もののけ | monster | soshiro hoshina (Kaiju No. 8) (COMPLETE)

ろくじゅうさん | sixty three

もののけ | kaiju | monster

63

Trigger Warning: This chapter contains intense and distressing scenes involving physical and emotional abuse, non-consensual acts, and manipulation. Reader discretion is advised.

[TRUTH OF THE PAST]
THE ONE WHO BECAME A MONSTER
PART 4

[A lengthy chapter ahead]

Kiyomi

I KNEW I WAS DEAD. My body had been crushed under tons of debris—concrete slabs, boulders, twisted metal-each one heavier than the last, pressing down on me with a weight that had stolen my breath away. I had felt every agonizing second of it, every bone in my body shattering, every muscle tearing under the immense pressure.

The pain had been unbearable, a white-hot agony that had seared through me until it reached the point of numbness, the kind that only comes when the body is too broken to feel anything more. I remembered that final moment, the way my breath had hitched in my throat, the way my lungs had struggled to draw in air that wasn't there, the way everything had gone dark as I took what I was sure would be my last breath.

I knew I was dead.

But why the hell did I still feel like I was alive?

The sharp, sterile beeping of a machine cut through the darkness, piercing the silence with a monotonous rhythm that echoed in my ears. It was the first thing I noticed—the steady sound of my own breath, in and out, like a machine. But it felt wrong, too controlled, too measured, like l wasn't the one breathing at all. My eyelids were heavy, as if weighted down by an unseen force, yet I fought to open them. The effort was exhausting, but the need to understand where I was, what was happening, propelled me forward.

When my eyes finally cracked open, a blinding light assaulted them, and I winced, trying to blink away the haze that blurred my vision. Everything seemed too bright, too harsh, like the world had been turned up to an intensity I wasn't ready for. Slowly, painstakingly, the world around me came into focus.

I was enclosed in something-something smooth and transparent, like a giant dome. The surface reflected the cold, sterile light above me, and as I looked around, realized I was lying down. I should've been in pain; I remembered the crushing weight, the agony that had torn through me as the debris had buried me alive. But there was nothing. No pain, no discomfort. It was as if my body had been disconnected from me, severed from the reality of what I should have felt.

A massive oxygen mask was strapped to my face, fogging up with every exhale. It felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. I was alive, but how? The last thing remembered was the excruciating pain, the feeling of my bones snapping, my skull splitting under the weight. I had been certain I was going to die.

I forced my eyes to move, scanning my surroundings. My body remained unresponsive, trapped in some limbo where I was aware but powerless, like I was a prisoner inside my own mind. I was in a lab—a sterile, high-tech room filled with machines that blinked and whirred, each one more unfamiliar than the last. The air was thick with the hum of technology, a sound that seemed to press in on me from all sides.