Just what the hell have I been doing with my life?
I'm about to enter my last year of high school, yet I've been drifting through it all without purpose. Have I done anything I'm proud of? My grades are good, but that means nothing to me. I don't plan to go to college. What then? Waste away? Grow old and die having done nothing? I have no friends—and I don't plan on making any. Maybe that's just the life I'm meant to live. Maybe I should just keep sleeping forever—never dreaming, never thinking. Is this really the life I want? Since it is, I might as well—
Then, suddenly, I saw her. Olympia Ventura. A girl I've shared classes with throughout high school. What is she doing here?
I chose this place—the backside of the school bleachers—because no one ever comes here.
This is meant to be my sanctuary.
Cold. Dark. Comforting.
Yet here she is. Why?
"Are you staring at my breast?"
"What?"
"I asked, 'Are you staring at my breast?' What? Are you hard of hearing? I knew your head was dense, but I still thought you could hear from a decent distance. Guess I was wrong…"
"I wasn't staring at your breast!" I was. "And my head isn't dense!" It is.
"I'm just messing with you, Kiyomi."
"Huh? You know my name?"
"Of course I do, Kiyomi Otonashi. We've always shared the same class throughout high school. Don't you know my name?"
"I don't." I do.
"Liar."
"Okay, I'm lying… Of course, I know who you are, Olympia Ventura."
"Why did you lie, Kiyomi? Are you a liar?"
"N-No! I was just surprised that someone like you knows who I am."
"Well, you know I'm a friendly person. So why wouldn't I know you?"
"Because we're not friends…"
"We're not?"
"No. Sorry… I'm just not the type of person to have friends."
"Why not? It's nice having friends."
"I just never really wanted or felt the need to make any." I lied.
"How about I be your first friend? Maybe then you'll learn to like making friends."
"And why should I be friends with you?"
"Just for the hell of it." She smiles. A beautiful smile. A genuine smile. One that says you can trust me.
"I'll have to pass. I'm sorry…"
"That's too bad. I really would've liked to have been your friend. But I can't force you, so I'll just have to accept it. For now, can we just talk for a bit? More than wanting to be your friend, I've always wanted to, at the very least, talk to you."
"Sure, we can talk. What did you want to talk about?"
"I wanted to talk about the future."
"The future?"
"Yeah! What do you plan on doing in the future?" Should I tell her the truth? Should I tell her that I was just about to— "No matter what comes across the path I take, I want to live a life I'm happy with. But I don't want to be just happy.
"I believe that happiness isn't something I'll experience for a long time. At the very end of my life, when my very existence reaches its end, I want to be able to say my life was filled with countless moments of happiness, so many that I don't care about the bad or if things end here.
"This is the life I want to live. No matter what hardships I face, no matter what pain I feel or inflict, I want to be able to live a life I'm happy with."
"Happiness? Is that all you want? What a boring person you are. Everyone wants happiness. There isn't a single person alive who doesn't crave it."
"I don't want happiness. I want a life I can be happy with. Can't you hear? Or are my breasts just too distracting for you?"
"Wouldn't your breast being a distraction for me impact my eyes, not my ears? What's the difference between wanting happiness and a life you can be happy with?"
"As I said earlier, happiness is a transient thing to me. I don't want to be happy all the time. At the same time, I don't want to experience happiness solely. I want countless happy moments, but I won't shoo away any other emotions. I want to experience all sorts of emotions. That's why we're alive, aren't we? To experience things. And more precisely, to observe. Don't you know, Kiyomi? We're observers. That's why we are born. To experience and observe. Joy, pain, tranquility, anger, admiration, jealousy, love, and hate. All of these emotions converge into one thing. That one thing is us. Don't you understand, Kiyomi?"
I don't understand. "I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?"
"Why would anyone want to feel and experience negative emotions? Pain, anger, jealousy, and hate. Who would want to experience these things? Shouldn't we strive for only positive emotions? Why the negative ones, too? I don't understand."
"That's because you're weak."
I'm weak? "I'm weak?"
"You're too much of a coward to allow yourself to experience those negative emotions. To be human means to suffer. Don't you know that? From the moment we are born, we are suffering. No matter what we do while we are alive, we will eventually die. Don't you know how terrifying that is? We all sooner or later meet our eventual end. But that end isn't today. So until we die, let's all suffer. Let's experience all sorts of things while we're still alive. Hell, you might end up dying later today. Do you want to look back on your life and see that you were a coward who was too afraid to experience this gift called life?"
"I'm not a—"
"You are. Whatever. I'll leave you alone. You've made it obvious, you don't want to be my friend. And I don't want to be friends with a coward… Goodbye."
She left, calling me a coward. I stood there, silent. "I'm not a coward," I whispered to no one but myself.
Then out of nowhere, I suddenly hear, "Would you like to see if you truly aren't a coward, Kiyomi Otonashi?"