Chapter 1: Prologue

By all accounts I, Ishiyama Houtarou, considered myself a typical person. My family while being poorer than most, have barely been able to support both my little sister and I through childhood. Though they couldn't always provide us with what we wanted, they never once begrudged us their love and attention, and never withheld what they could afford.

I felt blessed to have them as parents, even if I had to give up many of my dreams and aspirations due to their lack of funds. They had a hard time rebuilding their lives after the global catastrophe known as Exodus when they had me shortly after, but they never once made me feel like a burden to them. In fact I thought that considering their situation, they did rather well.

My parents used to own a convenience store but it was forced to close during Exodus and the economy did not allow them to reopen their shop. Since then they have been doing odd jobs wherever they could for little over a pittance. My dad eventually found work as a lowly paid office cleaner while my mom was a seamstress along with the other wives in the slums but the economy was still bad and their income was barely enough to cover our bills. My sister and I hardly saw them much once we started school as they left early and came home late, but they tried to spend as much time as they could afford with us when they could.

Once we were old enough, my sister and I both started working over the weekends just to make even a little more to help with the bills. I had helped to pay for much of my own education, even my sister's when she broke her arm and was unable to work and even paid for medication when my parents ran out of money. We couldn't buy new things so I fixed much of the appliances at home with whatever scraps we found on the streets.

I thought of myself as ordinary, and I knew many people just like me in the slums. But where they chose to help out with their families business or started working after middle or high school, I chose to pursue higher education. I needed it, I had to do it, I knew in the long run it would help my family best if I could get a degree, but it was extremely expensive and without a scholarship I had absolutely no chance to change my fate. Fortunately I could study well enough.

My friends in school Kouya and Haruto were supportive and empathetic, but they could not understand this struggle. They just didn't know how, they didn't come from the slums. Their families were lucky and they were connected well enough and had managed to save enough funds to rebuild their lives and they weren't under as much pressure as I was financially. 

They had enough saved to pay for a private university even if they did not get a scholarship and all they needed to do was to score well enough to be accepted by any university. They were by no means rich though, but they were comfortable enough to not have to worry much about their future. They had told me many times that they would be happy enough to get a degree and start working in a reputable company. 

Honestly I had considered doing the same myself, but I thought that since I had to aim for a scholarship anyway to attend university, if I could aim high then I should aim as high as I could. If I could get into Tōdai or something, I could probably climb the corporate ranks as quickly as possible after graduating and give my ageing parents some peace of mind for once. I remembered I thought something like this back in middle school, and made sure to study extra hard.

Kouya and Haruto said I was no fun since all I did was work and study, but they still stuck by me the whole way. In any case they made my life somewhat interesting, and the study sessions with them and my sister were extremely useful as it exposed my own gaps in knowledge as I helped them with their studies. My textbook was covered in notes that I had written and rewritten so many times over, that it looked more like a magic tome from a fantasy game Haruto used to play than a textbook. 

I had been preparing for the Common Tests since middle school, I sacrificed so much, working part time gigs over the weekends, on top of the other part time gigs I already had, saving money to help pay for the cheapest prep school along with Kouya and Haruto. I spent hours studying before school, after school, during work, over the weekends. My family of course understood, and would make it a point to come by my room every couple hours or so with a cup of coffee and some snacks to power me through.

All those years of hard work has led to this, and I confidently sat in the exam hall on a cold and unassuming Saturday. With a head cramped full of things I would most likely forget a several years down, I managed to complete the first day of the exam in high anxious spirits. It was by no means easy but the subjects today were my best and I wasn't too worried about it. Still I had made sure to check through my mistakes and quickly copied my answers onto the question sheet so that my friends and I could check our answers in the rubrics provided by our prep school and I was pretty happy with the result when I returned home and began revising for the second day.

For some reason though, my head felt heavy that night, and I began to doubt myself and my readiness for the next day. I took out my materials and began revising again and again. I made sure that I could understand every mathematical formula, and knew how to apply it in every situation. I also checked that no chemical process was forgotten, that I knew how to explain every reaction. I also revised on my Physics, making sure that i remembered how to explain and answer every phenomena. I remembered I had once lost some points because I did not adequately explain the photoelectric effect, and made doubly sure that that mistake won't be made again.

I had a splitting headache, and I thought that perhaps I wasn't drinking enough water, it was late at night and my parents had already been home for some time. It was painful enough that I had to sleep early for once, but in the end I powered through and studied for a few more hours after taking some aspirin before going to bed.

By morning, I was rested and confident as I sat down in my designated seat, my head was still slightly aching but having reviewed the material several times on the train I was more than ready to take on the test. The hall that was once calm and serene, raged now with the quiet sounds of scrawling and frantic scratches of pens as soon as the clock struck the hour. We knew our lives and futures depended upon the result of this test and the points of our pens like swords, stabbed into the pages as if slicing flesh. Sometimes the shaking of our hands fumbled the practised strokes and ruining its graceful art, but we persevered.

