Chapter 8: 7

Chapter 7: A Boy’s Memoir

I have always been a ‘strange kid’.

I wasn’t very good at socializing, I was always interested in things much different from what other children my age were, and I repeatedly acted in ways that seemed very odd to adults. I had no common sense whatsoever and I just kept reading books on and on, slowly absorbing their knowledge in my spare time.

I’m afraid to say it myself… but I was what people called ‘a genius’ in this world.

I am a ‘genius’ and have always been a ‘strange kid’. The word ‘genius’  was often used in a bad way.

I didn’t have any friends.

Ever since I was little, I never really got along with the other kids. While everyone else was engrossed in watching funny cartoons and games, I instead was absorbed in reading biology books. I was too young to realize that I was doing something out of the ordinary. By the time I realized that I shouldn’t just read technical books, that I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone and make friends if I continued to do so, there was nobody by my side.

I was being bullied.

He’s a creepy guy. I have no idea what he’s talking about. He’s an idiot. Bully him. Hide things from him. Beat him up, kick him down. Pour water on him.

They didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand them. I didn’t even know why I was being bullied. My common sense was nonexistent. I was crazy from the time I was born. I was missing something crucial as a human being.

I was the bad guy in this world.

You can’t deviate from what everyone else thinks. After I realized this, I reflected on my behavior and tried to change myself. I already had no friends by my side, but I still tried to fix myself with nobody with me.

Apparently, it’s not good to always get a very good score on tests. It seems that everyone was jealous of me for doing so. I realized this and intentionally got a bad score on the test. However, my teacher noticed that I had cut corners, and he got angry with me in front of everyone. The fact became clear to everyone, and I became a “arrogant know it all.”

I continued to fail.

I tried to make an effort to have more conversations with people my own age. But that, too, failed at every possible turn. I couldn’t learn to enjoy what everyone else had found ‘interesting’. And nobody was interested in what I liked to do either. Even when I was talking to someone with a slightly good atmosphere, a single misstep would instantly turn the atmosphere into a cold and chilly one.

No matter how hard I tried, I could never have a normal, decent conversation with anyone.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I knew more than most people. And I didn’t know who didn’t know anything that I did. When someone told me something I didn’t know, no matter how humble I’d be, it was always taken as sarcasm. They think I’m just talking over them. If it happened once or twice, it would be fine. But in my case, it happened too often. They were not mature enough to endure it. We were children in the right sense that way.

No matter how politely I offered words of comfort to those who didn’t win the prize, they were always perceived as me being sarcastic. It was always the same thing. I leave a scratch on my ‘friend’s’ self-esteem even though I had no intention of doing so. It was as if I had no idea what the people my age knew and didn’t know.

I didn’t know what to say anymore. The more I thought about it, the more I tried to do something, the more I wondered about what I could say that would be effective and enjoyable for everyone.

I had no idea what I was talking about. It was painfully difficult to converse with the common knowledge of my age group.

I could do nothing but talk blindly.

If I opened my mouth, everyone would hate me. I would say things that they didn’t know about and slowly claw harmfully into their hearts. Not saying anything is also a factor that makes people hate you. But that’s a less likely alternative compared to just talking to someone face to face, that always makes people hate me more. I had no choice but to adopt the attitude with the least negative impact.

They say that a pleasant conversation is not something you should try hard to create. So what should someone do if they can’t even do that normally? I still don’t know the answer to that.

My brother used to scold me, saying why can’t you talk normally, why can’t you get along with people normally, and well…? I didn’t know either. I had no answer to say back to him.

I was different from my peers around me. They were jealous of my good test results. I tried talking to my teachers about it, but they only took my words as sarcasm. They told me “Don’t get carried away just because you have good test scores, the reason why you can’t make friends is because you always listen to our classes and act like it’s boring.” 

In the end, It was always my fault.

My father was a researcher. He was a researcher working for a company, not a university. He introduced me to his research institute. I was grateful, but he didn’t introduce me to the institute with my well-being in mind. He always said, ‘A capable person must give it back to society’. He always said, “Those who have ability must give it back to society. Geniuses must develop the world”.

According to my father’s words, he didn’t introduce me to the institute for my sake, but rather it was for the world’s good instead.

Even after entering middle school, I did not do very well, and I was always bullied by everyone else. No, the more the time passed, the wider the gap between me and everyone else seemed to widen. Was this arrogance? The gap between me and the people around me has never corrected itself, it instead became even more distorted than before. I lost my place in school. No, there was no place for me at school from the start. 

Life at the laboratory was monotonous. I spent my days facing only the documents on the table and the experimental apparatus. My mouth had already deteriorated to the point where no one cared about me, who had very little to say. I just repeated experiments and research monotonously. However, I was grateful for the extra space in the laboratory that they were lending me.

I did not go to high school. I didn’t have the energy to go to one, and I no longer saw the point in going either. If I only had books to study, I could do it all by myself.

After a while in the institute, my father started to envy me. My research began to develop and I produced greater results than my father. My father became very envious, he felt as if he no longer had a place in the institute. Although I had not always gotten along with my father, our relationship naturally fell apart.

