Chapter 10 chapter Ten
There was a lot of smoke coming out of the restaurant and it was obvious that there was a fire.However, as far as yesterday's fire is concerned, I don't think the fire will remain here in the building.I thought it was incredible, but it took me a long time to realize that the day before, the "principal" temporarily entrusted the management authority of the "school" to Mrs. Cotton, but she died on the way to prepare lunch.At that time, she was probably boiling that unpalatable rotten vegetable soup in the pot?Later, "Neutral" came and insisted that the paper bag was snacks and drinks stolen from Stella's room; Mrs. Ton was in a state of desperation. He must have estimated that the students' affairs would be settled soon, so he didn't lose his temper.Or maybe she adjusted the fire to a low fire in advance, but the fire in the kitchen has been on since yesterday, so the contents of the pot evaporated completely, and the fire started from the burnt place. I tried to measure it and poured it on the ground. the prisoner's pulse, but he was dead.Stella seemed to stab him several times in an instant.The face of the "house supervisor" who usually has a bright red face turned pale, and red horizontal stripes formed on his chest and abdomen.
"...Stella." Seeing her covered in blood about to disappear into a large amount of smoke, I panicked. "Hurry up and get out of here."
"I, I—" she shook off my hand, and yelled in a hateful voice that I had never heard before, "I, I—"
"I know!"
"I'm Stella. I'm eleven years old and I live with my parents in a large apartment overlooking the Arc de Triomphe."
"I know, I know." I took her hand again, as gently as I could. "And I am Wei Mikogami, eleven years old this year. I live with my father in Kobe, Japan. When I grow up, I will go to France to pick you up, Stella."
Stella opened her mouth wide, maybe she wanted to yell again, but she couldn't make a sound.She kept wriggling her mouth, her eyes filled with obvious madness and inescapable sadness.Carefully and slowly, I touched her cheek with my hand, and turned Stella's gaze away from the dead body of the "Housemaster", with the touch of blood remaining on my fingers.
Maybe Stella overheard the conversation between the "house warden" and me?Now that the secret has been leaked, for her, the "house warden" is no longer the important concierge who guards his fantasies.So, Stella immediately went to the kitchen, grabbed the kitchen knife and came to the door, just like before, to punish and execute those who made her fantasies come to naught.
"Stella, let's go."
I took her hand.The interior of the building was shrouded in thick heat, but the automatic sprinklers did not start to work like yesterday.Is it a mechanical system failure?Or there is not enough water, I don't know why, but if this continues, the fire from the restaurant will soon spread to the entire building, right?Stella twisted her body anxiously because she couldn't make a sound. Her hair was messy. I pulled her by force and fled from the porch to the outside of the "school".
"My name is Stella..." While I was urging her to leave the "school", she finally made a sound, "Stella. I am eleven years old this year. I live with my parents and can see the Arc de Triomphe. Inside the big apartment."
"Yes, Stella, and I'm Wei. I'm eleven years old. I live in Kobe with my father. When I grow up, I'll go back to France to pick you up as my bride."
We just keep having this conversation over and over again.Go to the only road with wilderness on both sides.After a while, when the flames of the school became as big as the golden lighter of the "Housemaster", Stella finally recovered her smile.
"Yes." But her eyes could no longer restore their normal brilliance. "Yes. I'm Stella, eleven years old. You're A Wei, eleven years old. We're going to get married in Kobe when we grow up. No, we'll get married in Paris."
"Yeah, Stella, soon. Soon we'll be married."
We're having conversations, but I don't have the same fantasies as hers anymore.Looking back now, no one in the "school" fully agrees with Stella's delusion, right?Dennis, who was killed for refusing her story, and Lou Bennett, and even Bill.Others think that Stella's fantasy is very weird, but while sticking to their own stories, they try to find ways to adapt and adjust the distortion of the world.
Howard insists that "school" is the story of a breeding center for undercover detectives.Or Kate who made up the story that "School" is a research institute that brings together people who have the ability to reproduce reincarnated past life personalities.Kenneth, who wrote the story that the "school" is not the real world, but a virtual reality world revealed by the data set-in any case, this is the situation.Stella is not the only one who forces others to accept her fantasies, everyone is the same.Not even me.It's just that Stella's aura surpasses others in terms of the degree of coercion.It's just that, it's just that...
"My name is Stella, I'm eleven years old—" Stella kept repeating like a broken tape recorder, I forced a smile on her way, and suddenly, I saw a figure in front of me come over.
Her brown hair, which was always neatly tidied up, was now unkempt.It was the "principal," Dr. Deborah Seward.
"--you?"
It was incredible that the "principal" recognized me and Stella, and ran over at a jaw-dropping speed, but maybe she immediately noticed Stella's face and clothes Are they all covered in blood?She stopped suddenly. "F-what happened? It happened...that's it?"
I followed the headmaster's gaze and looked back. A huge flame rose from the "school".Now the fire is so big that you can see how serious it is from here.
"Could it be... that is my facility?"
"I'm sorry, Dr. Seward." I walked slowly into her. "It's only a matter of time before your facility burns down."
"What happened? Are you the only two who escaped? Where are the others? Where's Ron? Where's Ani?"
The Ron in her mouth probably meant "house master"—no, Baggins.Ron Baggins.So that's the full name.It doesn't make any sense to know now.
"Everyone is dead."
