You say "don't complain," but to someone, that sounds like a complaint that they should stop complaining.

Cricket.

The one I miss so.

Leave me alone!

Bad balance, as usual.

She tastes like the real thing

A spore twirling toward over yonder.

Straying balloons.

Inconsistencies arise. My head feels funny.

The cold clears up, I close my eyes, and remember the pain. Don't say it was garbage; it comes out as broken.

An android, opening its eyes, forgetting the times it was lonely. Living like I'm dead, the shadow that appeared after you departed grows longer.

If you sew a gap into a telephone line and find a television that displays nothing, abandon everything, and it should display your heart.

A town of dolphin-fish.

With certainty, she was in this town, she was me, she was lifelike. The dolphin-fish, with pupils like glass spheres and cracked skin, is praised, is blamed, and as it gives a shout, it dives into a manhole.

She couldn't help but cry and laugh. So the town was dowsed with rain and dried with drought, and the people cried and laughed just the same.

Isotopes spread throughout the town. Roots like a rugged old man's fingers. The sakura that stood in the third park, the ubame oak that partitioned the town like an electrical circuit, the end-of-season daffodils.

Her lifeblood dripped from a splinter stabbed into her back, melting the damp black asphalt.

Her body pulsed like a heart, and she was curled like an embryo sleeping in a mother's womb.

She was born in this room, in this bathtub.

Until the yeast is slain.

With a body of volatile height.

Drinking lots even with little.

Only but the not-allowed.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

13

12

11

10

9

"Silence."

He...

He won't talk.

He doesn't see the point in singing.

He doesn't want to sing.

He can't sing.

He never sings.

He won't sing.

He doesn't sing.

He doesn't see the point in talking.

He doesn't want to talk.

He can't talk.

He never talks.

He won't talk.

He doesn't talk.

You who died while he was living, and I who lived while I was dying... we'll let all of ourselves out.

Let's be together always.

、

Struggling to endure the feeling of my eyeballs being ready to fall out, I spoke. "I won't cause you any trouble, so please just leave me be." That said, I departed from my place under the overhang. The old woman didn't stop me.

An old woman called to me, I who had completely changed in appearance. My face was wrinkled and pulpy, my hips were bent nearly to right angles. Completely bent, like a ski jumper before making a jump. I wiped some sludge dripping out of my mouth and looked at the woman.

It's just fun to do, okay? Leave me alone.

"Why, there... What are you dragging along that monster for?"

The child was obviously growing bigger. My doubt had changed to conviction. The added weight made walking a trying process, and the trash bag seemed to be getting too constraining. But I could feel nothing but wonder and dislike. The child's enlargement, surely,

Thoughtlessly, I felt that Time of Death Approximately 10:11 PM was getting heavier. I was willing to dismiss it as my imagination and let that be the end of it, but I didn't know how to handle that, so I simply opted to not worry about it.

I took a stroll with Time of Death Approximately 10:11 PM again today. We walked all over. At the deteriorating shopping district, crows danced up on the fountain. With my cell in one hand, its screen glowing murkily, I coarsely laughed. On the station platform, there was a drunkard tumbling about like a splattered tomato. Reeking of ammonia.

At school today, it was hideously more humid than usual. It seemed rumors were somehow spreading about "Nekoya's made friends with a garbage bag." I had no intent of making an objection to it (rather, it was true) - it was merely another case of adding an easy target. I once again spent the day reading books on the Kyumune toilet.

♪ ~

As I rinced out my mouth in the basin, I thought it'd be alright if everything just went away. If everything went away, and I could spit it all out. In my half-baked stomach, the eggs and lettuce and sandwich and pot-au-feu I'd eaten today remained. And by my side, as if cut out with scissors and pasted, was Time of Death Approximately 10:11 PM.

I passed by a convenience store. A sheep punched at the register apathetically. I stopped and waited there for an hour. Near the entrance and exit was a wandering cat. A truck's diesel engine seemed to sound as if it were coughing. Countless red tail lights passed by. I became nauseous and went to puke in the toilet at the nearby park.

I walked a little while afterward. I had the trash bag hanging on my right hand. Everyone who passed me by gave me suspicious looks. The streetlights were flipping on and off. Little bugs assembling around the light seemed to taunt me, appearing and disappearing. A police box with no one there. A cat giving a strange meow.

I stuffed Time of Death Approximately 10:11 PM into the fully-emptied trash bag. The first time I touched the child, the feel of its skin gave me an extremely awful feeling. It was slimy, and a strand formed when I removed my hand. Despite being tortured by this extraordinary disgust, I stuffed the child into the trash bag.

As I felt a bit of disappointment over the trash bag being considerably lighter than I expected, the overturned contents all poured out. With a rustling sound, the trash expanded out from my feet. Most of it was empty containers of the cup ramen sold at the nearby supermarket.

I set out to bury the child. It was simply too pathethic rusting away under the narrow overhang. Amid darkness, I inspected my surroundings. In the damp weeds, I found a rotted propeller, a No Parking sign. And a black trash bag. Seeming to conceal its breathing as it tumbled in the darkness, I took it. The contents were mostly plastic containers.

I gave the child a name. "Time of Death Approximately 10:11 PM."

Where did you come from?, I tried asking. Naturally there was no reply, and I had no reason to expect one. But, if this creature I knew nothing about had once lived, I thought perhaps my voice could still reach it.

I greeted some kind of corpse. It was much too abstract, so I can't be certain of anything other than the corpse. It was lying sideways in a shape that looked like the head of a horse giving birth, but it still vaguely smelled of its former life, so I greeted it.

Morning.