The end drew to a close, as with one last mighty slash, I finished the final question and closed the pages. It was difficult, I thought, but somehow I managed. The little time I had I used to check for careless mistakes or something, anything that would cost me marks. Glancing through my pages again and again, I convinced myself that I had done as well as I could, keeping an eye on the hour hand creeping closer to the end before finally it was over, and not a second sooner. 

It took some time, but the examiners eventually collected and counted the papers and finally released us, I felt dizzy as I stood up to leave the hall and slowly made my way to the entrance where my friends were waiting for me and we made our way to a nearby fast food restaurant. It felt like an eternity but eventually we arrived and we began discussing the answers and comparing it to the rubrics. The dizziness never left and my friends began noticing that I wasn't feeling very well. I assured them I was fine, explaining that I had slept late last night to study, which eased their concerns somewhat.

We ordered some food to celebrate the end of our exams and began checking through our answers. They teased me at first, as they planned to go to one of the lower ranked private schools and did not need to take the secondary examination like I did, but soon they began noticing that I couldn't eat, and that I was so tired that I could only drink some soda and some fries that they offered me out of concern. The dizziness made the world spin about three axes and my vision blurred as I experienced a heavy sense of vertigo making me rather nauseated.

I could hear worried voices around me, Kouya calling out to me screaming my name and I saw Haruto dialling away on his phone, talking frantically to someone on the other end, I wanted to tell them to shut up but I couldn't do it, my mind was fading into blackness and every now and then I could see something happening about and voices around me. I couldn't make any sense of it though, it sounded like whispers and I felt cold, extremely cold. Then I felt hot, so hot that I thought I was melting. I wanted to scream but no sound could be heard and it was dark and silent all around me. I really tried to scream so many times but I couldn't even feel my lungs breathing, or even see anything with my eyes. I realised soon after that I couldn't hear anything at all and my consciousness faded in and out.

Every now and then I could see some flashes of light, like passing under street lamps. The sky was dark and quiet and suddenly became very bright and I was surrounded on all sides by white. Then I faded back down.

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I could hear things around me now, the doctors running multitudes of tests. I tried several times in vain to tell them not to do so much, the bills alone would kill me at this rate, but either they ignored me or my voice could not be heard, I didn't know.

My family, my poor family I could see them beyond the foggy glass. Or perhaps my vision was the one that was foggy without my glasses, everything seemed so distorted. Their tears and cries silently echoing in my drifting mind. If this was how it would end then I would rather have spent my last days with them by the dinner table. For all that I sacrificed, all that time has been in hindsight, wasted.

In all my life, only now did I feel like a burden, as I glanced at the fading faces of my friends and family, I knew that there was little they could do.

The last thing I saw, was what appeared to be a metal coffin, surrounding me on all sides. I could no longer see soon after but I swear that it felt like I was buried or drowned alive, something pressing down on me like a viscous fluid very much like mud. I was in pain, so much pain I couldn't even scream. I felt like I was cremated alive, my skin felt like it was burning in the darkness. I couldn't breathe, in fact I was pretty sure I hadn't taken a breath in since god knows when.

Eventually though, after so long my senses dulled. The pain that was so searing now tickled like a cat rubbing against my skin and no longer registered in my mind. The thoughts of my family, regrets and ambitions, all left this body. 

In the darkness I occupied my mind with silence.

I managed to open my eyes once and briefly saw something. Though I could not care less about it anymore, it was a paper of some kind. Upon it I could see my name and various other information, it was a death certificate but I just couldn't comprehend its significance or even bother to try to understand this simple truth.

I, Ishiyama Houtarou was a normal boy, with a loving family and friends. I had also just died.

 

 

 

 

Author's Notes:

The University Entrance Exams that we know are commonly called the Centre Tests or Centre Shiken (センター試験) until 2020 after which it was superseded by a new test called the Common Tests or the Kyōtsū Tests (共通テスト). Originally the Centre tests was a multiple choice test taking place in mid-January over the weekends. The Common Tests while similar, has several essay questions inside.

The Common Test itself may not be enough for admission though and are three different types of university admission criteria, and there are several secondary examination systems unique to the institution that students have to sit for.

Most national universities use the Common Test alongside a secondary exam that is specific to the institute to decide admission. More prestigious universities like Tokyo or Kyoto University, use the Common Tests to determine who qualifies to sit for their secondary, institute specific exam which then decides admission, meaning only the very best can even hope to apply. There are some private institutions that only use the Common test to decide admission.

These secondary exams are often touted to be far more difficult and gruelling compared to the Common Tests, and is a complex and convoluted system that results in the 'Exam Hell' culture prevalent in society because these tests often determine how well you will do in life.

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