"What..." Her eyes were inexplicably sad, as if she was evaluating the credibility of my words.
"What's the meaning?"
"That's the question I want to ask you. What's the matter?"
"A Wei, what are you talking about?"
"Of course it's about your research, what the hell are you trying to do with us?"
I am not obliged to answer your unexpected question-"Principal", no, Deborah Seward has a smile of this color on her face.
"Well, let me ask you this. How old is my real age?"
Yes, I was no longer part of Della's fantasy of domination.No matter how subjective, I also know that I am not only one year old, just look at my hands and body.No matter how you look at it, I am already in my seventies.Maybe it's over eighty years old.And of course, Stella too... the poet—no, Kenneth too. "Her Royal Highness" - no, Kate too. "Retainer"—no, Bill too. "Neutral" - no, Howard is no exception.Everyone is not a child of eleven or twelve years old, but an old man, in his seventies or eighties. "The reason why your facility is a hospital has its meaning, right?" I ignored the silent Stella Seward and chattered. “Each room has its own larger-than-normal bathroom for caregivers. I used to think that would be a big help for Kenneth who has to live in a wheelchair, but it’s not just his problem. Because No one knows when I will be unable to stand up like him." When I saw Bill Wilba's dead body, I wanted to jump out the window of Room 101.However, my body couldn't cope with actions that subjectively should be easy for me to perform.The reason I reconsidered it was not so much that Kate stopped me, but that I was unconsciously aware of the danger. "In retrospect, Mrs. Cotton's diet also made sense." Deborah Seward's eyes slowly developed a warning and menacing color. "The only thing we, the elderly who have bad teeth and have to worry about high blood pressure, eat is the tasteless dishes." Yes.I once heard Kenneth say it.He once heard Baggins complain to Deborah that it was his insensitivity to be forced to eat the old man's diet with him.Kenneth and I both mistook the old man he meant for Mrs Cotton, when in fact he meant us. "Also, Deborah, from time to time you use the master key to sneak into our room and steal the snacks and drinks we buy to store." "Why?" Maybe it's because you know you've been silent all the time, and ignoring it won't help.Deborah sighed. "Why do you even know about this?" "Howard found it." I told her about the signature on the back of the price tag. "Of course it makes sense for you to do this. Subjectively, we are in the development period, and once we get pocket money, we will satisfy our desires and buy snacks and drinks. Our usual dissatisfaction with food strengthens our desire. But in fact, We can’t eat that kind of thing when we buy it. Although it’s not impossible to eat it completely, at least our body can’t bear it like a child. The speed of eating is far slower than the speed of buying it. Therefore, if we put it aside and don’t eat it Snacks and drinks will accumulate to an unnatural amount. Maybe we will start to be suspicious of this matter, and this suspicion may be an opportunity to make the illusion covered in the facility display collapse. You are careful just to avoid it. That sort of thing, isn't it, Deborah? That paper bag you told Mrs. Cotton to dispose of yesterday in the usual way also contained the candy bars and drinks stolen from Stella's room." Now I know that Mrs. Cotton used to roll her tongue and say, "Boys and girls..." She was referring to us with a hint of sarcasm.It's all too clear.I always thought Mrs. Cotton was my grandmother's age, but she wasn't.Maybe, I'm still older than her. "I didn't expect you to even notice these small places..." Deborah said regretfully with a tasteless attitude, showing her gums. "What the hell is going on? My research... has finally developed to this point. I didn't expect that my efforts and everything are because of this—" "What kind of research are you doing? I'm personally very interested." "Really? To put it simply—" I just wanted to stir her up, maybe it was my personal reserve that was stimulated?I was taken aback by Deborah's eagerness to defend herself. "For example, here is a stone, a black stone. Please treat it as an objective fact. Of course, people other than you should have this perception, right? But, what if the people who make up the ethnic group If most people say it is white, what do you think the situation will become? Although the stone is black, it will turn white under the influence of many people. I do not mean that the stone itself becomes white. It is not color, but the cognition that this stone is white has become an objective fact for this society. Ah Wei, do you understand? When the subjective illusion becomes the will of the majority of people, it will change into the society fact. The purpose of my research is to unravel this faulty system." I remembered what my mother said before—no, now, I can only say a long time ago—from the point of view of physics, God does not exist in this world at all.This is an objective fact, but if 99 out of 100 people say that God "exists", it will become a fact of the society.Even if one person scientifically and correctly proves that God "does not exist", as long as 99 people disagree with that fact, it will be interpreted as a joke.People whose positions should be right are regarded as lunatics instead. "I think you may have understood that the real age of the six of you is around seventy or eighty years old. But your memories are all stuck between the ages of ten and twelve, because of some kind of amnesia, You have completely lost your memory of your life after that." Why don't we have memories of when we were moved from our family to the so-called relay point before we were taken to the facility?The above statement solved my puzzle.In my case, it's a matter of course that I have no memory of leaving Japan, since that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.Did I immigrate here when I grew up?Or did I ask my kids or grandkids who live here to let me come?The unidentified middle-aged man and woman who delivered me to Deborah's relay point should be my children, or grandchildren. The relay point Bill mentioned was an elderly woman who lived alone.She said he had been showing her an obnoxious endearment that made him uncomfortable, but I think that woman was probably Bill's daughter.She was facing her own father, and the attitude she showed was of course intimate. "Your heads, whose memories of the first half of your life have come to an abrupt end, cannot form