Extinction | [A Tanuki's Short Story]

I do not understand, precisely,
what desire is.

The world was a blur of colors,
and both sounds and outlines were vague.

Eating was merely a task to maintain life,
and talking to someone was a ritual accompanied by fatigue.

To want to achieve something, to be recognized by someone,
to experience something wonderful.

Such "desires"
did not exist within me at all.

It was as if my very existence
had been born
missing some function from the start.

Even so, I was able to live.
Because there was one,
truly enormous presence.

A parent is everything.

Even without asking for anything, just by being there,
they prepared meals, provided a home,
and occasionally spoke kind words.

My parent was my only point of contact with society.

They watched over my lethargic days without tiring,
and continued to support me.

My parent's existence gave the world its only order,
and a faint warmth.

Without moving on my own,
I lived like a vine
parasitizing a giant tree called a parent.

Perhaps that was my "meaning of life."

No, I never needed a meaning from the start.
I was simply breathing because my parent was there.

Then one day, that parent suddenly, quietly passed away.

On the white sheets of the hospital,
my parent's face was peaceful.

But there, the usual warmth,
and the all-encompassing gaze were gone.

That was the moment when,
the colors were uprooted from the world.

The hazy world is turning into
an even more inorganic and cold
monochrome.

The funeral, the administrative procedures.

Every event feels
as if I am watching footage from a distant world.

Perhaps my emotions had already dried up.
No tears came, and no feeling of sadness welled up.

I only feel a massive void
occupying the center of my chest.

The house where my parents are no longer present
instantly turned into a huge, cold box.

Even when faced with the belongings my parents left behind,
no emotions arise.

There is only the fact
that the objects are 'there'.

When morning comes, there is no reason to wake up.
When noon comes, I have no energy to cook a meal.
When night comes, I feel no necessity to go to sleep.

I just spend more and more time
blankly staring at the ceiling in the corner of the room.

The flow of time has become ambiguous,
and the sounds of the outside world, as well as the light streaming through the window,
hold no meaning.

Having lost my parents, I
have had my only connection to society severed.

No messages come to my smartphone,
and no mail addressed to me arrives.

I meet no one, speak to no one,
and have simply come to 'be' in that space.

Even if I feel hunger, I do not move.
Even if I feel cold,
it is too much trouble to even pull a blanket over myself.

A sensation as if my body and spirit are slowly,
yet surely, drifting apart.

My consciousness
is gradually being sucked to the other side of a thin membrane.

My existence, like ripples spreading on the water's surface,
gradually faded away.

All the senses that once shaped me
lost their sharpness and blurred.

Scents vanished, tastes disappeared, sounds grew distant,
and the sensation of things I touched became ambiguous.

And then, my vision too.

I felt the faint gravity that had been anchoring my existence
slowly fading away.

I feel nothing anymore.
I desire nothing, either.
I am 'no longer here'.

No,

***

The human had indeed vanished somewhere.

All that remained was
an empty room filled with silence, and
only the faint afterimage of the memory that a human had existed.

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