Short Story: The Rhapsody of the Death Row Inmate with a Neck Too Thick

When he was born, his neck was a little thicker than other people's.

His parents thought, "Our child's neck is a bit thick," but they were more overjoyed that he had been born safely.

Perhaps it was because his neck was thicker than others'.

Generally, it is said that an infant's neck becomes steady around three months after birth, but his neck was completely steady at 20 days old.

Although his neck was a bit thick, he grew up healthy, wrapped in his parents' deep love.

However, around the time he entered elementary school, his neck began to look clearly different from others'.

Even though he was not obese, he had no facial contour.

Immediately below his jaw and chin, there was a neck of the same thickness, and his head and neck looked like a cylinder.

Even though his face and head were not rounded at all, the reason he looked like a cylinder was, after all, because there was no step between his face and his neck.

When he was a toddler, no one teased him, but once he started elementary school, his classmates began giving him nicknames and making fun of the thickness of his neck.

The first nickname he remembers was Cristiano Ronaldo, and as his neck grew thicker, his nicknames changed.

In the fifth grade, his classmates, who had learned the concept of a cylinder, began calling him Cylinder, and after learning the formula for calculating its volume in the sixth grade, they began calling him Base Area × Height. When someone realized that nickname was too long and hard to say, they started calling him Volume, and his nickname reached its final destination as Volume.

Hey, Volume. Hey, Volume.

The reason he was able to endure the painful days of being insulted by his classmates every day was the existence of one girl.

While everyone else insulted him by saying, "Hey, Volume, hey, Volume," only one girl called him Takeshi-kun.

There was a reason why that girl was kind to him.

The girl herself also had a deep-seated complex.

Born and raised in a family where both her father and mother were professional keirin cyclists, she had been given an elite education in keirin since she was very young.

Forced to practice every single day on the practice keirin track installed in their home, her body began to develop features different from others by the time she was about to enter elementary school.

She had become a girl with thighs that were too thick.

Due to the training piled up day after day, both of her thighs had become as thick as the waistline of an average classmate.

He, with a neck that was too thick, and she, with thighs that were too thick, found themselves in a romantic relationship before they knew it, as they comforted each other over their respective complexes.

While filling the void of each other's complexes, a change occurred when he went on to become a university student with an overly thick neck and she entered a training school for keirin cyclists.

His situation did not change much, but hers did.

When she entered the keirin training school, she was no longer special.

In a world where people aim to be keirin cyclists, having thick thighs is a given; in fact, the thicker they are, the more they are respected as proof of rigorous training.

Upon entering the world of keirin, she met a man for the first time in her life who had the exact same circumstances and past as her.

Meeting him brought not a superficial comfort like the one she shared with the man with the thick neck, but a true sharing of their complexes and a liberation of the heart.

She became so obsessed with her love and intimacy with the man with the thick thighs that she stopped caring about keirin altogether.

The act itself didn't matter much, but she felt an abnormal level of excitement when their thick thighs rubbed against each other during intimacy.

The man with the thick thighs felt the same, and they rubbed their thighs against each other until the skin became swollen.

The more they rubbed their thighs together, the more they accepted each other's existence, their lives, and their painful pasts, savoring a sweet, melting sensation as they merged.

Looking back, she realized that the skin on her father's and mother's thighs was always swollen.

She learned the reason for that upon meeting this man with the thighs of destiny.

Those swollen patches of skin were the crystallization of her father's and mother's love.

Having learned what real thickness was, she began to ignore messages from him, the man with the thick neck.

In truth, she had preferred men with thin necks since she was a child.

Because she had her own complexes, she had simply been settling for him and his thick neck.

Now that she had found her ideal man—one with a thin neck and thick thighs—the man with the thick neck was nothing more than a nuisance to her.

The man with the thick neck, who had suddenly lost contact with her, could not easily give up on her, as she had been his only hope for survival since childhood.

Since she wouldn't answer his calls, he had no choice but to resort to drastic measures.

He snuck into the dormitory of the training school where she lived.

He believed that if they could meet and talk in person, they would surely understand each other, given the emotional bond they had shared since childhood, encouraging each other through their respective complexes.

She returned home late at night.

Hearing her talking to someone at the entrance as she arrived, he hid instinctively.

Unaware that the man with the thick neck was hiding in the closet, the man with the thick thighs and she, with her thick thighs, began to passionately desire each other as they always did.

Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

Thighs rubbing together...

Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

Thick thighs against thick thighs... melting into each other...

Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

Rolling their eyes back... rubbing against each other... until their skin became swollen...

Eventually, the frenzy subsided, and the two began to talk quietly, savoring the afterglow.

["By the way, did you properly break up with that guy back home?"]

[I already told you not to contact me, but you're so persistent.]

[Wait, didn't you say that guy has a neck that's too thick?]

[That's right.]

[Why don't you just tell him, 'You're fired' from being my boyfriend?]

We were laughing together after having that conversation.

My boyfriend with the thick thighs said,

[You know, maybe his neck doesn't actually look thick because it's thick, but because his torso is so thin?]

The moment he said that, the man with the thick neck burst out of the closet and, catching the two with the thick thighs off guard and causing them to collapse in shock, began to beat them like a madman.

He was used to being mocked about his neck and could endure that, but he could not stand being falsely accused of having a thin torso.

I won't let them pin anything else on me... especially not a false accusation...

He kept on beating them.

My torso is normal! My torso is normal! My torso is normal!

By the time the residents of the other rooms heard him screaming that while beating the two and managed to restrain him and call the police, the two with the thick thighs were already dead.

He was sentenced to death for killing the two of them.

Having killed two people without any sense of resolve, he became a death row inmate and was gradually tormented by the fear of his own death.

Even after his request for a retrial was rejected and all that remained was the execution of his sentence—that is, waiting for death—no feelings of remorse welled up in his mind, only the fear of death.

Is there any way to avoid death?

As he researched, he learned that the death penalty in Japan is carried out by hanging, and that it ends once a doctor confirms death.

Is there any way to survive the execution...?

If he could endure the hanging until the time came for the doctor to move on to their next job, wouldn't he be able to avoid death...?

And, wouldn't he be able to do that, given his thick neck...?

No, rather, as long as his request for a retrial had been rejected, this was the only way he could hope to avoid death...

He decided to endure the execution.

From the next day on, he spent all the exercise time allowed in the detention center on training his neck by putting a load on it.

Naturally thick-necked, he should have had an even thicker neck, but he had lived his life trying to avoid putting any strain on it and training it naturally so that it wouldn't get any thicker.

Because of that, from the moment he lifted the ban on neck exercises, his neck began to thicken at an incredible rate.

Five years after his death sentence was finalized, on the morning his execution was finally decided, his neck was already wider than his shoulders.

The sentence was carried out.

Naturally, with a neck wider than his shoulders, he did not die easily.

However, because he had suddenly and excessively trained his neck, his plan had been discovered by the prison officers.

Therefore, multiple doctors had been hired in advance and shifts were scheduled, so that even if death could not be confirmed, they could move on to their next job.

He, whose neck was wider than his shoulders, did not die easily by hanging, but finally passed away from starvation two months later.

(End)