and such that are vital for survival from still living humans. Therefore, for a donor to emerge they would need to be brain dead.

However, the brain dead make for even more difficult donors than corpses. It’s not hard to point at a corpse and declare ‘this thing isn’t alive, it’s an object.’ That’s just a matter of fact. However, it’s incredibly difficult to point to a person still warm from body heat, whose veins are still throbbing and who in some cases even still has their automatic spinal reflexes and declare it an object. While it’s easy enough to say it’s a fact that — unlike in cases of cardiac arrest where the body may be revived — the cessation of brain function means that the death of the entire body is sure to follow, actually believing that a brain dead body and a dead body are one and the same is not.

Practically speaking, there are people who doubt that “brain death” is anything more than a concept doctor’s have come up with in order to perform transplants, and we can’t simply label the category of ‘life that is similar to death’ as such.

In order to resolve these issues, many resources have been dedicated to the development of xenotransplant research. In other words, the transplanting of the organs of nonhuman animals into human bodies.

I say this, but historically speaking, xenotransplantation is — in itself — hardly a new concept. The very first xenotransplants performed on humans were kidney transplants. Kidneys were transplanted from goats and pigs to human beings. However, unfortunately, the immune system’s powerful rejection of the organs lead to near immediate necrosis. Though, the experiment in that story just now wasn’t particularly scientific since they didn’t even bother using immunosuppressants.

So, how does the immune system differentiate between foreign substances and its own bodies organs? In fact, the bodies own cells are clearly marked. These marks are called histocompatibility antigens. In the case of humans, these are referred to as HLA antigens. And just like how there are blood types, there are different types of HLA. Moreover, the HLA types aren’t as simple as the ABO-blood types.

To begin, there are 24 different variations of the HLA-A antigen. And then there’s the HLA-B antigen which has 50 variations. So, according to basic math, the odds of finding both matching HLA-A and HLA-B antigens is around 1 in 1200. On top of that, there are other HLA antigens besides A and B: C, D, DR, DQ, and DP all exist; the chances of all of these matching between two complete strangers is one in several tens of thousands. However, in reality, not all of the HLA antigens need to match for the organ transplant to be able to take place. While it’d be ideal to have all the HLA antigens match, it’s impossible to find someone who fits that criteria outside of identical twins. As such, even if the organ comes from a blood relative, it remains necessary to use immunosuppressants.

However, there is a loophole in the apparently flawless immune system. As long as the HLA antigens match, it can’t differentiate between its own bodies organs and a stranger’s organs, so it won’t attack. It doesn’t matter if everything other than the HLA is different. They could be cells of a different race, or cells of a different species.

—Or the cells of a swine.

Nowadays, the problems surrounding organ transplants from brain dead or living people are a topic of the past. That’s because transplanting the organs of animals has become the norm. Animals that are as close to human as possible would be the ideal choice, but realistically speaking there are only a few species of anthropoid ape’s and they’re difficult to breed. Furthermore, reproduction costs time. Among already existing livestock, pigs were selected because they’re on a relatively comparable biological scale to human beings.

Whenever a disease is identified in a person’s internal organs, a skin sample is swiftly taken from the patient. Then HLA antigens are extracted from the dominant genes, next more are cultivated, and then the antigens are implanted into the core of a fertilised pig embryo.

The pig embryo repeatedly undergoes a cloning process, and then is implanted within the womb of a sow. After enough time, a piglet is born with the same HLA antigens as the patient. Thus, when the organs of the rapidly maturing pig are transplanted there’ll be almost no chance of rejection occurring. Even though organs are clearly from an entirely different species, the immune system judges them to be the person’s own.

I was the very first successful instance of a pig organ transplant; I was lab material. He gained data on all sorts of organs through my treatment, and the field of xenotransplantation developed significantly and rapidly. At any rate, nearly every single one of my internal organs has been replaced with a swines. The transplant surgeons must have been waiting with bated breath for my father to publish my research data that they hungered for so badly they could practically taste it.

“Human swine!”

Someone cried. Or perhaps I misheard?

It was a decade ago, at a time when I was absentmindedly staring out the classroom window at the schoolyard, that those words ran through my soul like a knife.

I tried to turn around but for some reason my body refused to move. After an absurdly long period of time passed, I was able to gradually, gently, begin to twist my body.

No. It probably took an instant. It felt as if all the girls around me were moving like frames of a film running in slow motion. None of them showed any semblance of being alive, but they continued emitting the scent of young women.

My gaze crawled across every pore of their faces. I scanned them hunting for the source of those awful words, though I had no intention of confronting her. But I was unable to find the owner of the voice. Still searching for the owner of the voice, I prayed that she didn’t actually exist.

The young women all moved in a seductive malaise, in comparison my gaze moved far more sluggishly and fretful.

In the next instant, time resumed it’s usual flow. In that instant, all those girls began to blend together and continuously switch places with such speed that I couldn’t keep track of what was going on.

After all this time, I still have no clue who said those words.

Even so, they continue to reverberate within my ears.

“Human swine!”

What a nasty phrase. If I was going to have those words thrown at me, I would have preferred if they just called me a ‘swine.’ There’s no way to escape the term ‘human swine’, it leaves an unbearable echo.

“Did someone say something, just now?” I gave a crooked smile I prayed looked pleasant.

Everybody stopped moving. I felt their needle gaze’s pierce my patchwork body all at once.

“Something wrong, Yuka?” Saori’s voice called out from by the classroom entrance.

“Just now, I heard someone’s voice.” I responded in a quiet voice.

“A voice? You say you heard someone’s voice but, well, everyone was talking…” Saori was doubtful.

“Uuuuh… That’s not it. Someone was… That is… They were bad mouthing me.” I said, my voice growing even quieter.

Every girl in the classroom began surrounding me, all of them chattering at once as they did.

“Did you really hear that?” Saori asked. “Are you sure you didn’t just mishear something?”

I silently shook my head.

“Well, what did you hear?” Yumiko joined in. “What kinda insults were they spouting?”

“They were saying cruel things.” I ran both my hands down my chest to my stomach. “About my body.”

“Your body… About your transplants?”

I nodded.

“Did they say it loud?”

“Yeah. But they weren’t calling it out or anything.”

“Well, then. Did anyone else hear it?” Yumiko looked around the group.

The girls did nothing but stare at each other’s faces.

“As I thought, it was all in your head, wasn’t it?” Saori asked again.

“I’m not really sure.” I hid my face and slunked down in my seat.

“What’d they say?” Yumiko said.

“Human swine.” I replied.

A commotion rippled through the room.

In the end, no-one had any clue whatsoever. No-one who’d heard or said ‘human swine’ came forth. Even though I claimed that I’d heard someone say it, it was just my word, so nothing could come of it. Nevertheless, the uproar reached the ears of our teachers and they spent that day’s homeroom giving us a talk on bullying and human rights and so forth.

From that day forth, the phrase ‘human swine’ was ingrained upon my heart.

No-one has entered my father’s bedroom ever since his death.

Though I call it a bedroom, the reality is that it had long been turned into a study — data and research materials are scattered all over it, just another extension of his laboratory. Some months before my father’s death, they were all packed up in several tens of cardboard boxes and sent here from the university and his clinic.

The majority were his experiment notes, but there were also a substantial amount of disks packed with graphs and charts and documents, and video recordings of the surgeries and experiments he performed. As soon as my father died, various research institutions requested to review his documents. I rejected them all.

I think my father realised his death was near. In that case, I wonder, did he not want anyone else to see the vast data he’d collected? Did this have something to do with a secret he was trying to conceal? If that’s the case, I’ll obey his dying wish to keep his research materials and data private.

That’s what I thought, so I kept my father’s room locked.

Before long, a year had passed and the day arrived where my heart had gradually settled down enough that I suddenly had the thought of organising my father’s research materials. Of course, I didn’t have a deep understanding of medicine, moreover it’s not like I comprehend my father’s research. I have no idea what a layperson can do, but I feel like this could be a substitute for a real connection with my father.

The room didn’t have ventilation and, in the span of a year, every inch of the room had been covered in a sticky, white film that was neither dust nor mould nor cobwebs, and which seemed to glow with a dim light even with the curtains drawn. The cardboard boxes had been left overturned, the research materials abandoned. Judging from appearances, the labels on the notebook covers, as well as the disks and videos, didn’t have dates written on them. Since all the titles were things like “A-3B” or “YUKA-αω”, it was considerably difficult to tell their contents apart.

I picked up notebook that seemed like a good place to start and seated my rear on the chair my father used at the desk my father worked at. Dust had collected on both my father’s chair and his desk but without worrying about dirtying my skirt or top, I wiped the desk’s surface with my sleeve and opened up the notebook.

15th March, Kidney Transplant. Donor: Y-III……

My eyes suddenly leapt to those words. Most likely, they were about me. When I was ten years old, I received a kidney transplant in the spring. The notebook continued on with cryptic words and symbols scrawled across numerous pages.

There was no mistaking that the donor referenced was the pig who the kidney had been extracted from. So was Y-III the name of the pig, or was it perhaps an indicator of its condition? Giving them uninspired names like ‘Y-III’ and such would be just like my father. As I flipped through the pages, I came across the notation ‘V-No. 6a.’ It looked like ‘V-No.’ was an abbreviation of ‘video number.’ Digging through the mountain of research materials, I hunted for the video.

In the end, I never found a video with ‘V-No. 6a’ written on it; all I found was a video with ‘A-6’ on the label.

My father’s room didn’t have a VCR player, so for the time being I took the video back to my room which did.

On playback, a disturbing image started to appear and narration mixed with static began. It was my father’s voice. On the screen, several doctors wearing surgical gear stood around; my father was among them. Apparently, the sound wasn’t recorded at the same time as filming, it was inserted afterwards.

Suddenly, the footage was split into two segments. Both respective sections depicted an operating table in their centre. On one, a lone girl lay sleeping while on the other an infant pig rested on its side. You couldn’t see the girls face very well, but from the dark-red birthmark that resembled a fish’s head on her right shoulder, I could tell it was me.

