What is the absolute most universally despised entity on the face of the planet?
Whether you ask a student still in school or a corporate worker who has entered society, the answer will always be overwhelmingly unanimous:
The morning alarm clock!
Ringgg! Ringgg! Ringgg!
The shrill, piercing shriek of the alarm violently shattered the peaceful morning silence.
The instant the sound registered, it felt exactly like taking a heavy wooden club directly to the brain. The sheer concussive force rivaled the legendary blow Gin delivered to the back of Shinichi Kudo's skull—a strike so powerful it literally shattered the timeline of the Detective Conan universe.
Jolted awake, Suyan's immediate, primal instinct was to thrust his arm out from beneath the blankets and stop the shrieking device on his nightstand.
However, a massive, crushing weight pinned him securely to the mattress, rendering him completely immobile.
I am bearing a burden far too heavy for my young age.
What oppressive force is keeping me pinned down?
Is it the crushing weight of reality?
No. It's Marikawa Shizuka!
Suyan forced his eyes open, and his entire field of vision was instantly dominated by Shizuka's sleeping face. She was so incredibly close he could clearly count the fine, peach-fuzz hairs on her flawless skin.
She had completely wrapped herself around him, clinging to him tightly like an octopus. Her entire body weight was fully draped over him, and the two massive water balloons on her chest were squished aggressively against his chest. Her warm, rhythmic breathing tickled his cheek.
Without lingering too long in Shizuka's soft embrace, Suyan struggled to extract his arm from her vice-like grip and slammed his hand down on the alarm clock, finally silencing the infernal noise.
He then groggily sat up, reached over to the edge of the bed where he had built a small nest for the two YukimiBotamon, picked up one of the little cuties, and immediately shoved it directly into Shizuka's empty arms.
Still deeply asleep but instinctively reacting to Suyan leaving her embrace, Shizuka's arms blindly groped the bed. The moment her hands brushed against the YukimiBotamon Suyan had sent over, she immediately seized it and hugged it tightly against her chest.
"Mi?"
Startled by the sudden, suffocating pressure, the YukimiBotamon's large, round eyes snapped open in sheer terror.
If any sane male on the planet could see the exact, deeply enviable position the small Digimon currently occupied, they would have desperately wished to take its place. Yet, at this precise moment, the fluffy blob's face was the absolute portrait of existential despair.
"Shh." Suyan quickly pressed a finger to his lips, signaling the Digimon to remain silent. "Don't wake her up."
"Mi!" The YukimiBotamon nodded solemnly, a look of profound, heroic determination hardening its tiny features.
Seeing its brave sacrifice, Suyan smiled faintly. He silently mouthed the words, I'm leaving her to you.
YukimiBotamon: I swear to god, this house would completely fall apart without me.
Suyan glanced at the alarm clock. It read exactly 6:01 AM.
In reality, he could have easily slept in. Japanese high schools typically started classes around eight in the morning, meaning he had a full two hours to kill. But the main reason he forced himself out of bed so early was to prepare breakfast for Shizuka and make their bento boxes for lunch.
Japan possessed an incredibly deep-rooted bento culture. Whether they were students attending classes or adults heading to the office, the vast majority of the population woke up early to meticulously prepare boxed lunches for the day.
For elementary schoolers, parents or older siblings usually handled the task. However, once students reached middle school, Japanese curriculums mandated Home Economics classes, where teachers explicitly instructed students on how to prepare basic, essential dishes like rolled omelets (tamagoyaki). Thus, from middle school onward, teenagers generally began packing their own lunches.
By the time a student reached high school, anyone still relying on someone else to pack their lunch was universally assumed to be either a ridiculously wealthy, pampered aristocrat or a hopeless culinary disaster.
While the school cafeteria did sell pre-made bentos, their attempts at foreign cuisine were... questionable at best. General Tso's Chicken, anyone?
Faced with those bleak options, Suyan was forced to do as the locals do and embrace the bento culture.
He opened his closet, pulled out his Fujimi Academy uniform, and quickly got dressed. After washing up in the bathroom, he headed straight for the kitchen to tackle breakfast and lunch.
