No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

164
to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin."
I paced back and forth, half in a frenzy, between my
apartment and the pharmacy.
The more I worked the more morphine I consumed,
and my debt at the pharmacy reached a frightening
figure. Whenever the woman caught sight of
my face, the tears came to her eyes. I also wept.
Inferno.
I decided as a last resort, my last hope of escaping
the inferno, to write a long le,tter- j to-ray~father fat
which I confessed my circumstances fully and accurately
(with the exception, of course, of my relations
with women). If it failed I had no choice but to
hang myself, a resolve which was tantamount to a
bet on the existence of God.
The result was to make everything only the
worse: the answer, for which I waited day and night,
never came, and my anxiety and dread caused me
to increase still further the dosage of the drug.
I made up my mind one day to give myself ten
shots that night and throw myself into the river. But
on the afternoon of the very day I chose for the event,
Flatfish appeared with Horiki in tow, seemingly having
managed with his diabolical intuition to sniff out
my plan.
Horiki sat in front of me and said, with a gentle
smile, the like of which I had never before seen on his