Boredom is not a lack of things to do; it is the absolute certainty that nothing you do actually matters.
My name is Kyouya Kusanagi. I am sixteen years old, a first-year high school student, and I am completely, utterly alone by choice—and by design. My family didn't die in a tragic accident, nor were they murdered by some shadowy syndicate. The reality is much more mundane. They simply looked at me, an unwanted son, and decided the burden outweighed the biological obligation. When I entered secondary school, they cut ties, leaving me to walk my own path.
I didn't cry. I didn't beg. I just packed a bag and left.
Currently, I live in a cramped, cheap dormitory near my high school, funding my existence through a string of exhausting part-time jobs. I woke up today exactly as I do every other day: before the sun, my internal clock functioning better than any alarm. I went through the motions of a morning routine—brushing my teeth while staring at my dull, lifeless dark eyes in the mirror. A single, stubborn strand of hair—an ahoge—stuck straight up from my messy black hair, refusing to be flattened no matter how much water I used.
"Meow."
I glanced down at my feet. A tiny, black-and-white kitten was weaving between my ankles.
"Yeah, yeah. I hear you," I muttered, opening a tin of cheap cat food and scooping it into a small ceramic bowl.
This kitten was the only living creature on this planet I actively cared about. My room, while impeccably clean, was lined with towers of manga and light novels. They were my escape, my database of simulated realities. I often found myself wondering what it would be like to actually fall into one of those worlds. Romance? I read romantic manga, but the actual concept of it eluded me. I didn't want love; I wanted something to happen. My life was an endless, gray corridor. I wanted an anomaly.
Grabbing my school bag, I gave the kitten a brief scratch behind the ears and stepped out of my room.
"Ah, Kyouya-kun! Good morning!"
It was the dormitory owner, a plump, kind-faced aunt sweeping the hallway. She was a good person—the kind who secretly reduced my rent because she pitied the abandoned high schooler living under her roof.
I immediately plastered on a flawless, polite smile. It was a mask I had perfected over the years to mimic a normal human being.
"Good morning, Auntie. Thank you for always taking care of me."
"Working hard again today? Don't push yourself too much, okay?" she chimed.
I nodded, maintaining the smile until I was out the front door, letting the expression drop the second she was out of sight.
My high school wasn't particularly prestigious, but for some reason, it attracted a bizarre concentration of intellect. Class 1-A was a microcosm of society, containing exactly twenty-one students.
I walked into the classroom and went straight to my designated territory: the back row, right next to the window. As I sat down and rested my chin on my hand, I began my daily observation.
At the center of the room, naturally drawing the gravity of everyone else, was Hiroto Kiya. He was the undisputed Class Leader. With neat navy-blue hair, sharp rectangular glasses, and narrow blue eyes, he looked like he stepped out of a corporate brochure. He was athletic, academically brilliant, and disgustingly friendly. Even I, with my cynical worldview, had to admit his control over the classroom's social dynamics was masterful.
Laughing loudly next to him was Kento Kirishima. Kento was the eternal silver medalist, always ranking second in the top ten. He was the social butterfly, bridging the gap between the elite and the average students.
Then, there was Shiori Asano.
She was sitting a few rows ahead of me, her posture perfect. She was the top student in our class. She had soft, dark hair, but underneath it lay a striking layer of lavender. Whenever the wind blew through the open window, or whenever she tucked a strand behind her ear, that flash of purple caught the eye.
I felt a familiar prickling sensation. Shiori was staring at me again.
I didn't turn my head, keeping my eyes fixed on the clouds outside. I noticed her gazes frequently, but I aggressively ignored them. If I acknowledged her, it would inevitably lead to a conversation, and talking to girls was a mathematical equation that always resulted in me getting annoyed. It was better to remain a ghost.
My gaze shifted to the opposite corner of the room, near the sliding door. Tatsuya Minato was slumped over his desk. Like me, he was a back-row loner. He wore an oversized hoodie, his messy grey hair completely hiding his eyes, with heavy, dark bags underneath them. A pair of thick headphones rested around his neck, and he was aggressively tapping away at a Nintendo Switch hidden under his desk. Despite his appearance, he was in the top ten—ranking slightly higher than me.
I intentionally kept my own grades floating securely in the lower half of the top ten. High enough to avoid remedial classes and teacher scrutiny, but low enough to remain entirely invisible.
The bell rang. Homeroom ended, and the first period began: Advanced Physics.
Sensei, an older man who always looked like he’d rather be asleep, droned on about orbital mechanics. I was half-listening, my mind drifting to a sci-fi space simulation game I had been playing the night before, when Sensei suddenly stopped pacing.