Both the donor and recipients surgery began almost simultaneously.

My part of the surgery was directly handled by my father, and he performed it with the utmost care. Meanwhile, on the contrary, the piglet’s surgery was being handled in a considerably crude fashion by a fledgling doctor. Partway through making an incision, it seems he severed a large artery and fresh blood began gushing out.

Before long, two kidneys were extracted from the piglet and, without even bothering to stitch the wound back up, it was abandoned. The scene of the piglet disappeared, and my side expanded to fill the screen. As soon as the doctors in charge of the swine were done extracting the kidneys, they were placed in a metal container and brought over to my operating table.

My father wordlessly accepted the kidneys and, after giving his assistants two or three instructions, slowly began the transplant. Seeing the insides of my own body, I was attacked by an unceasing wave of nausea but I grit my teeth and continued watching the video.

After a while, first checking whether urine had leaked from my ureter tubes in the process, my father stepped away from the operating table. Sewing me back up was the fledgling doctor’s responsibility.

It turns out that the clumsy stitches upon my body weren’t solely my father’s fault. However, as harsh as it is to say, the fact that if you look at my body, it’s obviously the handiwork of a fledgling doctor shows that, as expected, my scars were of practically no concern to my father.

The piglet never reappeared. But if it had just been left in that state, it couldn’t have lived much longer. The only still living part of that piglet are those kidneys — just those kidneys.

I lay my palm on the surgical scar.

And just like it had started, the video came to an abrupt end.

“You need to have the surgery.” My father admonished me in the hospital room. “Your heart and lungs are especially frail. We don’t know how many more months they’ll last. There’s no way you can live if your heart stops.”

“I don’t want it! I don’t want any more pig bits in my body, Dad.” I begged him, shedding tears.

“I can’t help that.” My father shook his head. “As your father and as a doctor, I can’t let you refuse. Besides, your Dad just can’t understand why you’re so bothered by the organ transplants.”

“Because they’re pig organs! At school, they call me ‘human swine’!”

“Human swine?” For a moment, my father lowered his voice. “Well, they can say what they want. But this surgery is no different than putting in contact lenses or dentures. No-one ever worries about what contact lenses or dentures are made out of. In reality, in cases such as where the cornea is scarred, pig skin tissue is used as the raw material to make the contact lenses. But it’s not like the people who use contact lenses get turned into pigs.”

“But the transplant is putting it inside my body! Pigs blood is getting mixed with my blood; pigs flesh is getting mixed with my flesh.” I screamed, ignoring the snot running down my face.

“There really isn’t that big a difference between human tissue and pig tissue. For a start, almost everyone in this world eats pig meat, right? So the blood and flesh of all those kids who bully you saying ‘human swine’ came from the corpses of pigs.”

“Transplants are totally different to eating! The pig parts come from a pig that’s still alive, after all!”

“Of course. Once the heart stops beating, the success rate of the surgery drops dramatically. If it’s the kidneys, corneas or bones, there’s no problem with waiting until the donor is dead to transplant them. But for the heart, lungs or liver, it just can’t be done.”

“I won’t do it! I won’t!” I persevered. “You’re lying to me, Dad. I don’t actually need to have the surgery! You just want the research data, that’s all!”

My father’s expression changed.

“That’s not true. You were born with a serious illness. Don’t you see that’s why your Dad is using all his energy desperately researching organ transplants for the sake of helping you?”

I continued to cry without looking at my father’s face. My father gave an exasperated sigh and, for a while, he fretfully tried to lift my spirits but, soon enough, he gave up and began to leave the hospital room.

“Dad, wait.” I sniffled. “There’s still one thing I need to ask you.”

“What is it? Go ahead.” My father put on as tender a voice as he could muster.

“Who is my Mom, really?”

“Where did this come from?” My fathers eyes wavered indecisively. “You know your mother passed away when you were born, Yuka.”

“You’ve told me that story a million times, Dad, but I don’t believe you. After all, it’s weird. We don’t have a single family photo in our house. If we were a normal household, even if we didn’t keep them in an album, we’d still have a bunch of photos or something.” I said as if I was cross-examining him. “Why don’t we have any photos of Mom?”

“Some families don’t like to take photos.”

“That’s not all. I’ve never met a single one of Mom’s relatives. I don’t even know the names of Mom’s parents or where they live.”

“They all have their own reasons for that.”

I pulled open the desk drawer and retrieved an envelope.

“Here’s our family register!”

“Yuka, what’s the meaning of this…” My father’s eyes opened wide.

“Until now, I never noticed it because anything that required the family register was handled by you, Dad…… In my family register, your name is the only one there. The ‘mother’ column has been left completely blank. What the hell is that supposed to mean, huh? What happened to Mom?”

After staring at the family register for a while, my father shook his head sadly and sat in front of the computer terminal in the corner of the hospital room.

“Do you mind if I use this, Yuka?”

Even though I hesitated to answer, my father didn’t wait for my response and switched on the computer terminal. With practiced strokes, he remotely accessed the main computer.

“Take a look. This is your mother.”

I stared at the screen.

Height, weight, stature, education, IQ, physical ability, special skills. I was buried under those paragraphs filled with lines of letters and numbers.

“What is this? What do you mean this is Mom?” I couldn’t understand what was going on.

“It’s what you asked, Yuka. “Who is my mother?” But your Dad doesn’t know either. What’s written here is everything that your Dad knows about your mother.”

“I don’t get it. What the hell… No way!! That’s…” The realisation hit me.

“In his youth, your Dad was completely and utterly devoted to his studies.” For some reason I can’t explain, this was the only time I’d ever seen my usually stoic father look a little sad. “I never had the time to find a wife. But your Dad wanted to have children. That’s why I saved up my money to purchase a high-quality ovum. I knew it as soon as I saw that data sheet. This was the finest quality egg I had been waiting for. Of course, it was incredibly expensive. It wasn’t just the egg that cost money. I also had to rent the womb. But make no mistake, Yuka, you are my daughter. My seed was used so there can be absolutely no mistake, you are my child.”

I remember feeling sick.

“So, half of me was bought. It was bought with money just like a dog or a cat. And then the remaining half of me comes from the same man that was willing to buy his child with money.”

“What are you saying?! Buying seed and eggs, and renting wombs is all perfectly legal. You were born through a completely respectable procedure, Yuka. I shouldn’t have hidden it from you until now. I’m sorry. But I was just thinking about you, Yuka… That is… In other words… I thought it would be a shock…… Was it a shock?”

“Yeah. Kinda.” I covered my face with my hands.

“I was planning on telling you eventually. I was going to tell you everything when you were older, when you were an adult and your illness had fully healed.” My father was growing increasingly flustered. “It’s really nothing to be upset about. There are many children with parents like that in the world. It’s just kept a secret from the children. After all, you see. They wanted a child. Wouldn’t it be nonsensical to have to move in with a complete stranger for that?” It sounded like my father was speaking to himself, rather that to me. “We should all have the right to raise our own children in the way we think best. Other people shouldn’t interfere. Besides, I’m absolutely repulsed at how she could knowingly allow for her imperfection riddled genes to be combined with my own. As long as you pay for it, you can buy the ovum with flawless genetic material you’re looking for. Wouldn’t anyone want their own sperm to fertilise the perfect ovum?!” My father’s shouting abruptly brought me back to my senses. “Ah… Aaah… I’m so sorry. I got a little overexcited there. It’s alright. You don’t have to worry. It’s fine. It’s just that your Dad… Your Dad……”

My father drooped his shoulders and started to leave the hospital room.

“Wait!” Why did I tell you what you wanted me to say? “It’s fine. I’ll go through with the surgery.”

Was it because my father’s figure looked far too miserable? Was it because it was far too pathetic to watch a man who couldn’t even fall in love like a normal person try and justify himself?

My father suddenly lifted his head.

“But I have one condition.”

“A condition?” My father’s eyes were gleaming.

“After this surgery is over, next I want you to operate on my skin.”

“Your skin? Have you been burnt somewhere?”

“It’s not that I’ve been burnt. Just look at it!” I threw off my gown. “My body is covered in stitches!”

“You’re worried about your surgical scars?!” My father seemed shocked.

I couldn’t believe my father’s reaction.

“I want to cover up this skin. Of course, I know that the scars themselves won’t disappear. But, at the very least, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the outside.”

My father stared at my skin as if he was bewitched, and then nodded his head with an ominous smile. And then, without saying another word, he left the hospital room.

As soon as my father was gone, I broke down in a fit of tears. I regretted my words bitterly.

The first transplant performed on me was when I was three months old. Even had the abnormalities were discovered immediately after I was born and my genes had been implanted into a pig embryo, it’s absolutely impossible that they could have performed the surgery that quickly. Clearly, my father had planned for this from the start. I have no doubt that he must have divided the purchased ovum fertilised with his sperm cells into multiple parts; only one part was implanted in the rented uterus of a woman he was paying, while the rest were used to implant genetic material into pig embryos. My father said that he wasn’t expecting the egg he fertilised to have any hereditary illnesses. I think I can believe that. In case the gamete being sold has a risk of hereditary disease, there is an obligation for a chart of characteristics to always be produced, and I checked that characteristics chart registered with the Ministry of Health and Welfare. And, yes, the genetic profile included in that chart partially matched my own. I think I can also rule out the possibility the chart was falsified, nor was it switched with the chart of another ovum. In that case, doesn’t that mean the truth behind my defective organs is a mystery?

My father only presented a fraction of the transplants I received to the academic community and the media. The vast majority of the surgeries were covered up. Looking through the files my father left behind, I realise that there were often times when I was receiving surgery once a month.

At the very least, my father was doing something illegal.

Implanting animal cells with human genetic material is only permitted if it’s select cells with specific functions. For example, HLA designating genes, or particular enzymes, or genes that produce hormones.

However, my father crossed that boundary when he implanted human genes — my genes — into pig cells. He was outright producing malformed pigs with human organs. The organs transplanted onto me weren’t only those hidden inside my body, but those that can be seen from outside, as well.

