Paraporopurun Peroporoparapon
I prayed with all my hearts that she could live happily in this beautiful world.
Thousands upon tens of thousands upon billions of stars twinkled outside the spaceship, illuminating the ash I held.
At the same time, an image of her from back then arose in the back of my mind.
“Hey… what does it mean to live?”
I recalled it in empty space.
I still thought back on it fondly, as if it were yesterday.
She was highly intoxicated after having swallowed down a macaron, and her cheeks were turning a faint emerald green.
After all, Peroporoparapon-chan always said such rude things to me. It was the first time she’d ever said something so whimsically sweet.
And after she’d said that to me while slithering a green tentacle, my own faces went completely red.
But my three-thousand-five-hundred-four hearts beat like alarms at a hundred and twenty decibels.
I wondered if Peroporoparapon-chan could hear my hearts too.
Her violet skin, her slimy green tentacles, the yellowish-green fluid that leaked from her seventieth digestive system… What was there not to love?
Peroporoparapon-chan could have spent time with someone much cooler than me. So why?
“What do you love about me?”
I nervously asked her.
Peroporoparapon-chan giggled and hugged me.
“Heeheehee,” she laughed, tearing off one after another.
Adorable.
I wanted to marry her.
But I knew that could never happen.
A mere Roronopusun Ganopiririnronron Peroporoling like me could never be her husband.
So it would only be for a little longer that I would even get to enjoy Peroporoparapon-chan’s company.
And I had just been so happy.
“Huh? What?”, she said, her seventy eyes bulging.
“Morning.”
“Yeah. Just a little.”
“My heads kinda hurt,” she said, rubbing her thirty-third head. Even her casual actions were cute. Too cute. Like she’d gotten mixed with an angel. Her thirty-five faces were especially angelic.
“This is all your fault.”
Classic Peroporoparapon-chan.
But just a while ago, I’d learned how Peroporoparapon-chan really felt.
She could and should have just left without saying that.
“Don’t go. Stay a little longer.”
“Hooray! Thanks, Peroporoparapon-chan!”
Twenty-four of Peroporoparapon-chan’s thirty-five faces weren’t able to hide their smiles. Ohh, too cute.
“Hmm. What do you want to do, Peroporoparapon-chan?”
Peroporoparapon-chan slapped my body, sending seventy-two tentacles flying off. She was cute even when she was angry.
After that, we had fun annihilating a planet three planets away from ours.
I was nervous all throughout my slaughter, but Peroporoparapon-chan seemed to enjoy it more than I expected.
“Right? I’m glad you had fun!”
Perhaps childish games were fresh to Peroporoparapon-chan, having been raised as a princess.
I wish it could just keep going on like this, I thought.
We had both been too busy to see each other lately.
“It has. You haven’t changed.”
Peroporoparapon-chan who I hadn’t met in so long had become very pretty.
Her once-thirty-five faces had doubled, and she grew three thousand new feet. Her body was oozing with slippery yellowish-green fluid, and the lungs on her tentacles were like new.
Downy hair grew out of her abdomen toward her seventh belly button.
While I wasn’t looking, Peroporoparapon-chan had become a grown girl.
“Harumph. I’ve become very popular with the guys lately, you see.”
Peroporoparapon-chan’s faces turned deep green and lowered.
I was amused by this reaction, and looked into Peroporoparapon-chan’s seventy faces.
“No, well, that’s just…”
“Oogh…”
“Ohh, shut up, you idiot!”, she screamed, taking off at Mach 100.
Her appearance had changed, but inside, Peroporoparapon-chan seemed the same as ever.
“Are you free next year?”
“Shut up. I just want to know, are you free then?”
I felt like if I pressed it any further she’d beat me senseless once we met up, so I telepathically said “Yeah, I’m free.”
Before, I’d always invited her. It made my seventy-six [sic] hearts beat fast.
“Alright, we’ll meet up at the start of next year, on Pisoronopokorun which I destroyed with you before.”
Filled with cheer, I lept off the planet I was currently annihilating.
*
“So yeah, I’m going on a date with Peroporoparapon-chan next year. What do you think I should do?”
I didn’t know the first thing about romance, so I always asked my childhood friend Yuuka when I needed help.
Yuuka’s name was one of those weird, embarrassing “unique” names for your kid, and she wasn’t looked upon favorably by adults. But I knew that she was a kind girl.
“Again with Peroporoparapon-chan? Learn to think for yourself!”
Yuuka let out a big sigh. “You really need to stop relying on me already.”
