Ninika Cloche 

This world is destined to come to an end someday.
While awaiting a slow death, people sought words to which they could entrust their hearts.
A self-proclaimed philosopher in the form of a young girl… who offered fleeting respite.

It was said that the messages she wove held a mysterious power. …No, they had been deceived.
“Is God the one who is sinful? Or is it us? Even though the seasons are about to finish their cycle.”

She muttered, madness in her eyes. Words that held no meaning. As if she were speaking some kind of truth.

At what age did I realize I could never be the hero of my story?
To live out my life as just another face in the crowd, in a place where no one would ever know.
If that was my fate, I wanted to kill myself.
But I also wanted to give that version of myself a reason to live.

I pulled out several dusty philosophy books.
“Heroes leave their names behind through their deeds… and become poetry. …Philosophers leave their names behind through their words… and become books.”
If this world is going to end anyway, I wanted to kill it as gently as possible.

By the time I gave a small laugh, I might have already been captivated. …By an incurable disease.

Everyone seeks words that suit them… words they want to believe.
It wouldn’t matter if the last page of the philosophy book read, “This is all fiction.”
Once satisfied, the book is closed there.

“Beautiful words are so light, aren’t they? But the truth is heavy. Since I can’t bear it, I want to pretend I never heard it.”
There is nothing more ridiculous than the ideal fantasy everyone seeks.
I laughed, wondering if by deceiving myself and speaking of it, I was becoming a clown rather than a philosopher.

Even though countless lives are lost in the blink of an eye. People continue to walk toward the end, turning their eyes away from it.
In the blink of an eye, countless new lives are born. But…
“This world is going to end anyway…”

Persuasiveness is a strange thing; for some reason, when an old person says something, it feels like they are speaking the truth.
I end up taking it as a kind of answer reached through accumulated experience.
Even if it is nothing more than the ramblings of a senile old man.

“People find mystery even in girlishness. As if sleepy eyes could see right through everything.
As if a fragile aura signifies a presence not of this world.”

Even clothing can become a factor in unconscious judgment. If so, I’ll wear whatever is desired.
If that’s what it takes for magic to dwell in my words.
…If that’s what it takes for them to believe it.

“Distorted? Wasn’t it this world that distorted itself first?”
Without knowing if a correct lie even exists, I kept reciting the lies I believed to be true.
Without anyone ever pointing out that they were lies.

In the end, what is depicted is all that matters. It’s a self-imposed rule not to imagine scenes that stray beyond those boundaries.
Even if tragedy awaited them afterward, only the good parts are ruminated upon over and over again.

“When I leave a record of myself, I must have it done that way too, mustn’t I?”
It won’t be a fairy tale picture book, but a book with a slightly higher threshold. Yet just imagining it lifted my spirits immensely.
“There’s no need for my past to be recorded there.”

Not even that day when I realized I could never become the hero of my story.
I shake my head, banishing those accursed events from my mind. They must not remain in memory or in any record.
Even if it’s a hypothesis riddled with inconsistencies, I’ll keep proclaiming it.
…No matter how much blood is spilled because of it.

I wasn’t moved by the tear-stained letter claiming my words had saved them.
It was like giving them a push to give up.
It might have made things easier for them, but that is no different from a kind of death.
“Perhaps the one I truly want to save is myself.”

If someone reached out to me with compassion, would I take that hand?
…Even if poison were smeared on the outstretched hand, would I smile and grasp it tightly?
What I was doing was essentially just that.
“Even that essential compassion is coated in lies, though.”

A beautiful death appears incredibly sweet to those who do not know death.
The pain and suffering that must surely be there do not reflect in their eyes.
“I think that’s a truly wonderful thing,” even if it only appears that way and the reality is different.

Genetically modified dreams are too perfectly crafted for convenience, giving them a somewhat distorted shape.
“Who decided the preconception that distorted things are bad?”
No matter how distorted it may be, if it brings salvation, isn’t it a good thing?

After all, this world is balanced on a scale where one person’s attempt at happiness forces another to swallow their tears.
Tracing my finger over the blood-stained cover of a philosophy book, I laughed self-deprecatingly.

If it’s true that people change with every lie they tell, then I probably don’t even resemble my original self anymore.
My name, the words I spoke, the facade I put up… everything was a lie.
A fabricated story, presented with a straight face and polished to perfection. That was how I protected myself.

“So I wouldn’t break. Or maybe I’ve already broken long ago?”
Leaving only me behind, they crossed a line… and just as I feared death and chased after my beloved family who had taken their own lives, I crossed a different line.

“I can’t be the hero of a story that saves someone’s life.”
Or perhaps even that is a false memory? Is it a tragic story I created to justify everything?
I had lost even that understanding.

Among the countless words I’d spun, I’d spoken both extremes: “What you can see doesn’t matter” and “Nothing but what you can see matters.”
All the while thinking that, in truth, nothing at all mattered.

Surely someone is waiting at the destination of that running cat.
The cat’s scream, heard from a side street, was drowned out by the noise; on the main street, no one noticed it and everyone was laughing.
“Is this also a matter of balance? No, surely it’s a trivial thing that doesn’t even affect the scales…”
Thinking somewhere deep down that I was the same, I set off for home to finish my philosophy book.
With quick steps, as if being chased by something.

Even though no one was even looking at me.

Just by being classified as an illness, everything lost its meaning.
I was branded as a child throwing a tantrum while pretending to be a tragic heroine.
The philosophy book I’d written through the night was glanced at and scoffed at.

“You don’t… You don’t understand a thing. You are just categorizing things as understandable because you are afraid of what you don’t know… of what you cannot comprehend.”
I muttered this as I tossed the blood-stained knife along with the medicine.
When people die, their words will be lost along with their existence.
“Except for philosophers like me, of course.”

Feeling exasperated that I’d even thrown away the headache medicine I’d taken lightly, I walked on as if nothing had happened.
Leaving behind events that weren’t worth mentioning.
The red that looked like the end of the world was soon swallowed by the twilight and vanished.

To a place that seems within reach yet remains out of reach, unconsciously and without malice.
“That’s so adorable, and yet so ugly.”
Let’s send this to those adults who were once children.
So that even if this world ends, words and names will remain.
Even if they take the form of wounds, even if they’re accompanied by blood, I’ll leave them behind, strong and lasting.
“The endings of the fairy tales I used to read always went like this, right?”
Happily ever after…

I won’t respond to the curtain call.