Cover view
Bored.
In less than ten years, the strongest emotion I’ve ever experienced wasn’t happiness, love, sadness, or regret—it was boredom.
A place composed entirely of white, known as the White Room.
A top-secret project in Japan, where children were subjected to hellish tests that far surpassed the challenges faced by their peers—and those who failed were discarded.
The experiment continued relentlessly, filtering one subject after another until a so-called genius emerged—a child who passed every trial.
Each generation faced a different curriculum, and I was part of the fourth batch of White Room students.
It all began by chance.
Without even knowing my name, I was handed over to the facility’s enigmatic director, known only as Teacher, and was condemned to be nothing more than an experimental subject raised within these walls.
At eight or nine years old, I lived a miserable life—rifling through trash cans, deceiving unsuspecting adults to steal their money, and, when necessary, unleashing brutal violence on any middle or high schooler in my vicinity. For someone like me, a decent bed and a clean meal each day were rare comforts.
But beyond that…
Bored.
What was the point of stuffing theories like structural mechanics, relativity, measure theory, chaos theory, and so forth into my head—concepts I could grasp yet found utterly devoid of meaning?
What was the sense in a life that demanded the numbing of my emotions, the exploitation and deception of those around me, and, at times, the brutal assertion of my will?
"...Ah, dead-fish eyes."
As these thoughts churned in my mind, I glanced at my sparring partner for the day and muttered the words silently to myself.
My opponent was a boy around my age with unruly, brownish hair. I didn’t know his name, but since the start of the experiment he had never once shown any emotion—an impressive trait in its own way. What struck me most were his lifeless eyes, which is why I nicknamed him “dead-fish eyes.” Not that I could tell what he thought of me.
Above all, he was exceptional—perhaps even on par with me or better. I could sense the researchers’ heightened expectations for him, their attention fixated on his every move.
It was clear that his final results would undoubtedly surpass mine. I had grown tired of merely solving problems and chasing scores, so I’d been coasting along, careful to maintain just enough performance to keep my bed and food secure.
"...Oops."
Lost in my thoughts, I barely registered the start of today’s hand-to-hand sparring. Before I could react, the dead-fish-eyes kid — who had caught me off guard — lunged a punch straight at my solar plexus without hesitation.
It was astonishingly fast—so quick it was hard to believe he was only about ten years old. Despite our still undeveloped bodies and the fact that puberty was yet to come, I instinctively sensed something remarkably special about him.
"I could dodge it if I wanted to."
I wasn’t eager for a prolonged match with such a promising opponent that might alter my evaluation and draw unwanted scrutiny, so I figured...
"I’ll take a few hits and then quit."
Just as I was shifting to avoid his next attack, our eyes locked.
I had always thought his gaze was dead, but up close it was the first time I’d really seen his eyes. Staring straight into them, I thought,
"What are you looking at, bastard?"
In reply, his punch landed squarely on my jaw, and I blacked out.
Damn it—so he was faking his gaze all along... I had been expecting a feint aimed at my forehead.
Then, one day, as that monotonous existence dragged on, an unexpected incident granted me a way out of the White Room. It wasn’t because I’d failed a test or anything like that, but still—escaping cleanly was its own sort of happy ending, wasn’t it?
And as time passed, the day came when I entered high school and enrolled at Advanced Nurturing High School.
It was good