The entirety of my ears — including my inner ear — were transplanted, but you can’t tell from the shape. I think my father figured it would obviously look incredibly bizarre if a human had pig ears. Not that a pig with human ears is any more pleasant to see.

Besides my ears, my teeth, tongue and nose were all transplanted from pigs. Surprisingly, my nipples and mammary glands are also from pigs. Pigs only develop breasts when they are in their child rearing stage, prior to that stage they are dormant. However, my breasts completed their development during puberty normally and without any incident. Supposing that pig hadn’t been used in a transplant and was allowed to grow into an adult, would it have become a pig with the bosom of a woman? Or was it the exposure to my human hormones that caused them to take on a human shape?

Stomach, intestines, trachea, arteries, nerves, bones, and muscles. Every conceivable inch of my body was stolen from pigs. Even my salivary gland is a pigs. Every minute of every day, I’m slurping down pig spit. By the time I reached my father’s notes on transplanting both upper and limbs, as expected, I no longer believed my eyes. No matter what, at the very least, I wanted to believe that my hands and feet were my own.

But I still looked, anyway. That harddrive contained an image of a piglet with those disproportionate, feeble arms and legs sprouting from it’s spherical body.

“Maybe I am a human swine.” I muttered while I ate my bento together with Saori and Yumiko.

It had been several weeks since my heart transplant was finished.

They both pretended not to hear me and brought their chopsticks to their mouths. An uncomfortable silence filled the air between us. Three people enveloped by the surrounding noise — the boisterous voices and bustling of young women brimming with pride.

“Hey, the phrase ‘Human Swine’ is from the Records of the Grand Historian, isn’t it? We learnt about it the other day in Chinese literature class. So maybe they weren’t actually making fun of me. But it’s all the same either way. In the end, I’m still a human swine.” I continued speaking to the two of them, ignoring my food.

Saori’s chopsticks stopped. Yumiko continued eating without skipping a beat. Sadly, I could barely taste a thing.

Of course, I realised it must be bothersome to hear me say something like that out of nowhere. But I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.

“You’re not Consort Qi, Yuka.” Yumiko said, looking at my face. “And your dad isn’t Empress Lü, either.”

“How can you say that for sure? You’re not me, Yumiko, and you’re not my Dad.” I spat fiercely.

“That’s right. I’m neither you, nor your dad, Yuka. But you’re not Consort Qi or even Empress Lü, either. I have no idea how you��re getting yourself and a human swine mixed up.” Yumiko muttered, thinking about how everyone around us could hear.

“Because I’m turning into a human swine. But, obviously, it’s not the same thing. Consort Qi’s was turned into a human swine from the outside, by getting rid of her body parts. But I’m being turned into a human swine by taking out my insides!”

“None of your insides have been gotten rid of.” Yumiko finally lifted her head. “Your organs are being switched out for new ones before they become a problem. These days, stuff like that is normal. That said, surgeries like Yuka’s aren’t just done when the problem’s just starting.”

“That’s right. My aunt recently got a pig liver transplant.” Saori finally opened her mouth while trembling. “Stuff like that happens all the time.”

“You should be thankful to your Dad that you can have a healthy body, instead of comparing yourself to a human swine and making problems for him.” Yumiko seemed slightly angry at me.

“You’re wrong.” Flustered, I struggled to express my thoughts. “It’s not like that. You’re mistaken about something. I’m not just receiving normal transplants like Saori’s aunt got. My surgeries are experimental.”

“So what?” Yumiko’s voice was gradually getting louder. “When we were little kids, the success rate of transplanting animal organs into people was almost zilch. But isn’t it out of parental love that, when his daughter was deeply ill and there was nothing else he could do, he still took a chance on it anyway? Obviously the records of those surgeries were always going to end up as research data, and sure it might look like it was an experiment in the end, but who cares about that if it helps with your illness.”

“Until now, heart transplants have pretty much never been done, so don’t you think this will be a big relief to many people? And it’ll all be thanks to you and your dad, Yuka.” Saori backed Yumiko up.

“But there’ll be almost nothing of me left!” My breathing was growing heavy.

“What are you talking about? What are you even saying?” Yumiko asked.

“Empress Lü took away Consort Qi’s hands and feet and eyes and ears and ability to speak. I’ve also had so many kinds of things stolen from me. Kidneys, livers, heart, lungs, pancreas…”

“But it’s everyone else’s problem, too. If no-one did anything, you’d have died!” Yumiko’s voice was almost at a yell.

“Both me and Consort Qi survived. Everything that was taken from Consort Qi was important for her to live as a human, but wasn’t necessary for her just to survive. Meanwhile, everything that’s been taken from me is necessary for my continued existence, and pig replacements have been switched in in their place to keep me alive.”

“It wasn’t just body parts that were taken from Consort Qi.” It seemed like Yumiko had stopped caring about all the surrounding eyes. “She was called a ‘human swine’ after having all of her dignity as a human being taken from her. That’s nothing like you, Yuka!”

“Are you sure about that?” My tears spilled forth in heavy droplets. “If just having your flesh be taken away is enough to turn you into a human swine, how can you say that having your human flesh taken away and replaced with pig flesh doesn’t?”

***

While being tormented with flashbacks of my past, I continued searching through my fathers remaining research notes. Despite being near overwhelmed by the ocean of research data, I was beginning to dwell what it meant to be human. I don’t mean a philosophical concern like the meaning of a human life. It was more practical than that. I wanted to know what a human life actually was. In other words, what kind of conditions needed to be met to call yourself something human.

Humans receive human rights. There are those that would say we should grant the nonhuman human rights but, at present, you can kill nonhumans without being charged with homicide, and you can take or do whatever you want to them, as much as you like, without it being a crime. There must be a fundamentally distinct disparity between them.

Leaving aside unidentified cryptids like the Yeti or Big Foot, in the natural world there has never been an animal discovered that could be easily mistaken for a human. However, in the present, we’ve seen an abnormal jump in the development of genetic engineering. In fact, though it’s prohibited by law, my father implanted pigs with human genes which developed several human features.

If a human is defined by “the specific genes they have and the form they manifest”, the potential for my father’s manufactured, malformed pigs to also be humans is made apparent.

I can see the potential rebuttal to this way of thinking.

The formation of chromosomes that aggregate the genetic material is called a genome. You can put in no end of human genes into it, but the base structure remains the genome of a pig. You can’t judge whether or not it’s human on the presence or absence of genes for specific human features, you have to judge based on the entire genome, they’d say. That’s easy to say. But when push comes to shove, are things like mapping out an entire genome and such really possible? A pig that has been implanted with part of a humans genes is not a human, it’s still a pig. And vice-versa, if a human is implanted with pig genes, they’re still a human. Well then, what if half their genes came from a human and half their genes came from a pig?

Even if someone tried to create something like that, it would have fatal complications in its developmental stages and would die before it could become a living creature in the first place. However, pigs and humans are both mammals so they share the majority of their genes. In the near future, if it becomes possible to recombine genes with precision, it may become possible to produce an animal that shares the genes of both pigs and humans, so as things stand we can’t rule out the possibility. So, what would that animal be really: a human, or a pig?

The opinion that we can ensure such a problem like that never arises if the law prohibits it is not a real solution. The extent of the law’s ability to control human behaviour is far from perfect. As long as it’s technically possible, someone, somewhere, is always going to do it. And then, once a creature like that has been born, you will have to hand down a judgement.

There’s no point to comparing the ratio of human to pig. From the very beginning, in addition to the fact humans and pigs share the majority of their genes, I have no idea how we should evaluate the genes that don’t express themselves physically called introns. For example, if every single one of your introns was replaced completely with a pigs, wouldn’t you still become a pig even though you didn’t take on any of their features?

Even if we had completely clear answers to questions like that, we’d still be overlooking something. In regards to myself, I am a human with pig organs. Almost all of my organs are made from genuine pig cells, and those nuclei contain pig genes. Of course, the genes that determine the HLA and the shape of the organ are human in origin, however that isn’t grounds enough for those organs to be human. If it was, we’d have to call the pig those human genes were implanted into for the transplant human, as well.

The majority of my organs are pigs’. Parts of my skin, muscles and bones are also pigs’. And the bone marrow that produces my blood was transplanted from a pig, so that makes the genes in my white blood cells pigs’, too. If I was wrapped up in some kind of incident and the police took a blood sample from me, the results would probably declare it pigs’ blood.

Despite being afflicted with these detestable thoughts, why do I continue to investigate? Just what the hell do I think I’m doing? A voice deep within my heart cried out. I could no long remember. Perhaps I was searching for evidence that would truly convince me that I’m human.

It was around ten years ago that I first started to think I was a human swine. Ever since I learned the phrase ‘swine’ in Chinese literature class, whenever I heard or said the word ‘pig’, it’s like the character for ‘swine’ appeared before me. It’s like I’ve become obsessed, I can’t get that word out of my head. I’ve continued spending every single day thinking about the’ human swine’ for close to a decade now. If things continue like this, my mind won’t hold out much longer. I need to track down something that proves I’m human soon. But just what the hell could do that?

***

Three years and four months old. Gastric transplant.

My stomach wasn’t one of the organs that needed removal. So why would he take the risk of transplanting it?

Two years and eight months old. Cornea transplant.

So I’ve only ever seen the world through the corneas of a pig.

Two years and two months old. Vocal cord transplant.

What did my actual voice sound like, I wonder?

One year and ten months old. Tear duct transplant.

My tears are the tear of a pig.

One year and six months old. Nipple and mammary gland transplant.

There’s no point to that. Why would you even do that?

One year old. Womb transplant.

I…… I’m……

Eight months old. Ovary transplant.

“Soon this beautiful skin will be yours, Yuka.” My father gleefully stroked the hide of a pig.

This pig that had been raised in an underground lab was devoid of hair. No, to be precise, there was long, black hair growing in localised patches — on top of its head, above its eyes, at the base of its forelegs, and on its genitals. The glossy looking skin that resembled a young woman’s made the pig’s figure look even uglier.

