Volume 2 - Top-Tier Character Ayanokōji-kun [DISCONTINUED] [READ THE REVISION]

Chapter 27 - Dancing In Death's Palm

[DISCLAIMER: This chapter deals with sensitive themes.]

Once upon a time, there was a little boy.

A boy so innocent he was adored by many.

But at the same time, his parents always worried about him. He was a naive boy who easily believed the words of strangers, which had led to many unfortunate situations in the past.

Still, the boy was lucky.

Because he had a brave sister.

Every time the innocent boy got into trouble, or if someone was trying to trick him, his sister would intervene.

The boy looked up to his sister. In his eyes, his brave sister meant the world to him.

But one day, the boy's parents fell ill, and they didn't have any medicine left.

They had to rely on herbs from the forest.

It was scary. But the boy didn't back down.

After all, he had his sister at his side.

And so, he faced the darkness with his sister at his side.

---

Just as I took a step outside of my apartment, one crow from a nearby tree flapped its wings.

Weird. I thought crows were a gregarious species.

With that thought, I turned my gaze down the street and looked at the people walking by. It was a Sunday. A day of rest for many. That's why there were so few people outside. Most were sitting at home, spending the day with their loved ones, working on a personal project or doing something else entirely. Every human was different, so it followed that what every human did also differed. We each took our own actions. 

Well, at least we liked to imagine it. What one required to actually go through with a decision they made on their own was "free will."

Free will is the potential to choose between various possibilities of a particular course of action without any external factors influencing the choices. That definition not only specified actions one could take, but also mindsets an individual could assume. But one needed to remember that free will didn't mean freedom of action.

Being in prison meant you couldn't taste slivers of freedom.

Being in a straitjacket meant you weren't free to move your body however you wanted.

Being locked away, darkness filling one's eyes and a muffling sound ringing in your ears meant you were completely shut off from the outside world.

All of those weren't issues of free will. What free will really meant was that you were free to try to escape from that prison or not, to try to take off your straitjacket or not and to try to yearn for the outside or not. Neither is free will the same as political or social freedom, better known as liberty. Just because you will be punished for stepping out of line in vain, didn't mean you weren't free to try, or even free to actually do so. You'd just wind up paying for the satisfaction.

Of course, one had to ask themselves if free will actually existed. If it didn't, then all this deliberation would have been pointless. You wouldn't do anyone a service by thinking about an imaginary, false concept. But I think even pondering about that was a waste of time.