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Volume 5 Trouble File First Second Half Part 10

Those who oppressed her by beating her with her fists, those who ate the meat of her fellow black Albinos and all of the people who enjoyed using the black Albino body parts and organs in various blasphemous acts. . . . all of them were guilty of committing sins against her and her kind, and if it were up to Izayoi, he would have gathered them all in front of Ishi and offered her their heads if only she asked about it. But even if that were to happen, Izayoi was firmly convinced that this would not have been enough of a punishment for them.

The way he sees it, the only way in which those cannibals and everyone who was collaborating with them and their Albino meat farm could have repented for what they have done would be to have them experience the same kind of living hell that they forced Ishi and the others to live in across all of their cycles of death and reincarnation until their minds and souls would be so broken that they would have never even thought of doing anything similar both in the future and during their next lives in the next cycles of reincarnation. But in order for all of that to happen, Ishi must first understand one crucial thing: while she might not be able to exact her revenge personally, she could always do so through Izayoi.

「Ishi. I am sorry for putting it this way, but what you are grateful and offering prayers for right now is something that is commonplace in this world, in other words, something so normal that it can even be said to be meaningless because we see it practically every day and got used to it, so there is no need for you to be grateful or thankful or feel any kind of gratitude for it towards anyone for such a worthless thing. Since the time you have left to live is finite, then you should make sure to spend it on doing the things that you want to do, and if revenge on your oppressors is one of those things, if the fires of hatred are still present within you either as small embers or powerful flames .  . . you should not try to contain them, but instead, you should nurture that feeling and add fuel to its fire.」

With burning anger in his voice, Izayoi talked to Ishi about revenge. That was probably also why he felt that Ishi’s actions were strange, and that something did not seem right with them. Because no matter how you looked at it, it is wrong that the cannibals are still out there somewhere, enjoying their lives filled with those sick deviances of theirs while the only one of their victims who managed survive the hell she has been thrown into was kneeling in the seawater while praising a giant ball of flaming gasses that was too far out in the outer space to actually be giving two shits about what she was feeling. If that is supposed to be what this world calls the natural order of things, then there was never a chance in hell that Izayoi would have ever forgiven such a world for toying around with the lives of those who did not deserve this. Maybe it really would have been better for the entire universe if such a world just got wiped out and destroyed without a trace then?

「Revenge. . . . . . . revenge, you say?」

While looking at the horizon in the distance, Ishi ruminated on the meaning of everything that Izayoi just said. As much as she wanted to say that she managed to get over her hatred and desire for revenge, she would have lied if she said that, because truth to be told, she knew that there repulsive feeling were still inside of her somewhere. But it is not her intention to only keep up appearances with it. She did not deny not feeling hatred at all, because she honestly believed that she will be able to overcome it and move past it without allowing it to consume her and steer her life for the remainder of her days on this world, but apparently that attitude of hers did not sit too well with Izayoi, and now a heavy silence has fallen between the two of them. Closing her eyes and listening to the sound of the waves beating up against the shore, and then she suddenly opened them back up and pointed straight ahead of herself, at some point located far, far away over the horizon.

「Hey, Izayoi. Have you ever been to the Strait of Gibraltar, which is said to be located at 「The End of the World」, according to some people?」

「. . . . Huh?」

「Just answer the question if you ever been there before. Is what they say true? Is that place really 「The End of the World」? Is it even possible for a location like that to exist in the first place?」

Ishi was looking Izayoi straight in the eyes with a very serious expression, which probably meant that this must have been a very important matter for her. And truth to be told, The Strait of Gibraltar and the 「Pillars of Heracles」that were located over there were the first place where Izayoi wanted to travel when he left Japan and began to travel around the world together with Canaria.

Long before the dawn of the Christian era, during the times of the ancient Greece that strait was considered as the most faraway point of the Greek world beyond which there was supposed to be nothing more, but Ishi probably thought that if Izayoi is a special kind of human he might have offered her some unique view on that subject, but the truth is that reality is often disappointing and vastly different from childhood fantasies, and that is exactly how it was with The Strait of Gibraltar as well. So while looking back into the crimson pupils that looked as if they wanted to pierce right through him, he slowly shook his head.

「No, there was no such thing as 「The End of the World 」there. There are just 「Pillars of Heracles」there, but beyond them there is nothing extraordinary at all. No Atlantis, no other kinds of lost continents from different mythologies, literally nothing.」

There was no 「End of the World 」beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, and there was no demons and mythological monsters roaming about in the basin of Iguazu Falls, or in any other place that he has visited together with Canaria. The only thing that Izayoi learned from all those trips was the fact that if your expectations about something are set too high, you are only going to get severely disappointed when the time will finally come for your childish dreams to crash headfirst into the cruel reality of the world. No matter how strong you might think they are, eventually all of them are going to break at some point. But then, what are you supposed to do? The answer to that question, as always, was way simpler than Izayoi initially thought. It was Canaria’s way of telling Izayoi that instead of living in the dreams and with his head perpetually in the clouds, she should focus on living in reality, in the here and now.

However, Ishi shook her head, and after she wiped the tears that continued to moisturize her eyes, she asked Izayoi another question.

「Izayoi, when you came to the facility where we were being bred, what were your first thoughts when you saw it for the first time? Did it look like a bird cage to you, or perhaps more like a miniature garden?」

「. .. . If I had to chose from just these two options that you have provided, then I would have to go with a miniature garden.」

Bird cages are cages meant solely for the purpose of keeping the birds placed in them alive so that they could breed, but with a miniature garden it is a little bit different.