18 - Emergence

Apparently, it was an incomplete emergence.

It's the term used when an insect has a defect when it emerges from its chrysalis as an imago. It actually applies to any problem with the emerging imago and is often used for individuals which don’t emerge in good health.

Incomplete emergence can result in deformities when it occurs, and even death if it isn't able to complete the molt. It's common for insects like cicadas to die from running out of energy or falling out of a tree while they're still molting.

Rhinoceros and stag beetles are famous for their deformities, and there are many cases where they emerge with bent horns and peeled-back wings if the pupa is bumped or the pupal chamber, the cavity they sit inside, is ruptured.

There also seem to be deaths that occur while they're still a pupa. When that happens, the joints in the abdomen turn black. Normally, their eyes and wings remain transparent, but because the transformation itself failed, the sticky pulp of the grub starts rotting inside.

Cicadas and beetles aren't the only insects that incomplete emergence happens to. Butterflies are also known to experience incomplete emergences.

Butterflies hang from branches and use gravity to unfurl their wings so they can harden after emergence. But their wings won’t unfurl if they can't find a branch. If that happens, the butterfly spends the rest of its life unable to fly. Naturally, they inevitably starve to death because they can't find food.

Actually, you could say emergence is the final test for an insect. Swallowtail butterflies are said to have an emergence rate under one percent. The natural world is harsh. If that's just how it is, that's how it is.

There's just one kind of incomplete emergence I couldn't make sense of. There weren't any external injuries, and it was in a good environment. There weren't any threats and it properly dangled its chrysalis in a safe place, but somehow there was a problem with its emergence anyway.

The fluid inside the chrysalis has nothing but growth hormone and a tiny number of muscles to give it shape. Even if there aren't any external issues, a disruption to the growth hormone could result in an incomplete emergence.

That must have been what happened to the swallowtail I was keeping.

I made sure to read about emergence. You should only provide wild grass that hasn't been exposed to agricultural pesticides when it's a caterpillar. You should also provide corrugated cardboard because it's easier for a chrysalis to attach to it. I made sure the chrysalis got the right amount of sun in the morning and put a rest bar in the container for the butterfly when it emerged.

However, the imago that emerged didn't have the right shape. I thought the butterfly was headless at first. But when I looked closer, I noticed that it did have a head, it was just round. Adult butterflies have a proboscis that allows them to sip nectar and compound eyes which help them tell flowers apart. This butterfly had neither.

It came out with fanged mandibles instead. The butterfly that emerged still had the head of a caterpillar.

The butterfly, which managed to properly stretch its wings, fluttered around the container as if to celebrate becoming an imago.

When I soaked a tissue in sugar water and held it out, the butterfly practically pounced on it. It started fussing around anxiously once its head got close, though. It lacked a proboscis to sip the water. It would starve to death without it. The butterfly desperately moved its mandibles in search of food.

No way... I offered it one of the leaves it had eaten as a caterpillar. The butterfly started to eat it enthusiastically. It was totally absorbed in devouring the leaf, trying to recover as much of the energy it spent on its emergence as possible.

When I got home from school the next day, the butterfly was dead. It passed away with a bloated abdomen and with a brown fluid leaking from what looked like its urinary tract.

While butterflies are still catepillars, they have mandibles and organs to digest leaves, but they lose those when they become adults. The imago develops a proboscis and trachea to get nutrients from sipping nectar. But this butterfly hadn't formed a proboscis. And yet, its body could no longer digest leaves since the organs for breaking them down had transformed.

Despite that, it ate leaves. It couldn't eat anything but leaves. It couldn't ingest what it needed to ingest. It died with its abdomen stuffed with leaves because it couldn't digest them.

...That was when I realized it was like looking in a mirror.

I told Ruri-chan I would separate myself from pain. I could only hurt myself so much to begin with, and Ruri-chan was the only one able to provide me with what I could ingest. I didn't have anything to eat anymore because she already told me that she wasn't going to hurt me anymore. And yet, I put up with it because I thought doing so would make me an adult.

Talking about yearning for the same experiences I had as a child was too twisted to talk about in public. I liked being in pain, but I couldn't have the pain that satisfied me. I wasn't interested in anything except whatever involved pain. I had to abandon that kind of childlike selfishness while I was still able to focus on compulsory education. I understood that. So, along with Ruri-chan, I turned over a new leaf.

And yet, my everyday life was putting up with the constant mental torment from the increasingly hard-to-fight urge to tear my body to pieces. One day, I had the idea of jumping from a high place. If I couldn't hurt myself, maybe I could borrow gravity. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I wanted to die. I wanted to get asymptotically close to death; to hallucinate the pain and despair of dying.

I scoped out the rooftop, fourth floor, and third floor in that order, and decided the second floor worked best. The rooftop and fourth floor were out of the question, and even hitting the ground from the third floor might kill me. I wouldn't die jumping from the first floor, but I didn't think it would hurt, either. Just a small amount of dull pain wasn't enough.

I couldn't stand it anymore. It was like withdrawals that kept people addicted to tobacco and alcohol. Like an addict, I couldn't separate myself from pain.

Bear with it, bear with it. My heart began to simmer the longer I did. My whole body itched and trembled; my teeth clattered. That kind of thing hadn't happened before. I'm sure crossing paths with Ruri-chan made me crazy.

No... I was crazy from the beginning. It's just now that I knew the thing I was looking for was out there, it letting go of that and abandoning it was taking up more and more of my headspace.

I didn't have the awareness to choose a time or place. I poked my head through the second-floor window, then hurled myself out.

It only took an instant to hit the ground. The moment I did, I tasted a dull pain so satisfying and intense that I felt like my consciousness was gone. A wave of blood—where from?—lapped at my cheek. In my tenuous consciousness, I had a realization.

Ah, I think I… I'm going to accidentally die searching for this kind of pain.

If the second floor didn't do the trick, I'd jump from the third floor. If I was lucky enough to survive that, I'd try the roof next! The pain I'm waiting to savor has to be waiting thereee! That's right! I could try strangling myself! If I tied a belt to a door handle, it might happily cinch tight for me!

That was the kind of thing I'd end up doing one day. I was sure of it. One day in the not-too-distant future. I wondered if I'd have time to feel the pain when I died.

I'll be just like that butterfly with a caterpillar's head.

In the future, I'd be an adult who hid her natural attachment to pain when she left for work. Like an imago, I’d try to follow the right path in a group of people, working, making friends, and falling in love. I just wouldn't have the proboscis to absorb that as food. All I could absorb was pain.

I'd keep feeding on human activities I couldn’t digest, and I’d die quietly one day with my belly distended and ready to burst just like the butterfly's had.

I wonder when my emergence failed. I don't even have memories of being a chrysalis. Why didn't I have a proboscis for sipping nectar?

My worthless consciousness would snap, and if I disappeared, no one would be bothered.

I had the sense that I could hear a voice calling my name mixing with the sounds of distant sirens.