Chapter 38 REINCARNATION
I was an unwanted child.
My earliest memory was of a fight between my so-called “parents”.
They looked at me with scornful eyes. They vented any and all irritation upon me. They were always yelling. The man called me an eyesore every time he saw me, told me to shut up every time I cried.
How many times he’d kicked me, I didn’t recall. Nor could I remember the number of beatings the woman had given me, even as she screamed “You should never have been born!”
Bruises littered my skin. Every morning, I got a single loaf of hard bread to last the whole day.
Once every few days, I would have a chance to wash myself with the leftover bath water. They threw me out to the veranda at night, and I would curl up and sleep in any empty spot I could find among the mountains of trash outside the house.
Before I noticed, the man was no longer around the house. The woman, mind sick and heart twisted, called me a “demon” as her final words to me. The last I saw of her was her misshapen grin as her hands tightened around my throat.
When I came to, I was in a white hospital room. I was fed decent, warm food for the first time.
I vomited it all.
I didn’t speak, laugh, or even cry much. No one would love such a kid. The adults of the orphanage always hit me first before talking. They would take my food away, lock me inside a storeroom until morning, and they called it “discipline”.
What did I ever do?
Upon turning eight years old in the orphanage, I finally gave up on being a child.
***
“Audrey, what’s going on over there? No. 13 had a response, right? Come on, explain quick!”
The audio-visual VR device could not share any data that was yet to be digitized. Brian, in the 7th research center, could not see what was going on in the collection facility. Audrey and the staff members heard his voice.
But none could speak. The unnatural sight they saw and the chilly presence they felt had rooted them to the spot.
No. 13 was lying there, outside of the suspended animation capsule and connected to a myriad of machines. Her body turned white, as if the color was being sucked out of her, and finally crumbled into a pile of salt.
As if in response, the other fifty-six secret alpha tester bodies inside their capsules followed suit and collapsed into salt.
The voice of a girl faintly rang deep inside the ears of everyone there.
“…I’m back…”
A white, shining ball of light gently rose up from No. 13’s pile of salt. The salt flew up and weaved around the ball, forming a vague human shape.
Sounds of fracturing glass rang out throughout the room. From the other fifty-six capsules, the salt slipped through the newly-formed cracks and danced around the human silhouette. They gathered, putting details to the shape.
Smooth white skin, like porcelain.
Curly snow-white hair hanging to the shoulders, and poking out from the locks were two long, similarly white ears.
Her eyes slowly opened, revealing two pools of blood-red pupils.
She floated in the air, graceful limbs bare to all. Then smears of bloody liquid began to form, staining the pure whiteness. The liquid transformed into a scarlet dress with a black collar and a puffy, layered miniskirt. Black stockings with a hint of red, scarlet high-heels, and red gloves wrapping around sharp claws completed the ensemble.
Such an eerie bunny girl.
As the girl leisurely spread her arms, fifty-six balls of light gathered toward her. She tenderly hugged them to her chest.
“Can you hear me? What the hell is going on?!”
Brian’s voice unknowingly cut through the fantastic spectacle, bringing the room’s occupants back to their own minds.
Hearing the voice, the white girl finally turned her eyes to the humans. Her red eyes narrowed into a cool glare.
An electrode rod clattered on the floor.
“…ah?”
Their thoughts could not catch up to reality for an instant. Between one blink of the eye to the next, the white girl’s kick had already taken off the orphanage supervisor’s left arm. The limb was pulverized into dust.
“…aa…aaaaAAAAHHH!?”
The stump froze. Despite the lack of any pain or bleeding, the woman still screamed from the terror of seeing her own arm blowing off. As she held the wound with her right hands, the frost spread to her fingers. They shattered, prompting another howl.
“AAAaaAAAArRGGHH!!!”
There was no pain. As the terrified woman writhed on the floor, screaming all the while, the white girl picked up the electrode rod on the floor. She calmly approached, holding down the woman, and slowly pushed the rod deep into her ear.
“Aakh…gah…”
The supervisor woman twitched, once, twice, then finally lay still. The staff members could only watch in silent horror.
“…aaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”
A woman was the first among the spectators to react. Her terror, no longer under control, made itself apparent with a throat-splitting scream.
With her voice, the other staff members finally came back to themselves. They rang the alarm.
Author’s Note: The description of her outfit might not be easy to understand, so I made this rough sketch.
If you’re not very good at imagining how she looked and if you’re interested, feel free to take a look.
