When it comes to events, no matter what it is, there are always 3 ways to enjoy it:
1) Before the event: There’s the looking forward to it, and the sense of excitement counting down the days to it.
2) During the event: It gets busy as heck, but that’s what makes it fun.
3) After the event: Holding a review party together with the comrades with whom you had gone through all the highs and lows of the event together is super duper fun.
“Honestly speaking, I kinda feel like the second betrayal was a bit harsh, wasn’t it? There was no way they could have seen through it, and man did you two see Touka-chan’s and Shouta-kun’s faces? I just hope we haven’t traumatized them.”
After we clinked glasses together, I gave voice to my biggest worry. A “this again?” look immediately came over Baba’s face. She was in the right, of course, as we had already argued this back and forth at length before starting the event. And obviously, we had arrived at a conclusion, or else we wouldn’t have proceeded with it. As so, digging this topic back up at this point in time may have been a bit untoward of me. But even so, it was a worry that I couldn’t get out of my head.
“Isn’t that why we will be resurrecting you two soon, so as to lessen the intensity of any possible trauma? By quickly overwriting a failure experience with a success experience in short order, the blow to their psyche would be kept to a minimum. You two might have died, but you’ll be back, so in the long run everything’s still fine. I’ve already gone over this psychological technique many times, Sago-san.”
“That may be so, but I’m not talking about the technical stuff right now. It’s more like, was there really need for a second betrayal? Feels kind of like we were delivering a finishing blow hot on the heels of the previous one.”
The traitor event this time was Baba’s brainchild. It was also her who suggested the two consecutive betrayals. The first one would be a simple betrayal. Figuring it out would be easy, and the solution would also be easy. Then the second one would be a deep betrayal. Figuring it out would be extremely difficult, and the solution would also be extremely difficult. The question we wanted to ask was, would they be able to utilize what they’d learned from the first to deal with the second? The second one was a test, but was also meant as an example of a dilemma that does not fall neatly under the paradigm of good and evil dualism.
In this world, things don’t end after pointing at someone and saying, “He’s the enemy!” or “That guy’s evil!” Things rarely get resolved cleanly with just defeating someone and getting a “The End” screen.
During the second betrayal, Baba tried to kill me while refusing to engage in conversation. Between Baba and me, who was in the wrong? There wasn’t enough time or information to make a call. It was impossible to tell who was evil and who was just. Within such a dilemma where there was no “correct” answer to be found, Shouta-kun and Touka-chan had to make their own call, and do what it would take to stop what had devolved into a fight to the death. To make matters worse, the outcome of their actions would have a direct effect on two people that they were close with.
Honestly, I think this would be a hard call for even adults to make. If I was in their shoes, I would cry. While crying, I would beg and plead for both parties to stand down. I wouldn’t even have the presence of mind to use telekinesis to suppress both people or make any other calm decisions.
If I had to evaluate whether this was a good experience for the two high schoolers from the viewpoint of their mental growth, then the answer would probably be “yes.” Now, if they had caught on beforehand, or successfully stopped me and Baba from killing each other, then they would have gotten 100 points, full marks. But even though they had failed, letting Baba and me die, we would resurrect soon afterward, taking the edge off the bite of this failure.
Another way of looking at this was a nightmare-level trial with a safety net. In normal everyday life, one very rarely comes upon an extreme situation where other people’s lives are at stake. And it’s not really something that could be found by looking. The fact that the two students had just gone through one such experience was sure to leave a great impact on their lives going forward.
But then that’s where I thought, “Was there really a need to make them go through something like this?” Normal Japanese citizens would not encounter such experiences even once throughout the entirety of their normal lives. Has anyone ever said “Because of my first experience in an extreme situation with lives at stake, I was able to get through my second experience in an extreme situation with lives at stake”? Probably not, right? After all, this was real life that we were talking about. Real life grounded in a reality with an established reputation of peacefulness and humdrum. Let alone once, to encounter two such occurrences? It was nigh impossible.
So I’ll say it again. This was surely a very precious experience. Overcoming it would mean enormous growth in what it means to be human. However, was it truly necessary to force this kind of growth? There was no need to become an amazing human. Simply not becoming a bad human would be more than enough. What I wanted was to let Shouta-kun and Touka-chan enjoy a fulfilling adolescence and be happy. But then there we were, forcing a trial upon them and gouging their hearts with a traumatic experience.
The sight of me looking worried caused Baba to sniff in exasperation. “Those who know only happiness and success are brittle. They turn into clowns, forever trapped by an inability to understand the feelings of those undergoing hardships and failure. Sago, do you want Shouta and Touka to become those deplorable success stories who belittle those who fail as not having poured in enough effort or passion?”
“But even so, is that enough of a reason to purposely set them to fail? In the first place, Shouta already has experience with failure from his unwinnable fight, and Touka-chan had been a target of malicious bullying all the way up to her second year in middle school.”
Even without the finishing blow from another traitor event hot on the heels of the first, the two of them already had experience with setback. They were not the kind of kids who would laugh at someone else’s failure.
“You truly are soft on those two, Sago. Allow me to repeat what I had said before: after overcoming difficulties and learning to make compromises, they can eventually laugh about this when they become adults. Only by including this can their adolescence be said to have been fulfilling. Is this not the ‘tears’ part of the laughter and tears that you believe to be so crucial to this ‘fulfilling adolescence’ that you spoke of?”
“Well I mean, yeah, but...... when I saw the look on their faces, I just felt this massive wave of guilt rising up. Well what do you think about this, Kaburagi-san?”
Upon having the conversation directed to her, Kaburagi-san replied matter-of-factly while still elegantly swirling her glass of wine. “It seems to me there’s no point in theorizing about the ‘what-if’s of not doing something after having already done it.”
“You’re so right about that that I have nothing at all to say as comeback. Baba, sorry. I’ve wasted your time with meaningless talk.”
“I mind it not. To be frank, I confess that I also feel a little like I had taken the axe to a young sapling. Let us reflect and carry forward the lessons we’ve learned. I am changing the topic here, but was not the setting that I didn’t know anything about fingerprints too much of a stretch?”
“You think so? But it’s about another world, so it wouldn’t be strange if that was actually true.” Kaburagi tilted her head in response to Baba’s question.