the personality of an old man in his seventies or eighties. Subjectively, you still maintain the minds of teenagers and girls, although objectively, you are out-and-out grandpas. , Granny." Not knowing what was so funny, Deborah chuckled with a suppressed voice. "Of course, that's purely subjective. Not even subjectively, it's a bit strange. Because, to put it simply, don't you think it's strange when you look in the mirror, Wei? I'm obviously eleven years old But who is this old man reflected in the mirror?" Yes.When I look in the mirror after washing my face in the morning, I always have a sudden weird feeling.That's because—it's because the subconscious knows the real face of me.Get to know the real me.Know the face of an old man over seventy years old. "However, what will happen to you when the people around you repeatedly emphasize to Ah Wei that you are eleven years old and you are an eleven-year-old boy? They are not joking and laughing at you, but are very serious. Yes. They sincerely believe that this is a fact and say this, Wei. They say it is an eleven-year-old boy. Even if you refute it yourself, the ethnic group will not agree with you. Yes. It should have been a black earth stone But it is said to be white, so the black stone will become white. As an objective fact, understand? You are not an old man, but a young man. This will become a fact. Before long, The cognition of this society will also dominate your cognitive ability. Only the distorted information of the five senses is transmitted into your self, whether it is smell, taste, touch, sight, or even hearing." "The hearing is the same..." Yes.Now I see Stella as an old woman.But before I had always believed that she was an eleven-year-old girl.Although my eyes can see clearly.Because vision conveys distorted intelligence to my brain.I don't know it's Stella.The same goes for Kate, Kenneth, Howard, and Bill. "Even if the information is distorted, as long as everyone accepts it, it will become a social fact. This is the so-called common error phenomenon. However, this is theoretically valid. The real problem is that small errors of that degree can Does the scale of society hold true? Is it impossible for the common false phenomenon that governs vision, hearing, and all five senses to distort cognitive abilities? That is the topic of my research.” Deborah spouted it with exaggerated gestures as if she was giving a lecture in some class.It's as if he didn't take me and Stella seriously at all, and just indulged in his own world. "If you want to prove the theory, you just need to conduct an experiment. I think that if the old people who have stopped their life memories in their teenage years gather in a closed environment and instill in them the words that black is white, common errors will occur. .I built a facility that only gathered some old people, turning it into a group of boys and girls with subjective cognitive distortions. However, my efforts were laughed at by the society." Deborah, who was originally speaking triumphantly Suddenly turned into a cool appearance and said. "No one is willing to face up to my research. Their counterargument grounds make me unacceptable. They say that even if their memory is damaged, people who believe that they are boys and girls will have correct cognition when they see other people's appearance. That is to say , other members will only interact with the parties as old people, so that special ethnic group should not be established—" Yes.That's it.When I was first brought here, the others looked like alien monsters to me.Thinking about it now, it was because I saw them with a consciousness that had not been affected by the special environment of the facility.They are what they are in my eyes, that is, what they should be at their actual age.Including Stella as well. "Boring! There should be a certain degree of boredom. The reason for the good city. I really can't help but want to ask, is this considered a scholar? The focus of this research is how far human cognitive ability can be distorted, but they are so categorical Saying it can't happen. I can't say more. Huh, those people are stupid. I don't have time to waste time with this kind of guy? So I decided to conduct the experiment myself, so I prepared this facility , and it's been running smoothly, hasn't it?" I nod.I just nod. "Right? Of course you are. You should have the deepest feeling, right? Look, I'm right. I'm right. Do you know how much money I spent trying to prove it? I put my parents All the inheritance left to me has been invested, and that is a lot of money. Really, Wei, if you know the amount, you will pass out." Deborah said the same thing as Baggins.And also added the same note. "—However, those of you who have only used previous US dollars in the facility probably don't know how much the current currency is worth?" "Lon Baggins says the most expensive things are TVs and cars." "Did that person mention this to you? But it's true. Just think about it for a while. In order not to make you suspicious, I have to prepare home appliances and cars that you are familiar with in the facility. The most It is a headache to prepare TVs and cars designed sixty years ago. It is very troublesome. There are very few real stocks, and even if there are, the prices are scary. Even replicas are not so easy to make It took me a lot of effort to come out." The design style of sixty years ago... This sentence made my head, which seemed to have a fever, feel at a loss for a while.My lost memory turned out to be such a long time.No, what I lost was my life.Never come back.I don't know how to bear this sense of loss. No wonder.Some things finally found a reason. Room 120, collectively referred to as equipment.Before, we couldn't figure out what kind of machine was inside, and we didn't even know how to use the phone.Because those are all high-tech products in the future world sixty years from now—at least according to our subjective consciousness.Even Baggins' pistol is the same. I don't have any feelings about it. I take it for granted that the shape of the pistol is very strange, and even Howard, who is proficient in pistols, said that he has never seen that style.And that's no wonder, because that's not what our time should be. I remembered what Kate said.She said she occasionally dreams.I dreamed that I lived in a palace with an appearance that would never be seen in the United States.And there are cute boy and girl clothes in never-before-seen styles to live life gracefully.Kate believes it's a flashback of her past life as a princess, but that's