The Earth-Shaking Savior

(The author's about to start writing some weird stuff. I feel uncomfortable if I don't write something weird, and my writing suffers.)

Does [love] really exist?

I didn't understand the concept of [love]. When my mother died, I lost the nerves that let me feel [love].

There were many ways to love: pure love, love between blood relatives, spiritual love, bonds between people, and, of course, physical love. I couldn't express or perceive any of them.

[I used to ramble about love for no reason, pouring out aimless words. Now those wandering birds have found somewhere to nest. You can tell from the letters.]

Humanity is rotten. I know that...

Just like Kappa, I don't want to exist in this world. Humans are born against their will; they have no choice in the matter.

[After experiencing that feeling and then losing it, I once tried to erase the concept of "love" from my mind. I succeeded for a time, but ultimately failed. Now I understand: as long as I'm alive, it will keep appearing. Reason is utterly passive and powerless before it. Reason analyzes emotions through the discrete events that occur over the course of life, while love persists throughout life as it unfolds. So reason's analysis of love will always lag behind. Unless my brain gets an upgrade and my computing power rises to a higher level, reason will never be able to analyze love. It's even more impossible to resist or destroy love through reason, like the Maginot Line proving useless against the mechanized German army.]

"What did Senior Nagumo want to talk to me about?"

Star Color looked around the storage room, where there were no cameras. Was he some kind of infiltrating detective whose operation had gone wrong? If a guy like Miyabi Nagumo hadn't brought his "girlfriend" along... She was his girlfriend, right? If it had just been Miyabi Nagumo, he would've had to run away immediately. Wait, surely he wasn't bringing his girlfriend along to do that kind of... group thing? He could live with that.

"I'm interested in you, Seishiki Otonashi."

"Did Senior Nagumo investigate me?"

He really was a capable man. But that was all there was to him, wasn't it... Star Color scrutinized Miyabi Nagumo, who gave off a faint aura of being one of his "kind."

"Become one of my people."

"...Huh?"

Miyabi Nagumo put one hand against the wall and looked down at the petite, slender Star Color, towering over him.

"I'm a boy, Senior Nagumo. Don't tell me you're into that?"

Star Color calmly played dumb. He'd already figured out roughly what was going on. It was practically the same as in his own class...

"Become my ally, Seishiki Otonashi. You have the ability and talent... You're the kind of talent I need."

"Huh? Someone like me, who only plays games, is okay?"

"If you can beat the Student Council President, you're already one in a million at this school."

"What's in it for me? What can I get out of this?"

Star Color stopped pretending to be meek. The other guy had laid his cards on the table, so there was no point playing dumb.

"Points? You probably don't need those. You had five hundred thousand points by your fourth day at school. I don't know how you managed that, but at the very least, you have a way of making money."

"Then how about I grant you three wishes? As long as it's within the school, I can take care of it."

"More generous than Senior Horikita, huh?"

If he wanted to set up a [gambling den] at school, he'd need someone powerful backing him. Well, that was convenient. His backer had come to him.

"So, uh... Senior Nagumo, shall we work well together?"

Star Color held out his hand. Miyabi Nagumo clasped the small, soft hand.

After exchanging contact information with Senior Nagumo, he strolled through the now-empty campus...

A lot had happened today. Classmate Sakayanagi had revealed the rules, he'd founded a club, and Senior Miyabi Nagumo had invited him to join forces. He'd wanted to be invisible, but it seemed he'd gotten the opposite result.

But he had to do this now. There was no other choice.

[Kiyotaka Ayanokouji, Atsuomi Ayanokouji, Shigemori Sakayanagi...]

He exhaled a cloud of stale breath and looked up at the azure sky, as flat as a texture in a video game.

A howl rang out from the bathroom like thunder. Were they hunting an animal? It sounded that bad.

Star Color frowned. Violence was prohibited at school, wasn't it? Was this bullying?

There wasn't much he could do with a body like his. It wasn't as if he could just charge in and get beaten to a pulp...

So even a school supposedly devoted to cultivating [talent] couldn't filter out [scum]. Well, he was scum too...

What should he do? There was only one thing he could do.

Star Color altered his voice completely, making it sound like a girl's. Sorry, Classmate Sakayanagi. I'm borrowing your voice.

"Ah! I think I just heard someone howling! Hey, Katsuragi-chan. Let's hurry and find a teacher. This sounds really bad!"

Then he pretended to run and hid in a nearby classroom.

A redhead who looked like a bad person just by looking at him came out of the bathroom.

Star Color secretly watched from the side. This guy was a purebred violent delinquent.

(Star Color's little guide: This word comes from the Japanese abbreviation "dokiun." It refers to unreasonable, violent, or antisocial people, as well as those who lack common sense or education, such as bizarre delinquents.)

There was another guy with a one-track mind written all over his face. And there was even a Black guy? What an international school.

After they'd gone, Star Color sneaked into the boys' bathroom.

"Are you okay?"

He spoke in a meek, soothing voice. Of course, when someone was being bullied, they were extremely vulnerable and prone to irrational behavior.

The boy in front of him had a bowl cut and glasses. His face was badly bruised.

"I... I'm fine... By the way, this is the boys' bathroom..."

"I'm a boy."

Star Color held out his hand, but the boy trembled and didn't take it.

"Are you being bullied? Have you tried talking to a teacher?"

