Chapter 1-6
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VOLUME 1
Chapter 1: Part 6
I stopped my bike at the foot of the hill and slipped through a gap in the fence. Since the hill was in fact private property, its surroundings were enclosed in barbed wire. Still, it looked like no one was taking care of it. The weeds were overgrown, the ground was downtrodden and the barbed wire was all torn up. I hadn’t heard about all the kids playing around and vandalising the place.
Using my flashlight, I trudged up the narrow dirt trail with a great deal of effort. My back bent under the weight of my body pillow. Luckily, the hill was a small one and it only took ten minutes to reach the summit. There, the ancient cedar tree spread itself out, its single thick bough appearing to cradle the night sky.
The Stony Cat was there that night too, propped up by the base of that tree.
Its face was about half as big as my leg. It was three feet tall, stood on two feet and was crudely made. Even though it had eyes, whiskers and a nose carved into its wooden face, the Stony Cat had so little in the way of expressions that for some reason I thought it looked strange. While a normal cat raises one paw to beckon, this cat had both paws raised. On top of that, the back of its paws were faced my way.
Maybe Mother Nature was its maker. The sight of it was both awful and awe-inspiring. I didn’t know how long it had been enshrined, but I had a sense that it had always been there. Looking at this creature, I could certainly see how the bizarre rumours had come about.
Because of the bugs gathering around, I turned off my flashlight. As if on cue, the darkness instantly became total. I put my body pillow in front of the cat and immediately set down to pray – or so I intended. I hesitated first. “Hmmm, maybe it’s better if I do this,” I muttered as I removed my leather belt and fixed my body pillow up straight.
By impulse, I had mail-ordered a body pillow just like Ponta’s. It even had a name: “Barbara.” A posing shot of an idol I liked at the time was supposed to be printed on the fabric, but when I got the pillow I was shocked. The image was from another dimension, a creature from an alien invasion. I didn’t have the wisdom to return it nor the guts to trash it.
You see, Ponta and I forced each other into having it. It was a pass-the-parcel game spanning a couple of months. Recently, as a way of congratulating him for passing the high school entrance exam, I snuck it into Ponta’s locker. Then at some point in March this year, it had ended up back in my closet. Come to think of it, it was in March when Ponta prayed to the cat statue. He said he used the pillow as an offering, but then just how did it find its way to my closet through all the wind and rain?
Barbara was being used twice for religious purposes, so she had to be satisfied with herself. “I wonder if this god will be happy with a body pillow of all things as an offering,” I thought aloud. “I hope it’ll be okay…”
Then again, since Ponta’s wish was granted and all, I figured no other offering would work. Good thing it was the middle of the night. If someone saw me lugging Barbara around, just what would they thi-
Plonk. Someone kicked a rock.
I held my breath in the darkness. Who was it? The police? A high school kid walking around with a human-like object strapped to him with a belt was just asking to be arrested for disturbing the peace! If they searched my house, my treasures would be confiscated! Destroyed! I’d rather die.
Yeah, that probably wouldn’t happen, but if the Steel King found out, she’d be furious: “Body pillows are a sign of weakness! Such insolence!” She’d probably beat me to a pulp. That’s not the kind of hard-core hobby I’m into. Same thing if I was discovered by a neighbour or by someone from school. I didn’t want to live out my youth under the dubious title of “Barbara’s boyfriend”.
I had no intention of dying – socially or physically. Man, oh man. What was I gonna do?
While I struggled to hold my thoughts together, the sound of footsteps trampling through the undergrowth grew nearer. I was frozen to the spot, unable to make up my mind between running away or announcing myself. I didn’t even question why anyone would choose to go to Ipponsugi Hill of all places.
Ahead of me, I saw a beam from a flashlight teeter from side to side. It was practically right under my nose already. The intruder was only a metre away or so. Argh, I didn’t care if it was the police, the Steel King or a complete stranger. I’d rather live to fight another day than stay in these dire straits.
The instant I stood up, we collided.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”
We’d been closer than I thought. Had my eyes misjudged things in the dark?
“E-eek! Eww! P-p-perv…!” the intruder yelled.
“W-whadju say?!” I yelled.
