Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita:Volume 1 Chapter 1

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This english translation is brought to you by Matcha. It was translated from Chinese from the manuscript hosted at www.wenku8.cn, which was scanned from the official Taiwanese publication by Ozzie and typed into simplified Chinese by 七夜 ("Seven Nights"). The Japanese raw was consulted for spacing the lines, sound effects, names, and resolving unclear text. All images are derived from the Japanese raw.

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Status: Incomplete

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1/125 pages completed

   

Chapter 1 - Planet of the Fairies

The vibration is horrible.

Paved many decades, or rather, many centuries ago, what may once have been a highway road is now nothing but a rocky path. Its irregularity, along with the many weeds encroaching from its sides and the vein-like roots spread over it all add to the chaotic intensity of the rattling.

On this sorry excuse for a path is a flatbed truck, trundling along with an air of indifference.

The quality of the ride is the worst, in a word.

As the truck navigates each bump on the road, sharp jolts travel up to its bed... shaking both me and the wooden crates I am packed together with.

I am quite bitter at myself for foolishly expecting a ride on the back of a truck to be an elegant one.

Even though the view of the flowers bordering this meandering road is a sight to behold, the soreness of my bottom is such that I cannot enjoy any of it.

The situation feels quite similar to the song "Dona Dona".

"If only I'd sat in the passenger seat from the start... but I'm past that."

I softly vocalise my revulsion to the idea. To sit in the passenger seat would mean I would have to eventually strike a conversation with the caravan chief beside me in the driver's seat. For a person like me who loses her head and starts to blather when faced with strangers, it would have been a nerve-wracking experience.

Between my sanity and my bottom, I prefer to whittle down the latter.

But, as one would expect, I can't bear the pain any longer, so I face the truck's cabin and call out to the chief after taking a deep breath: "... How mush merr till we reach?"

I slurred my words a bit, but since the chief doesn't really seem to notice, I shall refrain from repeating myself.

Ahh, I'm just awful at talking to strangers.

"Three, maybe four more hours, I'd say. That's if the weather stays fair though."

Statuesque, the chief responds without so much as a glance towards me.

With a short thank-you, I begin to ponder on the rugged solar panel module that is mounted above the truck's canopy like an umbrella.

While this truck appears to be a rare hybrid one that can use both solar and fuel cell based power, only one of the two power sources seems to be in regular use.

As I ruminate on this, I grow restless.

Since I got a free ride, I can't really complain though.

It's just that this behemoth of a truck is ambling on at all of 8 kmph.

"Four more hours of this..."

Presently, the chief begins humming.

It must be very comfortable to drive while basking in the sun.

Tiring of the pain in my bottom, I begin to raise my hips a little when the chief gives me a warning: "It's better not to stand up. There was once a person who did so; he ended up falling over the side. Oh, and then he died a slow death, tangled up in the tyres."

That makes me sit right back down. I decide to distract myself from the implications of that anecdote by looking at the opposite edge of the road lined with wild flowers.

Most of my field of vision is filled with the yellow of rape blossoms.

What a handy plant rapeseed is; its seeds can be squeezed for oil, and are also used in pickles.

However, I won't be caught making the mistakes of my childhood again; traipsing into these plants will only get me covered in a cloud of aphids.

My maiden heart is crumbling away, as is my patience for this ride on the truck's bed.

To keep my mind off the pain in my backside, I idly watch the scenery go by. Suddenly, I notice something popping its head out of the flowers.

...

Our eyes meet.

I would say the moment lasts for about a second?

As if to escape, the head rears back into the flowers.

"... Well."

I last saw one of their kind as a child. This was a rather short encounter, but my eyes weren't lying. Their kind leave quite an impression even when seen just once, after all.

Forgetting even the persistent soreness of my bottom, I smile to myself.

"So they even live around here, huh?"

They are existences that live in any place inhabitable by people, but they are rarely ever seen by us. The unexpected encounter feels like a good omen to me.

I would be as friendly with them as possible. This is something of a duty I feel obligated to perform as one of 《School》's last graduates.

Leaning against the side of the truck with my cheek being caressed by the gentle wind, I lose myself in my memories.

It has been two days since the graduation ceremony, which was held in an old and rotting lecture hall. You might think it remiss to hold an important ceremony like that in such a dangerous place, but rest assured, the hall was so old that it had neither a ceiling nor walls that could collapse on anyone.

We all entered that hall whose floor was polished leaving not a single pebble, with a forest of twelve chairs in the middle. We stood around listlessly for a spell, unsure of where to sit.

The sharp scent of the flower pinned to my lapel made the insides of my nose tingle. We all had the feeling that we would only be together until our flowers wilted. The only thing left for us to do after this would be to return to our hometowns after all.

