No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

124
"Yes, isn't it?" Shizuko's low laugh sounded
genuinely happy.
I opened the door a crack and looked in. I saw
a small white rabbit bounding around the room. The
two of them were chasing it.
(They were happy, the two of them. I'd been a
fool to come between them. I might destroy them
both if I were not careful. A humble happiness. A good
mother and child. Cod, I thought, if you listen to the
prayers of people like myself, grant me happiness
once, only once in my whole lifetime will be enough!
Hear my prayer!)
I felt like getting down on my knees to pray then
and there. I shut the door Boftly, went to the Cinza,
and did not return to the apartment.
My next spell as a kept man was in an apartment
over a bar close by the Kyobashi Station.
'"Society. I felt as though even I were beginning
at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant.
It is the struggle between one indiyidualjinjLanotherT'
a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate
triumph is everything. Human beings never submit
to human beings. Even slaves practice their mean retaliations.
Human beings cannot conceive of any
means of survival except in terms of a single thenand-there
contest. They speak of duty to one's country