COTE: Self-Preservation

Prologue

How do people approach a new school year? With joy? With anxiety? Perhaps it was both, I can't say.

Then again, each particular year also matters. Those who stand at the dawn of their final year of university would be experiencing wildly different feelings to those experiencing their first year of high school. Inwardly, though, there is a similarity which most students possess.

Promises.

'I promise I'll get a good grade.'

'I swear this is the year I get popular.'

These platitudes are ones that all people have, no matter how small. Because, at the end of the day, humans are creatures that live off their desires; it's fuel.

Tomorrow is the day the school year begins. There is a person arriving from a facility inside the mountains. A room where that lacked natural light, and yet, it was blinding. They made the promise that they'll fulfil their orders.

Within them was the feeling of hatred for me. The training they went through would have prepared them for everything that they could encounter, they'd have information on a level beyond the most connected, and they'd be aiming to expel me without a second thought.

No matter the difference in our skills, there was one thing they had that I didn't.

A pact.

A goal to achieve, something that fuels them unilaterally and unequivocally.

It's said that when man has a desire in view, there are no limits they won't go to reach them.

Looking back at my previous year, did I make any promises? I suppose the desire to live peacefully was one. I had made myself believe that it would be enough to live like that.

Yes, I thought it would have been fine if I could be peaceful for these three years.

Make some friends, hang out after school, and get a girlfriend.

It would be enough, enough for me to satisfy my curiosity about the outside world.

No matter how limitless a space is, time is a factor that can't be ignored. Curiosity follows the same path. No matter how much I desire to know about the outside world, eventually, it'll be ripped away. So to live peacefully and enjoy the small time in this garden trying to see what I never did before was what I settled on.

It would have been a life that would be remembered by no one.

How many people live their lives like that, I wonder? The talent that is washed away, the odd 80 years of living never to be heard of again, the connections they had established; withering away day by day?

And yet, that doesn't mean they'd be regretful.

But it's not possible to live without some, so there may have been an idea in their heads. 'What if?'

What if I tried just a little harder? That idea came to my mind, albeit it left as fast as it arrived. It never did leave entirely, though.

I didn't want to regret these years.

So, I'll make a promise.

Author's notes:

- I think it's been 4 months since I last wrote a full chap like this, so forgive me if I'm a little rusty.