106 - Chapter 32: The Malice of the World I Came to Know
I had a dream. I had a dream. I had a dream.
A dream of childhood. A dream of longing. And a nightmare of yearning.
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"Hey. Jinnai-kun, if you were reborn, what would you want to be?"
I remember having that conversation with her once, on a stairwell landing.
Apparently, someone had committed suicide by jumping from the roof in the past, so the door leading to the roof was locked. Because of that, the recessed landing just before it was a blind spot. It was the perfect place to hide from the sight of classmates during lunch break, and at the time, Jinnai Tsubamehiko used it as a momentary sanctuary. But at some point, an intruder began to enter.
A petite girl. To Jinnai, girls in his own grade were, in a sense, enemies, but she ignored his vigilance and began to sit beside him and talk.
She wasn't in the same class. I remember she wasn't in the classes immediately next to his, but a bit further away. I no longer remember her name────only her surname, Asai, remains in my memory even now.
"What do I want to be? I don't even believe in reincarnation to begin with."
"Geez, it's just a hypothetical, a hypothetical!"
"Let's see... maybe a handsome guy."
"Why?"
"You can tell just by looking at me, right? Short, fat, and ugly. When your looks are bad, you lose out in every possible way. At the very least, I wouldn't be bullied like I am now."
"I look normal and I'm still being bullied, though?"
"Wow, such overconfidence."
"How mean!"
When he looked at her with half-closed eyes in exasperation, she would giggle. For the beginning of a romance between a boy and a girl, it was a bit too casual, and if someone told him that's just how it was, he would have agreed, so unremarkable was their relationship.
However, the reason Jinnai didn't distance himself from Asai despite his vigilance was that she was in the same situation as he was. In terms of irrationality, since her looks were normal, one could say her situation was even worse.
"Well, it's true your looks are normal, for better or worse. I actually don't understand why you're being ostracized. If you just blended in like a mob character, you wouldn't be targeted."
"Hmm, for some reason, I just don't click with the other girls. They call me a 'denpa-girl' (T/N: someone who speaks in nonsensical or delusional ways), but from my perspective, the girls around me are far more incomprehensible denpa-creatures."
"Ah, I can actually understand that."
"Is it really such a bad thing to have no interest in boys?"
At the time, Jinnai had the misguided assumption that perhaps she just hadn't awakened to romance yet.
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Even after some time had passed, their midday trysts────or rather, meetings far too dry to be called that────continued. To put it bluntly, it was a gathering for venting by a group of school caste losers. Those pessimistic lunch hours became a psychological sanctuary for both Jinnai and Asai.
No, they were driven to the point where they had no other choice.
"It's especially bad today, isn't it?"
"It is."
One day at lunch, Asai appeared, soaking wet, with her lunch box in one hand.
"What happened?"
"A false accusation that I made eyes at a boy liked by one of the high-caste girls in class."
"That's just..."
"I went to the restroom and got drenched from above, honestly," she sighed as she sat down next to Jinnai.
"Didn't you change?"
"As a form of protest. Well, the teacher just looks the other way."
"Even if they're called teachers, they're just salarymen."
"Plus, he's a contract employee. He was floating on air because he thought he might become a full-time teacher at the next contract renewal, so he doesn't want to make it an issue."
The world is ending, Jinnai thought, looking up at the sky, and Asai stared at the ceiling in the same way.
"In the first place, I have no interest in boys. If anything, I think I like girls more."
"Eh, what's that? Like, a lesbian?"
"Hmm, rather than sexual love, maybe it's longing."
"Longing."
"Yeah. You see, for a long time, I couldn't really get interested in the things girls are supposed to like. I didn't long for a prince on a white horse, and when I saw handsome guys like idols that other girls scream over, I could only think 'huh'. That's not to say I played around with the boys, though. Hmm, it's hard to put into words..."
After humming to herself for a while, Asai suddenly clapped her hands.
"Ah, that's it. I longed for beautiful things. Because they were things I could never obtain."
"Beautiful things?"
"I've had no friends since I was little, so I used to watch the girls playing happily together from a distance. I'm sure it would have been better if I'd joined in, but I liked gazing at those sparkling things from afar."
"You didn't want to be a participant?"
"You know how festivals are? I'm sure I'd have fun if I joined in and danced, but don't you think there's a certain elegance in just listening to the distant festival music from a quiet place? It's definitely that feeling."
"Isn't that lonely?"
"Well, it is lonely, but when I overlook that beauty and wrap it in my hands, I feel as if I've obtained it. I think that's what I love."
"You're twisted."
"I guess so. So, what happened to you? That's quite a big injury."
Asai's gaze was fixed on the bandage wrapped around Jinnai's forehead.
"Ah, yeah, it's just a game, a game. For them, it's just a prank."
"Tripping you on the stairs?"
"What, you saw it?"
"No. It became a rumor. That they went too far. It sounded like you could have died if things went badly."
"True. I tried to protect my head instinctively, but I couldn't do it completely and it got sliced open. Blood was gushing out of my face, just gushing."
Last Friday, while heading to a different classroom, Jinnai had tumbled down the stairs.