“Ugh, fine. Sighhh… Why do you have to fall for a girl like her, anyway…”
“Hm? What’s that?”
“Thanks! You’re a lifesaver. You’re so nice, Yuuka.”
“Hm? What?”
“First off, there’s so much that’s hopeless about you. I’m going to list all of it.”
- You’re desperately lacking in legs. Grow one more.
- You have way too little sympathy. Think about your partner’s feelings.
- Get a better understanding of the female mind. That’s why you’re a virgin.
“I gotta stress how little you understand women.”
“If you ask me, you’re trash.”
“Worse than trash, highly radioactive waste. Your very existence is a bother.”
One of Yuuka’s best qualities was that she told it like it is. I couldn’t say I didn’t like that.
But sometimes it depressed me. Highly radioactive waste…
“Hm? What was that?”
Yuuka’s face was all red, though, so I wondered what had happened.
“Huh? I’m curious! Tell me!”
“Well, whatever. Get your tentacles in order and study the heart of a woman. I’ve got stuff to do.”
Yuuka laughed hollowly. “You really would be.”
“Now leave me alone and go be happy with Peroporoparapon-chan.”
“Bye, and tell me if it does go well with her.”
“Okay, good luck!”
With that, I said goodbye to Yuuka for the day.
*
Next year, I went to the desolate and empty Pisoronopokorun.
I didn’t know how to study the heart of a woman, so I tried reading the akashic records, but it was too hard to understand and I gave up.
“Sorry. Were you waiting?”
I lied. I’d been waiting for thirty-seven days.
“Where are we going today?”
Fixed-star sunbathing was such a common date idea for the raised-princess Peroporoparapon-chan.
“Wow, fixed-star sunbathing?”
“No, that’s not it at all. I love it!”
Peroporoparapon-chan’s faces turned green and she shook her tentacles.
“I see! Well, I’m still really glad!”
It had been too long since she demonstrated such violence.
I wondered how long it could be like this.
We headed off for the fixed star.
*
“Mmm, feels good…”
True, I had seen Peroporoparapon-chan naked when we were young.
But on my planet, there was a bit of an implication in the act of nudity after becoming an adult.
I wondered if Peroporoparapon-chan knew that or not.
“Feels good, doesn’t it? Such nice flares!”
I couldn’t look Peroporoparapon-chan in any of her faces. It took all I had to say that over the rapid beating of my hearts.
“Of course I am! I’m just having so much fun and I’m so happy that it’s making me a little nervous, that’s all!”
Then she turned to me and said something, with some difficulty.
“Um, err… I actually invited you today because there was something I wanted to tell you.”
“What?”
She took a breath, then quietly spoke.
“This might be the last year I can hang out with you like this.”
My hearts exploded like they were hit by bombs.
“See, papa and mama told me to get ready for marriage. You know about my thirty-five trillion fiancés, right?”
“The potential grooms are going to have a tournament of mutual killing next year. Then I’m going to marry the top hundred.”
I understood it in my mind, but I simply couldn’t accept the reality.
Looking into my faces as I said nothing, Peroporoparapon-chan spoke.
Before she could finish that sentence, tears flooded out of Peroporoparapon-chan’s one hundred forty eyes.
“I don’t want this to be the last time. I want to stay. I want to spend more time with you. To destroy more planets with you, and fixed-star sunbathe with you. I want to know more about you. And stay with you forever.”
I said nothing.
I had to say something.
Something…
“I’m sorry. I’m such an annoyance.”
“Oh, but I am… If I stayed with you, papa and mama would kill you for sure. I’m going to have to marry my fiancés. I’m sorry for bothering you. I could never be honest around you…”
Something to stop Peroporoparapon-chan…
“I’m leaving for the year. I had fun meeting you again.”
Without waiting for me to finish, Peroporoparapon-chan’s tentacles fluttered.
“Well… Goodbye.”
I could only look on in shock.
*
The next day, the fiancé tournament on Ferogaron Sutegoronopusupero Poroparapo was all over the news.
I returned to the planet I’d been in the middle of destroying to cheer myself up, but nothing worked.
I aggressively destroyed planets to forget the reality.
A hundred years later, I was done destroying planets. With nothing left to do, I holed up at home.
At this rate, her husbands would be decided in a matter of days.
Imagining one of those husbands drinking her yellowish-green fluid of love that leaked from her seventieth digestive system made me want to burst.
But I couldn’t do a thing.
I couldn’t marry Peroporoparapon-chan.
“Hey! Open up!”