I had treated the notion lightly, and had thought myself disinvested in the matter. However, as I entered the hall, the landscape in my heart clouded over, as if a mist had descended. It was a premonition that this ceremony wouldn't end so simply. There were a number of attendees other than our professors in the hall as well.

Whoever they were, almost nobody in the room was a relative of us graduates. After all, we had left our homes far behind to stay in the dorms of the school. Most of the people present were school personnel.

There were more attendees in the hall than there were graduates, and the atmosphere was tense. We had all resolved among ourselves not to cry during the ceremony.

In the presence of so many guests, it would be embarrassing for us graduates who were finally becoming adults to cry. The expectation was that the ceremony would end quickly; there were only twelve of us graduates after all.

The professors lined up on the stage had other plans though. They took their sweet time in calling each graduate to the stage one-by-one. As they did so, they would all talk a little about that graduate, while Chopin's Farewell Waltz

was played in sync. Just a few simple words from the professors were enough to have everyone crying by the end; it was unbelievable.

Let me summarise the theme of the professors' address for you. It was laden with word choices that were on occasion mean-spirited, with bold and colourful figures of speech as well as inversions of expression that successfully shook the hearts of all who listened. Where we expected cold realism, they employed lyrical sentences with personifications and vivid descriptions that evoked emphatic emotions. Such poetic gems were accentuated by expertly timed spells of silence, followed by more praise, in a constant cycle of adulation that culminated in an excess of tears in our eyes. They were definitely messing with us.

I became a wreck in less than a minute, but every one else was pretty much the same in this regard.

Even my friend Y, who didn't usually show any emotion in front of others had tears behind her glasses after she stepped down from the stage.

I have a feeling the professors were secretly taking their revenge on us for all the trouble we gave them. That's definitely what they were doing. After this session of public humiliation ended, each of us held in their hands an unblemished, pristine white graduation certificate.

More than a decade had passed, and I had learnt and personally experienced a multitude of things, all for the sake of receiving this thin sheet of paper. But, mimicking the feather-like weightlessness of the certificate, the end of our journey left us with an unsatisfactorily hollow feeling.

All of us put our now-drooping flower decorations into the photo albums we got as souvenirs, to turn them into pressed flowers. Speaking of photographs, they were becoming quite the rarity in recent times. It used to be that one could look back on the past whenever they pleased by flipping through a photo album, but we could now only rely on our increasingly more ephemeral memories. The loneliness burst forth at the farewell party.

The indescribable chaos of it all, and my inability as an observer to go against its flow means I can only give you a broad description of its elements. The farewell party proceeded as follows.

A feast full of dishes I had never seen before was brought in; a multicolored rainbow of fallen fruit on the floor; somebody set off some improvised firecrackers; champagne corks popped; there was an attempt at a piano performance; graduates shouting; graduates crying; graduates laughing; graduates dying of embarrassment after making fools of themselves (I was one of those); the red, puffy eyes of my friend Y returning from her roughly ten-minute session in the restroom; elderly guests sharing drinks; the graduate boys endlessly pouring each other drinks left and right; The scratchy tone of a jazz trumpet; Some random old lady holding my hand while crying; an off-tune chorus; a jumble of young graduates and old guests crying together, and the minute and hour hands of the clock overlapping as the time passed midnight.

School was humanity's last educational institution. Over a hundred years had passed since it came into existence as the agglomeration of the universities, cultural associations and non-governmental organisations of the distant past.

The merger of all educational institutions was the natural conclusion of an accelerating decline in the human population. If the population decreased, so too would the number of children. The student population began to dwindle.

In turn, the schools and universities would merge and the scope of individual educational districts increased... This became a dominant trend. It all went downhill from there.

As early as 50 years ago, the boarding school became the norm for education around the world.

In the past, institutionalised education was a given. But now, with the twelve of us having graduated, even humanity's last bastion of education, 《School》 was set to be shut down. From now on, education would once again become something inherited from parent to child. And now, I, with an aching bottom am on my way home.

A huge shadow looms over our path. It is a gigantic camphor tree. Its profile is burnt into my memories from my childhood. That tree would act as a landmark separating the village from the outside world.

In this region dotted by the ruined remains of houses in a sea of luscious wild grasses, it stood out prominently. For a child, it was a three-hour journey from the village to the camphor tree. It was a popular tourist destination for the children of the village.

This truck would probably cover that distance in about two hours. I rest my back on my luggage and relax myself. A new life is waiting for me at the village. Having decided to find a job at my hometown after graduating, I am determined to take the path less travelled.

I have spent about ten years studying at School, and have gained knowledge in a variety of fields, including cultural anthropology and engineering. The time has come to put all that knowledge to use.