“It’s rather plump, isn’t it? In order to make sure the epidermis’ surface was large enough, we intentionally fattened it up. In any case, the exterior of a pig and the exterior of a human have considerably different shapes. If there are wrinkles or stitches left behind, there’s really no point to the surgery. But if we have a large quantity, we can do the treatment.” My father narrowed his eyes. “At first I thought we’d just transplant skin to the part with surgery scars, however it turns out its unexpectedly difficult to regulate the melanin pigmentation. The colour of your future skin just wasn’t coming out how we wanted. I realised that if we went ahead with the transplant as things were, your skin would be mismatched at the seams. And so I had the thought that we’ll just transplant the skin of your entire body.”

“Dad, I have a request.” I pet the head of the pig. “It’s about the birthmark on my shoulder.”

“Aah, now that you mention it, I do recall you had a birthmark.” My father said without interest. “What about your birthmark?”

“If I have the skin transplant, will my birthmark be gone?”

“What? Is this what you’re talking about? You don’t have to worry about that. If the surgery is successful, your entire body will be the lightly-tanned colour of a healthy, radiant beautiful woman. Well, it’s not easy for me to sacrifice this pale beautiful woman you are right now, though.”

“That’s not it.” I continued petting the unresponsive pig. “I want the birthmark to remain.”

“Eh?!” As I expected, my father seemed shocked at this. “It’s not like I can’t do that, but why would you want to intentionally leave that birthmark behind?”

I threw off my gown, tugged on the hem of my nightie and bared my shoulder. There it was, about the size of a fist, dark-red and in the shape of a fish’s head.

“I’ve had this on my body ever since the moment I was born.”

“Right. It’s because of that birthmark that I was always able to tell my darling daughter apart from the other children.”

Does that mean if I didn’t have that birthmark, my father wouldn’t be able to identify his own child? However, that was just more ammunition for my position.

“This bit of my body is undoubtedly part of me”

“You have plenty of body parts that haven’t been replaced, besides that birthmark. There’s your spleen, and then there’s your thyroid gland…”

“I can’t check those parts from the outside. Besides, there’s no guarantee that they won’t need to be transplanted in the future. But if its a part of my skin, I’ll always be able to look at it and the possibility of it needing to be replaced is quite low…… Not unless this patch of skin gets burnt or skin cancer, anyway.”

“Even then, we could leave behind a different patch of skin. Say your back or your stomach. Or if those are too conspicuous, we could do your inner thigh or the back of your foot.”

“No. I want this birthmark. A patch of pale white among the gently tanned skin just doesn’t leave a strong impression. As I thought, it has to be this birthmark. This fish-head birthmark.”

“Why, does it leave an especially good impression?”

“The birthmark leaves a bad impression. Especially when it’s this big. That’s why a clear impression remains. There’s a dark red birthmark on Yuka’s shoulder shaped like the head of a fish. It’s just like you said a short while ago, Dad. It’s thanks to that birthmark that you were able to tell me apart from the other babies. In other words, this birthmark is my identifier. This birthmark is a secret weapon for identifying Yuka. Existence depends on being recognised by others. As long as I have this birthmark, I’m able to be recognised as Yuka. If I lose this birthmark, at the same time, I’ll stop being Yuka.”

“What are you saying?” My father was flustered. “Your dad can’t understand what you mean in the slightest.”

“Why can’t you understand something so simple? Year by year, more of my body is being replaced with something that isn’t mine. Even so, why do you still think I’m Yuka, Dad?”

“Of course, you’re Yuka. A few organs being replaced doesn’t change that. That’s not the part that matters. If it’s the only one that continues to hold Yuka’s personality, the entire body is Yuka.”

“You’re wrong. How can you know my personal identity? What basis do you have to say that my personality now is the same one I held before my lungs and heart were transplanted?”

“I don’t have a good answer when you put it like that.” My father folded his arms. “That is to say, are you saying that you, yourself, can’t sense your own personal identity, Yuka?”

“Obviously, the consciousness that tells me that I am Yuka is always there. But that’s not the problem.” I struck the pig’s youthful skin. “If this pigs consciousness told it ‘I am Yuka’, this pig wouldn’t suddenly become me. Everyone would still think that this pig is a pig, and think that Yuka is me. Because of that, this pig is a pig and I am Yuka. Whatever me or this pig think has nothing to do with it. Whenever you look me, you vaguely put together that I am Yuka from your impression of my whole body and that’s the only reason why you think that I am Yuka, it’s not because you’ve managed to grasp my personality.”

“While that may be true, why the birthmark? Even without the birthmark, Yuka is Yuka. You’re not a baby anymore, so it’s not your sole identifier. For example, aren’t your voice, face and mannerisms more than enough to tell that you’re Yuka?”

“But this birthmark leaves an intense impression on those who see it.”

“But it’s an impression of disgust, right?” My father spat the words out.

“Do you feel disgust towards my birthmark, Dad?”

“No, that is, that’s not what I meant.”

“It’s fine, you don’t need to deny it. It’s natural to feel disgust towards grotesque things. It’s not a problem if your emotions can take over your logic when they need to. Anyway, even if it has a negative connotation, as long as this birthmark can leave the strongest impression on people that I am Yuka, there’s no problem. That’s why this dark-red, fish head is the part of me that is the most ‘me.’ To get rid of it, would be to get rid of me.”

***

The organisation of the data my father left was going very slowly. At the very least, I thought I could put them in chronological order based on the dates and such, but it turns out there was a large quantity of research materials which didn’t have their date recorded properly so I couldn’t even do that.

It’d be much easier if I had some expert assistance, but for some reason I didn’t feel like showing it to anyone else. Even if I did show it to them, it would be after I’d already achieved my goal.

My goal? Just what was my goal? What was I struggling through this pile of notebooks filled with occult-like, untranslatable and incomprehensible phrases scrawled like they were spells, video recordings of gruesome scenes, and computer data that no application could even recognise for? I was searching for knowledge that would release me from my suffering. I have been constantly tortured by an inexplicable anxiety. Just what kind of being am I? What was I to my father? Why did my father raise me? All of those anxieties come from my ignorance. If I knew the truth, if everything was dragged out into the light of day, then all of my anxieties would disappear. Whatever the truth may be, it’d be better than ignorance.

The doorbell rang.

I pulled up the camera-feed of the entryway on the computer terminal next to me.

A woman of roughly the same age as me appeared on the screen. Her name didn’t come to mind immediately. However, I felt sure that this wasn’t the absolute first time I’d seen her. Her face sparked something in my memory. But because my memory over the months and years had become foggy, and possibly because of the marks of age etched upon her face, I couldn’t recall.

“Yes. Who is it?” I turned on the switch of the intercom.

“Um. I’m called Tanuma.” The woman responded in a slightly strained voice. “Uhhh, my maiden name is Minamiura. Saori Minamiura.”

Saori!

“Please wait a moment.”

I hurried to the front door while dusting off my clothes.

I hadn’t seen Saori since our high school graduation.

“It’s been a while, Yuka.” I opened the door and the young Saori I knew appeared before me.

But in the next moment her figure shifted and Saori transformed into an adult woman.

“Saori, it’s really been forever since we last spoke. How many years has it been? Gosh, just how old are you now?”

“What are you saying? We’re both the same age.” Saori flashed her pretty teeth as she laughed.

I flashed back from the figure of the adult Saori to her fluttering, shimmering younger self.

“Anyway, come in. Though, the place is a complete mess.”

I didn’t say that to be humble. The interior of the house was in a completely absurd state.

“I’m not intruding, am I?”

“Not at all. I was just sitting around alone feeling sorry for myself. I’m glad to see you!”

“Um. So, are you living alone, perhaps?” Saori gave a strained smile as she stepped over a cardboard box that had been left in the entryway.

“Yes. Ever since my father died, there hasn’t been any money coming in so all the employees stopped coming. Well, the inheritance I was left was quite substantial, so I’ve had no problems keeping myself fed.” I said defensively.

“Huh, so you got an inheritance like that, I’m jealous.”

“It’s not like that. Almost all of it went to taxes…… There’s also a clinic on the same property as this house, but it’s completely wasted on me.” I sighed.

“Just how many doctors and nurses do you think the clinic had?”

“Aah, at one time there were a great number of them but by the time of my fathers death there were only three nurses left. Those three nurses are all gone now, too. In my father’s final years he grew moody and tended to shun people. He couldn’t get along with the doctor’s either, so it seems they all left of their own accord.”

The parlour was tidier but, since Saori wanted to have a relaxed chat, we passed through to the living room.

“By the way, why did you come by today?”

We sat near-supine on the sofa, just like back in our student days.

“To tell you the truth, the topic of you came up the other day during our class reunion and I heard about your dad. It’s been over a year now, right? Since we knew your dad personally, it came as a shock to me and Yumiko. In truth both of us intended to come here today but, unfortunately, Yumiko’s mum got hospitalised.”

“Oh, Yumiko’s mother? What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s her liver. It’s getting transplanted.”

I stood up, pulled at my hair and screamed. It’s not that I’d lost my mind. But, for some reason, I couldn’t control myself. I was aware of my eyes growing wide, my ribs elevating and that my breathing was heavy. I was aware that my vocal cords were active. And yet, for the longest time, I couldn’t stop myself screaming.

Even so, Saori watched me calmly. Saori looked up at me as I made a flapping motion with my limbs. I’d probably lost control of my motor system. As expected, this situation only lasted a few seconds before Saori suddenly stood up, placed her hands on my shoulders, and began violently shaking me.

“What’s wrong, Yuka?! Snap out of it! Tell me what’s going on!!”

Miraculously, the moment I heard Saori’s words, I regained control of my body again. Strength drained from my entire body and I started shivering. Somehow, I managed to sit down on the sofa.

“Are you okay? I wonder if I said something I shouldn’t have.” Saori said, bewildered.

“Uuuungh. Sorry. That was a shock. I also have no idea what just happened. That was the first time this has happened. I was sorting out the research materials my father left behind, just now, and I guess it must have stirred up some painful, old memories?”

“Old memories?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about that today. Putting that aside, say, your last name changed. Tell me, what kind of person is Tanuma-san?”

