Vol 2 Prologue (1/1)

Dreams don’t come true so easily Well, yeah I mean, I can barely handle reality So, in other words, all wishes are nearly unattainable Well, yeah, but not all nearly unattainable things are wishes That’s a single fragment of Zerozaki and me A small sample of our conversation Let’s suppose that it hadn’t been a nonsensical babbler like ine, instead, it was someone who harbors at least a soupçon of doubt about the world—the person would still have had a more or less similar experience in conversation with Zerozaki When you were in conversation with hie wasn’t influenced by cheaply supplied empathy, or a pathetic desire to conform Nor was it ever a product of the miraculously common synchronicity you see everywhere Instead, a conversation with Zerozaki was aand conceptualization; It simply said, “This is the way it is”There was no speck of realisment of a theoretical forle puff of congruence and no such word as allusion, no solution nor illusion, not a drop of cogency, not a streak of the world order, and above all else, there was no romance The true cos conversation with hi It was the kind of comedy that bred sorrow, denant air I think he was an irregularity to begin with An untouchable When I think about Zerozaki as someone “on the other side of the water”—as the person I saw on the other side when I saw my reflection on the surface of the water—that’s the only way I can think toable toto put his existence into words But then again, regardless of what heto Zerozaki in the first place? If he was likewhatsoever, then to look at Zerozaki fro How could one go about describing this sensation? Explaining thiswith Zerozaki was like looking intoto in with P R O L O G U E ■■■ i x Maybe it had all begin long ago, with our very first experience The very first e ever heard Our root memories A past both easy to recall and easy toin the sa of days Like reflections in a mirror That is to say, I think ere siures, so sieometric proof And ere both incredibly aware of this From a subjective viewpoint, e spoke to each other, I was, of course, myself; and Zerozaki, of course, Zerozaki Neither of us was anything more or less than just that, and ell aware of this And yet we identified with each other, were unified with each other That was the paradox that we shared—a paradox that surpassed the lie He was on the opposite side of the water’s surface Now iine the first time she ever looked in the mirror Surely, in her perfect innocence, she didn’t know that the iht Instead, she i more: On the other side of the le pane A perfect replica of her “here,” yet existing in an infinitely distant place An enorination It wasn’t ignorance that allowed such a paradox to exist It mattered little which world was the true one and which was false If one side was real, then the other was fake, but if reality was in fact fake, then both sides had equal value, and equally lacked value That’s what I think So did Zerozaki In a sense, my relationshi+p with Zerozaki was very much like that We realized ere the same, but we also understood that, at the saht have once become like you, so I feel a certain affinity” “I definitely could not have become like you That’s what I like about ya” This was another fragment of us Truly nonsensical Ultimately I’m pretty sure we both despised ourselves Likewise, we despised our own kind and scorned our own species We both hated ourselves, resented ourselves, cursed ourselves so e each other with a bit of irony I think it was so special Wait, of course it was: I was the passive onlooker and he the homicidal monster We existed at such extremes; it really did feel like there was a irl reached out her graceful hand and placed a finger on that ness The thing she had allowed to exist, so she had allowed to exist didn’tto anyone else And this she finally realized For that girl, in that eration, a world had been destroyed And so begins the story of the downfall of a single world A world that fell apart not due to the interference of an azurehaired Savant or a crimson-haired Mankind’s Greatest, but si a justifiable paradox descends upon a huoes back to zero So