Classrom Of The Elite- Monologue of a blank slate.

Blank slate

---

A faint aroma of coffee wafted through the room, mingling with the comfortable silence between the two. Horikita Suzune kept her gaze fixed on the cup in her hands, while Kiyotaka Ayanokouji remained impassive, staring out the window with his ever-apathetic eyes.

"You're smiling."

Horikita's statement was quiet, but enough to cut through the silence. Kiyotaka blinked, looking away at her. For a brief moment, something almost imperceptible happened. His eyes, always cold and calculating, widened just a few millimeters. Small, but significant.

"I'm smiling? Do you know why?" he asked, his voice as calm as ever, but with a curiosity that almost seemed childish. He himself hadn't noticed.

Horikita blushed slightly, looking away to hide her embarrassment. "Yes... But I don't know why." His voice, usually firm, seemed hesitant.

Kiyotaka leaned back in his chair, his gaze lost, reflecting on what she had just said. A smile? That didn't come naturally to him. At least, it shouldn't. He turned to his memories. Since birth, his life had been an experiment. The White Room had shaped him into a blank slate, where emotions were unnecessary and human connections were superfluous. He had no memories of anyone genuinely caring about him, nor of receiving affection without ulterior motives.

He immersed himself in the analytical mode that characterized him so much. The concept of smiling was, to him, a physical manifestation derived from positive emotional stimuli. An act that should be conscious or, at the very least, the result of a specific emotional reaction. However, he couldn't identify the trigger. What external or internal factor could have induced such behavior? Was it a mistake? A lapse of control? His mind took him to Yuki, one of the few variables outside the norm in the White Room. She smiled, even in an environment devoid of joy. This behavioral divergence resulted in her early elimination. Her emotional instability became a limiting factor. When she was expelled, she broke down, unable to even talk about the White Room without freaking out.

This raised the question: What was the real value of affection in a controlled environment? In the White Room, everything was reduced to utility equations. Kindness, affection, and empathy had no intrinsic value. They were redundant, distracting elements that compromised efficiency.

Still, he found himself intrigued by the logic behind kindness. Why would someone be kind without a clear intention to reciprocate? If there was no measurable exchange of benefits, what was the rational motivation? He considered the hypothesis that kindness might be an evolutionary mechanism, a cooperative behavior rooted in primitive social bonds. But even this explanation seemed inadequate in today's context.

He reframed the problem.

If kindness is a means of strengthening bonds, then what defines those bonds? "Friendship" would be the most common answer, but the term is subjective and difficult to quantify. Are friends those who share common interests? Those who demonstrate trust and whom you can count on when you need it? Or perhaps those who provide unconditional assistance?

If the latter criterion is accepted, then why the distinction between friends and family? Both can overlap. In that case, would family be a subset of friendships, defined by genetic ties or by continued presence? The initial conclusion indicated that any attempt to categorize human connections was inherently flawed due to the subjective nature of relationships.

Kiyotaka realized that, regardless of the variables analyzed, there was one element that he could not ignore: the lack of experience. He did not have the necessary data to validate or refute the logic behind these interactions.

His existence, until then, had been isolated, controlled. He did not know what friendship was, just as he did not know what family was; he knew the concept of both, but could not feel it. It was impossible to understand something that he had never genuinely experienced. Therefore, any conclusion on the subject would inevitably be incomplete.