“Yuka, what’s your body’s condition been like lately?” Saori ignored my question. “If you’re not able to do something like organising your dad’s research material, why don’t you just have someone else handle all of that?”

“As you can see, my body is in perfect condition. See for yourself how healthy I am.”

There was a momentary silence. It didn’t seem like there was any shock nor fear in Saori’s eyes.

“Well, then, you haven’t realised it yourself, then, Yuka.”

“Haven’t realised? What are you talking about?”

“Hold on a moment.” Saori rooted around in her handbag and pulled out a compact mirror. “Take a look at your own face. What does it look like?”

“It looks how it always does.”

“I haven’t seen you in forever so I can’t say for sure, but at the very least it seems to me that your face has become incredibly worn out, Yuka.”

Worn out?

I snatched up the mirror from Saori and stared at my own face without blinking. There were a few conspicuous wrinkles here and there, but I didn’t think I looked worn out.

“Maybe it’s because the lights are too bright, but I can’t see anything?”

“Yuka, have you been eating properly?”

“Yes. However, I’ve been eating in moderation. I can’t let myself get fat.” I let out a sigh. “I won’t let myself put on any more weight.”

“Your complexion looks healthy but… Can you show me your arm for a second?”

Just as Saori said, I presented her my arm. Saori sucked in a breath.

“Your bones and veins are sticking out. If you really have been eating properly, then you’re probably ill. Yuka, has a doctor had a look at you recently?”

I looked at my own arm and compared it to Saori’s arm, trying to grasp what she was saying. Certainly my arm was slightly thin but not so thin that I’d think it was sickly. In contrast, Saori’s arm looked flabby and plump and filled me discomfort. Of course, Saori didn’t care if she was fat. But, I absolutely refused to get fat. Being slightly thinner was ideal for me.

“No. Ever since I was born, my father would perform examinations on me, however now that my father has passed on, I haven’t had any contact with doctors whatsoever.”

“That’s not good. I’m sure there are, say, other doctors your dad knew personally.” From Saori’s eyes, it didn’t look like she was joking. “Since your body isn’t norm… That is… Because your body is particular, it’s completely reckless for you to avoid seeing a doctor.”

My father was a famous doctor and his accomplishments were held in high esteem, but he had a poor social disposition and because the results of the majority of his research were never made public, his public relations were scarce. That father of mine had no friends he could entrust me to. My father probably didn’t care at all about what would happen to me after his death.

“I know my own body better than anybody else.” My tone was unintentionally stern. “Furthermore, I have a reason I’m trying to avoid gaining any more weight.”

“A reason? What reason?” Overwhelmed by my forcefulness, Saori’s voice grew quieter.

“My body has pig all throughout it. As such, if my body gets even the slightest, tiniest bit closer to a pig’s, it’ll return to being a pig in the blink of an eye.”

“Eh? What are you talking about? Humans can’t turn into pigs!”

“Do you really believe that? I’m a human swine. If I’m not careful, I could instantly trip up and go from person to pig.”

“You’re not a human swine, Yuka, you’re clearly a fully-fledged human!”

I smirked. As I thought, Saori didn’t understand anything. She hadn’t acknowledged reality.

“‘Human’s can’t turn into pigs.’ Isn’t that what you said just now?”

“Yes. That’s right.” Saori nodded.

“Well then, what about the opposite? Can a pig turn into a human?”

“It’s the same for both. Living beings can’t just arbitrarily change their species as they please.”

“So you think that a pig that possesses a human heart is still a pig?”

“Eh? What do you mean?” Saori glanced around.

“I mean exactly what I said.”

“You mean if a human heart was transplanted into a pig? There’s no way that could happen.”

“An a posteriori transplant wouldn’t work, but what about an a priori transplant?” I snorted in exasperation with how dull Saori’s mind was.

“An a priori transplant?”

“Genetic recomposition. If pigs and humans are the finished products, then genes are equivalent to a blueprint. I’m not talking about swapping parts out from the finished products, but if the blueprint for a human heart was slipped into the blueprint of a pig from the very outset.”

“But I don’t really get it.” Saori cocked her head. “Doesn’t the law forbid things like that?”

“The law has nothing to do with this. No matter what, even if it’s forbidden by law, as long as it’s technically feasible, someone is guaranteed to do it. No. It’s already been done. Do you think that pig has human rights, Saori?”

“Probably… not, I think.”

“Well, then. What about that pig’s heart? Does the heart have human rights?”

“A body part can’t have human rights. To the very end, human rights should only apply to an entire human body. If that wasn’t the case, having an organ removed would create two people — the person and the removed organ — each with their own individual rights. Besides, I think a pig’s heart is a pig’s heart, no matter what. Even if it’s been implanted with a human heart’s genetics, there’s the pig genes within every single individual cell used to form that heart. For example, if you used cells from that heart to make a clone, it wouldn’t turn into a human, instead another pig with a human heart would be born, so I still think it’s a pig.”

“My heart is a pig’s heart.” I sneered.

“But parts don’t matter. Your heart might be a pig’s, but as long as your entire body is a human’s, you receive human rights. That’s just common sense.”

“Does a pig that possesses a human liver have human rights?”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? The parts don’t matter. If it’s in a pig’s body, no matter if it has a human heart or a hippopotamus’ heart, it’s still a pig!”

“So, then is a human that possesses the heart and liver of a pig a human? Or a pig?”

��How many times are you planning on asking me the same goddamn thing!? As I thought, you’re kind of screwed up in the head, Yuka.”

“If the heart from a pig with a human heart, the liver from a pig with a human liver, the kidneys from a pig with human kidneys, the lungs from a pig with human lungs, the large intestine from a pig with a human large intestine, the eyeballs from a pig with human eyeballs, the anus from a pig with a human anus, the skin from a pig with human skin, the womb from a pig with a human womb, the hands and feet from a pig with human hands and feet, the spinal cord from a pig with a human spinal cord, the stomach from a pig with a human stomach, the ears from a pig with human ears, the ribcage from a pig with a human ribcage, the thyroid gland from a pig with a human thyroid gland, and the ovaries from a pig with human ovaries were all combined to form a human being, would that be a human?” I said in a tone like I was trying to persuade Saori.

“You couldn’t create a human like that.” Saori averted her eyes.

“How can you say that? I’m standing in front of you right now!”

“You weren’t cobbled together from pig parts, Yuka. You simply had the defective parts of your body replaced, right?”

“It’s just like an appliance which is breaking down all over. Little by little, its parts are replaced and then eventually all of its old parts are completely gone. Can you really say that its the same thing which you started with?”

“The human body is always renewing its cells, so you could say that the human body is constantly replacing itself.” Saori seemed like she was desperately looking for a way out. “Every several years, it’s a brand new body. But not matter how many years pass, I am me and Yuka is Yuka. That remains the same.”

“But your cells don’t have pig genes in them. Mine do. If you were to use any of my skin cells for cloning, a piglet would be born. Unless they were from here!” I tore my clothes and showed off the dark-red, fish-head-shaped birthmark on my shoulder.

“You have the continuity of character we call Yuka.”

“How do you understand it enough to say that, Saori? Even I don’t really understand it.”

Saori covered her face with her hands. She was searching desperately for the right words.

“That’s right,” She removed her hands and gazed into my eyes. “Your brain. Right! Because of your brain. If your heart dies but your brain is still alive, you’re not dead so just as long as the brain is human, you’re human. Even if your other body parts are entirely replaced with pigs’, if the brain is Yuka’s, you’re Yuka. That’s how it is. It’s something that’s in the brain.”

“So you’re saying that the brain is the essence of a human.” I shook my head. “That’s nothing more than a convenient assumption you’re making. Human death is defined by brain death because the process is irreversible, not because it is the essence of a human. There’s no grounds to claim that you’re human as long as you have a human brain, and that everything else is completely irrelevant. Besides, Saori, you seem to think the brain is an organ that’s impossible to divide.”

“Divide? You can divide the brain?”

“The brain isn’t a simple thing, it has a complex structure. Every single part of it has a specific function. Though, obviously, we haven’t yet managed to elucidate how all of it works.”

“But the brain holds your personality.”

“What is a personality? If the right half of my brain was replaced with half of your brain, would I become you? Or would I still be me? Where does human consciousness reside in the brain?”

“Something like that brain swapping surgery could never happen!”

“Are you bringing up the law and ethics again? Bringing up social standards has no bearing on the question of whether or not it’s possible. If it’s technically possible, sooner or later, someone will do it.”

“It’d never happen, no matter how you look at it…”

“Six months after my birth, part of my cerebral cortex was transplanted. I wasn’t able to understand which part and how much of it from reading my father’s data, however that part was grafted in successfully and it looks like it confirms that it could form neural paths between future braincells. I don’t know what the true nature of personality and consciousness is, but if it’s the neural circuits within the brain, then my consciousness has a pigs mixed into it.”

“Yuka, do you feel like anything is abnormal within you?”

“Hmmm. I don’t feel anything. But by the time I was cognisant of my surroundings, pig braincells were already part of my brain. Even if my consciousness was a pig’s consciousness, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. In order to determine whether my consciousness is a human consciousness or a pig’s consciousness, I would need to know what a normal human’s consciousness is like, something like experiencing the consciousness of other people is something I’ll never be able to do.” I looked at Saori absentmindedly. “Or would you like to swap half of your brain with me? In that case, we could check the contents of each other’s consciousnesses.”

“Yuka, you need to stop organising your dad’s research right away. You’re not normal right now. I’m sure you’re misunderstanding the documents. There’s absolutely no way that someone would do something so horrific to their own child.”

“But, for my father, it doesn’t seem like it was horrific in the least. Besides, from the very beginning, this is the purpose he raised me for. From my father’s perspective, I was just another piece of experiment material.”

“There’s no way that’s true. If he raised you for the sake of experimenting on you, it makes no sense that he never released his data to the public and instead kept it hidden. If he never publically releases the experiment data, it’s not any kind of experiment whatsoever. That’s why that surgery never happened. You’re misunderstanding, Yuka, or else it was your dad’s simulation of theoretical transplant surgeries. Look, it’s what’s called a thought experiment.”