I had nothing else other than research.

Research, research, research… results, publish papers, receive awards. Keep  researching, experimenting, researching, researching, getting results, achieving results, results, results….

I discovered a new cure for a disease.

But in the end, the hole within me was never filled. 

One day I had a small bump with someone on the stairs. I don’t think it was intentional. But the small impact knocked me off the stairs and my body rolled down the stairs. I hit my body, then my head, and by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, my whole body was numb and sore.

I could see a lot of blood flow out of me, I must have hit my head during the fall.

That’s when I slowly closed my eyes and my life came to an end.

—-But then I reincarnated.

I have no way of knowing why, but it happened.

After my reincarnation, I was named Rain. 

My circumstances as ‘Rain’ were a little more difficult than in my previous life, as I was born weak and my parents were divorced, but I didn’t care much about that.

It didn’t matter.

I didn’t talk to my elementary school friends the same way I did before. This time there was a difference not only in my knowledge but also in my actual age. With the experience of reincarnation, I was able to get a 100 on a test very early on, but even in my previous life, I also scored 100 on tests, so it didn’t really mean anything.

There was no point in scoring a 100.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t care about anything. I had literally died once. I couldn’t bring myself to start my life all over again and make it work somehow. My energy had died along with my previous life.

I wanted to fill the hole inside of me.

I believed that if I could fill that hole, I could become normal, with basic common sense. I would be free from this suffering.

However, the more knowledge I gained, the more I lived my actual life, the greater the void within me became, and the more I felt that I was diverging from the norm. It was as if there was a certain framework for humanity, and the more I gained something, the more something else fell out. The more specialised knowledge I learnt, the more my common sense was collapsing and the greater my deficiencies grew.

Apparently, being a genius means being an anomaly.

And I wanted to treat that anomaly.

In my previous life I immersed myself in research. My father repeatedly told me, “Those who have the ability must give it back to society.”

If my research could be useful to the world and make people happy, my gap would be filled. That’s what I had thought. There are many geniuses in the world who are called abnormal. They are achieving results and contributing to the world. If I could do the same, the void in my heart would be filled.

I used to genuinely believe that.

And in my previous life, I encountered a certain disease.

It was a disease named ‘WM-8 Chronic Myocardial Dysfunction.’

This has long been thought to be a heart disease. It has been thought to be something that slowly weakens the heart, as some factor causes the heart to function poorly.

I was doing research on living organisms related to their bodies. The company my father worked for was developing magic tools, and the company wanted me to do research on how to assist or enhance the reactions of living organisms with magical tools.

Then I realised. The ‘WM-8 Chronic Myocardial Dysfunction’ is not a problem within the heart, but it’s with the quality of the magical factor that the person possesses.

It has been determined that this disease is caused by a certain type of magical factor with the nature of stagnation that over a long period of time collects inside the heart, the place in the human body where the greatest amount of magical power gets collected, and it just stagnates there, causing the heart to function poorly. The stagnant magic factor is a field that has only recently been studied, and people who are born with a large amount of stagnant magic factor have accumulated a large amount of stagnant magic inside their hearts, which causes their hearts to gradually decline functionally.

The “WM-8 Chronic Myocardial Dysfunction” had long been treated with cardiac surgery and medication, but it was necessary to approach the magic factor that resides in the human body instead of the traditional method. This was something I realized only because I had been exposed to both the field of living organisms and the field of magical tools.

I will continue to do research in order to create a cure for this disease.

“I’ll confess… I don’t understand.”

“…………”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

That person was my supervisor at the research institute. I wanted to get his advice, so I discussed this with him, on the areas I was stuck in my research and future plans, and the logic of my theory. But he never responded back.

A short time later, he quit the institute on his own. No matter how anyone looked at it, it was my fault. I had driven him into a corner.

The man was a good man. He was kind and warm.

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I was the bad guy. I hurt a lot of people.

Still, I continued my research. I repeated more experiments.

I was certainly on the cutting edge of my research, and I received a lot of support as well as a lot of obstacles. For example, there was the issue of authority in the medical world, and criticism from within the company for the research that was going into the medical field in earnest.

But I was used to being ostracized. I was bullied at school after all.

Walking on the cutting edge of research was also terrifying. Pioneering a new path was an act that burned me. Anxiety always clung to me as I walked ahead on this path.

But I wasn’t allowed to escape. Because I could hear their voices in my head. My friend, my child, my husband, had the disease. Please, they said, please develop a cure for it, if you don’t I won’t forgive you.

People around me said that it was my mission to do so.

I was wanted. The people’s desires did not allow me to escape from this. So, I continued my research quietly.

I had high expectations placed upon me…

If the research is successful, my gap would be filled.

I believed that beyond the success of the arduous research that kept burning and sapping my spirit, there was surely something I truly wanted. If only I could fulfil my responsibility as a genius with an empty gap inside of him, if I return my existence to society and earn the world’s admiration–

I believe that my gap will finally be filled.

I thought I could make some genuine friends.

