Episode 26: Akito’s Distant Memories
My parents were the epitome of elites.
They graduated from good universities and got jobs at good companies.
After they married and I was born, my mother quit her job to become a full-time housewife.
My father was steadily promoted and was never short on income.
My father, being an elite, naturally expected the same level from his son, me.
And then.
My mother, who had strayed from the elite path through marriage, was even stricter with me than my father.
Get into a better university than your father. Get a job at a better company than your father.
That was my mother’s educational policy.
She would make me an even greater elite than my father through her education. Perhaps she was trying to take revenge on her husband for making her a full-time housewife.
Looking back now, that’s what I think.
Back then, I didn’t have the leeway or life experience to think about such things.
I was just scared, desperately trying not to betray my parents’ expectations, trying not to be disliked.
I think I met their expectations to a certain extent.
That is, until I was hospitalized.
“To collapse at a time like this, will you even make it to the middle school entrance exams!? Isn’t this because of your poor upbringing!?”
“My education is perfect! Isn’t it your bad blood!? I heard your father-in-law has been feeling unwell again! Akito has that blood flowing in him!”
My parents were having such arguments in my hospital room.
It was utterly absurd.
Still, they were my real parents.
I studied even while hospitalized, desperately, so as not to be abandoned. Even after lights out, I would hide and study.
In the beginning of my hospitalization, my mother often came to visit.
But after the test results came out, and it seemed I was going to die soon, she completely stopped showing her face.
I learned about my parents’ situation through the nurses’ gossip.
My mother, freed from taking care of me, had rejoined the company she used to work for.
It seemed that she had regained her vitality by walking the elite path once more, and her relationship with my father had improved. I could hear such whispers.
They were happier without me.
I was an unwanted child in that house.
No. That couldn’t be true. After all, I had always been told to do this, do that. I was given instructions because I was needed, because they had expectations.
It was my fault for not being able to meet those expectations—.
Thinking that, I studied even more. But it was pointless. I wasn’t going to school or cram school to take tests, so I couldn’t show the results of my studies. Even if I did tests myself and graded them, no one would praise me. Except for a girl named Mizuha, who often came to visit me in the hospital—.
And then, the day I graduated from elementary school arrived.
Before I knew it, I had entered public middle school.
I didn’t attend the graduation or entrance ceremonies, so it didn’t feel real at all.
I didn’t even get to take the entrance exam for the private middle school I had wanted to go to.
My parents had abandoned me.
I had no choice but to accept that.
The despair I felt at that time was immense.
If Mizuha hadn’t encouraged me, I might have committed suicide before dying from my illness.
A memory from the distant past. A memory I had managed to avoid remembering thanks to Mizuha.
But seeing the eyes of the girl named Misty, the memory resurfaced.
Her eyes were exactly like mine when I was desperately trying not to be abandoned by my parents.
Perhaps Misty was also desperately trying not to disappoint someone.
Perhaps Celine, her creator, completed Misty as such a high-performance Automata because she had given her some kind of role.
For an Automata, the creator is like a parent.
Of course, it’s all just my imagination.
But if Misty is truly desperately trying to meet her parent’s expectations.
And if she has been doing that for three hundred years.
I couldn’t just leave her alone.