Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 11 Chapter 3 (section)

== 3.04 The Others ==

The starting rain pounded hard on the car window.

Rui watched the streams of water running down the glass surface expressionlessly. He caressed the small girl sleeping peacefully on his lap.

“What should we do now, master?”

The old gentleman in the driver’s seat asked through the mirror.

“…”

Rui’s heart was filled with a sense of loss.

The gunfire he could hear from outside the car and the death throes of his private forces echoed inside his empty self.

“—I don’t care. Everything ends now.”

When his Round Table comrades brought the story about the research of the Undying, he couldn’t easily believe it.

Although he cooperated, he intended on keeping his distance from those guys.

However, that was just deceiving them.

“What if”—

Perhaps the one who thought this and looked with burning eyes from afar was himself, more than anyone else.

This emptiness served as proof.

The reality where Mushi destroyed the city.

It reaffirmed his sins and meant the failure of the research.

“No, it already ended long ago. When I lost her, my world lost all meaning.”

There was only one woman he truly loved.

Rui offered everything he had to her, and she also accepted it all.

In this world, filled with so much hatred and betrayal, she taught him the meaning of infinity. If she hadn’t given her selfless love, Rui would have probably turned into a monster that controlled others through money and authority.

They obviously exchanged the vows of marriage, and had a child.

And—his most loved person suddenly left the world he inhabited on a journey.

“I couldn’t accept that it ended… and ran into a dream. To the stupid nightmare of the Undying.”

Rui looked at the sleeping face of his daughter.

He wished for the Undying for this girl’s sake.

Since he didn’t want to lose a loved person again, he tried making his daughter Undying. If he could release her from the cruel fate of death, his daughter would be happy—

Him believing so from the bottom of his heart probably meant he lost his sanity.

Reality would become a living hell that allowed no death.

That fate—was nothing more than a curse.

“The moment I lost her, I really thought I’d been cursed… but I was wrong. The one casting curses was myself—”

In order to forget the unbearable sadness and emptiness, he was trying to use his own daughter.

Such a person was even scarier than Mushi, and was nothing more than a walking disaster.

If he really intended on stopping the research about Undying, he should have done it long ago.

But since he didn’t, he prophesized.

“My curse will change this country—no, this world.”

The monster called Mushi would destroy people.

The form of that future that only had despair rose to his eyes.

“Let’s get out of the country. Call a car.”

So he was going to run away.

“So at least this child doesn’t get cursed… let’s run far away.”

“…There are many people who need your powers, master. If you were to abandon the country, you really wouldn’t be able to solve anything.”

“I don’t care…”

It was how he really felt.

Actually, he thought so from the very moment he lost his beloved.

Once he lost his partner in life, everything he’d offered up to her was lost as well.

“A world without her is worthless—”

It happened when Rui mumbled this.

His daughter suddenly rose.

Large eyes that didn’t look as if she just woke stared at her father Rui’s face.

“…You can go back to sleep. When you next open your eyes, it will be in a world without monsters—”

''Slap.

A dry sound and a slight pain stopped Rui’s words.

His still-young daughter used both small arms to strike his cheeks from both sides.

With an angry face, his daughter stared at him.

“…”

Rui froze, startled.

His daughter’s knees folded. Leaning on his chest, she began sleeping comfortably again.

“No way. Have I just been—scolded?”

Heat began to gather on his cheeks.

This slight pain brought to mind his past vividly.

When he tried running away of carrying the burden of his lineage and wealth, there was a woman who scolded him the same way.

The person who told him that he wasn’t alone and tried living with him.

“Haha, ha… getting scolded by my own toddler, what kind of a parent am I?”

How could he have forgotten?

Being dyed by sadness made him forget all the fun times as if they were a distant past.

“What a stupid dad I am… haha.”

She was alive.

He lost the woman he loved, but his connection with her was sleeping on his lap.

Although she lost her flesh, if the shape of love created with the one he vowed an eternity with still remained—

That eternity still continued.

Perhaps Rui hadn’t lost everything yet—

“—Go to the ship.”

His short order was followed by the old man. He turned the car.

“I already obtained the Undying…”

Even if the life of his loved one was lost, the life she’d left him was in his arms.

That connection remained unsevered.

If that wasn’t Undying, what even was?

“All that remains is cutting off the curse.”

He might already be late.

However, he was going to use his power to cut off at least one of the origins of disaster.

All for the sake of his beloved, still-living daughter.

“I wish this daughter of mine wouldn’t wake into a nightmare…”

So she could live in a peaceful world that had no Mushi.

So he could welcome a son that had one or two bad habits.

Rui headed toward the place that was the beginning and the end.