The Destruction of the World by Fire by Shiden Kanzaki Page A

minority. And maybe you shouldn’t support it so much.”
    Rentaro shook his head slowly. “That’s impossible, Doc. I can’t think of a life without Enju and Tina anymore.”
    “But they will fall like leaves one day. Rentaro, don’t chase after falling leaves. The lifespan of Cursed Children is bound by the shackles of the corrosion rate of their body, which they cannot be freed from.”
    Rentaro gritted his teeth and looked away from Sumire. “Doc, it’s not that I’m running away. I will definitely talk to Enju about this. But please don’t pursue it right now. It’s not like I know how to bring it up with her, either.”
    “It’s really the doctor’s job to tell them, though…”
    “Please don’t. When she finds out, I will definitely be the one who told her.”
    Sumire shrugged her shoulders. “Well, if that’s what you’ve decided, I won’t interfere. By the way, did you know, Rentaro, that Cursed Children can breed with normal humans?”
    “Theoretically speaking, right?”
    “No, it’s happened.”
    “What…do you mean?”
    “Do you know about the custom of child marriage? There are actually a lot of countries where girls get married when they’re still children.”
    “No, but the law……” One way or another, all civilized nations should have had some sort of law forbidding the marriage of girls until their bodies were matured.
    “What are you going on about? In the Middle East, in countries where rape crimes are rampant, girls lose their virginity just by walking outside. And generally, in those countries, no one will take a girl who’s damaged goods as a bride, so in order to prevent that from happening, parents will secretly marry their daughters off before they even understand what’s going on around them.And the Guinness World Record for youngest person to give birth is five years old. It’s not strange for one of the Cursed Children somewhere around the world to have already experienced giving birth.”
    “But wouldn’t the Cursed Children fight back? No one would want that, right? To be married off to some weird guy before you know it?” Besides, the girls were part of the New Humanity, with powers that far surpassed those of regular humans. If they faced a situation they didn’t want to be in, they should have the power to break out of it with their own hands.
    Sumire recrossed her legs in her chair. “Rentaro, do you know how elephants are trained?”
    “Elephants? No…”
    “When the elephants are still young, their legs are wrapped with a strong chain with the other end of the chain fixed to a stake. The young elephant will cry and go wild, but it won’t be able to break free. Eventually, that elephant gives up. And once it learns that it can’t get away, it’s all over. Even if it grows up to become an adult and gets stronger, if it has a thin hemp rope tied to its leg, it won’t try to move one step from that place.”
    Rentaro suddenly looked at himself in the full-length mirror at one end of the basement room. A scary Rentaro, eyes narrowed, stared back at him. “Doc, what’re you trying to say…?”
    “Try changing
elephant
for
Cursed Children
. Unfortunately, the story you thought up of the Cursed Children fighting for their own freedom is like the pipe dream of a child who doesn’t know the realities of the world yet. In countries where women already have low status, women are treated as trophies taken by victors of war, not as humans. Then, add the additional factor of Cursed Children to the list of things to be discriminated against. Those girls aren’t human anymore. They’re livestock. And even if they’re raped while being cut up, they don’t die easily. They’re pretty fun toys for perverts to play with.”
    “Stop.”
    “No, I won’t stop. I haven’t said anything until now, but I hate people like you who don’t face reality. Have you ever seen one of the Cursed Children cut up by blades and hung with a rope, rotting, with flies