Kuzu to Kinka no Qualidea
Chapter 2 : Haruma-2 As I left the nurse’s office behind, loud voices clamored around me. Lunch brea

Haruma-2

As I left the nurse’s office behind, loud voices clamored around me. Lunch break was just about to end, and the rush of footsteps echoed through the hallway and cla.s.srooms.

I hate the j.a.panese word for crowds: hitogomi. I don’t like people (hito) and I don’t like trash (gomi), so I can see no reason to like the two things put together. In comparison, I love the j.a.panese word for “a cold”: kaze. It’s made up of the characters for “wind” and “evil”. It’s totally overblown and that’s why I love it.

To be fair, I did try my hardest at one point to like crowds.

When I was little, I attempted a lot of things: junior baseball league, swimming school, mental arithmetic tutoring, calligraphy cla.s.s, piano lessons. Almost all of them were things that, well, Amane-chan dragged me to. Either that or it was for her benefit. I never really took a liking to them. Thanks to that, I got surprisingly little bang for my buck. I demand a refund.

There was only one lesson I took to heart.

“You should think of humans as pumpkins!”

That’s what my piano instructor said when I was nervous before a piano performance. Rather well-worn words, but since the old hag was the one saying them, I had to give them a whirl. Gotta respect your elders, right?

As it turned out, though, there was a kernel of truth in the old hag’s words. Indeed, when you think about them in terms of water levels, humans and vegetables are not so different. When you consider their common trait—they’re both sacks of water—they’re on a nearly equal plane of existence. Good old hag. The older the wiser, or however it goes. She said some good stuff. Thanks, granny.

Thanks to her, I’ve been under the a.s.sumption ever since that humans are vegetables. Well, not that the old hag’s words helped with my nervousness—I still screwed up my piano performance and quit soon afterwards. Sorry, granny.

Right then, I looked up at the sky through a window in the hallway. There, I could see slightly unusual clouds in the shape of temple bells at midnight. Internet denizens would be performing their hot takes at this very moment: Whoa! Are those earthquake clouds?

What idiots. Honestly, this world is full of pumpkin heads. Whenever signs of an earthquake appeared, the clouds themselves would turn into omens. The majority of them, it seemed, were actually just regular clouds. People just arbitrarily linked them to earthquakes, fooling others with their ignorance.

There are positives to twisting logic to one’s own convenience. If you can allow it, you can kid yourself into believing that humans and vegetables are the same because they have similar water levels. Anyone saying that is a complete moron.

Well, for now.

How about I give you another similarity between humans and vegetables?

I’ve already said that I hate vegetables. However, I exclude strawberries and melons from that list.