5.8
Again and again, I repeated the same day.
Repeated the days of learning that seemed to go on forever.
In a world where there were hardly any breaks, we fourth-generation students continued to repeat the curriculum.
There was nothing more to say.
No matter how complicated and difficult it got, what we had to do remained the same.
Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after the day after that, and the day after that. Again and again, I repeated.
The next day came as a matter of fact.
We learned something new.
Absorb. If you didn't absorb, you wouldn't survive.
Once you were branded as a failure, there was no undoing it.
And what was normal yesterday may not be normal today.
The buzzer sounded.
The children followed the rules and placed their pens on their desks.
This was the end of the high-stakes written curriculum.
The test papers were collected and the scoring began immediately.
Meanwhile, the children sat silently in their seats and waited for the results.
However, the results were usually known before they were given out.
All the children who remained here knew how well they answered the questions.
The little girl in the front seat was shaking slightly.
I stared at her blankly, waiting for the right moment.
One of the instructors came in and walked over to the shaking child.
“—Disqualified.”
The instructor announced in front of the child… in the same calm tone as usual.
Once again, another student had been disqualified.
The number of remaining fourth-generation students had been reduced to only four, and now one of those seats disappeared.
“Oh no...”
In the White Room, failure in the training and study phases was never an issue.
It didn’t matter how much you progressed leading up to the exam, scoring a ten or a five on the other exams was irrelevant. The instructor would just keep the learning process going without stopping.
It was the final exam that decided everything—whether or not you failed.
If you failed to meet the standards, you’d be judged as having no ability at that point and dropped from the curriculum.
“Stand up.”
No extra words were included, short phrases were all that mattered.
“I... I don't want to...”
The last thing you’ll want to do would be to answer that demand.
If what she said was correct, Yuki's result was only five points short of the passing grade.
To the casual observer, it may seem like only five points, but in the White Room, there was no redemption even if one point was missing.
This was true for many students I have trained against.
Children who failed to meet the passing grade once were generally less capable of learning later in life.
This has been proven. In other words, even if we ignore the situation here and let it go until the next regular exam, they still won’t be able to break out of the situation where they’re the next top candidate to drop out of the White Room.
In other words, you aren’t qualified to remain in the fourth generation once you see that you’ve hit your ceiling.
“Rotten apples must be removed. Any hindrance will become a burden to our growth.”
I guess they didn’t intend to spend any more time on this.
One of the instructors reached for Yuki's arm.
“No… I hate it!”
Brushing away his arm, Yuki rushed towards me while still shaken.
“Kiyotaka, save me! I don’t want to disappear!”
Spilling tears, Yuki pleaded for help.
I took one look at the instructor who slowly approached me, but I didn’t change my indifferent position.
“It’s impossible.”
“...!”
“I can't help you. No, I’m not going to.”
“Please! Next time I’ll do my best! Next time!”
“Next? Why didn't you try before that? You know there’s no next time.”
“Well, that's...!”
If you can't work hard now, you won’t be able to work hard next time.
Continuing was impossible, just as there’s only one life.
“But still... I can do it, I can do it...!”
Look at what I've achieved up until now. Is that what this is about?
The instructors had me and Yuki surrounded.
“Huuh?”
I signaled to the approaching instructors to stop and turned to Yuki.
“It's true that you’ve been following the curriculum except for the written exam. However, your grades kept dropping year after year and never seemed to improve. In other words, this is where your limits lie.”
Even if she were to be saved and remained, it would be the instructor's decision, not the decision of the kid that wants to be saved. I could only assume that Yuki was making a mistake by hanging onto me like this.
“Come here!”
“No! No! Please! Please let me try again!”
Raising her voice, Yuki showed a peculiar resistance to the instructors.
It wasn’t an unusual behavior among the dropouts, but even so, Yuki's behavior was a little different from what we had seen before.
“You know very well the rules of the White Room. Why are you so upset?”
The students in the White Room, including myself, didn’t understand the situation.
The instructors, however, knew very well why Yuki was resisting so much.
But they never stated the reason.
They grabbed Yuki by the arms and forcefully pulled her off of me.
“Help me! Kiyotaka!”
She called out my name over and over again, screaming and begging for help.
“Help! Help...!”
She reached out to me as she crumbled to the ground, begging for my help.
Help?
The girl in front of me had already been disqualified.
The disqualified will leave this room.
And they never come back.
There were no exceptions.
Then why did she need to ask for help?
It was a waste of effort—a waste of time.
“Please, I don't want to leave!”
Two adults, who couldn’t stand that she still hadn’t left the room, came into the room in a hurry.
The instructors then seized the girl and dragged her out.
“No! No! No! Help me!”
One more person failed to reach their goal and was eliminated.
I'm sure the remaining children were looking at Yuki with the same cold eyes I did.
Or maybe they were scared that they might be next.
Either way.
All I cared about was that I was the last one standing.
From the beginning, I've been living in this world relying on those feelings alone.
I lived in that white world. A scream that comes from learning together for years, like family, or perhaps something from a different dimension entirely, like affection towards the opposite sex, huh?
To be dragged out of here is a denial of all that we are.
Therefore, everyone repeated their studies within a limited time so that this didn’t happen.
It's just...
“Please wait.”
I muttered quietly to the instructors.
“Who said you could speak? You won’t get away with it the next time you open your mouth without permission.”
“Then it's fine if you don't let me get away with it, but please listen to me”
Immediately after those words came out, the instructor fell silent, came up to me, and kicked me without hesitation.
“I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
“Yuki wasn’t feeling well before noon. She seemed restless during the exam, and I think she was unable to show her ability in other areas...”
As I was about to continue, he grabbed me by the chest as if to further interrupt me.
“It is also her responsibility to keep herself in good condition. Do you think that's an excuse now? I didn't see anything wrong with her this morning.”
“That's right. But it would be a different story if it was unexpected.”
“Unexpected?”
The instructor turned around and looked at the other instructors surrounding the fallen Yuki.
“...There’s bleeding.”
The adults seemed to realize from their observations that Yuki was in an unusual state.
“Bleeding? Did she get hurt somewhere…No, is it that?”
“Yes. Normally, the earliest that this could occur is around 9 years old, but this early is exceptional. It’s probably due to the stress, which is different from that of the other students in the class, caused by the difficulty of the course. She also seems to have a fever, so it’s no wonder that she’s unexpectedly ill.”
“Go to the doctor's office. We'll see if she's disqualified or not after we get a closer look at her.”
With those words, the instructor instructed Yuki and took her out of the room.
As they were leaving, Yuki looked at me through her tears, but I didn’t meet her eyes.
“Well spotted. That’s what I would say, but we would’ve noticed it right after this without you having to point it out. Your unauthorized comments are still a problem.”
“So you’ll punish me?”
Punishments, such as corporal punishment, would follow after violating rules outside the curriculum.
But that was all there was to it.
I knew that they couldn’t take such brutal measures, such as dropping out.
“Do you think I’m joking?”
“If you're going to stand by and keep an eye on me, you'd better watch me more closely.”
“...You!”
Too late. The instructor, clenching his right fist and revealing his murderous intent, came at me, but I avoided him.
“Stop!”
The instructor tried to retort, but another instructor rushed back to stop him.
“Don't let the kid's comments get to you, newcomer!”
“...!”
There were some instructors who were inexperienced, but with this new instructor, he will make more mistakes from now on.”
That's why there’s a need to make it wide-known at this stage.
If they were going to use him, they needed to train him better. If they decided that he was useless, they needed to get rid of him.
In the end, after that day, Yuki never came back.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login