Tædium Vitæ - (n) Profound ennui or weariness of one's life.

. . . . .

It is a white mist, but I can see clearly.

In the distance, on all four sides of me, as though I were standing in a translucent grid, or in a house of mirrors, I see the Goddess speaking with figures I am able to recognize as my classmates'.

My classmates. And so, no doubt, am I visible to them. And presumably, she is offering them the same bargain she's offered me: cheat skills along with reincarnation into another world. Reincarnation into another world--so it exists after all! And thereby, some of my classmates might live out their dream, some of them might, with their cleverness and irritating talent for finding loopholes in normal human interactions, obtain a cheat skill that overpowers all others.....

And what of myself?

"What my heart's desire is? What I want?"

"Yes. Give me some clue into your heart, and I will supply you a cheat skill with which to make your way in the new world. Though I am a Goddess, I cannot read into the souls of people from your world, a domain I normally have no contact with." (Goddess)

I am at a loss for words.

"Come on, come on, don't be shy. What is it...boys? Bewitching beauty? Strength in magic? Or do you desire a comfortable life? an ordinary life, filled with pets, books, gentle bearded men? Or do you desire fashion, a life in the eyes of all, a life in Court, a life in the City, in the salons of interesting strangers, on turqoise daybeds, in boxes at the opera? Do you desire to play every part? Do you scorn life, and wish to joke at its expense? Do you want to satisfy your envy, side with injustice, and learn the art of consummate deceit and disguise? Or do you want to remain forever righteous, forever loved by the common people, forever justified by the most mediocre sense of right and wrong? Do you want strength to acquire? or the happiness of fashion and wealth? or the satisfaction of pride? or familial comfort and safety?"

"Nothing... nothing! I want for nothing. I don't wan anything! If I died...it is against the honor of a Japanese schoolgirl to wish for it, but if I died, I would die without remorse, without sadness, without loss! Boys? Immaculately bearded men? They have nothing that could interest me. Neither the status going out with them would confer, nor mysteriousness among the third-years, nor to become, by a fascinating lover, beyond the judgment of my peers. No, nor am I interested in love. Though I feel attraction, desire, and though at times, longings, I have no illusions about love. I do not hold love at any worth, neither romantic, platonic, nor filial love mean a pinch to me. Nothing, from my skin to the core of my heart, nothing within me feels the slightest compulsion that can be given the name of love. And comfort! Father figures bore me."

The Goddess shakes her head at me, as though I were young child. I feel my face getting hot and continue.

"No. When I was 8, I learned a disgust for snugness. I don't want protection. To me, nothing can be so close to hell in this world...in that world...as being confined in a room... Since I was 8, I have refused being hugged."

"I am not allowed to let you go with nothing. Consider your choice well. Since you were 8, less than a decade has transpired. Six more of those decades shall transpire in the new world, during which one's tastes will change, one's old selves become strange, and during which, as the only constant, the spokes of your possibility will disappear one by one. If you are too proud to give an answer, consider the future, the future selves you will extinguish by this choice. If you are too depressed to care, consider that apathy does not understand contentment, happiness of glory, or the perfection of love, and that these are not things to be thought and judged, but states, like apathy, that are responsible for the thinking and judging of things. Consider your peers, who have either chosen, or are reflecting carefully on their choice. Consider the fact of the unknown: that you know nothing of where you're going, nothing of what you'll become. And then give me a choice. A cheat, a wish, some sign by which I can act according to my vows as a Goddess." (Goddess)

"I have already told you."

"What?" (Goddess)

"...At 11, I lost myself in the City. In the faces of salarymen, I saw how civilizations held together. In a library, I saw human passion, vice, sin, and more unknown and yet to come, strut before me in the darkness, and they revealed to me the secrets of their nature. At 12, I became popular. I obeyed only the fashions of the time. My word became powerful, my jests destroyed the spirits of pretty boys, my deeds were talked about, my cuteness was known from Shinjuku to Aoyama. At 13, fame grew tasteless to me. I no longer sought any honor but that I presently possess. I no longer cared for the praise of teachers, cool girls, or the state. My old friends met my disdain. I ceased to run with girls of the highest rank. At 14, I fell in love with Charming Stupidity. At 15, it stopped moving me. While the other girls swarmed the best boys in the school like flies swarm corpses, I was as cold as a pickle. I acted as though I liked them, and so was able to pass as an ordinary teenage girl. My heart did not beat faster. My pits did not sweat. It did not matter to me whether they found me beautiful, or whether they could pick apart the flaws in my face. It did not matter to me whether they loved me. I fooled vain boys, and, so, stopped them from bothering me. But for a long time I have masturbated to the thought of neither boys nor men. At sixteen, I learned my duty. I learned who I was. At seventeen...at seventeen, I'm old!"

"Then you think you're experienced. If you think you're experienced, then you must know that there are points where accepting the will of another is the easiest way to get what you want. And whatever you want, be it nothing, be it to blend in with the others, requires firstly that you tell me what you want." (Goddess)

"But I don't want anything."

"You must want something. You want to leave this place don't you?" (Goddess)

"I can't say I want that, because I don't. If I have ever wanted in my life, if I have ever recognized the feeling of desire in myself, then there can be no doubt that it's absent now... But you don't seem to understand me at all."

"Do you want to be understood???" (Goddess, perking up)

"No. Where others see their words going unheeded, and their closest friends in the world bearing a false impression of their true selves, I see instead my duty to be what a teenage girl should be being accomplished. I am answerable only to that duty. And I speak not with the goal of being understood, but of observing that duty. And therefore it does not matter to me if I am understood, only that I speak clearly and truthfully... But, I suppose, seeing the frustration on your face, I do have a wish."

"I will not necessarily grant it, but I will do my utmost to derive from it the verymost suitable gift." (Goddess)

"Then...I wish to sleep with you."

The Goddess stares into the distance for a moment. Then she puts on a broken smile.

"Sorry, did you say something? Please, tell me what cheat skill you'd like." (Goddess)

"You asked me what I wanted! I'm gay--even though I've only slept with boys up till now... I wanted my first time with a girl to be with an older maturer woman... And though I'm not at the moment attracted to you, I can acknowledge that you are conventionally beautiful..."

"You wish to..." (Goddess)

"Yes... though...obviously not in public..."

I look around the space, where in the cells all around me, the same scene is being played out, the Goddess talking to my classmates. When I look back at the Goddess I realize to my shock that she's blushing.

"That's it." (Goddess)

"Eh?"

"That's it. No cheat skills. No blessings. Does that satisfy you then?" (Goddess)

"Ehhhh..."

"Well?" (Goddess)

"...I'll be in your care!"

I bow deeply to her, feeling my face begin to burn. The white floor below me gradually grows opaque. The light takes on the color of blush. When I look up again, the Goddess is lit in soft ambience. And suddenly, her formal beauty becomes transformed into a sensual one.

Her straight nose becomes softer, her lips become fuller, her face becomes rounder. Light shadows touch her flushed cheeks, her collarbones, the tendon of her neck. She sits on a divan that wasn't there before and crosses her legs, looking away.

Awkwardly, I approach her, and take a seat neither too close nor too far from her. Despite being intimidated by her transformed presence in the light, I feel responsible for initiating. I hold her timidly by the waist. She doesn't resist or correct me. I look into her face... The desire, pettiness, need, and weakness that I thought I had lost forever, returns. But the desire I feel is not the desire of a lover. Rather, and though it's strange to say, it is the hitherto unknown desire of my heart to have a beautiful older sister,-- a person whose very involvement in the world is enough to make it seem again fresh, orderly, and hopeful.