The Lying Counselor’s Eloquent Reasoning - Chapter 8
“When did you take that! Are you a thief!”
“No, not at all. I’m not that broke to rob a high school girl’s purse. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of money in it. What I’m more intrigued by is this, the thing crammed in here, tightly packed.”
Uroma fished out a number of cards from Tomomi’s wallet and spread them out on the desk. It was like a magician unfolding playing cards and flashing them at the audience. Looking at them, all were medical cards from various hospitals. Each one had Tomomi’s name written on it.
“You’re so young, yet you’ve been under the care of so many hospitals.”
“Didn’t you listen to me? I told you! I’ve been to so many hospitals to cure my body!”
“By yourself?”
“What?”
“You’ve been to all these hospitals all by yourself?”
“No, of course not. Hospitals? Normally??”
“That’s right. Minors usually attend with their parents, I believe. In other words, you and your stepmother, who lives with you, visited the hospital together, correct?”
“Ah, isn’t that obvious!”
She responded vigorously, but internally, Tomomi felt very uncomfortable with Uroma’s question. She didn’t like the idea that she was relying on that woman, even if it was just to get to the hospital.
However, Uroma remarked immediately afterward.
“I see. I understand everything now. After all, you are only lying to yourself, aren’t you, Tomomi? You’re like the Baron who spouted nonsense – like you have Munchausen’s syndrome.”
“W-What’s that?”
“Well, in your case, it’s similar to that, but one of the causes of child abuse is the idea of proxy. Yes, Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It refers to those very troublesome people who deliberately hurt or cause their own children to fall ill, and then show the people around them that they are good parents by caring for them. Then, if it fails to reach their heads as a proxy, they intentionally hurt their own bodies to appeal to the people around them. So to speak, it is an attempt to appeal, ‘Look at my poor self!’. This is also the case with the color of your skin. Perhaps, with your body in such an abnormal state, you want someone to take care of you.”
“Take care of me? I, I do?”
Tomomi was stunned. The words were thunderclap to her.
“What are you talking about! Who do you suppose I’m looking for attention from!”
“Well, of course, your stepmother, whom you live with.”
“Don’t be absurd!”
Tomomi was infuriated. She wondered what this man was referring to out of nowhere.
“I’m not messing around. Your behavior, which you just described, can only be regarded as exactly that. Yes, you talk about your mother in a quite negative way, but the truth is that you wanted to be spoiled, and you couldn’t help it. That’s why you tried to get her attention by mimicking suicide.”
“I wasn’t trying to get her attention??”
She was ready to declare that she didn’t have any intention of doing so, but suddenly, Tomomi started to feel uncertain if she would be able to say so.
“Even with the bento, your behavior is unnatural. If you honestly hate your stepmother, you should not have accepted the bento in the first place. Alternatively, you could simply receive the bento and then dump out the contents. Why didn’t you do that? Could it be that you felt bad for your mother who prepared the bento for you?”
“T-That’s not possible!”
“Then why are you visiting the hospital with your mother whom you despise? You’re already a high school student, can’t you go to the hospital by yourself?”
“That’s??”
Tomomi became increasingly breathless. Why was this man blabbing on and on like he actually had knowledge of the subject? She wanted to complain, but her mouth was dry, her tongue was stuck, and she couldn’t think of anything to retort.
“Tomomi, you’re a liar after all. You tell people around you, and even to yourself things that are contrary to your true feelings. That’s exactly what you are doing when you claim that you want to cure your body. That gray body of yours is precisely what you desired for yourself.”
“I want to have this body? Don’t be silly!”
“But your mother must be treating you very kindly now that you have such a body.”
Uroma grabbed a couple of medical tickets before her and lifted them up.
“I can imagine how your mother must have felt as she accompanied you to these hospitals. No doubt, her heart was overflowing with the desire to grasp at straws and help you somehow. And I’m sure you are conscious of this, but you were very content with the situation. That’s why no matter how many hospitals you went to, your body could not be cured??”
“What does my feeling have any relation to the color of my skin!” Tomomi was unable to stand it anymore and shouted immediately. “Even if you’re right and I wanted a body like this, it wouldn’t happen like that! The heart and the body are two separate things! There is no way that my body would change the way my heart wished it to!”
“No, that is not the case. The heart is actually an electrical signal that flows through a physical vessel. Therefore, there is a strong relationship between the two, as if they are two sides of the same coin. If you compare the physical body to a river, you can easily grasp that the heart is the pattern of the river. When the river freezes in winter, its flow becomes stagnant. The same thing can be said about the human body and heart. When the physical body dies and its vital activities cease, the traffic of neurotransmitters between the synapses that form the psyche will also perish.”
“Huh?”
Tomomi vaguely wondered if the essence of the psyche was electrical signals or neurotransmitters, or if they could at least be unified.