For the bentos, Suyan strictly prepared robust, intensely flavorful home-style dishes—like garlic chives stir-fried with pork, shredded pork with green peppers, or minced meat with pickled long beans. These were the kind of dishes that actually tasted significantly better after sitting and marinating in their own juices for a few hours.
After eating his own breakfast and packing the food into the bento boxes, Suyan grabbed his bag and headed off to Fujimi Academy.
He deliberately chose not to wake Shizuka.
As the official school nurse of Fujimi Academy, Shizuka held what was widely considered the holy grail of employment: high salary, zero actual responsibilities.
If a student had a minor injury, they didn't need treatment; they just needed to lie down until it stopped hurting. If a student had a major injury, she couldn't treat it anyway, so they were immediately shipped off to a real hospital.
In many ways, the sole true purpose of a Japanese school infirmary was to provide students trying to skip class with another place to go. The role of a school nurse was fundamentally identical to that of a physical education teacher back home—sharing a remarkably similar essence in that they were both largely treated as optional.
When Suyan arrived at his classroom, it was still a bit early. The room was filled with small, tightly knit cliques of students loudly gossiping and laughing together.
Suyan felt absolutely zero desire to socialize with any of them.
The zombie apocalypse was quite literally right around the corner. He had no idea how many of these kids would even be alive by the end of the week. Furthermore, he hadn't awakened some overpowered 'Lord System' that required him to build an army of loyal followers. Aside from the canonical heroines he specifically wanted to target, interacting with these doomed extras was a massive waste of energy.
Suyan walked straight to his designated seat—the legendary 'Protagonist Seat' located at the very back of the classroom, right next to the window. The chaotic noise of the classroom completely washed over him as he naturally slipped into a deep, meditative state to train his Nen.
He didn't have to worry about anyone interrupting his training. Thanks to his established reputation as an elite scholar consistently ranking second in the entire grade, combined with his permanently cold, unapproachable demeanor, the other students naturally kept a respectful distance.
Time flew by, and soon the bell rang for the lunch break.
Grabbing his bento, Suyan headed straight for the holy land of anime tropes: the school rooftop.
Normally, Suyan would head directly to the infirmary to eat lunch with Shizuka. However, he had checked earlier and discovered she had called in sick today. She claimed she was going to visit her best friend, Minami Rika.
It seemed she had actually taken his apocalyptic warning from last night seriously.
Left with no other options, Suyan was forced to eat alone.
Despite the school rooftop being heavily romanticized in every anime ever created, it was actually a pretty miserable place in reality. It was freezing cold in the winter, blisteringly hot in the summer, and only mildly tolerable during the spring and autumn. Furthermore, to prevent students from dramatically throwing themselves off the edge, most Japanese schools strictly kept the rooftop access doors padlocked shut.
Honestly, Suyan had never even been to the Fujimi Academy rooftop before. He was purely motivated by morbid curiosity.
In truth, the only students who ever actually ate lunch on the roof were the absolute social outcasts who had literally zero friends.
This tied directly into Japan's unique bullying culture. Every time a new school year started and classes were shuffled, students were under immense, unspoken pressure to immediately form or join a social clique. If a few weeks passed and you were still eating alone, you were permanently branded as a social pariah.
Once that happened, the rest of the class would form a silent, unified consensus to relentlessly isolate and bully you until you either broke or somehow forced your way into a group. It didn't matter if you were the top student in the school or the worst delinquent; the collective would ruthlessly crush anyone who didn't conform to the herd.
More often than not, the solitary anime protagonist occupying the window seat was actually the prime target for this exact kind of systematic bullying.
Technically speaking, Suyan's extreme isolation firmly placed him in the 'bullied' demographic. However, from his perspective, he wasn't the one being ostracized; he alone was bullying the entire school.
Finding a quiet spot, Suyan sat down, leaned against the concrete wall, and prepared to pop the lid off his bento box.
Faintly, he heard what sounded like a girl softly sobbing nearby.
While finding a crying teenager on a Japanese school rooftop was hardly a rare occurrence, Suyan's curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to peek around the corner.
A girl with long, flaxen-brown hair was huddled against the far wall. She had her knees pulled tightly to her chest, her face completely buried in her arms as her shoulders shook with quiet sobs.
Asuna?