Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita:Volume 1 Chapter 1

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This english translation is brought to you by Matcha. It was translated from Chinese from the manuscript hosted at www.wenku8.cn, which was scanned from the official Taiwanese publication by Ozzie and typed into simplified Chinese by 七夜 ("Seven Nights"). The Japanese raw was consulted for spacing the lines, sound effects, names, and resolving unclear text. All images are derived from the Japanese raw.

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Status: Incomplete

8% completed (estimated)

   

Chapter 1 - Planet of the Fairies

This was terribly bumpy.

Paved decades ago, perhaps even centuries ago, the asphalt road was presently an abandoned highway without the slightest trace of humanity in sight. Weeds had sprung up on both sides, and roots had grown around it like veins, slowly transforming this place into a primeval wilderness.

The flatbed truck tread indifferently over this road that could hardly be called a road.

Seated atop it, I could only describe my feelings with exceedingly miserable vocabulary.

Every time the car rose up above an obstacle, abrupt shocks would vibrate up through the platform… thereupon shaking me and the boxes I was packed alongside with.

I blamed myself for thinking that traveling in the bed of a truck would be a graceful experience. It was far too stupid of me.

I was so fortunate as to be traveling on a road surrounded with flowers bursting in full bloom, yet I was no particular mood to admire it thanks to the excessive pain in my buttocks,.

This situation in itself reminded me of the song, “Donna, Donna.”

“If only I had just sat down in the passenger’s seat… never mind.”

I mumbled to myself, but quickly rejected that train of thought. If I had sat down there, I would have been expected to singlehandedly strike up conversation with the caravan leader in the driver’s seat. As someone who was endowed with a brain that froze with total blanks and was otherwise terrible with strangers, that span of time probably would have shaved my nerves dangerously thin.

My brain or my butt. Obviously I’d rather that the latter get shaved thin.

Be as that may, I seriously couldn’t bear this any further, so I turned towards the driver to ask a question.

First I took a deep breath.

“...Excuse me, how mush lunger will it be?”

I messed up my pronunciation, but it didn’t seem like he noticed, so I didn’t correct myself. Ugh, I was really bad at talking to strangers.

“Three, maybe four hours. That is, if the sun doesn’t get covered up.”

The caravan leader must have been a statue with how little he moved his head as he responded.

After I giving my brief thanks, my attention fixated itself on this crude solar cell unit that was spread open like an umbrella above the canopy.

This flatbed truck simultaneously used fuel cells and solar energy as its power source, so I figured it must have been a gasoline-electric “hybrid car.” The fact that it was still operational was rather miraculous—although, the car itself probably used only one of those energy sources most of the time.

As we traveled, I started to feel restless.

Since that guy let me ride along for free, I really wasn’t in a position to complain.

But since this truck was pulling an enormous load, it slowly lumbered forward at the thrilling speed of eight kilometers per hour.

“Four more hours of this...”

Around then, the driver began to hum from his seat.

With the warm sunlight shining down on the driver, he looked so very nice and comfortable.

I, on the hand, simply couldn’t bear the ache in my butt anymore, so I stood up. But then—

“I strongly advise against standing up, since there was once a person who did so but fell off. Incidentally, that person got swept up in the wheels and was dragged around for a very long time before he died.”

I immediately sat back down into my previous spot.

If that was the case, at the very least I needed to distract myself. I ended up looking at the cluster of wildflowers at the opposite side of the road.

A panorama of yellow rapeseed flowers occupied most of my field of view.

That was a very convenient plant that could processed into oil or pickled as an edible vegetable.

On the downside, if you approached them, there’d be a huge hoard of aphids that’d pounce on you. As a result, I had no desire to to prance into the midst of it like I might have had in the past. My maiden-like naivety had deteriorated, a little bit like what was presently happening to my tortured butt on this journeying flatbed truck.

With the ache in my buttocks gradually worsening, I dejectedly gazed at the scenery outside, just when a tiny head poked out from a bed of flowers.

“...”

Our eyes met.

For probably a second or so?

However, it quickly ducked back in, as if to escape.

“...Ah.”

This was my second time seeing them ever since I was a child.

Even though it was abrupt and lasted only a split second, I was absolutely sure I wasn’t mistaken.

From just one glance, they had this particular look that was simply unforgettable.

I smiled, forgetting how much my butt hurt.

“So they even lived in these kinds of places, too.”

It was common knowledge that they could live virtually anyplace where life was possible, but they rarely showed themselves in front of people. As a result, I personally considered this unexpected encounter to be a sign of good luck.

I needed to establish friendly relations with them.

As a member of the last graduating class of 《School》, this was my final duty.

I leaned against the edge of the platform, my cheeks feeling the gentle caress of a light breeze as I lost myself in memories of the past.

