Humans are trivial creatures.

Why I came to think that isn’t really worth talking about in any great detail.

It’s just the ordinary story of learning, back in elementary school, that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down and being envied a little by those around me.

* * *

I was born into a fairly ordinary family, but from a young age I realized on my own that the way my mind worked was far from ordinary.

What is funny?
What is irritating?
What is sad?

While the family and children around me laughed, got angry and cried, my thoughts were filled with nothing but questions.

Even before the incident in elementary school, I had always been extremely lacking in what people call emotions.

But I never let those around me notice.

Because I was good at observing others, simply watching the people around me made it easy to pretend to be human.

Laugh even when it isn’t funny.

Cry even when it isn’t sad.

Go along with the other person’s conversation even when I’m not interested.

It’s basically the same as wearing a mask. I keep on lying.

That mask is something I’ve worn since the day I was born and taking it off is far more difficult.

* * *

By the time I reached middle school, I decided to play the role of an unremarkable person.

Looking back now, I think that at the time I must still have had some expectations of humans.

Because if I truly hadn’t cared about the elementary school incident, then no matter what others did to me, I could have just stuck to being myself without worrying about it.

And yet, I twisted my own behavior and even held back just to match others, so when I think about it now, that choice itself is rather interesting.

When I look at it that way, I suppose I’m not completely heartless after all, I thought, as if it were someone else’s problem.

* * *

In the end, perhaps because I changed myself so as not to stand out, nothing in particular happened to me during middle school.

But unlike elementary school, as I interacted more with people and came into direct contact with human ugliness, nothing resonated in my heart at all, which was already lacking in such feelings to begin with.

Why do these people laugh at others with such ugly faces?

Why do these people attack others who have nothing to do with them, for no real reason at all?

How utterly trivial.

Thinking such things, I lived on without any particular purpose.

* * *

After an unremarkable middle school career, I enrolled in this Advanced Nurturing High School.

I thought that if I just went on to a normal school and lived an ordinary life, I wouldn’t gain anything at all and to be honest, the school sounded suspicious and I was simply curious about what kind of place it really was.

And then I met a monster who was endlessly pitch-black and pure white.

A monster who had a side similar to mine.

That said, I have no intention of taking any action.

I’ll make some friends and kill time casually.

Just like always, I plan to live quietly without standing out.

I’m certainly interested in that man.

But that doesn’t mean my way of surviving and my habits up to now will disappear.

For now, this 100,000 PP is extremely suspicious, so I’ll try not to use it as much as possible.

I don’t plan on telling anyone.

There’s a chance I’m just overthinking things and I’m not kind enough to go out of my way to teach others.

Basically, I’m lazy.

And to go even further, if I’m fine with it, then that’s all that matters.

* * *

Not long after I started living like that, it seems that that man began dating Karuizawa-san.

To be honest, this was the first shock of my life.

A man like him, who like me makes you question whether he even sees other humans as humans, dating someone was something I could never have imagined.

For example, would I ever take an action like dating Hirata-kun?

There’s no way.

So for the moment, I went along with Satō-san and said, “Karuizawa-san sure has an unusual taste.”

If I didn’t go along with it, I’d probably get treated as a weirdo too. Well, I am a weirdo, though.

I figured there must be some kind of plan behind it, or perhaps some kind of contract.

By coincidence, when I once went out with Karuizawa-san, I noticed some trash stuck to her clothes and tried to brush it off from the front without saying anything.

At that moment, she froze. Not to an obvious degree, but she definitely stiffened.

On top of that, she seemed to have a very wide personal space.

When I paid closer attention after that, I noticed that she was vaguely protecting her side and was very conscious of other people’s gazes.

From that, I could infer that she probably had scars from either abuse or bullying, either lacerations or burns.

Both were possible.

After all, this school is cut off from the outside world, so it’s entirely possible that she chose this school for that very reason.

And if it were abuse she was escaping from, then her purpose would already have been fulfilled the moment she enrolled here, so there would be no need for her to date that man.

Which means that her decision to date him was likely a countermeasure against bullying.

Right now, that man is treated as a weirdo, but you can tell just by looking that he has tremendous potential. He’s nothing like someone who just talks big like Yamauchi.

The people who make fun of him will probably turn on a dime before long.

* * *

‘...I feel like I’m being watched.’

Today was swimming class.

Because of the extremely creepy Class D boys, mostly Ike and Yamauchi, many of the girls chose to skip class.

I could have skipped too, but I don’t hate moving my body, so I decided to attend properly.

This may have been the turning point for everything.

‘It’s not the disgusting looks from Yamauchi and the others. It feels like I’m being observed.’

I feel like that man is watching me.

At his level, even that feeling is uncertain.

