A Placated Slave of the System

Where did it go wrong? The bed in my dorm room seemed to have been designed for contemplation. A king-size bed leaned against the corner, next to a ceiling-to-floor tinted window, while the glass panes further away from the mattress were clear as sheets of water.

The stained, wide view of the city brought about details not normally attainable. A scar on the side of a lone house, a tumor on top of an abandoned tree, a spot of faded color on the single car parked at a dead end. It was as if the simple change in color had granted me a glimpse into all the secrets normally hidden in metal and concrete.

My observation of the urban landscape didn’t last long. Soon, I resigned to scrolling on my phone while lying on the mattress, as a shut-in would have. Needless to say, I still couldn’t find Hanawa-senpai’s account on Sinstagram. I thought she didn’t have an account at first, but thinking it over, she must have found my account and obliterated any chance of me connecting with her online by blocking me first. What? Did she think I would look her up? Was she that narcissistic?

It wasn’t like I cared that she had rejected me. I was too good for her anyway. Plenty of women would flock to me if I just turned on my charm on the streets. What irked me was the slander she used to turn my classmates against me. My immense knowledge of Professor Silva’s work should have impressed the others, so she must have said some truly awful stuff for everyone to treat me so coldly.

When I searched for the accounts of the few peers whose names I caught from paying attention to my surroundings, I also didn’t find anything. Mamie was an exception, as I came across her profile with a simple search. Even though I had forgotten to ask for her family name, the picture of her face staring back helped me zero in on the correct account. Gessho Mamie, so that was her full name.

She had a public page, though her posts were sparse, and each one seemed crafted with too much time and effort. Professional makeup, studio lighting, and synthetic poses portrayed her as a completely different person, rather than whoever I’d met. My finger hovered above the ‘follow’ button. I didn’t only hesitate because this initiation would seem like a desperate plea; there was a more serious reason.

Not an ounce of shame was displayed by her online persona, since she proudly declared her identity as a student of the sex college. If I followed her, my friends and high-school acquaintances could, in turn, follow the breadcrumb trail and expose the lie I had told them. The lie that I had gone to a prestigious college in Osaka, studying to be a professional birdwatcher. Now that I thought about it, maybe I should have thought of a better lie.

Minutes later, I returned to skimming through the posts of my ex-classmates. This one went on a weekend trip to Russia with his friends. What a communist. I wrote a comment about how great the snow looked. Another one enjoyed a steak dinner with his girlfriend. Simp. I asked in the comments how much he had spent that night, with a fire emoji to mask my sarcasm. One more went on a hike or something with his new colleagues. A placated slave of the system. For this, I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be interpreted as backhanded.

My eyes just stayed on the picture. At his smile. At their smile. The greenery lining the background. This image had probably been violated by a filter and turned into something constructed, but this veneer still acted like a clear mirror. The more I dwelled on it, the more I thought about myself.

Yep, I look much better than all of those losers.

A couple more posts later, I became fed up with the mundane stories of those I knew. Reading their superficial theatrics, liking them, commenting on them, those were simply acts that wasted time and earned me no reward of any kind. Conversely, I wasn’t motivated to post anything. Lying about my life and thinking up misleading phrasings merely made me feel empty, as if I were writing about a stranger, or perhaps a hollow shell overtaken by platitudes.

The only saving grace was that the site had an endless stream of ‘sigma male’ influencers, so I switched to listening to their wisdom. Professor Silva would always be the top in the field, but the other ones, like The Lone Wolf Warrior and Tokyo Rizz Master, offered decent insights as well. But for whatever reason, the words of those prophets left my head soon after they had been uttered.

All I could focus on was the vast pocket of air in the room, as if the oxygen here were enough for my lifetime. The dresser and nightstand and the rest of the objects battered my mind with their lifelessness. If I stared at the static interior for any longer, I feared that I might forget to breathe.

So I forced my gaze outside again. The sun had already drifted behind a distant mountain. The sky flashed one last defiance in red before the night took over. The darkened glass couldn’t shield my privacy anymore, sold out by the indoor lights. I could lower the curtain, but I didn’t, because I finally noticed a passerby wandering below, and that was when I could swear that the city had been barren.

I waited and waited for him to do something, even though I had no idea what I was hoping for.

***

I arrived late to the lecture hall again. Maybe I should cut down on my social media time, but I had a feeling that the scrolling wasn’t the issue.

Scanning the rows that were hardly filled, I recognized the same split of social circles as yesterday. If I inserted myself between them with my smooth talking, would they gladly accept me into their pack? The answer was definitely yes. But I wouldn’t do that, as that was only something desperate Betas would do.

Instead, I chose the seat next to Mamie again. “Good morning, Gessho-senpai.”

She was reading a book with a plain light-blue cover, only sparing the corner of her eye and the softest of whispers. “Stalker.”

I failed to stop my smile from twitching. “I already told you. That was a mistake.”

“You accidentally liked one of my posts.”

Sirens that only I could hear screeched in my ears. “Did I do that?”

“Aha, I could tell from your tone. You were online-stalking me. Besides, there are only a few ways you could have learned my family name.”

“No, I heard about it from a friend.” The lie rolled off my tongue as if I had believed it myself. She had no way to verify this anyway. And it was for the greater good of maintaining my image, so I could rise from the ashes of Hanawa-senpai’s smearing campaign.

“Oh, really? Did your friend tell you about the mentor system?”

“Of course.”

“Then who is your mentor?”

“You,” I blurted out. That might have been the worst person to choose as part of this deception, so I scrambled to save it. “That was what I had heard. Maybe she was wrong.”

“Me? Really?” She scoffed and didn’t elaborate further.

I took that as a win, but a hint of doubt persisted, no matter how much I wanted to extinguish it and become the confident man that I had to be.

That flicker of unease survived throughout the first lecture of today, one that was part of the course Introduction to Practical Psychology. The teacher, a serious-looking woman in her 40s, spoke about the basic overview of psychology and, of course, Sigmund Freud.

“So should you assume that everyone is in love with their parents? Yes… if you are an absolute moron. Because that was not at all what Freud said a functioning adult would be like. AND he was wrong, by the way…” The teacher also said something about falsifiability and cocaine. My earlier conversation with Mamie had split my attention from the presentation. One hour into the lecture, I realized that nothing from the past three hours had been retained in my brain. That wasn’t entirely true. I did learn one thing.

I’m gonna fail this course...

If she had said anything that wasn’t in the lecture notes… wait… the other classmates might have written the main points all down, including the one sitting adjacent to me. I should be able to find ample opportunity to steal glimpses of their notes.

With my head turned, my gaze crossed Mamie’s again. The jade in her eyes pierced into me with the intensity of a laser, clearly communicating that she was observing me.

“What?” I feigned disgust, while my interior world swelled, knowing that she had finally fallen to my charm and become utterly unable to break her gaze from me.

“Just impressed that you could survive in the modern day without a laptop.”

Wow, her excuses evolved quickly.

“I don’t understand why that will end with you staring at me,” I probed.

“What? Do you expect me to look at your notebook instead?”

No, I expected you to face the lecturer. But I swallowed the words, since I would be a hypocrite for speaking them.

“When I’m interested in a person, I look at them. It’s this simple,” she added.

That was basically a love confession, but I still stayed silent.

Mamie wasn’t done yet. Even as she was whispering, each syllable poked into my eardrums like needles. “And I’m not in love with you. I can tell from your face that you were thinking about that. Maybe pay attention to the Expressive Arts class in the afternoon. Certainly, you should start by facing the lecturer.”

I should be able to pass the Fundamental Expressive Arts class, since I stopped myself from cursing at her with swear words then and there.