Manta's memory fragments...
Faust laid me on my back on that metal table and secured my wrists, ankles and neck with thick leather straps, chose a nail clipper from the drawer beside him and began to trim my claws. I was very frustrated, making an annoyed expression with my slightly narrowed eyes, as without them I wouldn't be able to cling to the ceiling.
"What's wrong? Why this angry face?" Faust asked me. "Oh… Is it because I'm trimming your claws?" He cut them one by one with extreme care and delicacy. Every week it was the same thing, and I hated it… "It's better that way than pulling them out, don't you think?"
"But if I was born with them, why can't you just leave them here?" I asked in annoyance, not looking at him, keeping my face turned away and pouting lightly.
Although I was already entering adolescence, I still had a somewhat childish behavior and way of thinking, as if my mentality was a little backward in relation to my age… But it wasn't my fault. In fact, I've always been extremely intelligent, curious and observant. If I had gone to school, like a normal child, it's quite possible that I would have even advanced a grade or two.
"That's because you can't cut them yourself…" Faust said, "if your claws start to grow out of control, they can enter your flesh, piercing your fingers."
I took a moment to think about why I needed to have my claws trimmed, and the scientist's threat to pull them out… That's when I realized something and suddenly stared at him "… You don't have a tail because someone ripped it off?"
Faust even laughed at my question, which was quite rare… I almost never even saw this human smiling. "Where do you get these ideas? I'm not like you, I wasn't born with a tail" he passed his hand between my ears, giving me a light pat "… I'm human, not a Yokai."
I lowered my ears, a little startled, when I saw that gloved hand approaching me, but I relaxed right away, enjoying that. I really wanted Faust to pet me more often… Why couldn't it always be that way?
"What is human? And Yokai?"
"… Me and you."
As vague as the answer had been, it answered my question somewhat. I understood that Faust was a human, because he didn't have a tail and his ears were small, and I was a Yokai, so we weren't the same thing… But that also raised a thousand other doubts. If we weren't the same, why was I there with Faust? Were there other humans and other Yokai? I had even seen other scientists hanging around that place, and they were a bit like Faust… But why had I never seen anyone else with a tail and pointy ears?
I didn't have time to ask any more when Faust finished cutting my claws and suddenly grabbed a disposable syringe. He tied one of my arms with a rubber band and passed an alcohol-soaked cotton ball over my skin.
"You'll feel a slight sting… Take a deep breath…"
I was paralyzed and retracted as best I could with those bindings. I didn't like that sharp object, it always hurt me… And the times that Faust used a syringe to inject some substance into my veins, it caused me very painful reactions. He took a sample of my blood and didn't take long to pull the needle away, placing an adhesive bandage in place of the sting. But I screamed… I screamed really loud, like someone was killing me! It sounded like a mixture of newborn crying and cat meowing.
After it was over, I was still crying softly, with hot tears running down my cheeks. Faust sighed at all that drama, "crybaby…"
He stirred the vial so the blood wouldn't clot, closed it with a cap and put a sticker, on which he wrote something, then put it in the drawer. From inside, he took out a package of snacks that looked like fish-shaped biscuits, bringing one in front of my lips "… Eat, it's good."
Upon smelling the biscuit, I stopped crying almost instantly. My ears perked up with interest. I snapped it up very fast, chewing and swallowing in the blink of an eye, and swiped my tongue over my lips. "More!", I smiled.
"I see you're hungry, Number 05…" He started taking one biscuit at a time from the package and bringing them to my mouth, holding them between his finger and thumb, waiting for me to finish eating one before giving me another and so on, until I felt satisfied. My eyes were closed with a wide smile as I licked the bran from my lips and flapped the tip of my tail happily.
"Very good, now we need to hydrate you to proceed with the next experiment…" He took a needleless syringe and filled it with a special mixture he always used to feed me. It looked like milk, but it was lactose free. He placed the tip of the syringe between my lips, to let me drink it myself like a baby bottle, I sniffed it before grabbing it with my mouth and sucked the contents out, quickly emptying it.
That moment, I was feeling genuinely happy… Faust was being very kind to me. The truth is that I had a kind of "fatherly" feeling for him, for being the only person I knew in the world and who had raised me, even though I didn't know what it meant to have parents — and as much as, at the same time, I really hated him and wanted to run away from him.
"Now that you are satisfied, we can proceed with the experiment" Faust tossed the empty syringe into the trash and wiped my lips with gauze, rubbing my stomach gently. He lifted my gown over my nipples, then walked away to wash his hands and change gloves.