Immortal octopus

Sakutaro Hagiwara

In a tank of some aquarium, octopus for a long time, had been kept hungry. In the dimness of the rock underground, pale light falls from the ceiling of the crystal, was drifting always sadly.

Everyone had forgotten that dim aquarium, had considered a long time ago, octopus was already dead. Only rotten seawater, in the dusty sunshine, had always been accumulated in the tank of a glass window.

This creature was not killed. Octopus was hiding in the shadows of a rock. When he awoke, in the unfortunate, in the forgotten of the tank, had to endure the terrible hunger, for many and many days. There is no food anywhere, when eating is all gone, he tore his feet to eat. At first the one. And then the next one. At the end, when all was finished eating them, reverse his fuselage, and began to eat a part of viscera. From part to part and the other little by little. In order.

Octopus, had eaten up all his body finally. From the skin, from the brain to the stomach. Everywhere, all without leftover. Completely!

One morning when the keeper came suddenly there, in the tank had become empty. In the cloudy glass covered in dust, clear waters and the deep blue, feeble seaweed was moving. Also from corner to corner of rock, appearance of an organism is invisible and has failed. Octopus is actually, is completely disappeared.

But octopus did not die. Even after disappearance, he had been living there forever. In an old, empty, forgotten Aquarium. Perhaps through the centuries−invisible existence forever with some tremendous deprivation and frustration, had been alive.

Translated by TAKAYUKI