"Let's test if any of you are actually awake," Sensei said dryly. "If an object is compressed enough, its gravity becomes so strong that not even light can escape. This is a black hole. Assuming the mass of the black hole is M, what is the equation to find the exact radius where the escape velocity equals the speed of light, c?"
The classroom fell dead silent. I saw Shiori immediately grip her mechanical pencil, her brow furrowing as she started furiously scribbling on her notebook, trying to derive the formula on the spot.
"Kusanagi," Sensei called out, his voice cutting through the silence. "You're staring out the window. Give it a shot."
I blinked, pulling my gaze away from the glass. I didn't even need to think. In the space sim I played, calculating gravitational pull to avoid being crushed by singularities was a basic mechanic.
"The Schwarzschild radius," I said, my voice flat, carrying easily across the quiet room. "You derive it from the classical escape velocity formula,
vₑ = √(2GM/r)
Since the escape velocity must equal the speed of light, you substitute, ve = c and solve for R.
The equation is R = 2GM/c2
where G is the gravitational constant."
Sensei paused, his chalk hovering over the blackboard. He looked at me, mildly impressed, but didn't show any overwhelming satisfaction. "Correct. Moving on..."
I rested my chin back on my hand, assuming it was a standard question. But when I glanced forward, Shiori had turned completely around in her seat, staring at me with wide, shocked eyes. She hadn't finished writing the derivation. Whispers erupted across the room.
"Wait, did he just do that in his head?"
"Isn't that university-level astrophysics?"
"I thought Kusanagi was just a lazy slacker..."
For exactly thirty seconds, I was the center of attention. But human nature is an absolute, predictable algorithm. Thirty seconds later, a boy dropped his eraser, someone laughed in the hallway, and the class collectively forgot what had just happened. Normalcy resumed. The ghost returned to his haunting.
When the final bell for the lunch break chimed, the classroom exploded into its usual chaotic noise. Desks were pushed together. Hiroto was laughing, holding court with the popular kids. Even Shiori was pulled into a conversation, though her eyes occasionally darted toward the back window.
I stood up, grabbing my cheap convenience-store bread. Rooftop it is, I thought.
I took one step toward the door.
Then, the world lost its color.
A blinding, pure white light erupted from the floorboards, engulfing the entire room in an instant. The deafening chatter of twenty teenagers was cut off as an intricate, massive magic circle materialized beneath our feet. Geometric runes spun in impossible, sickening circles, burning with a divine intensity.
Panic shattered the lunch break.
"What is this?!" Kento screamed, dropping his bento box.
"Earthquake? Is it an attack?!" Hiroto yelled, instinctively stepping in front of the girls.
Several students scrambled, desperately grabbing the edges of their desks as if the furniture could anchor them to reality.
I didn't scream. I didn't grab a desk. My dead, lifeless eyes widened, reflecting the pure white light. My heart, which had beat in a monotonous, boring rhythm for sixteen years, suddenly hammered against my ribs.
A magic circle. A localized spatial transposition. A whole-class summoning. The tropes flashed through my mind like a database downloading. My lips curled upward into a very small, very real smile.
Before anyone could run for the door, the light collapsed inward, swallowing us whole.
There was a sensation of falling—a violent, tearing pressure that felt like my soul was being pulled through a needle. And then, gravity returned with a heavy thud.
I blinked against the sudden brightness. The smell of ozone and old incense filled my lungs. The dirty, chalk-dusted modern classroom was gone. The desks, the lunch boxes, the bags—left behind in a world I didn't care about.
I found myself kneeling on a floor of polished white marble. Massive pillars of gold and stone stretched up toward a vaulted ceiling painted with murals of winged creatures. Around me, the twenty other students of Class 1-A were groaning, picking themselves up off the floor, utterly bewildered and terrified.
I ignored them. My eyes were fixed entirely on the dais at the front of the grand hall.
Hovering above the marble was a creature of absolute, terrifying beauty. A female entity draped in flowing white silks, glowing with a soft, ethereal halo. She looked down at us with eyes that held no humanity—only the cold, calculating gaze of a programmer looking at new lines of code.
A Goddess, I thought, feeling a thrill of pure adrenaline rush through my veins.
I was Kyouya Kusanagi, the abandoned son, the invisible slacker. I had nothing to lose, nothing to go back to, and finally, a game worth playing. I didn't know what this world was, but as I looked at the divine entity floating before us, I made a silent promise.
I'm going to enjoy this place like a protagonist.
✦✦✦