Rakuboku's Inner Monologue

Classroom of the Elite: A False, Gray Life Author: Year After Year

Synopsis:

What does it mean to be ordinary? To be unremarkable, nothing special.

What is a human being? The most advanced animal on Earth, the culmination of intelligence, the ruler of all species.

If that definition is truly correct, then I'm glad I can still be counted among ordinary people.

At least I can still be called "human."

And yet, everything I do has always been "misunderstood" by others.

"What kind of ordinary person do you mean? Someone with neither the comfortable life of the wealthy bourgeoisie nor the power of the ruling class? Or a god who can regard every event as expected and ordinary, all while retaining a human body?"

Ichinose Honami: "Don't change the subject, Mu."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka: "If I'm not mistaken, you're the product of that plan."

Ryuen Kakeru: "Even if you're under absolute suspicion, you couldn't possibly be that person. You're just a pawn being used."

A student in Class B, who was confessed to by Ichinose and forced to bid farewell to his gray life.

Chapter One: Luomu's Inner Monologue

"Pitter-patter—"

"Splish-splash—"

"Tap, tap, tap—"

The sound of rain was always fascinating. It kept changing, and falling on different objects produced different sounds. I thought that looking at the world through those sounds might offer a different perspective.

The traffic lights across the sidewalk blurred into blocky red halos in the rain. Their bright crimson lost its usual harshness and became softer.

But it was still striking.

The dense patter of raindrops on my transparent raincoat surrounded me, along with the press of the crowd.

"Rumble—"

A thunderous crash, like an explosion, spread across the dark night sky. Thunder on a rainy night should have been nothing unusual, but I still couldn't help being drawn to that roar.

A dark purple bolt of lightning, scattered with pale flashes, streaked through the thick clouds in an instant. For a moment, it illuminated the world—but then, just as quickly, it vanished.

That sentence was as repetitive as what I'd just said.

You might not understand what I'm talking about, but I only wanted to express that brief moment. Only in that instant did I feel something new. In the end, all that remained was the same old repetition.

I once heard a saying: "Have you really lived for ten thousand days, or have you lived one day and repeated it ten thousand times?" It came from the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. I hadn't understood what it meant before, but now I felt its truth deeply.

The past was no more than wisps of smoke, while the present was like an old film, etched onto black-and-white reels and endlessly replayed in an antique projector.

I stared at the black clouds in the rainy night, unsure what I was thinking—or whether I was thinking at all. With my thoughts unclear, I turned my gaze back to the traffic lights in front of me.

—Three, two, one.

It wasn't a lonely countdown. It was an electronic timer more precise than a pendulum, counting down alongside the red light and my heart, which looked forward to our shared end.

Unlike me, no one in the surrounding crowd wore a raincoat. Instead, they carried umbrellas.

One by one, they frowned, distractedly staring at the pale light in their hands as they hurried along.

I tried to take a step forward, but failed every time. Then I felt a push from behind. It wasn't very strong, but I could clearly sense the rough malice and impatience behind it. The repeated shoves made it even harder for me to move, though fortunately he soon tried a different approach.

He forcibly turned sideways, pressed his shoulder against my arm, and shoved me back so he could push his way forward. As he left, he gave me a final, resentful shove. Half his body got soaked by my raincoat in the process.

It wasn't his fault.

It was my fault for standing there so long... probably.

It wasn't that I didn't want to cross the sidewalk. The crowd around me was too dense, and I was forced to stay where I was. I imagined a scene from an anime: I wouldn't have to move at all, because the flow of the crowd would carry me forward on its own.

But clearly, that was just my fantasy. Such things only happened in unrealistic novels. In reality, no one would take you along of their own accord. They would either replace you or destroy you.

The idea of beauty had first come from the human heart. So beauty could exist only in a world built by the heart.

This world really was a place of fickle human warmth, wasn't it? I gave a faint, self-mocking laugh.

Of course. I'd never had the chance to play in a utopia. The "crimes" I'd committed deserved this treatment—and perhaps worse.

As the green light neared its end, the crowd around me thinned a little. The decline of one era always gave rise to another. Knowing that, I took the opportunity to hurry forward alone, weaving through the night.

The hood of my raincoat was shorter than I'd imagined, so I had to pull it low and look down at the hurried steps around me.

The sound of my footsteps splashing through puddles was completely swallowed by the rain. It went splish-splash, but I knew it was the crowd's commotion, more than the rain, that I heard. The mottled voices of humanity kept crossing one another, transforming into the loudest kind of natural sound.

Wasn't that ridiculous?

They said nature's sounds were the purest, the most ethereal and cleansing. But was that really true?

The sounds of people rushing about were full of all kinds of life. They were different, yet every one of them ultimately had the same purpose.

Someone making excuses for being late to a gathering, someone apologizing to salvage their dignity, someone complaining about still having to haul goods at work, lovers full of joy, a street-food vendor worn out... They all wore the same face. This entire society, this second nature of humanity, ultimately couldn't escape the so-called "interests."

Interests were the foundation of everything. Everything in human society was built on the pursuit of self-interest.

And we humans were creatures who put self-interest first.

I wandered toward the darkness of a narrow alley around the corner, living there like a worm in a gutter.

1

This may be a little sudden, but I'd like to interrupt you all here.

I want to ask everyone present: what is the meaning of life? Or, to put it another way, what is the meaning of existence?

Have you ever thought about that? In the brief respite from exhausting work, or when you were at a dead end, forced to endure hunger and cold, did you ever have the same doubts as I did?

What is the meaning of life? Where does the meaning of existence lie?

At first glance, these two questions might seem unrelated, but the meaning I'm asking about is much the same. Simply put: what am "I" here for?

