I Brought Home a Cthulhu - Chapter 1

It happened on a night of torrential rain.

A flash flood had triggered a landslide, and I had barely made it out alive on my way home.

Then, on a muddy slope with water roaring down it, I saw a motionless body lying facedown in the muck.

Rain hammered my face, each drop splashing hard enough to wash it for me. I wiped the water from my eyes and forced myself to focus.

It was a person.

It really was a person!

My heart leaped into my throat.

The area was extremely dangerous. If I tried to rescue them, there was a very real chance I would fall into the mudslide before I ever reached them.

But… but…

That was a person!

I couldn’t just stand there and let someone die!

My body moved before my brain could catch up. I threw away my useless, broken umbrella, ran over, and jumped down the slope.

The person lay facedown without the slightest movement.

Instinctively, I reached for the artery in her neck.

Her pulse was still strong!

She was alive!

As for why it felt so powerful that it seemed as though three pulses were beating at once… I chose not to think about that.

The rain was too heavy and the night too dark. I had no room to worry about details.

Panting hard, I hoisted her onto my back.

So light.

She was as light as… a shed skin.

The thought raised goose bumps all over me.

Had I walked one mountain road too many at night and finally run into a ghost?

But the head hanging over my shoulder did have weight to it.

There was no time to think. Even if she was a ghost, she was already on my back.

I needed to get out of there!

I clawed my way up the low embankment and broke into a run. The moment I reached the top, the slope collapsed behind me.

Too terrified to look back, I carried her all the way home.

And that was how, for no sensible reason at all, I picked up a stranger and brought her home.

At the time, I had no idea what sort of thing I had actually found.

Once home, I carried her into the bathroom, ran a hot bath, and washed the mud from her head to toe.

She woke in a daze. The moment the hot water touched her, a strange, tipsy languor came over her, as though she had just gotten drunk.

She draped herself bonelessly over the side of the tub.

Without thinking, I pressed a hand to her spine.

There were bones.

She had bones, so she was human.

That was what I told myself.

But then why did she look so… soft?

Like a puddle of… I couldn’t put my finger on it. A cartilaginous animal?

No.

A mollusk.

Visually, that was exactly how soft she seemed.

Maybe she was a dancer.

My mind supplied the explanation all by itself. The human brain was a marvelous thing: whenever it encountered something that defied common sense, it instinctively invented a scientific explanation.

As I washed her, I asked, “What’s your name?”

Eyes closed, she lounged there lazily.

Only after a long pause did she answer, drawing out every syllable. “…Qi Wuzhi.”

“Oh… that’s a lovely name. I’m Sang Feiwan.”

She gave no response, as though my name did not matter to her in the slightest.

One arm rested on the rim of the tub. Her other hand, however, had remained pressed over her stomach.

I grew alert. “Are you hurt? Let me look at your abdomen.”

She flicked me a weightless glance, then slowly moved her hand away.

The skin of her abdomen was smooth and unblemished. There was no wound at all.

I pressed it lightly. “Does that hurt?”

She said nothing.

That probably meant no.

I pressed around the area. “What about here?”

She tilted her head and remained silent.

“…”

Somehow, I could tell that she was not confused about how to answer. She was simply too arrogant to bother.

In her eyes, establishing any sort of human relationship with me was completely unnecessary—even while I was helping her.

What spoiled young lady had fallen on hard times and ended up in our tiny village?

I sighed and kept cleaning her. She was covered in mud.

But as I wiped it away, something began to look wrong.

“What happened to…”

A huge patch of skin was peeling from the back of her neck.

I gasped. “Doesn’t that hurt? A whole piece of skin has been scraped off!”

For a moment, I even wondered whether she had refused to answer me earlier because the pain was too intense.

She blinked. In the steam, her long lashes seemed to cling together, making each blink look laborious.

“…It doesn’t hurt,” she said languidly.

“…”

I could not have explained why, but I knew with absolute certainty that she had deigned to tell me it did not hurt not because she wanted to reassure me, but because my frightened voice was annoying her.

No one had ever conveyed an emotion to me with such impossible precision.

For an instant, I had the strange impression that I was not reading her through observation at all. It was as if she had delivered the emotion directly into the nerves of my brain.

That was the only way it could feel so exact.

Very carefully, I peeled the large translucent sheet from the back of her neck. Once removed, it shriveled rapidly in the steam.

Then it vanished.

I stared at my empty palm in astonishment, wondering whether I had hallucinated.

Human skin might shrink, but it shouldn’t disappear right out of my hand… should it?

My mouth fell open as I looked at her, equal parts startled and suspicious.

She remained draped quietly over the side of the tub, as if asleep.

Maybe… maybe it had not been skin.

Maybe some other substance had stuck to her neck and I had merely peeled it away.

Something like… yes, sugar.

Once again, my brain offered up a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Feeling calmer, I finished washing her, wrapped her in a large bath towel, and dried her off.

After changing into one of my nightdresses, she promptly went limp against me again. She was not willing to exert so much as an ounce of strength.

I had the distinct feeling she was using me as a piece of equipment.

But what else could I do?

She was so weak.

Resigned to my fate, I carried her to the bedroom.