“No. If it was a simulation, the same contents would have been repeated over and over again. There is only one recording of each of the surgeries.”

“I understand. For the sake of the argument, let’s suppose that all of the transplant surgeries you’ve uncovered were purely experimental. Even if that’s the case, the surgeries happened because they were necessary. So, out of consideration for your happiness, those surgeries were concealed. That’s the only theory that makes sense.”

“Right. That’s something I don’t know. For what purpose did my father perform those experiments? If it was to become famous, announcing several surgeries alone would already have been enough, why did he need to perform hundreds more?”

“Yuka, why are you continuing to organise your dad’s research material?” Saori’s questions piled up once more. “Do you want to think that you’re a human swine?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well then, stop organising your father’s documents right now, alright?” Saori uttered in a stern voice.

“That’s not how this works. There’s something I need to know, but I have absolutely no idea what it is or why that is. As things are, if I was to stop now, I’d be forced to spend my entire life in a state of limbo. My entire life I’ve anguished over whether or not I’m a human swine, and I’ve had to live with that trepidation. That sort of thing is unendurable. Through these research documents, I can confirm whether or not I’m a human.”

“I understand.” Saori stood up. “For the time being, I’m going to go home for today. I realise that I’m not going to be able to persuade you alone, Yuka…… Hey. All you need to do is stop organising your dad’s research and go to the hospital. If that’s too much to ask, at least stop with the dieting.”

“I don’t think I can convince you, but my diet isn’t unreasonable. This is my limit. Any more than this and I’ll get fat. Sometimes, I can see a pig reflected in the mirror.”

Saori silently turned to the door, slunk over to it and left. I turned away, just as silently.

“Next time, I’ll come back with Yumiko. Even if it might not be actual therapy, I think if the both of us carefully listen to your problems, a pathway will open up.” While she opened the door, I could hear Saori speak in a tender voice. “I was way too impatient today. I wanted you to get better fast, so I did nothing but argue against what you were saying, Yuka. Next time, I won’t just deny everything you’re saying, Yuka, we’ll think it through together. So, is it alright if I come back again?”

“You’re always welcome here.” I responded, with my head that was still hot from my argument with Saori trembling slightly. “I’m ashamed for showing you just how pigheaded I am.”

Of course, meeting up with Saori and Yumiko seemed like fun, however I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that speaking with the both of them about the burdens I carry could lead to a resolution. It hadn’t clearly been decided when the two of them would visit me, but from the way Saori spoke I could tell she wasn’t just being diplomatic, she meant it. When it happens, it won’t be an unpleasant meeting like today, I want it to be a harmonious and meaningful discussion between friends, just like the old days. I need to find the answer to my questions before that day arrives.

With hardened resolve, I headed to my father’s room. Nevertheless, no matter how hard I grit my teeth, unstoppable sobs came from the back of my throat like I was a new-born baby. Drop by drop, my tears fell in a trail down the corridor.

Empress Lü looked at my face and smiled sweetly. Her clothes were incredibly ancient in style and so gorgeous and refined that it was hard to believe, however her entire body was veiled in a mist-like, red spray. As I got closer, I smelled blood. Empress Lü didn’t move a single inch, but those swelling clothes trembled and swayed.

“Girl, one’s own aroma is a lovely thing.” Empress Lü said to me.

I disregarded Empress Lü’s words and as I drew even closer to her, I caught a better look at her face. I had been certain that Empress Lü was smiling at me, but I couldn’t see her face clearly because of the rays of light. However, whenever I got closer my eyes would flicker and I could never ascertain her facial features.

Again, I took another step towards Empress Lü and trod on something elastic and sticky. It seemed to be a bundled up mass of meat smeared in filth. The repulsive thing began to roll around and tremble violently.

Empress Lü undid the front of her kimono. Blood splattered everywhere, drenching me and the lump of meat. Empress Lü’s naked body was beautiful but it couldn’t help giving off a foul stench.

I retreated trying to flee from Empress Lü but I lost my footing in the gore, there was a large sound, and I collapsed. And before I knew it, I was also stripped bare.

As the lump of meat crawled towards me, I tried to cover myself. I writhed trying to escape, I was confined by my body that was slick with blood.

At that moment, Empress Lü picked me up in her arms. Empress Lü’s skin stuck to mine.

“Come now, assist me.”

Empress Lü slid down and lay sprawled out on the ground facing the sky. Dark brown liquid the colour of burnt tea flowed out from within a crevice in her white belly. Through the mouth of the wound, I could see something wriggling around.

Without hesitation, I thrust both of my arms inside Empress Lü. My hands grasped something within her. I let out an animalistic voice and pulled it out.

Slowly, from within that thing that looked like mud, I made out the shape of a human being.

In shock, I threw it to the floor.

It surged up and trampled upon the lump of meat.

“Lo, beauteous, are you not?” With her womb still dangling from her abdomen, Empress Lü clasped it to her chest.

“Prithee, look, Your Excellency. ” Without even attempting to hide her torn body, Empress Lü called out to it. “This is a human swine.”

It looked at the lump of flesh, screaming, crying and writhing in filth.

“Aah, this is no human, this is no human.” It said.

After a while, it started to crumble and returned to mud.

Empress Lü then laid face down on top of it and twisted her body around. Empress Lü’s abdomen then sucked up the mud into her womb. “Ah, overjoying, is it not? I can once again give birth to His Excellency.”

“Why did you call Consort Qi a human swine?” I posed my question of many years to Empress Lü. “She couldn’t hear, and she couldn’t see, either. No matter what you said to her, it couldn’t hurt her anymore. Even so, was it still out of revenge?”

Empress Lü opened up her mouth wide. She opened it far too wide until it exposed the contents of her stomach. And then, she let out a booming laugh.

“Why are you doing that? Have you got something wrong with you?” I looked back and forth between Empress Lü and the lump of meat, comparing them.

“Just who in the world is Consort Qi?” Empress Lü continued laughing.

“This woman. This poor, pathetic woman who received hideous treatment at your hand.” I tried holding the lump of meat up to Empress Lü to show her, but it was too slimy and it kept slipping out of my arms.

“That is not Consort Qi nor any one of her kind.”

“Eh?! Then just who is it?!”

“That is the real you.”

In shock, I tore apart the lump of meat. There was nothing inside. It wasn’t a flesh lump, it was a flesh bag.

“The form of your true self has lost both it’s exterior and its contents.” Empress Lü laughed.

“If this is the true me……” I let go of the flesh bag. “Just what the fuck am I?”

“You are the hide of a swine.” Empress Lü showed me a single pig.

The pig had no skin, it’s blubber and muscles were completely bare.

I crumpled to the ground.

Empress Lü’s face was my father’s face.

I finally understood. Why Empress Lü called Consort Qi a human swine. And why my father raised me.

It wasn’t because Empress Lü wanted revenge. If her goal was revenge, she would have called her a human swine before butchering her eyes and ears.

Furthermore, my father didn’t desire fame as a researcher. If he wanted fame, he would have performed more reasonable transplant surgeries and published his success.

They did it because it was fun. Tearing a human’s dignity to shreds, toying around with the lives of swines and humans, the sensation of omnipotence is violent.

I barely slept, I read notes, watched videos, investigated hard drives.

Without fail, they contained secrets my father had covered up. For my father, raising a human being into a pig was fun, in itself. In that case, I wonder what other sacrilege he committed besides the transplants.

However, the majority of his research materials were about me and all incomprehensibly cryptic. After feeling nothing but anxiety, going however many days without sleep, and skipping however many meals, I may no longer be recognisable.

At that time, I spotted one particular video. It was the same as any other video, there was nothing unusual about how it looked, but I noticed the characters written on the label. There were plenty of videos with labels like “A-1” or “1Q” and such, but this video’s label just read “1.”

As the number of videos increase, anyone would write their labels in easy to understand language for the sake of organisation. However, in cases where the same work is spread out over several volumes or where several works are collected in a single volume, rather than writing down the contents directly, it’s more reasonable to classify each volumes specific contents by serial number or by recording the date. Furthermore, as the serial-numbered videos increase, you will want to organise their contents. By alphabetising the numbers, using English letters and Roman numerals.

As a result, the possibility that this video simply labelled “1” was a video recording of the very initial stages of the project was extremely high.

As the video came to life, I felt the seed of a premonition. If this really was the very first video, then it could tell me what my father was doing — or, rather, what he was trying to do. That was still more than I could bear, furthermore I had a vague recollection of a memory before it became a memory — I felt like I grasped a glimpse of the secret that bound me and my father together.

The very first seconds of the video were in an indiscernible disarray, but then it abruptly became unbelievably clear. A single pig lay in the dead centre of the video. I couldn’t really tell what breed it was, though not because my father had toyed with its genetics; it seemed like an ordinary pig.

The pig was lying down in pain. Occasionally, it let out a cry. Was it ill, I wondered? Soon after, it became clear that it wasn’t ill. From the pig, a body wrapped in mucous was born. After that, the video displayed the sow endlessly giving birth to a continuous littler of piglets.

In comparison to the normal sow, the piglets had clearly received my father’s treatment. If you hadn’t seen the sow give brith to them, you wouldn’t have thought they were pigs at all. Despite their appearance the sow still seemed to love them, as she diligently licked her babies. The piglets huddled against their mother’s body as if they were trying to burrow back into her abdomen. Despite the appearance of the piglets, I unconsciously smiled gently at the scene as if there was nothing abnormal about it.

The piglets didn’t resemble any animals whatsoever. They obviously had mammalian features, but on the whole they gave off the impression that they were incredibly unfinished. They tried to get closer to their mother but, without their mother’s help, it looked like they were entirely unable to move on their own. It didn’t seem like they would be able to grow to adulthood. Victims of my father’s curiosity.

The sow resumed giving birth to piglets. It was too much for me and I went pause the tape. However, for some reason, I was unable to bring my finger to the stop button, let alone press it.