Fortunately or unfortunately, pushing someone down the stairs has been a classic prank for a long time.
Aware that he was a natural-born target for bullying, Jinnai had been through it often since elementary school, so he knew how to take a fall. However, for some reason, he failed slightly this time and hit his head on the edge of a step. He didn't slam into it, but rather grazed it, so his skull didn't fracture, but his forehead was sliced open.
He ended up needing seven stitches, and it was painful that his precious Saturday and Sunday were wasted on detailed examinations and recuperation. For Jinnai, it was a double blow.
"I think that's assault or attempted murder."
"It's bullying. Even if I had died, it would have been settled as an accident. In fact, my testimony was ignored this time too."
"School is an extraterritorial zone."
"The people who did it will probably turn it into a heroic tale about how they once killed someone after a few years pass."
"Once they obtain ordinary happiness, I want to storm into their workplace and shout 'you murderer'."
"They won't even care. If anything, aren't the people at their workplace just a collection of people like that?"
The two broken people giggled.
"I wonder why it turned out like this, really, for us."
"Being different from others must be such a bad thing."
"Life is hard to live."
"It is. But it can't be helped.────We have to play the hand we're dealt. No matter what that means."
"What's that? Those aren't words Jinnai-kun would usually use."
"A famous quote from Srpy."
"Srpy says some pretty gritty things, huh."
"But I was actually saved by it. Life is just a series of choices────so in the end, it's a gamble. A coin toss of whether you'll rise or fall. Right now, I keep falling, but I live believing that the day I rise will eventually come. For that day, I'm honing my intuition────or so I tell myself."
"You're positive."
"I'm just looking up. Because if I look down, there are too many people trying to tangle themselves around my feet and drag me down."
In fact, I tumbled down just like that, Jinnai said with a wry smile.
"────Hey, tomorrow. Won't you come to my house? There's something I want to give you."
"Something you want to give me?"
"Yeah, yeah. I thought if it's Jinnai-kun, you probably wouldn't make fun of it. I want you to know the things I thought were beautiful."
"I guess that's fine."
"Really? Then, see you tomorrow."
And the very next day, Jinnai would learn at school that Asai had died in a traffic accident.
Whether it was truly a traffic accident, he would never know.
However, he remembers that the lunches for the rest of his student days were terribly tasteless.
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Around the time he entered his thirties and such yearning had faded, a rookie in his second year since graduation made an extremely rude comment during a cigarette break.
"Jinnai-senpai, do you not have a girlfriend or something?"
"If you're saying that while looking at my appearance, it's synonymous with picking a fight.────You'd better look forward to next season's evaluation. I'll make sure your bonus comes to me as compensation."
"N-no, I didn't mean it like that! Look, even a piece of trash like me managed to get married."
If you're aware you're trash, first improve the way you speak, Jinnai thought, but since he wasn't the man's parent or sibling, he decided to stay silent.
"If I tried to force myself to get married, I could probably do it. Because I have an unnecessary amount of income. But it probably wouldn't last long."
Since he started working immediately after graduating high school, there was a difference in starting salary compared to the college graduates, but in sales, incentives are larger than the base salary. Jinnai's workplace was a world where every contract had a price, so the number of contracts spoke volumes. Having done this for over ten years, he was already in the veteran range, and in terms of income alone, he had about three times as much as those his age.
Probably, if he used money to speak for him in marriage hunting, the marriage itself would be possible. But naturally, no attachment other than monetary would be born there, so it was obvious it wouldn't last long. Entering into a formal mistress contract that left no loose ends would be nothing other than putting handcuffs on himself.
"Well, there are various reasons why I can't get a girlfriend. At this age, it becomes about the premise of marriage, and because my looks are bad, or because I'm an otaku────"
"Hmm, Jinnai-senpai, that's probably not it. You're not drawing a pessimistic line like that, but rather, do you have something like, a firm conviction?"
Asked that, Jinnai lost his words for a moment. For a person whose job is to use his tongue as a weapon, it was an unacceptable gap. He was further surprised to realize that this gap had been created by a person who admitted to being trash both to himself and others.
"I'm surprised in two ways."
"Two ways?"
"First, that you had the brains to notice such a thing, and second, the thick nerves to barge right into someone's heart."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's half a compliment. If you're doing sales, that kind of insensitivity is sometimes necessary. In my case, since my looks are bad and my first impression is poor, I'm always aiming for the maintenance of my tongue and the timing of when to step in."
"Jinnai-senpai's sense of timing is amazing.────I was shocked when you suddenly started talking about ramen with a client, became friends before I knew it, and landed another project."
"Clients are humans too, and if so, everyone has one or two things they like. If you always keep your antenna up during a conversation, something will eventually hit. After that, it's just a matter of timing and courage."
"How do you keep your antenna up, Jinnai-senpai?"
"You, a second-year rookie, might not know, but a long time ago, otakus were discriminated against as harshly as a witch hunt. Whether that was right or wrong isn't the point, but as a countermeasure, I developed a habit of incorporating various trends and information. Even if I had no interest. Especially those of us who were closet otakus, we wore general appeal as armor to survive the difficult social climate."