As a scholar, I am still green behind the ears. Undoubtedly, this difficult journey would require the strength of youth, a will that would not give in to compromise, concessions, complacence or laziness, and a fastidious spirit of inquiry. There would be no hope of reaching the top without all these qualities.

But I have in me a burning ambition to be recognised as a scholar. Being young is also a plus, and I have a chance to put my thoughts into action. There is nowhere else for me to go but forward. That isn't to say I would mind if I could take some shortcuts to achieve my goals though.

As the truck turns into a side street, the vibration stops.

It seems we have entered the village of Camphorwood proper. The road is now much flatter, as one would expect from a place inhabited by people.

"Mhmmmmmm~" ...

Even though my eyes are covered by a wet towel, and I am forced to sleep nestled between some wooden crates, the sharp decrease in vibration is all I need to understand where I am.

The journey has sapped the strength out of me, and I can hardly gather the willpower to get up. I clumsily fumble over the truck's bed, looking for its raised edge. Having found it, I muster the little energy I have in my arms to straighten myself up.

Contorting myself like an inchworm, I finally lean over the back of the truck's bed, and breathe out a sigh.

I can feel a constant sourness on the back of my throat, courtesy of my vibration-tortured stomach.

In a manoeuvre reminiscent of a pull-up, I lift my face up to rest my chin on the edge, and open my eyes to take in the scenery.

The truck is weaving about through the houses in the neighbourhood. The fences around the houses are close enough to reach out with my arms and touch them. It seems that even the main street of this village is too narrow for a truck like this to pass through.

Ahh, my reunion with sweet, stable land is drawing near. With my energy somewhat restored, I scan my surroundings. There are clusters of houses in good condition retrofitted with smoke-belching chimneys of tin. I suppose everyone is busy making dinner.

The houses inhabited by people are quite easy to spot owing to the bright pastel shades they are customarily painted with. But even if they look well-kept, these houses are most definitely decaying on the inside under the weight of centuries of history. Without a good coat of paint, a house may last only a few years, but the unpleasant effects of acid rain are apparent even on the more fortunate ones.

Even so, these pastel houses are now an indelible scene of the modern person's culture.

My childhood memories are curiously juxtaposed with the scene in my eyes.

The memory of that one cottage with a garish pink paint job comes to my mind.

As does that of going to the village hall to read books or play games.

There was also that nice old lady in the cream-white house whose hobby was making a variety of sweets with whatever ingredients children brought her.

The truck pushes on forward, and presently approaches a plaza. This round plaza was created by flattening a few buildings that had once been there. I can see a crowd standing there, waiting for the truck to arrive.

"wah!" - I pull my head back in, suddenly overcome with embarrassment. A strange shyness besets me as I contemplate seeing again the people I once knew.

Even at the best of times, talking in front of a crowd is something I dread.

I would have preferred to greet and talk to everyone individually, but this lumbering giant that has just stopped in the centre of the plaza with me in it is attracting all the crowd's attention.

I scramble into a gap between some boxes to keep myself out of the view of the rear of the truck, from where I assume things will be unloaded. Yes, this will be a good place to hide. If I sit on the floor and keep my head down, I won't be seen. I intend to stay here until the heat is off me.

However, the world isn't so kind as to let me off like that.

With an ominous metallic squeal, a crank is turned, dropping the side of the truck's bed. Of course, the side that opens up happens to be exactly the side I have chosen to hide in. In front of the crowd that has assembled to relieve the truck of its load, my crouching figure is revealed. One old man in the front row lets the pipe in his mouth drop to the ground as he watches on.

This truck is the type that could open up not only at the back, but also at its sides, it seems. A middle-aged lady with a familiar face snorts quizzically. Just as I remember her, she remembers me - "wait, are you perhaps-"

I quietly rest my head on my knees.

After being embarrassed to death by everyone at the plaza, I drag my worn body home and rest my hand on the door.

"I'm home... Grandfather?"

My grandfather's figure -- which is exactly as I remember it -- appears from within the dim house wearing a lab coat and holding a hunting rifle. Seeing his brisk swaggering gait unbefitting of his age fills me with a sense of relief.

"Oh, you're finally back, huh?"

My grandfather, who was rather tall among the old folks, placed his hand right on top of my head. I am, by the way, very tall for a girl.

“Huh, you’ve grown taller.”

“...Well, it has been quite a long while.”

On that topic, these past few years, I had shot up like a stalk of grain. I really didn’t want to keep growing much taller...

“Your skin’s looking nice too. Is it the carrots?”

“...Still hate them.”

My grandfather snorted.

“What, you haven’t grown up on the inside?”

“I think I did… probably.”