The "Teacher Sakagami" he'd hoped would save him had long since become a breeding ground for violence. The idea that good students who studied hard would be loved by their teachers was a thing of the past. He'd tried to resist Ryuen Kakeru's tyranny, but it was no use. What would someone who fancied himself Emperor Roman do? The answer was obvious! The fastest way to make everyone submit was to spread [fear] and [violence]!

"The teachers can't help me..."

The poor boy gave a self-deprecating smile. Perhaps catering to the [Tyrant] was the best thing to do.

"Then why don't you fight back?"

Star Color's expression turned slightly mocking, his presence twisting into something frenzied and insane. One word described it: [chaos]. Like the evil god [The Crawling Chaos] from the Necronomicon.

The boy roared in anger.

"Easy for you to say! I'm the one getting beaten up! How am I supposed to fight back? Nobody comes to help me. They just stand by and watch! What would you do if you were me?"

Star Color was like an evil god looking down on all humanity from above, watching the man whose psychological defenses had crumbled.

He was about to break... He needed new input, a new program.

[Destroy the mind with fear, then rewrite the data on the ruined mind. This is the most basic form of mind control.]

"So what? You're taking your anger out on someone you don't even know?"

"You're the one standing there all high and mighty, saying things that have nothing to do with you."

"Then I guess you deserve what you get..."

The boy knocked the frail Star Color to the ground.

"What? Are you trying to use that kind of move on me...?"

"No... I can't control myself..."

Only then did the boy realize that his anger had driven him to act irrationally. He was about to get up when—

"Take that anger and use it to fight back against them."

Star Color gently held him and whispered into his ear.

"The people who instill fear are afraid that it will stop working and cause an uprising. Calling a tyrant a tyrant is dangerous. Calling a slave a slave is just as dangerous."

"Hah... What are you even talking about...?"

"Your name."

The voice was calm, cold, suffocatingly emotionless, like the synthetic voice of a machine. It had the oppressive presence of a god.

"Kaneda Satoru..."

The words came out of his mouth against his will.

"Kaneda, have you heard of a famous experiment?"

Star Color stood up and opened his eyes—

His sharp finger pointed at Kaneda Satoru.

"The [Seligman Experiment]."

"Put a dog in a cage and shock it dozens of times a day. Do it without any pattern or warning. Then put the dog in an experimental cage, one that also has a device that can deliver electric shocks. But this time, before the current flows, there'll be a warning: the lights will dim. And put a barrier in the cage. The dog can cross the barrier to reach a safe area... in other words, it can avoid the shocks. So, what do you think would happen if an ordinary dog and a dog that had been subjected to random shocks were put in the cage?"

"The ordinary dog would find a way to avoid them..."

Kaneda Satoru thought for a while before answering. He was reasonably smart. If he couldn't give the right answer, Star Color would just say "boring" and leave.

"That's right. The ordinary dog would gradually learn the trick. Once the lights dimmed, it would jump over the barrier to safety. But a dog that had been shocked wouldn't try to avoid it. It would just obediently endure the shocks."

"Kaneda, you're like a dog that's been [shocked] over and over. You've developed [Learned Helplessness]."

"Learned Helplessness?"

"After enduring negative events that they can't predict or control for a long time, individuals gradually lose confidence in their ability to change or control their situation and become helpless. You're afraid of Ryuen Kakeru, so you've gradually started enduring his violence. You haven't submitted to his violence. You've submitted to your own negative thoughts."

"Now, let's take the idea a step further. What would happen to a dog that had been taught from the start that pressing a button with its nose would stop the current? What if that dog were put in the cage I just described?"

"It would press the button to turn it off."

"But one thing would be the same for all of them: the ordinary dog, the trained dog, and the dog that had been shocked at random. They'd all be shocked. The dog only knows there's going to be a shock when the lights dim."

"So what you're saying is..."

"If you're going to face the current anyway, why run from it instead of fighting back?"

"I'll show you what this world really looks like, Kaneda Satoru."

Star Color swept out both arms. Sunlight flowed from his body, like fresh blood washing over Kaneda Satoru. It was very warm.

Backlit, Star Color's face turned unnaturally cold. His purple pupils shone with a light not of this world, the light of the colors of the stars. The colors of the stars, corrupting everything, lethal and beautiful.

"The essence of this world is a [Bullying Show]. It exists in families, in schools, in society, in workplaces, between species, and between nations. Bullying and violence are everywhere. Parents, teachers, friends, family, lovers, classmates, bosses—every single one of them. The moment we're born, we're already trembling in a place called [Hell of Bullying]... Those of you trembling in fear, listen! Fools talk about equality, but everyone knows equality doesn't exist in this world. That's right! So fight back! Fight back against the bullies! An eye for an eye, double! No! We'll pay them back a hundredfold!"

Ordinary idiots would only comfort them, while true leaders and brainwashers gave them a clear target.

So, Kaneda Satoru, what would you choose?

Kaneda Satoru gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.

"I'm going to get revenge on Ryuen Kakeru!"

To Kaneda Satoru, Star Color appeared before him like an earth-shaking savior.

[I'll reach out to both the people who bully others and the people who get bullied... That's just who I am.]

I can't stand the torture of writing everyday scenes anymore. This weird style suits me better. Writing weird stuff makes me feel so much better. My writing improves all at once.