I’m Stuck as a Ghost So I Decided to Follow the Isekai Protagonist!

“Where am I?!” Caruncle couldn’t see anything, he was naked and cold. He had been chained from the legs and the arms. I also felt cold and more stiff than ever, so I sat around him and tried not to move. Someone opened the door, it was a man in a dark green suit, he looked quite old, but with the poor lighting of the basement, it was hard to see. Caruncle didn’t say anything, he couldn’t speak, his throat felt dry and hoarse. The man got close to him and stopped a few meters in front of him. Caruncle tried to raise his head, but trying so gave him a sharp pain in his neck.

The man lowered a small bucket with water he had brought with him.

“Drink.”

Caruncle got the bucket close to him and with a lot of difficulty he held the bucket with his arms and he started to drink slowly.

“You might call me Lopez. I met your father the other day.”

***

Zuriel Periwinkle was a wooden ships manufacturer. Yes, I know, you can laugh, I laughed a lot too. He had inherited his father’s business and had learned the art of his craft, he had also inherited his love for the technique, the construction, the design and manual labor it required. Now that wooden ships were falling out of use and were becoming more and more obsolete, he was stubborn about moving on. He refused to listen to the voice of reason and now he was nothing more than the owner of a falling business. Sound familiar? To me it does.

He looked around the walls of his office, people thought that houses built on wood were better, and more graceful, than houses built in adobe, the superiority of wood was always clear. He thought that he maybe could sell them as a cheaper alternative to the metal ships and he had managed to go on like this for a while, but now that metal ships were more widespread the cons were starting to outweigh the cons more and more. He saw himself forced to work in some other dangerous side activities to continue not just bringing food to the table, but also continue with his venture. In short, he was almost as stupid and pathetic as his son was.

He was talking with one of his clients. He was now entering his 50s and he was wearing the same dark green suit in a dark green. He looked slightly pale, but his face always had a smirk that denied any claims that he was ill.

"I also appreciate your vision a lot, but please, remember, for our dreams we all have to make sacrifices. I know you are a smart man, so wouldn't you agree?"

“I’m not selling my family business, Mr. Lopez.”

“Oh well, that is fair! Family businesses are no light matter. Have any of your sons shown interest in taking over after you retire?”

“Well, no, not really yet, no.”

“Oh, that is so dreadful, have you considered which of the two you might be able to talk into this.”

“Valentin is a good kid, but I doubt he would take over, he’s interested in being a doctor.”

“I see… I’ll guess that such a career takes a toll on your pocket.”

“Yes, but it’s a good investment.”

“What about the younger one?”

“Caruncle…” Zuriel frowned, he thought of him and remembered how empty his eyes always looked. “I don’t know, I can’t figure out that kid.”

“Does he misbehave?”

“No, but… I wish he did, at least that way I would know what I even have to do.”
“Oh? In what sense?”

“I don’t know, I used to think he was just leisuring with too much imagination, but no.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“One day I was about to buy a property on the other side of the city. The owner had died and had left no heirs, it was quite ample and beautiful too. It was being sold at a relatively low price since the auditor was about to leave the country, but he told me not to buy it.”

“Why didn’t he want you to buy the place?”

“He didn’t say why, he just kept asking me to not buy it, I had other matters to attend to, so at the end I didn’t go through with the transaction. Long story short, the house fell down a month after it was sold.”

Lopez opened his eyes fully and scratched his head. I chuckled.

“What happened with the auditor after that?”

“Nobody found him, naturally. He flew away with the money, and the family who went to live there died. To be honest, this has been far from the only time that boy has weirded me out.”

“You are afraid of him.” Lopez quipped, but Zuriel didn’t smile back.

“Perhaps I am.”

Lopez frowned in confusion, the conversation had gone to a point he wasn’t expecting, but rather than amusing him, it puzzled him.

“Mr. Periwinkle, such an event could be explained easily in lots of ways. If you allow me to speak in matters that do not concern to me, let me just say–”

“Please,” Zuriel interrupted him. “I know what you are going to say, I know how it looks, it's disgraceful. To know one didn’t manage to raise a child in righteous ways, but also to be afraid of one’s own child, it speaks ill of one’s abilities as a parent.”

“I see.”

“I trust in Valentin, I also trust in myself, and because of that, I’m always giving all my spirit to my business, because I believe in what my family has built upon.”

