COTE : Three days of happyness

I Say A Little Prayer

A short story about the troubles of being an observer.

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My prayer is for Ayanokouji to die.

Even if I just leave him alone, he doesn't have long. Ten days ago, he sold off the majority of his lifespan. It was already shorter than most, and so little remains now.

Three months. That's all the time Ayanokouji has left.

When summer ends, the cicadas stop buzzing, and leaves start to fall, he'll wither away as well.

He sold his lifespan in the middle of July, and so he'll leave this world in the middle of October.

But October is too far away.

I pray for Ayanokouji to die if only a moment sooner.

Ayanokouji was hurting for money, yes. But his sale of 99 percent of his lifespan was not for money.

He was told in advance his results, which showed that even giving away nearly all of it could get him no more than 300,000 yen.

It's hard to think that a healthy twenty-year-old would throw his life away for a measly 300,000 yen.

It would be more appropriate to say that Ayanokouji sold his lifespan not to have 300,000 yen, but because he realized the value of his life was so low.

The value of his life - based on standards, illuminating just how fulfilling the remainder of your life will be. The happier a future you're promised, the more valuable your lifespan. And vice versa.

And while there are some whose lives are worth several millions of yen a year, there are others who are only a couple thousands.

I had never before seen a person whose life was worth as little as Ayanokouji's. His value was the absolute minimum price that a life can go for.

This meant that in the remainder of his life, not a single good thing would happen. Unloved, not loving, unhappy, not making anyone happy... you get the point. A life that was in all ways unsatisfying awaited.

When he heard his results, he paid no mind to the compensation - he sold his lifespan just to be rid of it. It was a kind of passive suicide, you could say.

I think it was an excellent, very reasonable choice he made.

Even carrying the knowledge that nothing good will ever await you, life is not something so easily given up on. To the point that there are even people who want to buy lifespan.

But to think. It's so much easier to just give it up then and there.

Those who sell their lifespan and have little time left sometimes turn to self-abandonment and bring harm to others.
To prevent this situation, sellers who are reduced to less than a year left are assigned an "observer."

This addition brings about the desired result: the occurrence of desperate acts is greatly diminished.

To ensure the target of observation is aware of the observer's gaze, they carry out their observation very close by. The simple sense of "being watched" has a great impact on people's actions.

On the other hand, this gives rise to new problems. Namely, the anger the observed feel over having no refuge is directed at the observer.

People have a tendency to blame the source of their woes on those nearby. And there's no target more convenient than an observer.

It's surprisingly no small number of observers who have been killed by their subjects. Perhaps the true purpose of the observer is to take all their rage so that the injury may stop there.