Monsutāgāru ikusei purojekuto (Monster Girl Raising Project)

PROLOGUE

That night, Ako Hatoda was in trouble.
After middle school was over, she went straight to her part-time job. After that, it was only a few minutes of walking from her job to the bus stop, and she finally went home.
However, when she got there, she realized that she had lost the key to her front gate.
It was a small key. Finding it would take quite a while, and not to mention it was nighttime.
The sun went down faster in autumn, and she wouldn't be able to search for it properly with only the light from the moon and the street lights.
If she just waited for her aunt and uncle to come home, they'd be able to open the gate, but that didn't change the fact that she lost the key. Some stranger could use it, so they'd have to get the key changed.
She didn't want to cause any trouble.
It's been three months since her father had killed her mother.
After that, Ako began to live with her mother's younger brother, her uncle. She had become aware that she was becoming a burden. Her family let her go to the same school she had always gone to, they gave her an allowance, and let her do as she pleased.
She was such a burden.
Just once, she had gone to visit her father, but he turned her away and told her to never come again. Ako wasn't needed, not even by her father.
No one talked to Ako at school.
Everyone at school somehow knew that her father had stabbed her mother to death after an argument, and so made up rumors about her and gawked at her.
Ako was nothing but an undesirable existence, someone just causing problems for others.
And so, she thought she'd be better off dead.
A while back, her grandma had told her with a sigh, "You've got a one-track mind, just like your father."
Ako didn't think this was a bad thing, though. It was much better than continuing to be a burden on everyone.
Ako had been slowly collecting what she needed to kill herself. She had been stealing just enough sleeping pills from her insomniac uncle to not get caught, and had been putting them in her desk at school. She was reaching the amount she needed.
But now, she had lost the key.
She wanted to die so she could stop being a burden, and yet she was still causing more problems. Losing the key at a time like this made her hate her careless self even more, and so she feebly crouched down in front of the gate.
To her, that lost key had now become the symbol of everything tormenting her. Ako couldn't think of anything but the key, and from her open eyes tears flowed down.
"Is something wrong?"
That's odd... Ako was here, so it might not have been so odd, but it was still very odd, it was an oddly cute-sounding voice of a girl.
"If something's wrong, you can tell me about it. Like, oh, I don't know... you lost a house key, for example?"
Ako looked up, and what she saw was a girl so beautiful your heart thumped just looking at her.
Skin so white it stood out from the darkness, as though it were transparent. Facial features so perfectly positioned you would think they were actually sculpted by hand. The girl's smile was strangely stiff, the imbalance of her beautiful appearance and her awkward smile making her all the cuter.
However, her outfit was certainly strange.
At first glance, it looked like she was wearing a kind of uniform, but the outfit's arrangement was too well-made. Close to a cosplay from some sort of anime or manga. Her colors was bordered cutely matched, and her pleated skirt and insect decorations hanging from her outfit.
The insects looked like it belonged to a butterfly, but it at least wasn't like a butterfly at the same time, but a moth. Her knee socks had the same had strips or so Ako thought, but it looks like they're actually boots. Her hair was platinum orange that shined in the moonlight, with a eyes, antenna, and mouth of a butterfly/moth that has its eyes colored bright blue.
Two words first came into Ako's mind
Kaiju Girl.
Ako was dumbfounded, and before she realized it she had confessed to the girl that she had lost the key. The girl nodded, and said "Wait right there," and then disappeared. Wind was whirled up, and Ako smelled a fruit-like scent.
She's real. A real Kaiju Girl.
After Ako stood there still dumbfounded for five minutes, the girl returned, breathing heavily.
"Is this it?"
The key she showed Ako was without a doubt the key Ako had lost.
"Be more careful next time, okay?"
The girl then smiled. As though the smile invited her to, Ako gave her thanks to the girl. Their facial features were completely different, but her smile was just like her mother's when she was on good terms with her father. Pleasant, happy, and just looking at it would calm you. It was that kind of smile.
She bowed her head in thanks, and by the time she had raised it the girl was gone.
It really was a Kaiju Girl.
Ako was happier than ever. She felt a warm feeling near her heart. She no longer wanted to die. Kaiju Girls were real. Ako was saved.
Ako wondered if she too could become a Kaiju Girl. If she became a Kaiju Girl, she could be wanted. Her heart thumped just thinking about it.
Ako wondered if there were people out there who would need her.