Shingetsu Nagisa: Incompetent

When I was six years old, my teachers sat down with Father and Mother and told them that I was excelling in all my subjects. They recommended that I be moved up a grade.

Father was thrilled.

And a year later, when we sat down with my teachers again, they told us the same thing.

Father was thrilled again.

I didn't feel much of anything.

School was a distraction during the day. Adrenaline and amphetamines kept me awake, but the lessons were easy and the teachers were kind. They told me how clever I was. They praised me for being studious and sometimes gave me medals and phony certificates when I would win academic competitions.

I usually threw them in the trash on my way home.

Father told me that only fools gain satisfaction from awards. Then he sent me to my room to study.

I wasn't a fool, not even when I was seven, so I stopped gaining satisfaction from foolish things.

The next year, I didn't go back to school.

I don't remember sleeping after that, but I guess I must have slept sometimes. If I was only running on injections of adrenaline, I would have died.

But I still don't remember sleeping.

What I remember is a large, bright, halogen bulb glaring down at me from my mounted desk lamp. I remember Mother stepping into the room and tapping packets of powder into my IV a few times a day. I remember Father telling me that this was how adults worked.
Didn't I want to be a productive member of society when I grew up?
Didn't I?

I didn't.

And now, here, I know I never will be. I'll never even have the option, because there is no adult society anymore.

Good riddance.

When I was ten, I was scouted for a prestigious grade school—an affiliate of Hope's Peak High School.
I was surprised that Father agreed to let me attend.

I wouldn't board there, though. No, he moved our family to a modest house near campus so I could come home every night for my "study session".

I fit in better at this school than I had at my old one. The children here were brighter, stranger, and too preoccupied with their own talents to be judgmental. No one seemed to notice how my hands shook when I tried to focus, or how the bags under my eyes only got worse each day.

No one, except her.

The first day of class, everyone noticed Monaka. She was demure, but friendly, and she sat in a wheelchair. But when someone asked why she couldn't walk, she got this sad, sad look on her face, like her heart was broken.

She told me what happened to her. Not right away though—she told everyone it was an accident at first, and we all felt sorry for her.

I felt worse when she told me the truth.
I hated her brother. I still hate her brother.

We didn't become friends on purpose. Not just Monaka and me—all of us who stayed in the classroom late.
I certainly didn't stick around because I wanted company.
I just didn't want to go home.

Neither did the others, apparently. Monaka said her father was an important person, but she didn't like to talk about her life very much. None of us did.
We didn't have to, I guess. We all understood what made us similar, after awhile.

Utsugi was all smiles, and I never saw bruises on her like I did on Daimon. And she always said she liked her job as an actress. She would say how popular she was, and how everyone called her pretty.

But she would always be scared when the day came for her to perform. She'd cry and hug Monaka and say she didn't want to go. She said she wanted to die.

Daimon spent a lot of time playing sports and stuff. He had practice later in the afternoon, when we all went our separate ways, so I guess he didn't spend much time at home during the school days. On Monday, though, he would be quiet—quieter, I guess. He's always been a loud-mouth.

He told our after-school club once that he hated his dad. Kemuri asked him why.
Daimon gave him a bloody nose.

Kemuri boarded at the school. His parents never visited. He didn't have a reason to stay late with the rest of us, since he didn't have a home to avoid, but I guess he didn't have any other friends, and he didn't like being alone.

We all hated Kemuri.
I don't know why.
Maybe it was just because we were so angry and he was so willing to be our punching bag—sometimes literally.

The first time I saw him without his mask on, the teacher made him take it off to be inspected for head lice. He cried and held his hands in front of his face and apologized for how ugly he was.
But the thing was, he wasn't ugly.
We all knew it, us in the after-school club.
We all wanted him to be ugly. Sometimes, before we ever saw his face, we would draw what we thought his face looked like.
Kemuri loved that. He would draw too—or sculpt, or paint, or whatever. He always made himself look like a monster.

But I also feel sorry for him, sometimes.

Maybe that's because I'm growing up the fastest.
I think more and more often that Kemuri and Utsugi and Daimon are more sad and hurt than anything else.
It makes me angry. It makes me angry because the world treated them poorly when they didn't deserve it. And it makes me angry I can't see myself in that role, as a sad and hurt child.

I was complicit in my own abuse. I kept studying, even when I saw colorful dots in my peripheral vision; even when my headaches got so bad I thought I would die. I never tried to quit. Father's goal was to see how far a child could be pushed. So if I had quit, maybe that would have been it, right?

But I didn't quit…
I didn't quit…
I still can't quit because I'm too prideful and too stupid to know when I need to stop.

Adults who hurt children deserve to die.
I don't care if that sounds extreme.
I killed my Father and Mother.
I don't regret that.
I don't…
I don't regret it.
I can't… because if I do, then will I regret all the others?

They were killing us. They were killing us, so it was self-defense.

I have to be strong. I have to make sure everyone gets home safely at night. I have to make sure Monaka is never alone, so she never gets stuck someplace with no one to help her.

But I mess up. Still, even though I don't have much to do, I mess up.

Daimon likes to run off alone, and he's faster than any of us. He goes demon-hunting by himself. He could get killed, but he says he'd never let a demon kill him. He's too brave for his own good.
Sometimes Kemuri goes off and hides and we can't find him for hours. Once I decided we should let him hide as long as he wants and he was missing for three days. When he came back he was weak and dehydrated and he wouldn't talk for a long time.
Monaka says she's not helpless, and sometimes she wants to be by herself. She tries so hard to be nice when she says that, but I…

Utsugi thinks I'm bossy, and since Daimon's the leader, I can't tell her what to do. That's not what I'm trying to do, though. I don't mean it, but I come off as a jerk. I can't do anything right. I can't do anything right.

I can't do anything right.
I can't do anything right.
I can't do anything right.
I can't do anything right.
I can't do anything right.
I can't do anything right.
I can't do anything right.

I miss Onee-san.
Everyone smiled when we were with her, and we all meant it too.
But she died.
We saw it on the television broadcast.
She died.

She was the one who told me how bad my parents were. She said real life isn't how Father said at all.
And when I sneaked into his office, I saw all the notes.
He kept notes about my mood, my medicines, my work ethic… He had notes about how amazing it was that I hadn't had a complete mental breakdown yet.

He was experimenting on me.
He wasn't teaching me how to succeed.
He was studying how long it would take me to fail.
That was how the project was going to end.
One way or another, I'd just… break.

I killed him that night. Mom too.

I killed them, and then I cried.