My house shook. When I looked outside, I found Yuuka.
“I know. Leave me alone.”
Yuuka let herself in and grabbed me by the collar with her two arms.
“You said you saw the news, didn’t you? It’s too late.”
So I said that to Yuuka despite her worry for me.
But it hurts to think about Peroporoparapon-chan anymore.
As I stood there dumbfounded, Yuuka screamed at me.
“Of course I don’t!!”, I yelled back. “I love Peroporoparapon-chan! I really do! I’ve always wanted to marry her!”
“Shut up! Even if I could go and marry her, you think I would make Peroporoparapon-chan happy?! Obviously Peroporoparapon-chan would be happier marrying good partners her parents picked for her, not some remote Roronopusun Ganopiririnronron Peroporoling!! You don’t know anything, you moron!”
“I know all the good things about you… Because I’ve always loved you myself.”
Yuuka’s sudden confession blew away my anger at once. I couldn’t say anything more.
“But now, I hate you. You were always so earnest about your love for Peroporoparapon-chan. No matter how inferior you felt, how cold she was, you never stopped loving Peroporoparapon-chan, right?”
“There’s nothing charming about you at all now. Now you really are highly radioactive waste. Do you want that?”
“Shut up! No excuses!” Yuuka slapped me again.
“And can you really say that Peroporoparapon-chan will be happy marrying her fiancés?”
“Then don’t go talking like you know how Peroporoparapon-chan feels. You don’t know anything!”
Wait… That’s right. Peroporoparapon-chan had said…
“I want to spend more time with you. I want to stay with you forever.”
I recalled what Peroporoparapon-chan said the last day we met.
I was a fool.
It must have taken immense bravery. A whole lifetime’s worth, absolutely.
I didn’t do anything at all to respond to Peroporoparapon-chan’s feelings.
I had to go. I had to hurry.
“Yuuka, I have to go,” I said, hurrying to depart.
“Yeah. I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Right. I’m off.”
Yuuka was always strong-willed, but it looked like she was crying a little then.
“Thank you.”
I left her with that.
I flew off straight into the stars at Mach 400.
*
When I arrived at the tournament grounds, I found the ground littered with hundreds of fiancé corpses.
“What are you doing here?! Authorized personnel only! Go home!”
I vomited highly corrosive sulphuric acid at him, and he soon disintegrated in a sea of it.
“Who goes there?!”
“Bring out Peroporoparapon-chan! There’s something I need to tell her!”
I ran for where the ceremony was being held while decimating them like bits of sand.
Please, let me make it in time.
My legs, my body, move as fast as you can.
But that was fine.
I ran at Mach 1000.
“Peroporoparapon-chan!”
After reducing the super-reinforced tungsten door to atoms, I found Peroporoparapon-chan and a hundred grooms.
With a look at Peroporoparapon-chan, it was clear that she was about to be married.
There was a groom made of sticky slime, and a squarish mineral-like groom. There was a seventy-meter-tall cylindrical groom, and a smog-like groom, and grooms of all varieties.
But I’d stopped worrying about that.
What mattered were my and Peroporoparapon-chan’s feelings.
It had only been a hundred years since we last met, but Peroporoparapon-chan had changed drastically.
“Why are you here?! Didn’t I say goodbye?!”, Peroporoparapon-chan shouted in anger.
An attendant-like Ferogaron Sutegoronopusupero Poroparapoling held back Peroporoparapon-chan.
But it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter!
“Peroporoparapon-chan, listen!”
“I love you, Peroporoparapon-chan! I love you!”
Peroporoparapon-chan’s mouths hung open in shock. Ah, it looked so cute.
“I love how you act coy with me, Peroporoparapon-chan! I love how when you get shy, your skin turns emerald green right away! I love your slimy tentacles! I love all of it! There’s nothing I don’t love! Marry me!”
It made me happy deep within my hearts.
“Let’s go!”
The grooms made a commotion behind us. The angry shouts of Peroporoparapon-chan’s parents resounded in my ears thanks to the Doppler effect.
As I held tight to Peroporoparapon-chan’s tentacle, she held on tight to mine.
Our tentacles gripped each other so, so tightly.
*
“Geez, you startled me…”
Peroporoparapon-chan seemed relieved.
“It’s true. I love you. Please, marry me!”, I said, holding onto Peroporoparapon-chan’s thirty-two-thousand-four tentacles.
“But you’ve done that too, Peroporoparapon-chan. Like when you ate that macaron.”
“That’s a secret.”
Peroporoparapon-chan ripped off seven of my tentacles.