“Anyways, come in for now. I was just thinking of starting dinner.”

“Huh? I thought you were going hunting.”

I glanced at the shotgun he held in his hand.”

“Who goes hunting when it’s this late? I was just tweaking with it a bit to increase its firepower.”

My grandfather really liked guns.

“You rode the caravan truck back?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t mention the little incident I caused on the way here.

“Oh right, Grandpa. I think you’ve probably heard already, but I decided to become a Mediator just like you…”

“There’s some fine watercress for dinner. That stuff tastes great whether it’s with fried food or just bread.”

Even though I had grown taller, my grandfather’s ears callously glazed over my words like they still weren’t there.

We lined up a dried meat and vegetable stew, assorted western-style pickled vegetables and fresh produce, and a basket of sliced bread that was meant to go with the food.

My grandfather had prepared of all this himself.

Since he lived alone year round, he was extremely good at cooking.

Although he preferred whole roasts and smoked meat, occasionally he’d make more savory stews. The aroma of it kicked up faint memories of the distant past.

I carefully gathered a generous helping of pickled vegetables while each of us created a sandwich to our tastes. In the meantime, I spoke with my grandfather who was seated across from me.

“Is that so? The Institution of School is finally closing?”

“Yeah, there were so many related officials at the graduation ceremony… it really gave me a shock.”

“It’s always like that. When the school I went to shut down, a large number of officials also came by… Hey, you still haven’t fixed that bad habit of yours? Just open a shop already.”

There were five completely assembled sandwiches lined up in front of me.

“I get agitated if I try eating and making them at the same time… is that bad?”

“Whatever, suit yourself.”

Whenever I get into a rhythm with menial tasks like these, I always space out.

My friends joked that these runaway hands of mine were operating an entire cottage-industry, and my family often quipped that they were opening up a store.

“Are you going to eat all of those?”

“No, of course not. Even I can’t finish them all.”

I spoke without the slightest ounce of regret.

“You fool!”

My grandfather reached out and grabbed two of my sandwiches.

“Even if you’ve grown taller, you’re still that feeble thing like before.”

“I prefer the term civilized.”

“That’s a thing of the past. The past. Civilization or whatnot doesn’t exist anymore.”

“That reminds me, I rode on my first solar-powered truck earlier.”

“Those? They ain't got speed or horsepower, and they’re impossible to repair if they break down.”

“Fortunately the truck never stopped. The trip was relatively uneventful.”

“The caravan troupes have some pretty nifty toys. You should go get a job with them, since you’d probably find it interesting.”

“Uhh, no… it’s impossible for me to do physical labor.”

At this moment there was a change in my grandfather’s expression as seemed to remember something.

“You really want to work at my place? You really don’t have force yourself to inherit my line of work.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. I even went through the trouble to get an academic degree. Besides, the office is still there, right? I want to stay in a place that’s formally recognized by the Institution.”

“Your interests are quite strange. Why’d you insist on becoming a Mediator?”

“I thought this line of work would suit me.”

“Oh? And the reason is?”

“...I figured it’d be much more laid-back than laboring in the fields.”

I accidentally let my true feelings slip, caught off guard by the atmosphere of our reunion.

“So that’s the reason why…?”

Even my grandfather seemed astonished.

I confronted the taut look in his eyes and replied innocently.

“Of course you remember how fragile my health is, right Grandpa?”

“No, earlier you were talking about finding some laid-back work.”

...I said that?

“It’s not what you think! These days, agriculture and animal husbandry are part of the basic curriculum… but that kind of work is really hard on the body. That’s when I remembered that even old people could work as Mediators, so I figured that this line of work wouldn’t be too much of a burden on my health.”

Up against family, I wasn’t nervous at all.

“...My granddaughter’s picked up some really weird personality traits.”

“Wha?”

“To me, it looks more like you lack willpower. It’s not about how weak your body is.”

“Huh.”

“If you take it easy now, you’ll lose your motivation to do anything when you grow up.”

“Huh.”

“...Well anyways, if you still think like that after a month on the job, I’d be impressed.”

“Is your work really that difficult?”

Based on some cursory looks, I did do some research into the Mediator’s job description before I took the qualifying exams. But when you compared it with subsistence farming and other kinds of labor, I came to the conclusion that the Mediator’s job was a lot easier than the others… don’t tell me I was totally wrong?

My grandfather’s response was very vague.

“It depends on the person.”

I tilted my head at this. Could it be that some kind of harsh physical labor would suddenly appear?

“For now, just try and get in touch with “Them,” my useless granddaughter.”

“That’s a little rude.”

“But that’s precisely it. Tomorrow, come to the office and I’ll help you find a desk.”

And that’s how it was decided.

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