No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

64
beings, to seek a mere night of repose, but in the process
of diverting myself with these"kindred"pro8titutes,
I seem to have acquired before I was aware of it a
certain offensive atmosphere which clung inseparably
to me. This was a quite unexpected by-product of my
experience, but gradually it became more manifest,
until Horiki pointed it out, to ray amazement and
consternation. I had, quite objectively speaking,
passed through an apprenticeship in women at the
hands of prostitutes, and I had of late become quite
adept. The severest apprenticeship in women, they
say, is with prostitutes, and that makes it the most
effective. The odor of the "lady-killer" had come to
permeate me, and women (not only prostitutes) instinctively
detected it and flocked to me. This obscene
and inglorious atmosphere was the "bonus" I received,
and it was apparently far more noticeable than
the recuperative effects of my apprenticeship.
Horiki informed me of it half as a compliment,
I suppose, but it struck a painful chord in me. I remembered
now clumsily written letters from bar
girls; and the general's daughter, a girl of twenty,
whose house was next to mine, and who every morning
when I went to school was always hovering around her
gate, all dressed up for no apparent reason; and the
waitress at the steak restaurant who, even when I
didn't say a word . . . ; and the girl at the tobacco