not the case.That was the memory of her own life.Kate is also over seventy years old, and she must have repeated in her dreams that she was living a happy life in a big house surrounded by many children and grandchildren. We don't watch TV, we don't read newspapers and magazines, of course.If we touch the news, we will find that this era is not our "age".No, there may not even be such media as newspapers or magazines in the present age. "The remaining focus is how many people should be added to make up the ethnic group. If it can operate smoothly in a small group, but if there are loopholes in the common error phenomenon due to the increase in members, it cannot be regarded as a perfect result. At present, I Let's target ten people. And now..." Deborah lowered her voice as if she had just woken up from a dream. "And now it has turned out like this. What is the cause of the fire?" The occurrence of such a thing inevitably made him depressed, but her tone of indifference to the series of serial killings sounded too indifferent to my ears . "It's impossible for Ellie to forget to check the fire. Could it be caused by Long's accidental smoking?" The more the number of people who make up a group increases, the more difficult it is for the phenomenon of common error to be established.Should be like this?In this group, black things have always been distorted to be white, so it is inevitable that some mistakes will lead to flaws.Especially when there are new students who cannot accept our fantasies, that is the biggest crisis.Because in the eyes of the new students, the people in this facility are not teenagers and girls at all, but a group of old people and old women, just like Lu Bennett saw.And that's what Kenneth calls a "trial." Of course, although they are also freshmen, the types are also different.A character with adaptability, that is, people like me, while accepting the lie that school students are boys and girls, they also share the fantasy of being an eleven-year-old boy with everyone.I followed this pattern and slowly joined the circle of common mistakes.The success of this delusional transplant is a risk.So, when we were first introduced to Lou Bennett, our bodies resisted.Because our figure shakes our fantasies from the ground up.That's some kind of "mirror".In search of stability for myself, I turned my gaze away from that mirror, deceiving myself that "there is no one there".Until Deborah named the mirror an "eleven-year-old boy". We have built a false "school" of boys and girls relying on the delusion of mutual reinforcement, but of course there will also be people who cannot integrate into this kind of joint work and forcefully try to reveal the true face of this deceptive behavior.That's Dennis, and Lou Bennett.Bill Wilbur ended up like this too.So they are all excluded.It was excluded in the form of being killed by Stella, who was more obsessed with the common false fantasy of "this is the eternal land of boys and girls" than anyone else. ...Is that so? So this is ah?I felt as if I finally understood everything. This is a "religious war" -- (pagan,) (Pagans—) (no,) (we,) (we——) (not heathen,) (Not heretics——) (you are,) (You are the heretics.) That strange atmosphere we all experienced before Howard shot Mrs. Cotton.It was an ongoing religious war between us and Mrs. Cotton.Of course Mrs. Cotton knew that, in fact, we were not teenagers and girls, but old people much older than her.Leaving aside Deborah's instructions, Mrs. Cotton must have been unable to bear the fantasies we were trying to force her to accept.To put it bluntly, we and Mrs. Cotton are converted to different gods, and there are differences in beliefs between us. It was Howard who pulled the trigger, but it was Stella who pulled the trigger—Baggins said so.But he was wrong, it was a war between heathens.It is an act of killing each other that humans have repeatedly repeated in the long history, revolving around the theme of the advantages of each other's beliefs.As far as Mrs. Cotton was concerned, I was one of the heretics, and as such, I was not absolved of the blame.Stella may have really forced Howard to pull the trigger, but she was not the only accomplice, Kate was there, and I was there.Including Howard, we collectively killed Mrs. Cotton. "No matter how urgent the fire broke out, why didn't the others escape? And the automatic sprinkler system—" "Deborah." I interrupted her question rudely, as if she didn't seem to want to stop. "I want to ask you something." "what?" "What is the significance of the courses and internships we take? The courses seem to be similar to ordinary schools, which I can understand, but the practice class in the afternoon——" "That was Long's idea. I told her that it doesn't matter what he wants to arrange, as long as you have moderate entertainment and keep you from becoming demented. That's all." I see.So the content setting of his projects will always have demented old people appear?Maybe it was a kind of euphemistic ridicule by Baggins to us, just to make the explanation that "no matter what event or situation is set, it is made by the demented old man doing nothing" must be true?Is that a little bit of Baggins malice towards us crazy old folks? "You've built in our hearts the common mistakes of forever boys and girls." "Yes. It was going well, just as the theory says." "But, at the same time, you also create monsters." "monster?" "Kenneth said it. He said something evil inhabited the facility." "Then... what does that mean?" "In retrospect, although he apparently agreed with Stella's fantasy, in fact, he saw through the deception unconsciously." Deborah stared fixedly at Stella, who was hugged tightly by me, with a dazed expression on her face. "Perhaps you also vaguely noticed that Stella rejected her fantasies from beginning to end, and scolded her, you are not a young girl, but an old woman's Dennis." "You..." Deborah seemed to smell something bad, and there were a few ugly wrinkles between her nose and eyebrows. "What did you say?" "That's why Kenneth warned me." Deborah forced me over with an expression like she wanted to strangle me, but I ignored it and continued. "He said, that, one, east, and west don't like changes. He said that this is the fantasy of an eternal paradise for teenagers and girls. It must not be destroyed. If we accidentally see through the facts, we will all be destroyed by that thing in the end." "Wow ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!" Deborah's mouth roared like a beast, and at that moment—— boom!Think of a sound like popping a balloon.
