He looked a bit surprised.
He’s totally jerkin’ it.
“Are you, by any chance, a virgin?”
I seized an opening and threw a fastball. He didn’t know what to say for a moment and averted his eyes.
“N-No, why would I be? I even had a lover before. But, the thing is, I was busy with my research, so we broke up right away!”
Aha. Gotcha.
Some virgins are like this. Their pride is so high, they’re incapable of shaming themselves in the course of either seducing women or having sex, so when things don’t go their way, they panic.
They think too hard and then get limp when it’s go-time. Use your instincts, man—this is sex!
“So you’re a researcher, hmm? So that’s why you seem so smart. Well, take care on your way hoooome.”
And never come baaack.
I opened the door to my room and shooed him out with a wave.
“...Well, I have some degree of confidence in my area of study. I may not look it, but I have an associate doctorate of history. I teach at a school, too.”
Huh? Aren’t you leaving? All of a sudden he was chatting.
“My father and grandfather both had full doctorates. Of botany. So at first I thought to go that route, but I was also interested in magic and alphytemy. Then when I was thinking I’d like to gain a broader range of knowledge overall, one of my grandfather’s acquaintances, a doctor who is an authority in the field of history, reached out to me, so I joined his research office. Well, he’s a bit of a delinquent who’s not around much, but...”
I heaved a sigh.
“What we do is take a cross section of our colleagues in different disciplines and have them study the evolution of their fields. As you know, the verticals in the scholarly world are fairly well-established. Certainly, that makes it easy for incoming students to understand. But more than a few young scholars harbor a sense of crisis regarding the status quo. We need to preserve the structure of our learning, but if we don’t allow knowledge to flow, it will become rigid. The way things are now, people are just creating more and more meaningless walls. It’s because they’re all old people whose brains and bodies have gotten stiff. Ha-ha-ha.”
“Ah. Ha-haaaa.”
Maybe “you seem smart” was the trigger? I guess it’s like when adventurers boast about how far into the forest they’ve been or what kind of monsters they’ve hunted.
But it was even more boring, and the laughter timing was really a mystery. Well, what he was even saying was a mystery.
“I’m sick of politics in the scholarly world. All everyone thinks about is protecting their authority. We young researchers want to create a free discipline where—”
All it sounded like to me is that he and people around his age got together to make fun of the old men at their office. The young craftsmen who come to the shop are the same way. I wonder if he studies stuff like that. I mean, the history of the culture of salarymen must be super long.
I’m blessed to have such great older coworkers.
“Of course, studying history is fun, but I also teach. For example, how much do you know about the history of prostitutes?”
“Huh? They have history?”
“Don’t be stupid. Obviously everything has history. I guess I’ll have to teach you. Even prostitutes need the bare minimum of an education. All right, take your seat.”
“Umm, I don’t really...”
For some reason he was suddenly full of enthusiasm, and he started scratching away on my wall with a piece of chalk.
I’m not interested in the history of prostitutes, though. Actually, I have no interest in this world’s history at all. I hate studying, and this guy seems like a college-level expert, so give me a fucking breeeeak.
“Once upon a time, there was a country where the gods lived.”
“Is this kindergarten?!”
I slipped off from where I was sitting on the bed.
Even I had to do a double-take at how ridiculous that was. I can’t believe even Tokyo JKs take pratfalls, I thought.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“N-Nothing. I’m fine. Please continue!”
Well, this is that God’s world. Even the history is half-assed.
Great! I’ll be able to follow fine at this level.
“These first gods didn’t have life spans, didn’t require food, and possessed knowledge of everything. In other words, there was nothing they wanted. Without ever working, they stopped progress, and went to sleep. To the omnipotent, perfect gods, only silence existed in that world, right? But then one day a rock fell from the sky and made a little noise.”
The gods all realized something.
This sleep is death. We’ll die out in our sleep.
“Fearing silence, the gods changed their eternal lives into all the things around us to create a world in constant motion. The god with strong arms became fire. The god with icy eyes became water. They decided on fire, water, wind, and earth as the elements, gave the world fluidity, and created spirits to supply and transport the four elements in order to stabilize it. Well, every child knows up to that point.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard it!”
“Huh? Your parents didn’t even teach you this much? You were born into an uneducated household.”
My parents gave me an edumucation that included proper science!
But this world is so far behind—I mean, and we’re out in the country where God shows up on earth whenever he feels like it—so I guess this is the level they would have to be at.
From what I heard, even in my world up until a while ago, no one believed that the Earth was revolving, and up until more recently, people thought the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was three.
This felt less like a lecture and more like a fairy tale, so it was getting kind of interesting.
“Then the world began to move. But if you think the gods were satisfied with that, you’d be wrong. The gods, burning up with creative passions, decided to make living things besides themselves. They made birds in the skies, fish in the seas, and beasts on the land. The gods especially liked the beasts, so they made a big one and called him the beast king. The god with a beautiful voice became music, and the talkative god became writing; these gave the beasts education. That was when culture and individuality were born within them.”
Back then, beasts could talk and write.
The gods made plants for them to eat and the forest for them to live in.
“The number of gods was decreasing, but creating life was so fun they couldn’t stop. Seeing the surface so full of life and hope, the gods decided to make a creature in their own image. That was us humans.”
The first human was a boy. The gods were all men, so that was only natural.
The boy had been given intelligence, but he didn’t talk or make facial expressions, and he didn’t try to move around. At that rate, he would have been the same as the gods used to be, so they gave the boy’s mind curiosity, hunger, and other motivations.
Then the boy started to move on his own. But his expression still didn’t change.
They had him meet the beasts to see how he would react, but they couldn’t move the boy’s heart. The human declared the beast king a “boring animal.”
The gods fretted. They fretted for the first time ever. And the conclusion they came up with was their first and last mistake.
“The gods created a creature called a girl. They tried putting this creature that would pair with the creature based on them next to him. And when they did, the boy’s expression changed for the first time since he was born. He smiled at the girl and greeted her all on his own.”
Then the boy made so many different expression you could hardly recognize him.