Ring... ring... ring...
That annoying alarm went off again. Same morning. Same routine. Same exhaustion.
"Ugh... morning already, huh..." he mumbled, his voice hoarse and barely audible.
With his eyes half open, the young man reached for the phone beside his bed. But his body was still too heavy to cooperate. His hand slipped, and the phone tumbled to the floor. The sound of the impact was muffled by the thin carpet beneath the bed.
"Hah..." He let out a long sigh, surrendering to the laziness that clung to his entire body like glue.
A few seconds passed. With whatever energy he had left, he forced himself upright, then picked up his phone from the floor. His finger pressed the stop button on the alarm, and his eyes stared blankly at the time on the screen.
"This late already, huh..." he said flatly, then stood up while rubbing his face, still weighed down by drowsiness. "I should probably get ready for school."
With sluggish steps and hair still a mess, he walked toward the bedroom door, starting yet another day that would either be better... or exactly the same as yesterday.
...
That guy is me. Masayuki Akira. A third-year high school student in Japan, just a few months away from entering university. I should be feeling excited, or at the very least, a little enthusiastic. But the truth is, I don't feel anything at all.
To put it simply, I have no desire to study things that I believe are meaningless.
Algebra? Pythagoras? Why should I bother figuring out the length of a triangle's hypotenuse when I can't even figure out the direction of my own life?
The periodic table? Even if I memorized every single symbol, it wouldn't change the fact that I still have to worry about paying rent for this apartment.
Classical poetry? My teacher says it's art. But out there in the real world, nobody cares about the beauty of words. The only two things people care about are money and time.
Formulas for velocity, pressure, and force? The world doesn't run on formulas. In this world, the strong press down, and the weak get crushed. It's as simple as that.
History? Maybe it matters. But aren't we just repeating the same mistakes over and over, even though we already know how the story goes?
In my mind, all of it is just theory. None of it actually teaches you how to survive. If life really is a test, then why isn't there a single subject about understanding yourself? About dealing with failure? About how to be... happy?
And yeah, once again, I have no passion for learning things that feel like nothing more than a waste of time. Maybe after graduation I want to go straight to work, find my own path. But I know my parents would never let that happen.
They're the type of people who value achievement above all else, without ever truly understanding what happiness means.
As long as my grades are good, they smile. But do they have any idea how much time I've wasted studying things I'll never use? To them, the future is determined by a diploma and the numbers on an exam paper.
But to me... the future is just something that may never come. Even if I got perfect scores on everything, there's no guarantee my life would get any better.
Sometimes I wonder. Am I the only one who feels this way? Or is everyone else just good at pretending to be motivated, hiding the truth that they're also tired of a world that forces us to look "meaningful" in the eyes of others?
...
Those thoughts were still swirling in my head as I stepped out of my room. The short hallway leading to the bathroom felt quieter than usual. The morning air was still cold, and the moment my feet touched the bathroom's ceramic floor, a shiver ran through my body.
I flicked on the light. It flickered once before fully turning on, illuminating the mirror in front of me. As always, I grabbed my toothbrush from its holder, ready to go through a routine I could do in my sleep.
But right then, my breath caught.
The toothbrush slipped from my hand. The small sound it made as it hit the floor felt deafening in the silence.
"...What is this...?"
In the mirror's reflection, I saw myself. But it wasn't entirely me. Something was different. From the top of my head, two strange objects protruded outward. Black. Slightly curved. They looked solid, like bone that had grown straight through the skin.
Like... horns.
I froze. My mind went blank for a few seconds, as if my brain was refusing to process what my eyes were seeing. Then my reflexes took over. My hand rose slowly, touching one of them. Cold. Solid. Real. I pulled at it, trying to yank it off, but a sharp pain shot through my skull, forcing me to let go immediately.
"What... what the hell is this..." I muttered. My voice was trembling.
I took a step back, my spine hitting the wall. My eyes were still locked on the mirror, on the person who was supposed to be me but now looked like a stranger. I wanted to tell myself it was just an illusion, just the side effect of not sleeping enough, or a nightmare that hadn't ended yet. But the pain I had just felt was real. Far too real.
Then, in the middle of that suffocating silence...
Ding dong.
The doorbell rang from outside. I swallowed hard, staring at the bathroom door that now felt impossibly far away.
Who would come this early in the morning?
And... what am I supposed to do now?