“I guess there isn’t too much of a point in continuing to discuss the matter, then.” Mr. Lopez gave him a sad smile, Zuriel didn’t see it, but I did. I saw it because I’m smart. I notice this kind of detail. He was looking at him with the pity of a man you give to someone that has been married to their own doom. It wasn’t particularly romantic, it was just naive and pathetic.

***

“Your father was quite the sad old man, Caruncle.” The old man said in the basement, Caruncle hadn’t spoken at all the whole time, he was crying very silently. ”Now, do you wanna know what happens next? Someone knocked at the door of the building. I’ll spare you the details because frankly I don’t quite remember well myself. Valentin, your brother. entered the office along with, that friend of his, then, Evelyn, your fiance, as well as her trusted friend, entered as well, apparently the latter were following the former two along.

“Your brother asked your father about the painting called Egg’s Feet! Egg’s Feet! I still remember it because it was such a stupid name! They said it was a painting of a naked humanoid fox, or was it a human with fox-like features? It sounded like quite a provocative painting, to bad taste or shock, I don’t know, but it had been stolen by, according to Zuriel, his great great grandmother when coming to the country as a reminder of the time she had spent chained in the house of her masters. The painting had been kept in their attic as an heirloom; they couldn't showcase it in the living room since it was, after all, a stolen painting.

“Your brother mentioned he had found out your father was trying to sell it on an underground market, but it had been recovered by the police, the seller ran away and was shot on the spot, so while all witnesses about how the painting had been stolen were gone, now they had been left without any heirloom, and yes, he had also found out that his father’s business was on the edge of bankruptcy.

“Oh and here it was! Here it was! The nerve! The nerve of those people, do you wanna know what happened? Your father and your brother ended up yelling at each other, your brother then mentioned that little matter of sorts you have, yes, your illness, your perversion, whatever the hell you want to call it, but somehow the conversation turned around from the painting, to the bankruptcy, to the talk about a poor man wanting to wear some panties! Everyone was now sitting around the office with their throats tired out and no will to continue. Your engagement was about to be broken, your father’s business was about to be closed, it was such a dim atmosphere that if it had been anyone else other than me they might have left on the spot.

“That’s where I come in, Caruncle. Naturally, I had been all this time hearing from the other room where I had been speaking to Zuriel, he apparently had forgotten about me, so I stood up and looked around the room.”

***

“I believe I might have a solution for your troubles.” I spoke softly, very softly, trying to give them that sense or reassurance they were looking for.

“Mr. Lopez, I had forgotten you were here and I feel we should continue this another day, you must forgive me.” Zuriel stood up, but Lopez waved him to sit down again.

“Please, you say that you don’t want to sell your business, but you are having issues paying the bills, is that correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Then, please, allow me to talk to you in private for a moment. I certainly believe you will want to hear this out.”

The two of us talked for 10 minutes in your father’s room. Everyone stayed around, drinking black coffee while trying to calm down. Afterwards we opened the door and your father slowly came out with his eyes wide open, he sat down on the sofa while looking at emptiness.

“I shouldn’t have indulged you into listening to such… such a proposition.”

“What did you two talk about?” Your brother asked.

“Allow me to explain,” I answered them. “Aside from working in real estate and owning several kinds of business on my own, I also take my time as a collector.”

“Now, Caruncle, I know you are a smart man yourself, so tell me, do you know what I am collecting? Do you know what your family decided to sell instead of the painting? Do you know what it was? From all the ways I have managed to make someone my own, this is the most scandalous way possible, I dare say the most ridiculous too, I look back at it when I got sleep, and it still makes me laugh.”

Caruncle didn’t say anything, he started sobbing as quietly as he could.

“Yes, Caruncle, it was you, you were sold to me, by your family..”

***

Sure, Caruncle was in fact a pathetic man, a vermin, someone with no worth on his own, but he was MY toy, nobody should have even dared to touch him, he was the one I wanted to follow, the one I wanted to torment. How could such an idea pass through the minds of civilized people like them? Weren’t they supposed to be respectable people? Wasn’t Caruncle the delusional one? I wanted to know what happened that night, what did they exactly say, what did they exactly agree on, but I told myself that finding out would only bring me more anger.

There is so much time that has gone by ever since it happened. It has been 10 long years, and even after 10 long years, Caruncle, against all odds, didn’t die, he had been kept away in that putrid basement for so long with no sunlight, with barely any food or water at all.