There was an era where not watching Monday 9 PM dramas or variety shows meant the start of a bullying target gacha festival, Jinnai said, shrugging his shoulders.
"That's why I can talk to a certain extent about everything from major topics to niche ones. Naturally, that amount of knowledge can't compete with a professional, but a 'casual' who knows their limits is surprisingly well-received by connoisseurs compared to a complete amateur."
"An antenna, huh."
"Nowadays, because AI algorithms only show things you're interested in, it might be tough unless your antenna strength is higher than it was in our time."
"Ah, I see... wait, no. We're talking about Jinnai-senpai."
"Ah, could you let me deflect?"
"It's fine if you don't want to talk about it, but I'm interested. I think that's the root of Jinnai-senpai's sales talk. Since I have to support a wife and child from a shotgun wedding, I need more contracts and incentives than I do now."
"You're surprisingly good at reading people, aren't you?"
To call it a conviction, it was a bitter memory. To call it regret, he had been a powerless child. Yearning would probably be the most appropriate term.
"I wasn't born and immediately started doing sales. I had a reasonable childhood, and a puberty. I've had a love or two."
It was about her, whose name he had already forgotten, and of whom he could only remember the surname Asai.
"A long time ago, there was a girl who longed for beautiful things."
"Beautiful things?"
"To be blunt, yuri."
"Yuri?"
"I'm not talking about flowers. Like girls flirting with girls."
"Ah. I see? Did you fall in love with a lesbian, Jinnai-senpai?"
"That's not it, the difference between a lesbian and a yuri-lover."
Jinnai gave a wry smile to the junior who made remarks similar to his own past self.
It was after the day they made that promise. In the end, he never fulfilled it with her, but Jinnai, a boy who summoned his courage, visited her parents. When he told them he had a promise to be told about the things she cherished during her life, what came out of the room that no longer had its owner were things of that nature.
Being an otaku and thus well-versed in subculture, Jinnai had no feeling of disgust or aversion toward those works, and he accepted them easily. But it seemed the parents were not the same, and they pushed those mementos onto Jinnai under the guise of 'if you're that girl's friend'.
That was when Jinnai fell into the yuri swamp.
"Well, there's no point in telling someone without the aptitude like you, so I'll skip that... hmm. First love is first love, but it's not based on sexual desire. The closest would be longing for the girl who longed for yuri."
Before he knew it, he came to love the genre itself, but the starting point was undoubtedly the girl named Asai.
"I've been an otaku since I was young. That's why in elementary and middle school, I was naturally at the bottom of the school caste. I thought that wouldn't do and tried to make a high school debut by hiding it, but I couldn't hide what you'd now call 'gloomy-character moves'. I was found out immediately. And naturally, I was bullied, but she too was ostracized from the class in the same way."
As this junior was, the boundary between homosexuality and yuri is ambiguous to ordinary people. Even for men, the general public is understanding────no, lacking in discretion, to the point of noisily establishing a formula where passionate friendship equals homosexuality.
Moreover, it would be cruel to ask boys and girls in the process of acquiring knowledge and education to understand. The victim of that was Asai.
"But you see, she didn't hide it like I did. She was the type who could clearly say 'I like what I like'. I thought she was beautiful for that. I thought she was beautiful, being able to answer with her chest held high."
Jinnai found that, which could be seen as mere defiance, to be dazzling. He came to yearn for her not so much as a woman, but as a human individual.
If he had to force it into words, it was indeed longing.
"I wanted a beauty like hers. I wanted beauty. My looks are bad, so I can't become something beautiful, I can't touch it, and I can't get close to it. So I thought that at the very least, I would make my way of living beautiful."
"Your way of living?"
"Faith, style, honor, and courtesy. Grouping those together and calling it an aesthetic────that's just something I'm repeating from a person I met when I was at rock bottom. The standpoint that makes a person who they are. The root that supports one's pride. The core that must not be bent, that is an aesthetic, apparently."
"An aesthetic..."
For a while after he could no longer see Asai, Jinnai spent his days lethargically. In the midst of that, he met an old man and was taught that view of life.
The dead will not return, but what do you want to do────when asked that, he answered that he wanted to be able to stand beside her, and he was taught the words from before.
"She probably had that from birth. That's why she was so clean, so beautiful, and scorched my brain so uncontrollably. Probably even now."
"So Jinnai-senpai can't forget that person? Did you get dumped?"
"No, I was left behind. I was too late to hold up an aesthetic."
That's why, without forgetting the yearning for her, he continued to want to become beautiful.
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And in a certain place that was not this world.
"So, Refill-sama. Can you make me a girl?"
"Eh? You want to TS? Are you serious? I mean, I can do it, but..."
"Yessssssssss! Yurinyurin-land is now opennnnnnn!!"
"Can't be helped, I'll set you up as a beautiful girl."
"Thanks a bunch!!"
At this time, Marianne was born after making various requests.
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And there was a certain being who thought this way of existence was 'fun'.
To be continued next week.