The graduation ceremony was three days ago.

It had taken place in this old decrepit lecture hall.

You might think that this’d be a dangerous place to hold a ceremony, but please don’t worry.

The auditorium was so old that it basically didn’t even have any more ceiling or stone walls that could crumble or fall down.

When you entered the auditorium, which was polished so spotlessly that hardly a single pebble could be seen on the shiny floor, you would have found a lone twelve chairs arranged closely together with the group of us standing at attention.

The sharp fragrance that wafted up from a fresh-cut flower pinned on my breast made my nose tingle a little. They would be like this until they withered—a poignant reminder that these were the last moments we’d spend together as students.

Once we graduated, all that was left of us was to return to our villages.

I had thought I’d that accept this with all the calm indifference in the world. However, the moment I stepped into that auditorium, the scenery in my heart abruptly became blur.

I had a premonition in my gut that this ceremony wasn’t going to end so simply.

Excluding the faculty, there were a lot of attendees at this graduation.

But among those guests, there were hardly any parents. That was because to attend School, most of us came from distant villages and were subsequently introduced to the routine of dormitory life.

As such, the audience was comprised primarily of officials who were vaguely connected to education or the dealings of the School.

Also, there were far more teachers and guests than graduating students.

When the ceremony began, intense pressure sank down on us.

Before it started, we had all boldly declared we weren’t going to cry.

It would have been embarrassing to shed tears in front of such a large audience of people, especially as we were about to become adults.

Since there were only twelve graduates, the ceremony should have been a quick affair.

However, a large group of teachers lined up neatly on the stage and took their sweet time to call each of us onto to the podium one by one. They deliberately used informal language interspersed with touching comments. The presentation of diplomas was even carefully synchronized with a live performance of Chopin’s “Farewell Waltz.”

By the end of it, everyone was crying. It was unbelievable.

The comments that the teachers gave were actually very simple.

Supposing that they had notes in their hands, one sentence would have been enough to summarize their main point. It was probably something like, “Talk about a special memory you share with each student.”

But the biggest thing was how they managed to express themselves with such masterful skill.

The words they used held just a hint of malice, mixed with large helping of diverse rhetoric. Together with the flashbacks that they powerfully evoked, they shook the foundations of their listeners like earthquakes; originally I thought they would have been calm and thoroughly rational, but they actually employed personification and vivid scenes of nature to produce emotionally evocative performances of lyricism. Every time they reached the end of sentence, an eternity of silence would hang suspended, just to be tightly resumed moments later as they sung our praises and swept us away, a hauntingly ephemeral coda to that spoken verse… again and again this procedure on the podium would rain upon us graduates to the point our moist eyes couldn’t take on any more water. Only afterwards would this deluge stop just in time, gently fading away like it was never there.

No matter how you saw it, they were out to get us.

It took less than a minute for my ship to be hopelessly sunk, although my fellow graduates fared hardly any better.

Even my friend Y, who hated to show emotion in front of others, was hiding tears behind her glasses as soon as she got on the stage.

Now that you think about it, this was probably our teachers’ way of secretly getting revenge for all the pain we caused them in the past as students. I personally thought this was very plausible.

After the scene of our public humiliation finally ended, all of us graduates held spotless, pure white, and shiny diplomas in our hands.

We had spent more than ten years of our life going through School, studying all sorts of subjects and experiencing all kinds of things, just to receive this trimmed piece of paper. It was as weightless as a feather, and it left a gap in my heart that felt just as empty.

We took our wilted flowers and pressed them within the graduation yearbooks that were given to us as mementos. These days, photographs have become quite a rare thing. In the past, one could to flip through pictures at a whim, stirring up memories of those old days; now, memories were just figments of imagination.

Like this, the sadness burst forth from the auditorium where we held our farewell party.

I’m afraid it’s simply impossible for me to put those blurry emotions into words, since I myself as the recordkeeper succumbed to these feelings as well. As such, I’ll only jot down the important details below.

It mostly consisted of the following.

Things were carried into the room, dishes that I’d never seen before; a multicolored rainbow of fallen fruit on the floor; makeshift firecrackers that somebody put together; corks popping from bottles of champagne; an improvised piano performance; shouting graduates; crying graduates; laughing graduates; graduates who got too carried away and embarrassed themselves to death (that would be me); my friend Y’s swollen red eyes after she came out from spending ten minutes in the bathroom; the older guests toasting drinks with each other; the male graduates being goaded by everyone to chug alcohol nonstop; the rough blare of a jazz trumpet; an old granny whom I’ve never met before crying while holding my hand; a ragtag disheveled choir; old people crying just as much as the graduates; the second hand and the hour hand overlapping as midnight approached—

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