My Self-Consciousness Exceeds the Schwarzschild Radius and Saves the World (1)

Synopsis

Chapter 1: Confession, a One-Way Metaphysics

I decided to confess my love to Misaki Kagurazaka.

Please don't misunderstand; this was by no means a fit of lust brought on by the spring weather.

Love is gravity, and a confession is a magnificent celestial show to prove that gravity.

My condition today was perfectly prepared, to a surprising degree.

In the mirror this morning, my face somewhat resembled an early Renaissance sculpture.
Specifically, it was the face of a failed work where the artist tilted their head, thinking "this isn't it," while pouring an excessive amount of soul into it.

A serene intelligence and a passion with nowhere to go played a complex chord beneath eyelids swollen from lack of sleep due to days of filling out entry sheets.

With this face, I could do it. Even if I were to crash and burn, it would be sublimated into a work of art called "tragic love."

The location was behind the university lecture building, under the zelkova tree.

The May breeze blew through, carrying the scent of new young leaves and someone's breakfast miso soup.

Inside the right pocket of my jacket, I traced the corner of a stack of paper with my fingertips. It was a mass-destruction weapon called a "letter," which I had revised countless times since yesterday. It was too big for a store-bought envelope, so it was held together with a rubber band.

Rather than a letter, it was closer to a grand thesis spanning twenty pages of manuscript paper titled "How You and I Should Meet and Elevate Each Other in This Universe." In other words, it was my very soul.

"Kagurazaka-san."

I called out to her.

Someone once said that a man's voice sounds more attractive when it's low. I focused on a voice resonating from the bottom of my stomach and spoke as calmly as possible. It was a voice like an old jazz baritone sax.

Misaki Kagurazaka turned around.

She was perfect again today, to a violent degree. Her slightly brownish hair was as smooth as an aircraft whose air resistance had been calculated to the limit. There wasn't a single wrinkle on her white blouse.

She already had a job offer from a major general trading company. She was wrapped in a polished stainless steel wall called "correctness."

"…Oh, Akagi-kun. What is it?"

"I'll be blunt. Our souls likely share the same wavelength."

I took a step forward. The sole of my right shoe pressed into the dry soil, making an unpleasant crunching sound. At that moment, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the sole of my foot.

It was a pebble that had wandered into my shoe. While it was an "impurity" hindering my walk, it was also the only sensory organ telling me that I was in contact with the skin of this Earth.

I stared straight into her eyes.

"Your beauty and this overflowing potential of mine. If they mix, the world will be a much better place than it is now. Won't you go out with me? This is not a proposal, but a confirmation of destiny, a cosmic requirement."

I took the thick stack of manuscript paper out of my pocket.

Snap.

The sound of the degraded rubber band snapping echoed through the quiet campus. It was a far too clumsy sound for a starting gun announcing the beginning of love.

A crow cawed in the distance, and I heard the sound of someone buying a cola from a vending machine.

Clunk.

And then, after a moment of blank space, the surrounding buzz rapidly receded.

I could tell that the students passing through the campus during lunch break were sharing a silence filled with cruel curiosity, like bystanders witnessing the scene of a traffic accident.

"Is he serious...?"

I heard a whisper of "Manuscript paper...?"

I took that to be a voice "overwhelmed by the sheer intensity." They were in awe from the depths of their souls at a dialogue on a height that ordinary people could not understand.

Misaki Kagurazaka trembled her lips slightly for a while, as if she had no idea what to say.

In her eyes, there was no sympathy or rejection, but a more fundamental "bewilderment." It resembled the face of a homeowner when a meteorite falls into their front yard.

"Sorry, Akagi-kun. I... I don't understand even half of what you're saying. Because, even when we pass each other in the hallway, I've never even recognized you. Honestly, you haven't even entered my field of vision."

Her words had a ring to them like smashing the keys of a perfectly tuned piano with a hammer.

Snickers leaked from the surroundings. And not modest ones, either. It was a sticky laughter, like spitting out clay stuck in the back of one's throat.

However, the high-performance filter in my brain instantly converted those words.

"To me, your existence is too profound, and my understanding can't keep up. So, for now, I want you to keep a little distance."

I see, so that's it. My intelligence must have caused her capacity to overflow.

"I see," I nodded.

"I understand what you're saying. You need preparation, right? Just as the universe continues to expand, I will wait for the love for me to grow within you."

"…Eh, no, that's not what I meant."

It was just as she backed away with a desperate look on her face.

Whoosh.

Misaki Kagurazaka's body floated. As if an invisible magician had pulled up a silk cloth.

At first, I thought my semicircular canals were suffering from anemia. If not that, I thought the May-specific pressure distribution had caused an abnormal refraction of light.

But it was different.

Between the soles of her polished loafers and the dry asphalt, a decisive "rupture" had been born. There lay an absolute space, wide enough for an ant to pass through.

Her shadow grew faint.

As she left the ground, the outline of her shadow at her feet blurred, and it looked as if she had lost her fixation to this world. It was as if her very existence had begun to be unilaterally "deleted" from this filthy, heavy reality.

No one said anything. I heard the sound of a textbook page someone dropped being turned by the wind. Flip, flip-flip. That dry sound accentuated the abnormality of the situation.

"Eh?"

Misaki herself seemed to have finally noticed. She tried to stomp on the ground in a panic, but her feet just cut through the air as if she were walking underwater.

"Eek, wh-what is this!?"

"Amazing," I marveled.

"Did my confession release you from the wedge of gravity? They say love is wings, but I never thought it would act physically."

"No! Help me! Something, I'm floating... it's gross!"

With a tearful face, she clung to the trunk of a nearby zelkova tree. Her skirt puffed out unnaturally, and her long hair spread out as if in a zero-gravity space.

The surrounding students were also divided into those pointing their smartphones, those screaming and running away, and those just standing there in a daze, and the scene was engulfed in chaos.

"I see, so that's it."

I nodded with satisfaction and turned my back on her as she panicked.

I must not upset her any further. She is like a piece of fluff about to fly into the sky, fanned by the gust of wind that is my love.

Watching over her quietly is a gentleman's duty. —She still hadn't let go of my stack of manuscript paper.

"I'll contact you again, Kagurazaka-san. When you get back to the ground, let's have some coffee."

I walked away dashingly.

I felt like I heard a scream behind me saying, "Wait! Don't leave me!" but that was converted into a passionate love call of "Don't go, my beloved," which made my steps even lighter.

Step, step, step.

The feeling of the ground transmitted to the soles of my feet and the pain of the pebbles echoing dully with every step felt comforting, as if proving that I still "belonged" to this lousy world.

After all, gravity is justice.

I pressed my feet into the ground and continued my lonely triumphal return with a back that no one looked at.

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