Before she could realize that it was a gunshot, Deborah's body fell to the ground. It's Stella.At some point, she was holding the pistol that should have been in the back pocket of my trousers.She looked down at Deborah, who had lost her life, with bleeding on her forehead. "Stella—" She does not…… That, one, east and west looked at me. There was no trace of confusion on her face.She put the muzzle of the pistol between my eyebrows and pulled the trigger. Slightly—— The pistol made a dry metallic sound. The bullet did not come out. Stella remained expressionless, staring fixedly at a distant place instead of me, and kept pulling the trigger again and again. Go, go, go— Slightly, slightly—— Slightly—— I thought this sound would last forever. However, the bullet still did not come out.Is it a malfunction?Or was it only loaded with two bullets? Stella suddenly threw the pistol at me with empty eyes.Standing directly opposite her, I had no time to dodge, and the gunshot hit me directly in the face. The entire field of vision went dark in an instant, and when he came back to his senses, he found himself kneeling on the ground. I had a nosebleed and moaned non-stop as Stella walked past me and started walking down the path in front of me. Towards a horizon that doesn't know where it leads. I didn't have time to wait for the golden stars bursting out of my eyes to subside, so I quickly chased after him. "Stella." She didn't look back. "Stella, my name?" I don't know if she can hear me. "My name is Mamoru. I am eleven years old and live in Kobe, Japan." Every time I make a sound, the tense face triggers a paralyzing tingle.My nasal bone may be broken.Nosebleeds kept coming. "And your name is Stella. Stella Nanzi del Rose. I am eleven years old and live with my parents in a Parisian apartment overlooking the Arc de Triomphe." She still hasn't looked back.Just keep walking.Stepping on my staggering pace, my back is straight. While chasing her, I realized something in my heart.No matter how hard I try, she can't return to the age of eleven.me too. However, Stella and I have reached a point where we cannot accept our true age.Here is the future world in sixty years that we don't know.And just like that, abandoned by children or grandchildren who, in our subjective sense, have never met.How should we face this reality? I was eleven, I tried to tell myself that. So does Stella. If she was eleven— I can also be eleven years old. Yes. "Stella, your name is Stella. Stella Nanzi Del Rose. I am eleven years old and live with my parents in a Parisian apartment overlooking the Arc de Triomphe." No matter what I say, she still refuses to look back at me. Just keep going and going. Stepping on a mechanical pace. "Stella." I look at my palms. Wrinkles, wrinkles, wrinkles, and wrinkled skin. "Stella, I love you." Every time he yelled, nosebleeds fell into his mouth, and even his breath smelled fishy. That flavor instigator shatters a premonition. "Stella, I love you. I love you." The past is circling in my mind—a long time ago, so long that I can’t remember it, and a long time ago that can’t be retrieved, no matter how severe the violence was, I still didn’t want to abandon my mother’s figure. end
Yes, I was no longer part of Della's fantasy of domination.No matter how subjective, I also know that I am not only one year old, just look at my hands and body.No matter how you look at it, I am already in my seventies.Maybe it's over eighty years old.And of course, Stella too... the poet—no, Kenneth too. "Her Royal Highness" - no, Kate too. "Retainer"—no, Bill too. "Neutral" - no, Howard is no exception.Everyone is not a child of eleven or twelve years old, but an old man, in his seventies or eighties. "The reason why your facility is a hospital has its meaning, right?" I ignored the silent Stella Seward and chattered. “Each room has its own larger-than-normal bathroom for caregivers. I used to think that would be a big help for Kenneth who has to live in a wheelchair, but it’s not just his problem. Because No one knows when I will be unable to stand up like him." When I saw Bill Wilba's dead body, I wanted to jump out the window of Room 101.However, my body couldn't cope with actions that subjectively should be easy for me to perform.The reason I reconsidered it was not so much that Kate stopped me, but that I was unconsciously aware of the danger. "In retrospect, Mrs. Cotton's diet also made sense." Deborah Seward's eyes slowly developed a warning and menacing color. "The only thing we, the elderly who have bad teeth and have to worry about high blood pressure, eat is the tasteless dishes." Yes.I once heard Kenneth say it.He once heard Baggins complain to Deborah that it was his insensitivity to be forced to eat the old man's diet with him.Kenneth and I both mistook the old man he meant for Mrs Cotton, when in fact he meant us. "Also, Deborah, from time to time you use the master key to sneak into our room and steal the snacks and drinks we buy to store." "Why?" Maybe it's because you know you've been silent all the time, and ignoring it won't help.Deborah sighed. "Why do you even know about this?" "Howard found it." I told her about the signature on the back of the price tag. "Of course it makes sense for you to do this. Subjectively, we are in the development period, and once we get pocket money, we will satisfy our desires and buy snacks and drinks. Our usual dissatisfaction with food strengthens our desire. But in fact, We can’t eat that kind of thing when we buy it. Although it’s not impossible to eat it completely, at least our body can’t bear it like a child. The speed of eating is far slower than the speed of buying it. Therefore, if we put it aside and don’t eat it Snacks and drinks will accumulate to an unnatural amount. Maybe we will start to be suspicious of this matter, and this suspicion may be an opportunity to make the illusion covered in the facility display collapse. You are careful just to avoid it. That sort of thing, isn't it, Deborah? That paper bag you told Mrs. Cotton to dispose of yesterday in the usual way also contained the candy bars and drinks stolen from Stella's room." Now I know that Mrs. Cotton used to roll her tongue and say, "Boys and girls..." She was referring to us with a hint of sarcasm.It's all too clear.I always thought Mrs. Cotton was my grandmother's age, but she wasn't.Maybe, I'm still older than her. "I didn't expect you to