Ch.123123. Wish.

# Chapter 123

When a life experiences various meaningful events, they accumulate to form information. Well-refined information becomes knowledge that is passed down to future generations.

Though invisible to the eye, knowledge grows larger and deeper with the passage of time alongside the history of a species. Humans often compared it to the sea.

A single drop of knowledge first fell into the vessel called species.

Based on that single drop, humanity began to flourish, creating rivers and seas.

People were living well, fishing out whatever knowledge they wanted from the sea of knowledge that, though occasionally hit by rough waves, was familiar and stable.

—But suddenly, something strange happened to the sea that was thought to remain calm forever.

The sea began to churn, dark clouds gathered in the sky, and beyond that, cracks formed.

Soon, knowledge vaster and more extensive than all the seas possessed by humanity began to pour down at once.

Some rode that flow and quickly rose to higher places.

Others couldn’t withstand the fierce splash of water and sank to the depths.

The world changing every minute and second like a stormy sea was extremely chaotic, but…

“…Yawn. You all are lively today too.”

Because I existed in a completely different time frame from them,

I wasn’t swept away by the waves approaching with the force to devour everything.

Instead, I endlessly repeated similar days in this dark and quiet library—eating, reading, and sleeping.

“Time stagnated by habit tends to collapse. Repetitive—unchanging days. What year and day is it today? How much time has passed since I came here?”

Suddenly looking in the mirror, Mori, who once showed traces of girlhood, had already become a woman.

Her appearance hadn’t changed much since the days of rummaging through collapsed buildings.

She had gained a little weight, her hair had grown longer, and her expression had hardened.

Her face, so rigid it seemed as if she could feel nothing, appeared indifferent to the passage of time.

“When did my expression become so stiff? I’m sure until recently, my face would change dramatically over the smallest things.”

Though clearly my face, it felt like looking at someone else’s.

Was it because the gap between how I imagined myself and my reflection in the mirror had grown too wide?

But from the beginning, the image reflected in a mirror is how others see me, quite different from how I perceive myself.

Hands, feet, arms, and legs are parts of “me” that I’ve been aware of since birth.

But the face reflected in the mirror is unknown—impossible to even guess what it looks like until seeing it.

The expressions that form on that face need no further explanation.

The fact that I feel awkward because my expression has hardened—does this mean I’ve been unconsciously distinguishing between the “me” inside Mori and Mori herself?

If I truly considered the real Mori as identical to myself, I wouldn’t feel awkward just because my expression changed.

Is it because I had only grown accustomed to seeing through another’s eyes that a change in expression makes me feel unfamiliar?

“Expressionless and emotionless. If I just keep aging like this, I might end up looking like a respectable scholar.”

Even when I tried making nonsensical comments like before, saying all great people in books had stiff faces, my expression remained unchanged.

Even when I tried to force a smile, it felt like something deep within my face was pulling it back down.

“Well. Nothing I can do about it.”

Though I tried to smile by pulling at my cheeks, I soon gave up and decided to accept it.

My face might feel unfamiliar, but the expression itself accurately reflected my current state.

This strange sensation—awkward yet familiar—wasn’t all that bad.

Perhaps it was like finally becoming true friends with someone you’ve been close to but never really connected with.

“Still, you shouldn’t lose your smile. It’s a miserable world, but I hope at least you keep smiling.

I felt sorry for myself, having lost my expressions.

So I decided to draw a smiling face anew on the mirror.

“…It’s unusually noisy around here today.”

[What are you talking about?]

[I don’t hear anything.]

“No, there’s a strange sound coming from far away. Can’t you hear it?”

And not long after, I began experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations.

Since there are illnesses that come from the environment regardless of my choices, it was unavoidable.

“Hello. Why are you like that?”

[I’ve been saying this all along, but who are you talking to?]

[Maybe you should see a doctor. This is scary.]

“What are you all saying? It’s just light self-talk. Everyone mumbles to themselves when they’re bored or lonely. Well—right now I can actually see myself, though.”

Walking down the corridor, I occasionally see a faint image of myself.

Though I’m aware it’s a hallucination, the “me” that appears takes various forms each time.

But most often, like now, it appears as me leaning against a white wall, dead.

‘I’m all alone. After all that struggle, they just disappeared without me. It was all meaningless, and in the end, I was just alone.’

‘Mom. Dad. Now that I’m healthy, how about we go on that family trip we couldn’t take before? The sky is so clear!’

The hallucinations visible only to my eyes mimicked anxieties and lingering attachments I hadn’t been able to shake off.

It was certainly a cruel act that stirred up wounds deep in my heart.

But even seeing myself frozen to death, or dead with a hole in my temple,

My reaction was always calm, as you can tell from how I speak to the hallucinations.