Some people say they live for money, to repay their parents for raising them, to make their children happy, to be remembered for generations, or to have a happy marriage in the future... There are plenty of answers like these.

But they're merely specific things people encounter while pursuing their purpose in life. They aren't the essence of it.

So what is the essence?

The answer is—"nothing."

In a mere hundred years, all we do is pass through time. In the end, we become a speck of dust in our era—or perhaps not even that. Every achievement, like every life, disappears with a single breath.

After thinking carelessly for a dozen minutes or so, I came to this conclusion:

—There is no meaning to being alive. We live only for the sake of living.

If that's the case, why cling to life? Why not simply end it and be done with it?

Perhaps you'll tell me to think it through carefully, to use deeper reasoning to prove my point. Then I suppose I can discuss it briefly.

According to the law of entropy, a system tends to move from order toward disorder and chaos. Everyone will eventually turn to dust; that has been decided since the moment they were born. So our deaths are inevitable.

That is to say, when we leave this world, all those so-called possessions and money, even our bodies, will be destroyed. What we can take with us is only the spirit and beliefs left within us.

In other words, an undying consciousness and soul.

Let's assume, for now, that souls and consciousness can indeed have such qualities.

By that reasoning, people should pursue spiritual fulfillment while they're alive: emotional satisfaction and the accumulation of knowledge.

If that's the case, what our lives need is pure feeling.

In plain language, as people in this world would put it, that means happiness.

The meaning of our lives lies in pursuing happiness.

But although it seems we're on the road to happiness, we've already strayed far in the opposite direction. When everyone on the street has furrowed brows and hurries along, we should realize that.

Endless studying, crushing mortgage payments, fierce struggles in the workplace... These things leave us no chance to catch our breath. They say we're pursuing happiness, but when all is said and done, it's for one thing: money.

More precisely, it's for—"self-interest."

Human civilization has developed for thousands of years. The pursuit of self-interest has driven rapid social progress, even leading to today, when people are afraid to talk about money. We've become convinced that living is all about pursuing our own interests.

How tragic is that?

The original purpose of civilization wasn't to acquire more. It was to let people spend the rest of their lives as they wished, and thereby attain greater spiritual fulfillment. In other words, it was to pursue what people today call happiness.

But now, that's incredibly difficult.

People spend enormous amounts of time and energy, even sacrificing their health, to obtain a life of unequal exchange. A hundred years are over in the blink of an eye. We're born, go to school, get a job, get married, start a family, raise children, and finally depart.

What can you really accomplish in that short hundred years? Can you truly attain spiritual fulfillment? No, you can't. You give it everything you have, and when you look back, you see you were always striving for material security. Don't say that at least you tried. That sort of talk is nothing more than self-deception.

What is all this, then?

In the savage era of apes, was strength happiness?

In the perilous era of war, was staying alive happiness?

The happiness of most people is no more than a reflection of the social conditions of their own era. What we call happiness isn't true happiness at all. In the end, we spend our entire lives pursuing the interests of our second nature.

If you disagree with what I've said, then let's skip the rebuttal and go straight to pursuing this so-called happiness.

You haven't failed. Through your own efforts, you've reached the top of the pyramid. You're successful and famous, and your name might even be remembered for a thousand years.

But you have to accept that it's all an illusion.

Whether you're willing to accept it or not, billions of years from now, every trace of human life will be erased. No matter how glorious your achievements, no matter what status or power you hold, everything will vanish forever.

It will be as if we never appeared in the universe at all. On the vast scale of the cosmos, everything about humanity is insignificant.

Our existence and disappearance have no effect whatsoever on the universe.

Material satisfaction leading to spiritual satisfaction? Heh, is that possible? Can you really keep it up for that long? Even if you could, wouldn't you be left with nothing but emptiness at the summit?

If fate is no longer something worth discussing, why don't people return to the dust sooner and seek a grand liberation?

At least, that's what I thought.

I'd left the darkness of society behind on my own. I felt a little glad that I was about to die, though more than anything, I was sad about it.

I didn't see anything wrong with what I was doing, but he still called out to me.

"...So that's why you were planning to kill yourself?"

"I wasn't planning to. I was in the middle of doing it, but you interrupted me." I knew this conversation wouldn't end anytime soon, so I got down from the bench on my own.

"Do you think you're physically capable of hanging yourself to death?"

"I looked it up online. It's one of the most common methods of suicide. I don't think my neck would break and kill me, but I still wanted to try."

"You've experienced it before, haven't you... Even if you tried to adjust, your body would reflexively protect itself from this kind of thing."

"Reflexes aren't uncontrollable, and the experiments before weren't done voluntarily. Suicide means causing your own death. I didn't expect you to drop by my home unannounced today. I miscalculated... Next time, I'll treat it like a task and handle it carefully. I'll try not to let anyone find out."

I took two bottles of cola from the fridge and sat with him on the sofa. I wasn't interested in drinks like these, but since he was here, I might as well treat them as a little reward for myself.

"You're thinking of doing it again?!" he snapped, snatching the chilled drink from my hand. He yanked open the tab and took a big gulp. "You really do make it sound convincing."

"I'm only stating the facts." I imitated him, trying to pull open the tab on my can.

"Did I let you live freely so you could kill yourself?"

"Hadn't I already completed all your requests? You said so yesterday." After a great deal of effort, I finally opened the tab and took a sip.

...It didn't taste very good.

I won't interfere with you anymore. Do whatever you want.

Something like that, I think. I confirmed the image in my mind and nodded.

He rolled his eyes at my answer.

"That doesn't mean you should do this. I had a specific purpose when I said that."

"Really? I didn't pick up on it."

"You really are..."

He shook his head with a helpless expression. Then he pressed his fingers to his temples, closed his eyes, and thought for a while.

"All right, then. I'll arrange for you to go somewhere."