even notice these small places..." Deborah said regretfully with a tasteless attitude, showing her gums. "What the hell is going on? My research... has finally developed to this point. I didn't expect that my efforts and everything are because of this—" "What kind of research are you doing? I'm personally very interested." "Really? To put it simply—" I just wanted to stir her up, maybe it was my personal reserve that was stimulated?I was taken aback by Deborah's eagerness to defend herself. "For example, here is a stone, a black stone. Please treat it as an objective fact. Of course, people other than you should have this perception, right? But, what if the people who make up the ethnic group If most people say it is white, what do you think the situation will become? Although the stone is black, it will turn white under the influence of many people. I do not mean that the stone itself becomes white. It is not color, but the cognition that this stone is white has become an objective fact for this society. Ah Wei, do you understand? When the subjective illusion becomes the will of the majority of people, it will change into the society fact. The purpose of my research is to unravel this faulty system." I remembered what my mother said before—no, now, I can only say a long time ago—from the point of view of physics, God does not exist in this world at all.This is an objective fact, but if 99 out of 100 people say that God "exists", it will become a fact of the society.Even if one person scientifically and correctly proves that God "does not exist", as long as 99 people disagree with that fact, it will be interpreted as a joke.People whose positions should be right are regarded as lunatics instead. "I think you may have understood that the real age of the six of you is around seventy or eighty years old. But your memories are all stuck between the ages of ten and twelve, because of some kind of amnesia, You have completely lost your memory of your life after that." Why don't we have memories of when we were moved from our family to the so-called relay point before we were taken to the facility?The above statement solved my puzzle.In my case, it's a matter of course that I have no memory of leaving Japan, since that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.Did I immigrate here when I grew up?Or did I ask my kids or grandkids who live here to let me come?The unidentified middle-aged man and woman who delivered me to Deborah's relay point should be my children, or grandchildren. The relay point Bill mentioned was an elderly woman who lived alone.She said he had been showing her an obnoxious endearment that made him uncomfortable, but I think that woman was probably Bill's daughter.She was facing her own father, and the attitude she showed was of course intimate. "Your heads, whose memories of the first half of your life have come to an abrupt end, cannot form the personality of an old man in his seventies or eighties. Subjectively, you still maintain the minds of teenagers and girls, although objectively, you are out-and-out grandpas. , Granny." Not knowing what was so funny, Deborah chuckled with a suppressed voice. "Of course, that's purely subjective. Not even subjectively, it's a bit strange. Because, to put it simply, don't you think it's strange when you look in the mirror, Wei? I'm obviously eleven years old But who is this old man reflected in the mirror?" Yes.When I look in the mirror after washing my face in the morning, I always have a sudden weird feeling.That's because—it's because the subconscious knows the real face of me.Get to know the real me.Know the face of an old man over seventy years old. "However, what will happen to you when the people around you repeatedly emphasize to Ah Wei that you are eleven years old and you are an eleven-year-old boy? They are not joking and laughing at you, but are very serious. Yes. They sincerely believe that this is a fact and say this, Wei. They say it is an eleven-year-old boy. Even if you refute it yourself, the ethnic group will not agree with you. Yes. It should have been a black earth stone But it is said to be white, so the black stone will become white. As an objective fact, understand? You are not an old man, but a young man. This will become a fact. Before long, The cognition of this society will also dominate your cognitive ability. Only the distorted information of the five senses is transmitted into your self, whether it is smell, taste, touch, sight, or even hearing." "The hearing is the same..." Yes.Now I see Stella as an old woman.But before I had always believed that she was an eleven-year-old girl.Although my eyes can see clearly.Because vision conveys distorted intelligence to my brain.I don't know it's Stella.The same goes for Kate, Kenneth, Howard, and Bill. "Even if the information is distorted, as long as everyone accepts it, it will become a social fact. This is the so-called common error phenomenon. However, this is theoretically valid. The real problem is that small errors of that degree can Does the scale of society hold true? Is it impossible for the common false phenomenon that governs vision, hearing, and all five senses to distort cognitive abilities? That is the topic of my research.” Deborah spouted it with exaggerated gestures as if she was giving a lecture in some class.It's as if he didn't take me and Stella seriously at all, and just indulged in his own world. "If you want to prove the theory, you just need to conduct an experiment. I think that if the old people who have stopped their life memories in their teenage years gather in a closed environment and instill in them the words that black is white, common errors will occur. .I built a facility that only gathered some old people, turning it into a group of boys and girls with subjective cognitive distortions. However, my efforts were laughed at by the society." Deborah, who was originally speaking triumphantly Suddenly turned into a cool appearance and said. "No one is willing to face up to my research. Their counterargument grounds make me unacceptable. They say that even if their memory is damaged, people who believe that they are boys and girls will have correct cognition when they see other people's appearance. That is to say , other members will only interact with the parties as old people, so that special ethnic group should not be established—" Yes.That's it.When I was first brought here, the