No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

148
minute before he had staggered off downstairs, and
here he was back again, before I knew it.
"What is it?"
A strange excitement ran through me. The two of
us went down from the roof to the second floor and
were half-way down the stairs to my room on the
ground floor when Horiki stopped me and whispered,
"Look!" He pointed.
A small window opened over my room, through
which I could see the interior. The light was lit and
two animals were visible.
My eyes swam, but I murmured to myself through
my violent breathing, "This is just another aspect of
the behavior of human beings. There's nothing to be
surprised at." I stood petrified on the staircase, not
even thinking to help Yoshiko.
Horiki noisily cleared his throat. I ran back up
to the roof to escape and collapsed there. The feelings
which assailed me as I looked up at the summer night
sky heavy with rain were not of fury or hatred, nor
even of sadness. They were of overpowering fear, not
the terror the sight of ghosts in a graveyard might
arouse, but rather a fierce ancestral dread that could
not be expressed in four or five words, something perhaps
like encountering in the sacred grove of a Shinto
shrine the white-clothed body of the god. My hair
turned prematurely grey from that night. I had now
VwttJUf WITC/OO HI/ HMm\