Earlier, he seemed to be distracted by Kushida-san’s chest and got scolded by Karuizawa-san, so maybe he’s just looking at me in that kind of way too. I’ll think of it that way for now.

I swam at a relaxed pace, not overtaking Karuizawa-san ahead of me and finished in seventh place. It’s a perfectly reasonable ranking.

Swimming was fun and there was no penalty either.

And just as expected, my friends were all completely flipping their opinions, so I went along with that too.

* * *

There was a quiz.

It was far too easy.

I had planned to hold back from the start, but with this, it was too hard to get a nicely balanced score.

If I lowered my score too much, I’d get branded as an idiot, but if I solved everything except the hardest questions, that would be overdoing it.

What I’ve learned from spending time in this class is that there are a lot of people here whose intelligence and attitude aren’t very good.

In that case, getting too high a score would just make me stand out.

Let’s go with around 65 points.

Putting that aside.

The final question was difficult enough that even solving it seriously, I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten it right.

It’s frustrating not to be able to solve it, so I’ll buy a reference book on the way home.

That’s what I was thinking so casually at the time.

* * *

In the end, the quiz score was exactly as planned: 65 points. That part was fine.

But my prediction about PP came true.

This Class D has 0 CP.

Which means living on 0 yen every month.

It was definitely the right choice to try to save as much as I could.

So this is Class D, the so-called defective class.

No wonder there are so many pathetic people here.

I can understand why Kushida-san is in Class D.

Compared to me, her mask is still thin. We’re on completely different levels.

As for Hirata-kun...

Well, he probably won’t cause me much trouble, so that’s fine.

People like me and that man are probably in Class D because of our inner nature.

Of course.

Someone who only scored around average on the final middle school exams, then suddenly gets almost perfect marks on the actual entrance exam, would naturally be judged as someone who usually holds back.

Or perhaps they noticed the flaw in my heart during the interview.

If they really figured it out, then the examiners deserve praise.

Still, a Class D full of defectives.

Even with that man here, isn’t it going to be tough for this class to aim for Class A?

There are too many extreme people.

Including myself, of course, but it feels like nothing but troublesome people.

For now, until I can grasp everyone else’s true ability, I decided once again to stay quiet as usual.

* * *

In the end, the midterm exam finished safely, even if there was some chaos along the way.

That man took the helm and Hirata-kun took care of the studying, but the fact that he even managed to get Kōenji-kun to go get past exam questions from the upperclassmen and actually make him do it...

Apparently, that man mainly took care of Sudō-kun and Karuizawa-san and on top of that, even made Horikita-san, Kushida-san and the two idiots study.

This time, I aimed for around 80 points and answered accordingly.

With past exam questions, getting this kind of score should be fine.

We got through this midterm for now, but what comes next is still unclear.

From here on, I’ll just take it easy—

“Matsushita. I need to talk to you. Come with me for a bit.”

—maybe I won’t be able to.

* * *

“So? What do you want, Ayanokōji-kun?”

“I’m sure I told you on the day we figured out the school’s system that I wanted you to use your full power to bring our negatives to zero. And yet, you held back on this midterm, didn’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. And even if I did hold back, that wouldn’t be a minus, would it?”

“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re lower than the points you should have gotten. And I know you bought a fairly difficult problem book after the quiz. Those aren’t problems that someone who can only score 65 points on that quiz could solve. I thought about it during swimming too, but hiding your true ability is a habit of yours, isn’t it?”

“You keep track of quiz scores, stare at girls swimming even when they’re not your girlfriend and even know when I bought a problem book. Ayanokōji-kun, don’t you think you might have the makings of a stalker? You should be careful.”

“……”

“This is going nowhere, so I’ll be blunt. Lend me your ability. I use anything I can.”

“…Haa. I should have been more careful. Well, whatever. But you know, I’m already holding back, right? If you’re going to use me, you should take that into account.”

“…That’s fine. In fact, it helps if you keep hiding your true ability in your daily life.”

* * *

In the end, I won’t be able to take it easy anymore, but having that man close by is convenient.

It’s true that I was interested in him, so having more chances to observe him like this is a good thing.

I’m aware that I myself am broken, but I think he’s even more broken than I am.

He seems to only care about victory.

Maybe there’s also appetite and sexual desire.

But those are only natural for a living being and not on the insane level of those idiots.

I’ve never seen anyone like myself before. Whether that man can even be treated as human is questionable, but still.

Yes. I suppose I still have expectations.

Whether the way that man thinks and feels, so similar to mine, will change because of his environment and the people around him.

The reason he is so black and yet so white is either the result of having no one around him, or the result of his achievements.

You could even say he was dyed white.

But he chose to leave that environment and is now here.

If, as he spends time here, a heart is born within him, then maybe I myself can change too.