others looked like alien monsters to me.Thinking about it now, it was because I saw them with a consciousness that had not been affected by the special environment of the facility.They are what they are in my eyes, that is, what they should be at their actual age.Including Stella as well. "Boring! There should be a certain degree of boredom. The reason for the good city. I really can't help but want to ask, is this considered a scholar? The focus of this research is how far human cognitive ability can be distorted, but they are so categorical Saying it can't happen. I can't say more. Huh, those people are stupid. I don't have time to waste time with this kind of guy? So I decided to conduct the experiment myself, so I prepared this facility , and it's been running smoothly, hasn't it?" I nod.I just nod. "Right? Of course you are. You should have the deepest feeling, right? Look, I'm right. I'm right. Do you know how much money I spent trying to prove it? I put my parents All the inheritance left to me has been invested, and that is a lot of money. Really, Wei, if you know the amount, you will pass out." Deborah said the same thing as Baggins.And also added the same note. "—However, those of you who have only used previous US dollars in the facility probably don't know how much the current currency is worth?" "Lon Baggins says the most expensive things are TVs and cars." "Did that person mention this to you? But it's true. Just think about it for a while. In order not to make you suspicious, I have to prepare home appliances and cars that you are familiar with in the facility. The most It is a headache to prepare TVs and cars designed sixty years ago. It is very troublesome. There are very few real stocks, and even if there are, the prices are scary. Even replicas are not so easy to make It took me a lot of effort to come out." The design style of sixty years ago... This sentence made my head, which seemed to have a fever, feel at a loss for a while.My lost memory turned out to be such a long time.No, what I lost was my life.Never come back.I don't know how to bear this sense of loss. No wonder.Some things finally found a reason. Room 120, collectively referred to as equipment.Before, we couldn't figure out what kind of machine was inside, and we didn't even know how to use the phone.Because those are all high-tech products in the future world sixty years from now—at least according to our subjective consciousness.Even Baggins' pistol is the same. I don't have any feelings about it. I take it for granted that the shape of the pistol is very strange, and even Howard, who is proficient in pistols, said that he has never seen that style.And that's no wonder, because that's not what our time should be. I remembered what Kate said.She said she occasionally dreams.I dreamed that I lived in a palace with an appearance that would never be seen in the United States.And there are cute boy and girl clothes in never-before-seen styles to live life gracefully.Kate believes it's a flashback of her past life as a princess, but that's not the case.That was the memory of her own life.Kate is also over seventy years old, and she must have repeated in her dreams that she was living a happy life in a big house surrounded by many children and grandchildren. We don't watch TV, we don't read newspapers and magazines, of course.If we touch the news, we will find that this era is not our "age".No, there may not even be such media as newspapers or magazines in the present age. "The remaining focus is how many people should be added to make up the ethnic group. If it can operate smoothly in a small group, but if there are loopholes in the common error phenomenon due to the increase in members, it cannot be regarded as a perfect result. At present, I Let's target ten people. And now..." Deborah lowered her voice as if she had just woken up from a dream. "And now it has turned out like this. What is the cause of the fire?" The occurrence of such a thing inevitably made him depressed, but her tone of indifference to the series of serial killings sounded too indifferent to my ears . "It's impossible for Ellie to forget to check the fire. Could it be caused by Long's accidental smoking?" The more the number of people who make up a group increases, the more difficult it is for the phenomenon of common error to be established.Should be like this?In this group, black things have always been distorted to be white, so it is inevitable that some mistakes will lead to flaws.Especially when there are new students who cannot accept our fantasies, that is the biggest crisis.Because in the eyes of the new students, the people in this facility are not teenagers and girls at all, but a group of old people and old women, just like Lu Bennett saw.And that's what Kenneth calls a "trial." Of course, although they are also freshmen, the types are also different.A character with adaptability, that is, people like me, while accepting the lie that school students are boys and girls, they also share the fantasy of being an eleven-year-old boy with everyone.I followed this pattern and slowly joined the circle of common mistakes.The success of this delusional transplant is a risk.So, when we were first introduced to Lou Bennett, our bodies resisted.Because our figure shakes our fantasies from the ground up.That's some kind of "mirror".In search of stability for myself, I turned my gaze away from that mirror, deceiving myself that "there is no one there".Until Deborah named the mirror an "eleven-year-old boy". We have built a false "school" of boys and girls relying on the delusion of mutual reinforcement, but of course there will also be people who cannot integrate into this kind of joint work and forcefully try to reveal the true face of this deceptive behavior.That's Dennis, and Lou Bennett.Bill Wilbur ended up like this too.So they are all excluded.It was excluded in the form of being killed by Stella, who was more obsessed with the common false fantasy of "this is the eternal land of boys and girls" than anyone else. ...Is that so? So this is ah?I felt as if I finally understood everything. This is a "religious war" -- (pagan,) (Pagans—) (no,) (we,) (we——) (not heathen,) (Not heretics——) (you are,) (You are the heretics.) That strange atmosphere we all experienced before Howard shot Mrs. Cotton.It was an ongoing religious war between us and Mrs. Cotton.Of course Mrs. Cotton knew that, in fact, we