Lopez would come in, he would ask Caruncle for one of his fingers and Caruncle would beg him not to because he couldn’t bare the pain, there were a few times were Caruncle offered Lopez his finger in exchange to tell him about the intel he had in other people, he was trying to use the knowledge of the library of Pisces, “if you let me be, I’ll tell you what you can black blackmail this guy this way, you can find their funds this way”, yada yada yada, and Lopez would accept, but he stopped doing this since Lopez was starting to get obsessed with him. To force himself to stop giving out more information to the man, he stopped speaking entirely, that only made Lopez angrier. After 10 long years, Caruncle had lost all of his toes and the fingers of his right hand. He still kept four fingers in his right hand aside his thumb, which had been chopped away, but nothing else.

Mr. Lopez said he would have to take his eyes when he ran out of fingers.

Do you want me to talk about this in further detail? Describe to you all what happened? The fall of Caruncle the idiot and his misadventures in the rotting cell! Well, no, I won’t talk about it! I won’t talk about it! No matter how much time passes by! I won’t tell you anything about it! You will have to live with that hole in your memory, just like I have.

I can’t talk about it. I can’t.

I know that Caruncle is a small and worthless man, but…

Nothing. It doesn’t matter.

One day a man arrived, looking to purchase a slave from Lopez, he entered the basement where Caruncle was kept.

“So, is this the one?” He asked.

“Yes, I’m afraid he’s quite useless, he doesn’t know how to do any sort of task, he isn’t cooperative so I had to keep him here all along and his muscles aren’t in the best condition. He screams too much if you use him for pleasure purposes so sometimes you have to choke him with a towel. I was thinking about taking away his tongue, but sometimes he says useful information, it’s just that it is really hard to get anything out of him. Nobody really has offered to purchase him and I feel obliged due to good faith to be honest with you, that’s why he’s so cheap.”

“Right, and you say he has delusions?”

“On, indeed, he’s a lunatic with sexual perversions, but he’s not dangerous, that is for sure.”

They had gone downstairs and once he was standing up at the side of Caruncle, he raised his head and looked at him. The man stood at an impressive height, his presence alone was enough to silence anywhere he went. He wore a thick trench coat which made him look huge along with his muscle mass.

He squatted and looked at Caruncle who was now looking down at the floor. The man took Caruncle’s chin with hand and slowly raised it to make him look at him. His hands were coarse and rough, but his touch was gentle.

“You are the one who said he rather had a cunt, is that right?”

Caruncle didn't answer.

“I asked if you are the one who wants a cunt.”

He didn’t say anything, his eyes were staring at him, but his mind was somewhere else.

The man sighed and stood up. “Are you sure this is the one?” He asked Lopez.

“Pretty sure, sir.”

“Well then, I’ll take him, sooner or later he should be prone to speak.”

“In that case, I can unchain him right now and ask one of my men to bring him to your place.”

“No need, I’ll take him myself. Do you have the keys to these chains?”

“Well yes, and sir, about the payment–”

“Here.” He stretched his arms and gave a small case he was carrying to Lopez. “I’m pretty sure you’ll appreciate the tip, I would appreciate your discretion about the visit I have done today, now, the keys?”

“Oh, yes!” Lopez gave the man the keys and he slowly took off the shackles from him and then raised him on his arms. Caruncle didn’t react, he let himself get carried away.

“Make sure the door is open outside.”

“Right away.”
The both of them went upstairs and finally left with Caruncle from the basement. The stairs went for 10 whole floors, looking around it, the thing felt more like a modern industrial warehouse than a proper manor, the smell of the air made me uneasy. We both had gotten used to the smell of blood and feces, but now that we slowly were going up, all sorts of smells were coming through our noses, and we couldn’t really decipher what they were.

“Might I ask why would you choose a man like him? In all honesty, he has been more of a liability than anything else, so I feel rather curious about what you will use him for.”

“Nothing, he’s going to work as food for the beasts I’m growing now.” The man answered after a long moment of silence.

“Oh sir!” Lopez forcefully chuckled. “I can’t imagine what kind of animals you would need such expensive meat for.”

“Some beasts aren’t so easily fed.”

I directed my eyes for the last time at the basement, but it was so dark below that I couldn’t see anything.