I had an uneasy premonition. Something on the screen was urging on my subconscious. It was like I was seeing one of those shady subliminal messages that people used to make such a fuss over. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

The screen froze. I checked back frame-by-frame. No mysterious messages had been spliced into the footage. Again, I resumed the normal playback. Then I hit fast-forward. As I thought, something felt off. It wasn’t because the piglets were malformed. I could clearly recognise that on the conscious level. It was something much smaller. Something reflected within the screen.

As soon as I realised what it was, I regretted it bitterly. What possessed me to watch this video? Why did I ever think to organise my father’s research materials? In the first place, why didn’t I just meekly believe everything my father said?

It’s too late. It’s all over. I know the truth.

Aah, I’ll never forget what my father said before he died.

“Idiot! You say it’s liver cancer! So what?! You’re not going to put those swine guts in me! Filthy!!”

If I hadn’t heard those words, I could have continued believing my father’s lies.

My father taught the world that there was nothing filthy about having pig organs transplanted into you. Thanks to that, every year countless human lives are saved. That father of mine is hailed as a modern hero. Why would anyone believe that man spewed such words?

However, I’m certain my father always held contempt for me. The human swine he raised.

I found myself lying down on a hospital bed. In a hospital room I didn’t recognise. From the moment I was born until this year, the only hospital room I’d known was the one inside my own home, so when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t grasp what was happening and I was in a state of confusion. However, I recognised Saori and Yumiko’s faces directly across from me and I was able to calm back down.

They both had visited my house on a rainy day. They told me it had been a week after Saori had previously visited me. I didn’t know what day I had met with Saori, nor how many days had passed since I’d continued organising my father’s research. Nor did I know how many days had passed since I’d watched that revolting video. My memories were strangely jumbled. I couldn’t remember if I’d continued organising my father’s research material after watching the video, or if I’d thrown everything out.

According to Saori and Yumiko, they found me out in the pouring rain, wallowing in the mud in the garden. I’d screamed something out, but neither of them could remember the contents. Although, there’s no way to know if they’ve actually forgot.

“You gave us a real shock.” Yumiko told me in a slightly agitated tone. “At first, I thought you were some kind of animal. But then Saori let out a shriek and then I also realised it was you.”

While soaking wet, the two of them tried to carry me back into the house but they didn’t know where the key was so they gave up on that. (Later, the key was discovered within my intestines.) With no other options, they called an ambulance.

I can’t comment on their testimonies. However, I have a hazy recollection of meeting Empress Lü and Consort Qi but I’m not sure what meaning that has.

“You’d overworked yourself. The doctors also said it was caused by extreme fatigue and malnutrition. Hey. I know I’ve said it a lot, but why don’t you forget about organising your dad’s research for a while and slowly get your strength back?” Saori said in a tender voice.

“Yeah. I also think that’d be for the best.” I did my best to respond as clearly as I could.

That’s right. I have no intention of organising those documents ever again. After I return home, I’ll never go near my father’s room ever again. The truth is I want to throw out all my father’s research completely, however at this point in time I wouldn’t be able to endure seeing or touching anything in there. On the other hand, it’s not something I can trust other people to dispose of for me. All I have to do is think about other people seeing what’s in there to feel a sense of dread so intense I can hardly breathe.

I’ll be glad if I never have to see it again. Perhaps then I might be able to believe that what I saw was nothing but a dream. If such a blissful time ever arrives, I’ll be sure to never do something so foolish as looking in there ever again.

I wanted to thoroughly investigate the past, believing that if the entire truth was dug up before my very eyes that it would set my soul free from its suffering. But I had it backwards. While it remained sealed, I was blessed for I was able to be myself.

Saori and Yumiko come and visit me every day. I wonder if they’ve noticed that I’m steadily losing weight and withering away?

My tranquil everyday life will never return. Whether my eyes are open or closed, I can’t escape the image that plays on repeat within my head.

On the screen is a large sow. Malformed piglets swarm her teats. In the centre, a particularly small one lets out a frail cry.

And on its shoulder is a dark-red birthmark shaped like the head of a fish.

*「人獣細工」 more accurately translates to "Tampering with humans and animals", but that doesn't sound very good as a title. I think my choice still conveys the feel and ideas of the original title while sounding more natural.

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medea10 · 2 years ago

Text

My Review of Ascendance of a Bookworm

Okay, time to hit up another isekai. After watching a heart-wrenching anime like 86, I need something light-hearted to watch. No…I’m not reviewing 86. Sorry. Okay, let’s get to it!

This is Myne. But not really! You see, Myne was once a librarian named Urano Motosu with a love for reading books. But an earthquake struck and she was crushed by a mountain of books. With her last breath, she wished she could be reincarnated again and read more books with her new life. Now she is reborn in a frail five-year old named Myne. Myne is in a new world, new time, and with a new family. Only thing is, she cannot obtain a single book. Books are hard to come by, especially if you aren’t a noble. And in Myne’s case, she’s at peasant level. Even materials for writing are hard to obtain.

Before one can walk, one must crawl. Myne will go through a lot in order to preserve stories on the printed page. Will this bookworm survive without reading?

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: This one strictly belonged to Crunchyroll and the dub was filled with a lot of people I don’t think I ever heard from before this. So, hearing many of these folks is kinda a new experience for me since I decided to watch the entire thing dubbed. My experience with it was okay until I hit season three. I felt a little thrown off with the pronunciation of one of the characters. Myne’s mother Effa. We clearly hear her name being pronounced as “Eva” in the first 2 seasons. Now all of a sudden, they’re changing her name’s pronunciation. Okay, sure. Why not?! Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

JAPANESE CAST: *Myne is played by Yuka Iguchi (known for Crusch on Re:Zero, Tsukihi on Monogatari, Mine on Fruits Basket 2019, Mea on To Love Ru, Yuu on Sakura Trick, and Index on Railgun/Index)

*Lutz is played by Mutsumi Tamura (known for Kobayashi on Miss Kobayashi, Kanamori on Eizouken, Ermes on Jojo’s Pt. 6, Young Jintan on Anohana, and Young Ali Baba on Magi)

*Ferdinand is played by Show Hayami (known for Juan on Pokemon AG, Aizen on Bleach, Wolfwood on Trigun, Azami on Food Wars, Gakuhou on Assassination Classroom, and Ichiya on Fairy Tail)

ENGLISH CAST: *Myne is played by Reba Buhr (known for Nikaido on Dorohedoro, Cattleya on Violet Evergarden, Aoi on Demon Slayer, and LLENN on SAO: GGO)

*Lutz is played by Jeannie Tirado (known for Norman on The Promised Neverland, Riko on Love Live Sunshine, Fana on Black Clover, Kanae on Tokyo Ghoul :re, and Zera on Fairy Tail)

*Ferdinand is played by Armen Taylor

DISLIKED CHARACTER: I think it goes without saying that I hate that high priest with a holy passion. After his unsavory debut in the first season, I wished he could have died from his injuries when Myne’s mana went haywire. Sadly, he’s still around. And whenever he shows up, nothing good can come from it. He’s the reason why Myne wound up with disrespectful retainers when she started her apprenticeship at the church. I know the high priest is the go-to punching bag for most people. I am inclined to agree. It’s mostly a bias I have against certain individuals that claim to be a servant to the lord and do shady-ass shit. Yeah, he’s right up there with the Catholic Church, Mike Pence, and Judge Claude Frollo. He’s that bad!

I would have let certain things slide in season two like giving Myne unruly retainers or petty vandalism in the library. But then season three happened and there’s just no forgiveness for what this fat fuck did. I’m just happy he’s finally going to get some much-needed comeuppance.

SHIPPING: Myne x Lutz.

*sigh* I know it’ll never happen for many, many spoilery reasons. And I know it wasn’t canon or official or anything like that. I just want to enjoy their moments in season one and somehow ignore what happens at the end of season three.

AN ANNOYANCE: At the end of each episode, there’s like a chibi/4-panel style short that airs. I wouldn’t call it a preview for the next episode as there is never any mention of what happens next. It’s just random fluff. That doesn’t bother me all that much. Yes, I realize the first season had Ferdinand shown in those moments and we were never properly introduced to this character until like 10 episodes in. What bothered me the most came during the third season. There was one of these segments where Gunther and Myne were talking and he brings up that Myne’s mother had several miscarriages prior to having Tuuli and Myne. Okay, I feel like this sort of thing could have been said during the episode and not put in the passing fancy with the end of the episode LOL fluff. That’s my take on that matter.

END OF SEASON ONE: Throughout this season, Myne has been creating certain items and catching the eye of several key people. Semi-nobles like Frieda and her family have caught wind of Myne’s hair accessories. And a gentleman by the name of Mr. Benno decides to give Myne a chance with items she creates (for the right price). Unfortunately, there’s only so much Myne can do in so much time. Myne has been sick from day one and when really sick, she’ll spend days or even weeks in bed. Mr. Benno seems to think that she has mana (that is only reserved for nobles) and it’s eating her from the inside until she dies. It’s called “the devouring”. Meanwhile, Lutz has been becoming suspicious of Myne. It’s been bugging him for quite a while, but he finally confronted her. Without letting him know about her past life, she does reveal to him that she’s not really Myne and was only Myne for over a year now. Thankfully, Lutz accepted this fact and continues to help Myne pursue her dream and current ambitions.

Myne has been revolutionizing the world she’s living in with products she was able to easily make like hair shampoo, cute hair accessories, and even sweet treats. She did sell those invention ideas, but was able to keep some for her own. On top of which, she’s inching closer and closer to getting her paper goods to be successful. It’s just that her sickness (the devouring) is getting worse and worse. Her friend Frieda was able to suppress one of her attacks one night with the use of a magical item. It’s temporary, but it helped prevent something tragic from happening this time. There’s no guarantee for next time though.

With the way things are, Myne only has one year at most to live. It was a lucky break that Myne was able to get an item because her friend is semi-royal. Unfortunately, all Frieda gets are knock-offs because she isn’t really a noble. But that can all change once her coming of age ceremony comes and becomes a concubine for a noble. Myne’s coming of age ceremony is coming up and being married off to a noble might be her one solution to surviving the devouring. For now, Myne just wants to stay with her parents and if there’s time, set up her paper-making studio with Lutz and Mr. Benno.

