No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

150
would make a great ado over the trifling sums of
money he paid for them.
The shopkeeper, not surprisingly, did not come
again. I felt less hatred for him than I did for Horiki.
Why, when he first discovered them together had he
not cleared his throat then, instead of returning to
the roof to inform me? On nights when I could not
sleep hatred and loathing for him gathered inside me
until I groaned under the pressure.
I neither forgave nor refused to forgive her.
Yoshiko was a genius at trusting people. She didn't
know how to suspect anyone. But the misery it caused.
God, I ask you. Is trustfulness a sin?
It was less the fact of Yoshiko's defilement than
the defilement of her trust in people which became so
persistent a source of grief as almost to render my life
insupportable. For someone like myself in whom the
ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that
I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read
the expression on people's faces, Yoshiko's immaculate
trustfulness seemed clean and pure, like a waterfall
among green leaves. One night sufficed to turn
the waters of this pure cascade yellow and muddy.
Yoshiko began from that night to fret over my every
smile or frown.
She would jump when I called her, and seemed
at a loss which way to turn. She remained tense and