The flashlight fell to the ground, casting light on the offering in front of it. And in that split second, Barbara could be seen for the bizarre sight that she was. You could not unsee the vision.
What vision? Answer: a naked body I’d just fooled around with and then thrown aside!
“Eeeeeeeek, it’s a pervert! Do I need the police or the ambulance – right, I need the police!”
“D-don’t bring the police into this! Barbara’s not alive, so it’s okay!”
“I’m sure the police would love to be brought into this! Now if you excuse me, I have business to do in a phone box!”
It was the voice of a girl I didn’t know. Still, I understood that it was the voice of someone who had encountered a degenerate lowlife.
“Wait wait, let’s talk this out first! This is all a big misunderstanding!”
“Lalalalala, I can’t hear you! I’m not looking at you! I saw nothing!”
“You saw nothing?! That’s not gonna hold up in a cross-examination, you know!”
“Of course it will! All the policemen in Japan are on my side! The policemen are mighty! They’re invincible against perverts!” The girl’s screams were getting more incoherent by the second.
The prospect of being handcuffed and jailed got much more real much more quickly. At this rate, if I went back to town my hit points would be in the critical zone!
The girl tripped over her feet, and at that same moment, her chest bumped against my hands.
Silence. We were in a precarious stalemate.
We sized each other up as if we were playing cat and mouse, and then our noses bumped. That instantly broke the spell.
“Eww eww ewwwww! You need to be in love to do those sorts of things!”
“What sort of things?! Just shut up and I’ll be gentle with you! Then we’ll all be happy!”
“Gentle or rough it’s still eww! My life sucks right now!”
“Get over yourself already!”
The girl wriggled violently, and at that same moment, I put her in a nelson hold (1).
She was frantic. So was I. Struggling wildly against each other, our feet tangled up and sent us tumbling across the undergrowth. Our knees touched, and somewhere I felt skin under my fingertips. My first thought was that girls are really soft to touch, and then I realised this would look really suspicious to other people. I had unwittingly stumbled across the line into criminal activity.
“I’m not tasty at all! I’m skinny and flat and I’m not wearing any underwear, so I’ll taste really yucky if you eat me! It’s true – don’t kill me!”
“Don’t say such sad things about yourself! Have some more self-esteem!”
“I don’t need any self-esteem as long as my body still belongs to me! My measurements are the worst in the class! I’ll taste better if you wait for two years, so I… I… want to be pure until then…!”
Without warning, the girl stopped resisting. The darkness clouded my view, but I didn’t need to see anything – I could sense it from her voice.
This girl was crying.
The tears and the snot streamed down her face, and her childish body hitched as she let out a hoarse sob.
I felt my panic rising, which didn’t help my growing headache. Even though I had just become a criminal, I had my morals. A boy who makes a girl cry is the worst. No matter how low you sink, that is the absolute.
I clasped my hand on the girl’s shoulder, which was pressed up against the ground. As I hovered over her, I inhaled deeply and said, “Hey, listen! Barbara’s just a body pillow!”
Her shoulder was so fragile I felt a pang in my chest. She was as delicate as china, and I feared that her weak and brittle frame would shatter under my touch.
In that moment, I threw away my façade and my dignity and I bellowed with all my lungs. “She’s not human, just a collector’s item I brought up here! I’m not dangerous and I won’t hurt you! Honestly, I’ve never pushed down a girl before either! My body’s pure!”
My voice echoed throughout the entire hill.
I took out my flashlight so that two beams now shone on the body pillow. The dim circle of lights revealed a lump of fabric – the symbol of a young man’s lusts. I depended on it to clear me of my crimes.
“…so this is your first time pushing someone down, I see,” she answered. “If you’re as pure as you say, could you get off me right now, please?” The suspicion still showed in her eyes.
Satisfied that she was no longer crying, I did as she said.
You can see just from that conversation that I would never touch a “forced sex” video. I could never be excited by a girl’s crying face. I have my morals. Whenever I choose what to download, I refuse to use anything from that genre – that is my absolute!
TRANSLATOR’S NOTES
(1) A kind of wrestling technique that involves pinning the partner’s arm and neck from behind.
(NanoDesu) A Translation of the Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko Light Novel 