I repeated my research. The only things I was facing those days were the documents on the table and the experimental apparatuses, step by step, steadily and monotonously. I faced my mission and fulfilled my role.

I had high hopes placed upon me.

Beyond this research, I had to have something to fill in my missing piece.

If I succeeded in this research, I would be rewarded for everything I had done in my life and see a tremendous turnaround in my life. I would finally be able to be the person I wanted to be.

And the result was a success.

A cure for the disease was established.

We were able to develop a magical tool that could stimulate the magical factor of stagnation that accumulates in the heart and circulate it through the entire body instead. The clinical trials were successful. Many people suffering from the disease were saved. The medical society recognized the results and awarded us with a commendation. The magical tool company that owns this laboratory also succeeded in making a large profit and received an award within the company as well.

We were able to help a lot of people.

It was a great honor.

We got a lot of money.

But the void inside of me never was filled.

Nothing about myself had ever changed. I was still a bad talker, unable to communicate with others, uninterested in pleasant pastimes, and unable to get along with others.

The success in the research did not fill my void, it did not make me a normal person.

More people had begun admiring me. But I still didn’t make any friends.

The success of my research did not give me anything important as a person, and the admiration of others could not replace my lack of it. I was happy that so many people were saved because of me. But the joy of saving a faceless person was not strong enough to change my entire life.

A sense of emptiness flowed through my chest.

When I looked back, I saw pieces of myself scattered across the skyview. Pieces of myself, which were necessary to connect with others, were scattered along the path I had carved out. I had carved out a path by cutting myself down, and that path was one that I would never be able to turn back from.

I tore up the certificates I got and broke all my trophies. They were worthless. They taught me nothing. My father looked at me like I was crazy.

This void was one that would never be filled.

I realized that a person as abnormal as me would have to live the rest of my life as an abnormal being. 

I never made any friends.

And the company and the medical institutions affiliated with the company immediately set forth the next subject of what I should study. Everyone had high expectations for me. They expected new results from me.

But I didn’t have the energy to get up again. I knew I would never get what I truly wanted, and my energy was completely dead. My void hadn’t been filled.

Then the ‘reincarnation’ happened.

Yet, my nature remained the same. My ‘specialness’ will never be cured, and today it continues to gnaw away at me. Nothing has changed from my previous life, and I continue to walk a path separate from the norm.

I was living my life without any energy to get up and start over again. I was living my days in a daze, with nothing but emptiness inside my heart.

That is, when I met a strange girl.

Yuki.

For some reason, that girl had developed a rivalry with me. My mouth, which had completely deteriorated, did not speak very well, but Yuki had still kept coming at me.

I had no idea why, I have no clue why she would do such a thing. If I had understood her, I would have been able to make friends easily. I was unable to change who I was, but she still wouldn’t leave me alone.

When I first met her, she was surprised by me reading a book in a foreign language. I thought, well, kids this age don’t read books in foreign languages. I thought I was going to deviate from the crowd again and people would give me the creeps as usual. I decided to look up the typical age for starting to read books in a foreign language and be careful from now on.

But Yuki came to see me again. And this time, she had read through several foreign language books in a short period and came to brag about what she had read.

Her nosy face was hard to forget.

I was surprised. Yuki easily imitated the ‘abnormality’ of reading through a book in a foreign language at her age.

I was surprised. And I was saddened too.

I realized that she, too, was a gifted human.

Is she missing something, too? Will she have to live her life with a void in her heart? Will she have to lead a life like I did, a life that will burn in the fire of karma?

My heart ached at the thought of her future.

After that, Yuki visited me many times. She called me her henchman and tried to make me feel like her younger brother.

She was the only one who faced me. She was a mysterious girl.

I try to be careful not to say too much, but sometimes there are a few things that slip out of my mouth that are not in her area of knowledge. When this happens, I can tell by her reaction. She was stunned for a moment, and then she acted like she knew what she’s talking about. Seeing her like that, I knew I had hurt someone again.

But she was different from such ordinary people.

Whenever that happened, she would thoroughly research the subject to counter my knowledge, and the next time we met, she would share her acquired knowledge with me. How about that! Isn’t it amazing! I knew exactly what I was talking about! She was so proud and happy, she talked about her knowledge a lot, it was as if she was telling a story to her henchmen.

I was relieved every time she told me about her newly acquired knowledge.

Ah, thank god I didn’t hurt her. She’s a genius that can absorb and emit knowledge.

I respected Yuki. She was very capable. She was able to acquire, absorb, and think deeply about all kinds of knowledge.

She had the ability to stay out of the ordinary.

Even though she’s very bright and happy and talks to me about school often. She was a ‘genius’ and that meant she couldn’t be normal and must be missing something.

And yet, she looked like she was having a lot of fun and filled with laughter whenever she talked to me.

Hey, Yuki…

Why are you smiling so happily?

Are you really like me? Are you not ‘Special’? Do you not have a void like me?

I have feelings that I can’t tell anyone about.

It was a thought that came to mind the day I died.

There are thoughts that should not be put into words.

—I have been carrying a thought in my heart for a long time that I shouldn’t put into words.

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