To the point where people watching me would find it strange.

Is it because I understand that this will happen eventually anyway?

That I understand the end is not far off?

‘Rather than dying alone and lonely, wouldn’t it be better if everyone together…’

“Shh. That’s the one thing you can’t do. That would truly make everything meaningless.”

I crouched down and gently closed the eyes of my hallucinated self who couldn’t die peacefully, whispering softly.

“By the way, I should start looking for a suitable place for my final moment.”

I had no intention of entering the Cradle where my existence would essentially disappear.

But I didn’t want to die miserably in a corridor like this either.

When I muttered about finding a satisfying place, waves appeared in the message window.

Without reading each one, I could tell they were words of encouragement not to give up on life so easily.

Apparently, everyone had noticed that my condition wasn’t normal.

“Well, it would be strange if they hadn’t noticed.”

Though I can’t definitively attribute it to the hallucinations and auditory illusions,

Lately, I’ve been engaging in bizarre behaviors that even I don’t understand.

The once-empty dining hall was now filled with faceless dolls I had meticulously crafted by hand.

The pristine white corridor walls were covered with chaotic drawings.

Though they’ve returned to their original white state now.

Indeed, this isn’t good for my mental health.

I need to draw something.

[Please, can’t you take your medicine? The ones you got last time.]

[There’s still so much to do! So much you can do!]

“Everyone’s worried about me. I’m trying not to go crazy in my own way, but I guess I often look like a madwoman to you all. That’s quite bitter.”

I don’t even pretend to say I’m normal.

Because the moment the messages first became distorted, the reality I had been postponing returned to me.

No matter how hard I try, no matter how much time I spend sharing knowledge, my world doesn’t change.

Rather, the more I try, the further I drift from the people I can communicate with through messages.

How many people could maintain their sanity in this reality where my actions hasten my own extinction?

I still wish for many people to be happy. If even that feeling were gone, I would have hanged myself long ago.

But there are always some things that can’t be resolved by feelings alone.

If I could forget loneliness, hope, and pain, and become indifferent to everything, I wouldn’t have to endure all this anguish.

But I was just an extremely ordinary person. Escaping despair completely was impossible from the start.

So I struggle. I could do anything to accomplish everything within my power, to be remembered as a good person by many.

Ugly and clumsy as it may be, I dance, draw, and sing.

I prove directly that even when broken, if you don’t give up, you can somehow move forward.

I struggle desperately enough that even those who despair at the changing world might find hope to live by watching me.

“Haah… If among the many people watching me, there’s someone making a scary game, how about including this kind of background?”

The corridor is quickly erased. The bright, empty corridor always made my lips dry. So I painted it.

Black paint, red paint, fluorescent coating.

Just like in the slum, the humans in my haphazardly scrawled drawings evoked fear rather than happiness. But this level of scariness was just right.

As when I broke through the outer wall, the sensation of being alive is most prominent when close to fear.

“Ah. Maybe I didn’t need to say that—they were probably already making it anyway. Well, it’s an interesting sight in many ways.”

A human left alone in a place with nowhere else to go, slowly breaking down.

Could there be another experience in the world where one can witness such a process so vividly?

I was certain that many people, including those studying human mental health, were watching me out of simple curiosity.

Well, even I think it’s really funny when I look back at myself at the end of the day.

[How about taking a break for a while if it’s too hard? Maybe go for a walk…]

“I’m sorry, but rest is fundamentally an act to relieve deficiency. When nothing can be relieved by resting, does the concept of rest even make sense?”

Running was more comfortable than standing still.

From the beginning, running was all I had left.

Come to think of it, it had been that way since I first became Mori.

Days when standing still meant certain death.

Perhaps this ending was predetermined from the start.

“Well. I’ve relieved today’s stress, so let’s go back to studying. Spectators who came to watch can return to their daily lives.”

If there were times when I brightened up, it was only when I solved problems that had seemed unsolvable.

Even that didn’t last long, but it was something to be able to feel genuinely satisfied with myself.

I studied like mad and produced mad results.

There was a small commotion where doctors and robots joined forces to make me take medicine.

But it was useless anyway, and taking too much made me too drowsy to study, so I stopped on my own.

[――――――――――]

[■■―Right―@#%@■■■■]

The drone’s anomalous signs, once they started appearing, grew worse over time.

Even in a situation where the more effort I put in, the closer our farewell approached, I could only move forward.

My name.

Mori.

Having learned the origin of that name, now I can only hope.

Just as death approaching at the end of life is unavoidable for those born human,

I hope that even in a world that has moved away from the apocalypse and become peaceful,

People will suddenly remember my name and my existence.

That’s all I wish for now.

That’s all I have left to hope for.