were not teenagers and girls, but old people much older than her.Leaving aside Deborah's instructions, Mrs. Cotton must have been unable to bear the fantasies we were trying to force her to accept.To put it bluntly, we and Mrs. Cotton are converted to different gods, and there are differences in beliefs between us. It was Howard who pulled the trigger, but it was Stella who pulled the trigger—Baggins said so.But he was wrong, it was a war between heathens.It is an act of killing each other that humans have repeatedly repeated in the long history, revolving around the theme of the advantages of each other's beliefs.As far as Mrs. Cotton was concerned, I was one of the heretics, and as such, I was not absolved of the blame.Stella may have really forced Howard to pull the trigger, but she was not the only accomplice, Kate was there, and I was there.Including Howard, we collectively killed Mrs. Cotton. "No matter how urgent the fire broke out, why didn't the others escape? And the automatic sprinkler system—" "Deborah." I interrupted her question rudely, as if she didn't seem to want to stop. "I want to ask you something." "what?" "What is the significance of the courses and internships we take? The courses seem to be similar to ordinary schools, which I can understand, but the practice class in the afternoon——" "That was Long's idea. I told her that it doesn't matter what he wants to arrange, as long as you have moderate entertainment and keep you from becoming demented. That's all." I see.So the content setting of his projects will always have demented old people appear?Maybe it was a kind of euphemistic ridicule by Baggins to us, just to make the explanation that "no matter what event or situation is set, it is made by the demented old man doing nothing" must be true?Is that a little bit of Baggins malice towards us crazy old folks? "You've built in our hearts the common mistakes of forever boys and girls." "Yes. It was going well, just as the theory says." "But, at the same time, you also create monsters." "monster?" "Kenneth said it. He said something evil inhabited the facility." "Then... what does that mean?" "In retrospect, although he apparently agreed with Stella's fantasy, in fact, he saw through the deception unconsciously." Deborah stared fixedly at Stella, who was hugged tightly by me, with a dazed expression on her face. "Perhaps you also vaguely noticed that Stella rejected her fantasies from beginning to end, and scolded her, you are not a young girl, but an old woman's Dennis." "You..." Deborah seemed to smell something bad, and there were a few ugly wrinkles between her nose and eyebrows. "What did you say?" "That's why Kenneth warned me." Deborah forced me over with an expression like she wanted to strangle me, but I ignored it and continued. "He said, that, one, east, and west don't like changes. He said that this is the fantasy of an eternal paradise for teenagers and girls. It must not be destroyed. If we accidentally see through the facts, we will all be destroyed by that thing in the end." "Wow ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!" Deborah's mouth roared like a beast, and at that moment—— boom!Think of a sound like popping a balloon.
Before she could realize that it was a gunshot, Deborah's body fell to the ground. It's Stella.At some point, she was holding the pistol that should have been in the back pocket of my trousers.She looked down at Deborah, who had lost her life, with bleeding on her forehead. "Stella—" She does not…… That, one, east and west looked at me. There was no trace of confusion on her face.She put the muzzle of the pistol between my eyebrows and pulled the trigger. Slightly—— The pistol made a dry metallic sound. The bullet did not come out. Stella remained expressionless, staring fixedly at a distant place instead of me, and kept pulling the trigger again and again. Go, go, go— Slightly, slightly—— Slightly—— I thought this sound would last forever. However, the bullet still did not come out.Is it a malfunction?Or was it only loaded with two bullets? Stella suddenly threw the pistol at me with empty eyes.Standing directly opposite her, I had no time to dodge, and the gunshot hit me directly in the face. The entire field of vision went dark in an instant, and when he came back to his senses, he found himself kneeling on the ground. I had a nosebleed and moaned non-stop as Stella walked past me and started walking down the path in front of me. Towards a horizon that doesn't know where it leads. I didn't have time to wait for the golden stars bursting out of my eyes to subside, so I quickly chased after him. "Stella." She didn't look back. "Stella, my name?" I don't know if she can hear me. "My name is Mamoru. I am eleven years old and live in Kobe, Japan." Every time I make a sound, the tense face triggers a paralyzing tingle.My nasal bone may be broken.Nosebleeds kept coming. "And your name is Stella. Stella Nanzi del Rose. I am eleven years old and live with my parents in a Parisian apartment overlooking the Arc de Triomphe." She still hasn't looked back.Just keep walking.Stepping on my staggering pace, my back is straight. While chasing her, I realized something in my heart.No matter how hard I try, she can't return to the age of eleven.me too. However, Stella and I have reached a point where we cannot accept our true age.Here is the future world in sixty years that we don't know.And just like that, abandoned by children or grandchildren who, in our subjective sense, have never met.How should we face this reality? I was eleven, I tried to tell myself that. So does Stella. If she was eleven— I can also be eleven years old. Yes. "Stella, your name is Stella. Stella Nanzi Del Rose. I am eleven years old and live with my parents in a Parisian apartment overlooking the Arc de Triomphe." No matter what I say, she still refuses to look back at me. Just keep going and going. Stepping on a mechanical pace. "Stella." I look at my palms. Wrinkles, wrinkles, wrinkles, and wrinkled skin. "Stella, I love you." Every time he yelled, nosebleeds fell into his mouth, and even his breath smelled fishy. That flavor instigator shatters a premonition. "Stella, I love you. I love you." The past is circling in my mind—a long time ago, so long that I can’t remember it, and a long time ago that can’t be retrieved, no matter how severe the violence was, I still didn’t want to abandon my mother’s figure. end