I sincerely hoped this time could last forever.
“Hey, Peroporoparapon-chan?”
“Smooch!”
Without waiting for her reply, I gently kissed the lips on Peroporoparapon-chan’s seventh face.
Her faces a deep green, Peroporoparapon-chan punched away at my body.
“Geez! That was the WORST first kiss!”
“U-Um…”
“R-Right. Okay.”
It lasted much, much longer than the previous one.
After Peroporoparapon-chan left Ferogaron Sutegoronopusupero Poroparapo, it was apparently in chaos, with her mother and father in an angry search for her.
We didn’t hold a particularly large ceremony; we just destroyed a planet we were passing by and had a bare-bones one with no one around.
“Oh, it’s okay.”
“Don’t worry! I love planets where I’m the only one alive.”
“And in fact, I’d say a wedding on a planet with only us two is really romantic. It’s like we’re in the center of the world,” Peroporoparapon-chan happily reassured me.
“I do.”
I could never forget.
I could see no future. I didn’t know why I was still living.
It was a hell of only having three-thousand-six meals a day.
In those days of despair, suddenly Ferogaron Sutegoronopusupero Poroparapolings arrived to destroy the planet.
Peroporoparapon-chan seemed to live a life far more free and blessed, and beat up those who had worked me to the bone as if it bored her.
It was a beautiful sight.
Thinking about it, until our marriage, Peroporoparapon-chan had never deviated one bit from the path laid out for her.
Perhaps Peroporoparapon-chan had become fed up with it all.
Peroporoparapon-chan’s tentacles drew an orbit of sadness, destroying numerous satellites above their orbit. The people in the bases on those satellites fell to the ground like sparkling shooting stars. The sky glowed, illuminating Peroporoparapon-chan’s over ten thousand tentacles.
And Peroporoparapon-chan’s arms approached me.
But minutes later, I was not dead. I timidly opened my eyes to Peroporoparapon-chan smiling.
The Ferogaron Sutegoronopusupero Poroparapolings who destroyed the planet left like nothing had happened.
At any rate, I survived, and I met Peroporoparapon-chan.
“I know the answer to that question I asked when we first met,” Peroporoparapon-chan said, then kissed me.
Her faces were deep green, but she looked right into my eyes.
“I love you, too.”
On that empty planet, we became one.
*
Peroporoparapon-chan and I were together for eighty-four million years after that.
I had never been so satisfied before.
So Peroporoparapon-chan’s time came before mine did.
I could only watch as Peroporoparapon-chan’s body became like ash.
“It won’t be long,” Peroporoparapon-chan said one day while we were living on a ruined planet.
I decided that I wouldn’t cry.
But I couldn’t stop it from pouring out of my seventy-six eyes.
I wanted to be together until the whole universe perished.
I love you so much.
I want to get stuffed with plutonium, and bathe in flares.
I want to be with you forever. Forever and ever.
I don’t want to forget.
Let’s be…
“Thank you.”
Peroporoparapon-chan muttered as she turned to ash.
I cried. I couldn’t stop the crimson tears running down my red cheeks.
“Really, don’t cry. Don’t worry, I’ll always be with you.”
“It’s all right. Even if I die, and my body crumbles to pieces, I’ll still exist in this universe. I won’t go away. I’ll just become one with the world.”
Her body would become the soil of this planet, the sky, and someday would be absorbed into the cosmos.
Unlike Peroporoparapon-chan who was so smart, I was still too dumb to know what it meant to live.
It was just a feeling, but that’s what I thought.
*
In a spaceship, I thought back on Peroporoparapon-chan.
Colorful days that would never fade.
I decided to destroy one for old times’ sake. The spaceship would soon arrive at one with intelligent lifeforms.
I held a pot containing the ashes of what was once Peroporoparapon-chan.
I had to aggressively level it to the ground.
Once it was all destroyed, I was going to scatter Peroporoparapon-chan’s ashes in the wasteland. Across a barren planet, like she always loved.
And when it was all over, I’d forever scream my love in the center of that uninhabited planet.
It was many tens of thousands of light years from Roronopusun Ganopiririnronron Peroporo where I’m from. Extremely far away.
Well, time to get to work. This is my final mission for Peroporoparapon-chan.
I landed on that azure-gleaming planet Earth. The impact of my landing sent out an explosive sound.
As I scattered and decimated them, I made a quiet prayer.
Miin-min-min. Miin-min-min.
Under the clear blue sky, one could hear nothing but the buzzing of unknown creatures.