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Year 3023
The White Room Potential Development Project had matured and was now widely implemented, becoming a cornerstone of human advancement in the 31st century. Statistics showed that over 70% of citizens opted into the program, customizing their newborns with talents that aligned with parental expectations. The White Room was hailed as a "ladder to progress," a means to shatter knowledge barriers and accelerate societal evolution.
Among its beneficiaries, most were sculpted into perfection—except for those in the field of the arts. The failure rate for artistic development remained alarmingly high. The reason was clear: the White Room challenged the human psyche to its limits. Artificially cultivated artists either possessed impeccable technique but lacked creative inspiration, or they were pushed into emotional instability in an attempt to nurture their sensibilities.
After yet another scandal involving a White Room student suffering a mental breakdown, the program director at the time, Mr. Ayanokōji, made a bold announcement—he would send his own son into the White Room as a test subject, an experiment to overcome the project’s fatal flaw.
The boy given this role was named Ayanokōji Kiyotaka.
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A Crying Infant on the Screen
A young boy stared at the projection before him—a video of a crying infant.
"What do you think?"
As always, he did not ask if this was a test. The current phase of his training focused on "detachment"—a principle dictating that great artists observe without empathy. Coldness was the shortcut researchers had discovered, a way to reconcile artistic sensitivity with mental stability.
Thus, the infant on the screen was himself.
"A human’s instinct—the primal need for food, warmth, and protection. A state of ignorant chaos, something we strive to overcome."
The baby in the video slowly ceased crying.
"What if I told you this was a recording of you as an infant?"
"…Is this supposed to be a new question? I see no difference from the previous one."
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Summer, Age 16—Stepping Into the Real World
That summer, Kiyotaka walked out of the White Room.
He felt nothing for the lackluster aesthetic within those walls. He had already mastered all theoretical knowledge, and even the hyper-realistic VR simulations felt oversaturated and lifeless.
But the researchers… The fleeting condescension in their eyes, the look of regret that outweighed satisfaction—those told him the truth.
He was incomplete.
There was still something left to learn.
The real world was vast, an ocean beyond the drop he had experienced within the White Room. The moment he saw it, he understood his purpose—cultivating an artist in a controlled environment was insufficient. The post-White Room phase, the act of learning through reality, was an essential part of the process.
And he was the chosen experiment.
That was when he first heard of it—
"Advanced Nurturing High School, Tokyo."
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An Invitation
Kiyotaka never knew whether the butler told him about that place out of sympathy or under someone’s orders.
