“U-U-U-Sea turtle soup, sir...”
A blood-stained cook served sea turtle soup, but it clearly wasn't sea turtle, which is a problem.
The cook's apron is covered in blood, and there are clearly human handprints on it. We are on a shipwrecked vessel. Wait, isn't this human meat?
“No, it's sea turtle. This is sea turtle meat.”
“There weren't any sea turtles.”
“No, well, a sea turtle suddenly showed up.”
“What do you mean 'suddenly showed up'?”
“A sea turtle suddenly splashed onto the deck. It said, 'I'm a sea turtle! Please eat me!' so, you know.”
“Not 'you know'! Is this Tezuka Osamu's Buddha? And I heard sounds like a brawl on the deck earlier?”
“I was slaughtering the sea turtle.”
“But I heard a voice saying 'Don't kill me!'?”
“The sea turtle seemed to change its mind halfway through.”
“Sea turtles don't talk, do they?”
“Turtles are smart, you see.”
The cook was as persistent as an internet debater.
However, I'm starving too. I have no choice but to believe it's sea turtle. I look at the soup bowl in front of me.
“...There's clearly a human fingernail in here?!”
“That's a sea turtle scale.”
“There's a huge heart in here?”
“It's a sea turtle's heart.”
“No, the heart clearly has two atria and two ventricles? This is a mammal's heart.”
“Sea turtles sometimes undergo heart transplants. Things like that happen.”
“Lie a little better, please...”
“I'm not lying?”
Anyway, I tasted the soup.
Delicious!
Sea turtle soup is delicious!!
“The sea turtle soup is very tasty.”
The cook is also devouring the soup.
“There's a huge femur in the soup?”
“Ah, that's a fragment of the shell.”
“This shoulder blade too?”
“It's the shell.”
“A silver dog tag came out?”
“The turtle must have swallowed it.”
The dog tag from the soup clearly had a human name on it.
“It must have been a human-eating turtle.”
“You're not even trying to deceive me anymore, are you?”
I burst out laughing, and the cook burst out laughing too. After all, we just ate a human... I mean, a sea turtle, in an extreme state. We couldn't have been in a sane state of mind.
After that, we were rescued... years passed.
“Sea turtle soup, sir.”
At a restaurant, I ordered a large sea turtle soup.
To be honest, I mostly knew, but I thought it was time to check the answer.
What came out in the soup was...
“Wait, it's the same as back then...”
I checked the taste of the soup many times.
“It's the same taste as back then!”
I was really surprised.
I was sure I had eaten a person; I mean, anyone would normally know. In that situation, there's no way it wasn't human meat.
“Yes, what you ate really was a sea turtle!”
The cook appeared from the back of the restaurant. The cook brought out a sea turtle on a cart.
“It's huge!”
“It's big, isn't it? (laughs)”
The sea turtle the cook brought was massive. Moreover, that sea turtle had parts that looked like human bones, and there were surgical scars on its shell!
Wow, hooray, it really was a sea turtle! That's what I thought.
I no longer know if what I ate was really a sea turtle, or if the cook created this monster just to keep deceiving me.
But it doesn't matter anymore. The look in the cook's eyes as he watches me hasn't changed from back then to now as we've aged.
“Please live.” His eyes are saying that.
I will live. That's what I thought.
Whether it's a sea turtle or a human, to devour and consume, to live bearing the sin—that is what it means to face life.
That's what the cook taught me.
“Congratulations.”
The cook applauds.
Thank you, cook. Thank you, sea turtle soup.
I'm allowed to be here!