The day finally came for Myne to have her coming of age ceremony. At the church, Myne got intrigued by all of the ancient books, scrolls, etc. We also meet Ferdinand outside of the preview setting. He is the head priest of this church. Myne was ready to jump ship and join the church just because they had many books. Let’s just say nearly everyone in Myne’s inner circle objected to that tenfold. Her employer Mr. Benno hates to lose Myne to anyone, especially to the church. And Myne’s parents worry that being in the church can be detrimental to her health since she couldn’t live at home anymore and won’t get a steady income since only nobles in blue robes obtain that and everyone else is just a gray orphan.

Things get a little more complicated when the church learned of Myne’s devouring disease and wanted her even more. Myne is full of overflowing mana and this is something the church wants. This could work to Myne’s advantage if she gets the church to agree to her own terms. Mr. Benno told her to prioritize letting her continue with her studio works, live with her parents, and help with her health. Meeting the high priest of the church went really bad. He didn’t like the fact that Myne’s parents were not of nobility and threatened to take Myne from them by force. This led to Myne’s father beating up church guards. And then Myne went demon-possessed on them all!

Throughout this season, there were moments when Myne’s eyes would go rainbow and has this anger aura surrounding her. This would usually occur when she would get really upset or angry, like in the early episodes and she would try to make clay tablets and they got destroyed. This of course is because of the devouring. Her mana is overflowing and controlling her body. This time, this power affected the high priest by almost killing him. Ferdinand helped calm Myne down and de-escalated the situation that just went down. He agreed to all of Myne’s terms and agreements. In return, Myne will become an apprentice priestess at the cathedral. She will dawn the blue robes meant only for nobles and when she’s not doing that, she will continue to help Mr. Benno. And best of all, she could stay with her family.

Ferdinand will be there quite a bit to keep Myne in check at every moment. Especially, when she gets angry and her mana goes berserk. Because if she harms any higher-up like when she attacked the high priest, dire consequences will be passed down to Myne. But that’ll be a matter for another section of this review.

SIDE STORY: There were two short stories that were aired a month before the second season’s debut. One story was revolved around one of Ferdinand’s men from the church to spy and learn about Myne from the townspeople. The other was Myne, her sister Tulli and mother Eva visiting the fabric maker Corinna.

SEASON TWO: Myne is officially an apprentice priestess. Unfortunately, things in the church might serve to be difficult for her. The high priest has it out for her and is willing to make her life a living hell. This includes giving her retainers (Delia and Gil) that give her nothing but grief. Not just him, but everyone (excluding Ferdinand) hating on Myne because she’s not a noble, but is wearing noble clothing. Let’s just say they’re not fond that a little girl like her got to surpass many of them.

On the positive, part of her job is to read over the royal scripture. A book is a book, I guess. At least Myne made it to a point where she got her hands on the printed word, no matter what it is. Myne does get the idea to make children books during this season. Because her mother is going to have a baby in the coming months, Myne wanted to make children books with the paper goods she’s been making.

END OF SEASON TWO: Myne has to step up her game at the church to prove that she is truly worthy to wear the blue robes despite being a peasant. For starters, she has to prepare for some upcoming events that’ll require her attendance and assistance. Unfortunately, that means Myne will have to stay at the church during the duration of the winter season. That does cause a bit of a hiccup as Myne’s father is fully against it and Myne kinda wanted to stay at home a little more to help out her pregnant mother.

Myne ends up assisting Ferdinand with a mission against some out of control trombe. As demonstrated in earlier episodes, trombe can be dangerous if not controlled and cut down. Such a dangerous entity, but useful in Myne’s mission to making paper goods. This trombe however caused more trouble than normal for Myne. This time it wasn’t her fault in a sense. One of the guards Ferdinand assigned to keep Myne safe was a real shit-head and put Myne’s life in danger and lied about it. This guy put the fact that Myne’s a peasant over Ferdinand’s order. Yeah, he’s in trouble. And then Myne showed him up with the amount of mana she possesses for someone like her. After all of that, we kind of get this scene that I wondered about since I started this series.

This scene was the very first scene from the first episode of the series. Myne with something on her head and Ferdinand going to find out things once and for all. And that’s exactly it, they’re linking minds with magical items so that Ferdinand can lay his worries and fears about Myne to rest. Ferdinand got a first-hand look at what a library looks like in modern-day Japan. Myne got to see her old adult self before she died. And also, Myne almost had a breakdown after seeing her mother and wanting to say goodbye but never got the chance. That scene was pretty rough to watch, along with her hugging Ferdinand. That’s why Myne decides now to say how thankful she is for this family. Gunther, Eva, and Tuuli aren’t the family she knew back before Myne came to this world, but she’s happy for them.

Oh, and we get a scene of Ferdinand and Karstedt discussing Myne and planning to have her be adopted by a noble. Okay, that’ll be a story for season three.

SEASON THREE: Things take a bit of a violent turn in the first episode. In the previous season, Myne was seen asking about alternate inks for the book she wanted to make. The ink guild saw the book and got serious. They came to Benno’s shop and were very scary. And then, these ruffians assaulted Lutz in the street. It is now best that Myne have her winter stay at the church happen now. Meanwhile, it looks as though one of her own retainers can’t be trusted…AGAIN! It’s Delia. Of course, it’s Delia. Gil’s on Team Myne and its going to stay that way. Delia on the other hand is an informant for the high priest.

Myne’s life is about to get a little worrisome. Ferdinand told her that he thinks that Karstedt should adopt her and it was met with harsh rejection from Myne. Ferdinand decided it is best that at age 10 she be adopted by a noble. And at that age if she isn’t under the care of a noble, she will be at risk due to her amount of mana and everything she’s done up to this point.

ENDING: This season we’ve seen the good and the bad. I’ll start with the good. The book that Myne came up with was finally done. She had a lot of help from her retainers, the children from the orphanage, and other allies in the church. Myne was able to spend some quality time with her family as this may be the last years she can be with them. Along with that, the birth of her baby brother Kamil was worth celebrating. But then we delve into the seriousness here when an orphaned baby comes to the church and has the devouring disease like Myne, things take quite the turn for the worst. The high priest is at it again really causing trouble for Myne and just being an all-around fat dick. The high priest invited a noble man to take the baby and use him as a servant. Then, force Myne into a contract.

This plan led to Myne almost being kidnapped, Tulli almost being killed, Delia being deceived, Gunther and Fran injured, and an all-around magic showdown at the church. Myne went into berserk mode when her friends and father were injured by the high priest and this dick-head noble that wants to use Myne’s mana for his selfish wants. It wasn’t until Ferdinand came in the room that things settled. Unfortunately, Myne assaulted the high priest and a noble. They overlooked that crime at the end of season one when her mana caused her to go berserk. This time, Myne, Gunther, Fran, and the rest were to receive punishment for this. But a twist arose.

During this season, Myne met a man named Sylvester. He’s a bit eccentric and can be a bit of a headache. But he gave Myne a charm to form a blood seal if she were to come into trouble. What she didn’t know was that this blood seal was to form a contract with Sylvester. This means instead of being adopted by Karstedt in two years, Myne is to be adopted by Sylvester right now. If this happens, Myne and everyone else will avoid punishment because her status as Sylvester’s daughter will surpass that of the high priest and dick-head noble. Myne agrees. Add to the surprises, Sylvester is the lord of the land, the nephew to the high priest, and half-brother to Ferdinand. Sylvester laid down some much-needed punishment here as that shady noble was to be incarcerated and the high priest got the death sentence for harming Myne.

Sylvester made it official, but with some unfortunate terms. Myne is to be adopted by Sylvester. She will be a noble officially. However, she is to give up her name and her family. She will no longer be known as Myne and the commoner known as Myne will be legally dead. She may never again be with her father, mother, sister, and brother again. If they were to see Myne, they must treat her like a noble and not like a part of the family. Myne’s company and work will continue as paper goods and books are necessary. Myne will now and forever be known as Rozemyne. Rozemyne swears that she will protect those she loves and gives them a special blessing before bidding them goodbye.

This is the end of Myne’s tale as you see with her tombstone. But Rozemyne’s story is just beginning.

We just don’t know because nothing has been green-lit as of yet. But we got a “To Be Continued” at the end. That’s hopeful!

Oh, I loved this anime. I think this was one of my favorite Isekais to come as of recent. Probably up there with Mushoku Tensei and Re:Zero.

I’m going to go off a bit on something I was pondering about for a long time and how I feel about it. This mostly has to do with the story itself and not the anime at all. During season two, I got curious and read some spoilers. Once I finished season two, I really got upset that Myne was to be adopted by nobles and have all communication from her family cut off. The reason behind me being so upset is because at the end of season two, we got that sad scene where Myne is back in her modern world in her original body and her wanting to say something to her mother before she dies. So, learning about Myne’s separation from Gunther and Effa made me really upset. Myne was distraught remembering her mother in the previous life and swore to always say that she loved Effa. But now that I sat through season three, am I still upset by the circumstances? Hell yeah. But I understand that there really was no happy outcome where all parties could be satisfied. Myne was still going to be adopted whether now or in two years like originally planned.

Never mind me prattling on about this crap about adoption. This has been a fun watch and an educational one too. Isekais can get creative with new languages, items, and customs. I always enjoy learning about new worlds in anime. But not just that, I learn something new when Myne brings up something invented in her original world. We learn something new every day. By the looks of things, the light novel is still in publication, so I expect to see more content with Rozemyne and her continuing ambitions surrounding the printed word. Anyways, full recommendation from me!

If you would like to watch Ascendance of a Bookworm, Crunchyroll has every episode (along with the side stories and recaps) available to stream.

Man, I hate to think what I’m going to watch next. The anime following this one must be fucking bullshit.

It is.

*gasps* FINALLY! I GET TO WATCH IT!!!

*This stupidity aside, Medea is really enjoying Carole and Tuesday*

#anime review #ascendance of a bookworm #myne #lutz #ferdinand #honzuki no gekokujou #benno #frieda #gunther #sylvester #bezevance

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