Matsuda Jinpei Reborn, but as a Nonhuman

(This book is a rewrite of Matsuda's Wrong Way to Restart. The main difference is that the timeline has been shifted two years later.)

Blurb:

What he saw when he opened his eyes was an unfamiliar ceiling.

It hurt so much.

Matsuda Jinpei had thought he was a goner.

After all, his chest and abdomen had been blown open. There was no chance he could have been rescued, and no future waiting for him.

It hurt so much.

So what was this "him" who was alive here now?

A twisted white line crawled out of the corner of his vision, wriggling and drifting to the center of his sight. It broke into several pieces, then kept changing shape until it formed a line of trembling little words.

"My Temporary Workshop of Magic" was labeled on the ceiling.

The words wouldn't disappear, even when he closed and reopened his eyes. They looked like a childish scribble.

A workshop of magic? What was that?

It hurt so much.

He turned his head and saw a wooden bookshelf that seemed oddly out of place.

The white lines crawled along with his gaze, then changed shape beside the bookshelf in his field of view, forming a line of text.

"Bookshelf Something very important is kept here"

"...This is like some crappy RPG."

It hurt so much.

More tiny white lines branched off, turning his entire field of vision into a game's status screen.

In the lower left corner, the white lines writhed into the small words "Status."

The lonely "Status" had only one entry after it.

"Saint's Heart": A saint has descended upon this land...

An explanation that began and ended nowhere.

Perhaps this so-called saint's arrival would bring some unknown change to the people of this land.

Some lines crawled to the lower right corner and formed three bars. The first was half full, the second almost full, and the third had only a thin layer filled.

They had no labels, and he had no idea what the bars meant.

It hurt so much.

Now his abdomen throbbed with a sharp, cutting pain, even though there was nothing wrong when he touched it.

No wounds, no charred flesh, no blood.

Why would I have a dream like this?

Why did I wake up again?

Why was I lying in this dim room?

Why couldn't I feel anything at a time like this?

Outside the wide-open door, the landline rang.

As if some force had crushed his most basic feelings, neither anxiety nor fear rose to his pale face.

The cutting pain in his abdomen never went away, so he always had to keep a bottle of painkillers on his bedside table.

Yet his mind grew more and more restless by the day.

A deep-seated nausea made it feel as if his organs were sliding and tangling unchecked inside him. It was like kneading strips of meat into beaten eggs, leaving him unable to swallow food.

Mixed in with it was an ever-growing, intense desire.

A desire for blood and slaughter, coming from the other half of his body.

Matsuda Jinpei curled up in a corner of the bathroom. In an instant, he became a beast that filled the cramped room to the brim.

He/it had the head of a canine, a blackish-purple head and animal ears, and spasmed helplessly in the confined space.

Its canine muzzle, baring sharp teeth, snapped open and shut. Trembling, it managed to speak human words.

"Am I not even... human anymore...? Ha."

Scalding liquid ran down his cheek and dripped into his mouth, provoking only an instinctive snap of the jaws.

If he could indulge this beast within him without restraint, like an infant, abandon human reason, drown in the ultimate pleasure of slaughter, and butcher everything in sight, wouldn't this pitiful man be freed from this extreme mental torment?

He knew better than anyone how agonizing it was.

And he knew better than anyone that it meant never knowing peace again.

But he refused.

"There are already enough people suffering because of this."

He absolutely could not let the person he was now take even half a step forward.

He thrust both clawed hands into his empty abdominal cavity and tore at the last scraps of flesh, refusing to surrender to the bloodthirsty instinct to kill others.

From beginning to end, he held fast to the final principle of Matsuda Jinpei as a human being.

"Two years ago, I had a dear friend who was tragically killed in a terrorist attack in Tsugawa...

You must have heard about that massacre, right? The newspaper reporters were all going crazy, crowding outside the Metropolitan Police Department. Yeah, nine dead and thirty-two injured. I still remember it.

You really look like him, Manager Matsuda.

You really, really look like my friend, ████..."

Hagiwara Kenji, a detective from the First Investigation Division, sat in Cafe Poirot and spoke.

But Matsuda Jinpei, listening across from him, felt a chill run down his spine.

The thought crowded out all his grief and resentment.

"What about the 'Matsuda Jinpei' of this world?

Fate has been reversed."

In his vision, the white lines twisted into words, glaringly bright.

"Your last job before leaving the organization was to kill your partner, right?

How disgusting. I almost hoped you had a little loyalty to your comrades and would go easy on an old partner, so I could pick up the scraps.

You're sickening."

Matsuda Jinpei saw the flames in his eyes, impossible to hide, so unlike what he said aloud.

The blond man gripped Matsuda's collar tightly with both hands, gnashing his teeth as he growled.

A pair of purple eyes stared at him with an almost murderous resolve.

The last status bar in his vision surged like a rising tide, gradually casting a red shadow in the corner.

"Do you think I even want to keep living like this!"

Driven by that grief, a torrent of blood-sweet liquid mixed with bits of flesh rushed up his throat.

He couldn't dodge in time. His dark-colored arm was drenched in sticky gore, and shredded pieces of flesh ran down his elbow, carried by bright red blood as they dripped onto the wet floor.

Theme: Matsuda Jinpei, do you really want to save other people that badly?