Work Text:
En principo, erat Verbum.
(In the beginning, there was the Word.)
Next there was silence, as the weight of the Word settled into place.
Then, at the center of a brilliant supernova, as if it had always been there, there it was.
You.
Did You exist before that blinding instant of inception? Did You know Yourself before that moment of realization? Did You exist with purpose and intent, or merely travel along the predetermined path? Will You continue to follow that predetermined path to its natural end, or will You exert Your own will and see through the outcome?
The suspenseful question hangs heavy like Schrodinger’s fickle cat, awaiting the very first instant of Your existence.
What are You?
*
Against a moonless sky, a thick blanket of silence falls over the abandoned high school gym the Sheep have taken refuge in for the night. As always some of them are stubborn, holding out as long as they can against sleep for no reason other than they can. Others take a stealthier approach, feigning sleep in a desperate bid to catch a word of the kind of conversations that happen when grown-ups think kids won’t hear them. Thankfully, Chuuya’s heard enough of those conversations to know they’re never worth the trouble - none of those kids will have to suffer through the experience.
Mercenaries, mafia grunts, cops, government assholes in crisp suits, all of them talked the same stupid bullshit in the end. All of them thought only of their own power, their money and influence and their stupid egos. All of them underestimated his strength. Fucking dumbasses.
A deep yawn pulls Chuuya out of his reflection. He hops to his feet, slapping his face a couple times to chase away the drowsiness. He’d already claimed first watch - now was no time to get sleepy.
*
Guard duty is, oddly enough, Chuuya’s favorite kind of work. It’s the quietest part of his day, the one real break he has from toddlers tugging at his sleeves for snacks and older kids nagging for his blessing to swipe more alcohol. It's not that he hates that work - in fact he takes a distinct pride in being the central point around which life amongst the Sheep revolves - but there’s no denying the toll it takes.
He tells himself that he longs for solitude not out of exhaustion, but rather as a means for collecting his own thoughts. As much as he strives to listen to every kid with an unbiased ear, he needs the time alone to center his perspective, to balance between the many competing interests they push into his hands.
After all, he knows silence best. Silence was there with him before anything else was, and he knew better than anything how to make use of it. He’d constructed his entire sense of self within a void, with nothing but existence and the reflexive knowledge of that existence to build off of.
Cogito, ergo sum.
That simple, undeniable truth of identity that so fascinated centuries of philosophers and mathematicians alike. Chuuya had never heard of Descartes or Leví or any of the other stuffy old white intellectuals that wrote so much on the subject nor would he much care even if he had, largely because he had already grasped that truth in its entirety on his own.
He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was. Nothing beyond that, whether he was human or god or demon, truly mattered so much as the simple fact of his own existence and will. That was the simple principle on which the rest of his being followed. So silence, lonely as it might be, felt like as much of a home as anything else in the world for Chuuya.
Darkness too felt familiar, in that he was accustomed to knowing his surroundings without sight. None of the other kids understood when he tried to explain, but he simply knew - felt even - the motion and position of things within his vicinity.
The sensation was perfectly natural to him. After all, how could he even begin to grok the ability to manipulate objects without first understanding their initial state? But even the rare few kids with abilities never described the kind of awareness Chuuya had.
It was just another thing that set him apart from them, putting him on an entirely different level than the rest. The kind of thing that made the other kids call him King.
If there was anything he disliked about the way the kids orbited him, it was that. It was a different kind of loneliness to be set apart from his peers, his friends, his comrades. The respect he held as their leader had a cruel double edge to it, ensuring that he would never truly be one of them even while imbuing him with the kind of prestige mortal men only dreamt of. Still, he figured being a part of something was better than nothing at all, so he accepted his place at the top and took those long hours of silence deep in the night as his reward.
This particular night was especially still, almost auspiciously so. Like the whole world held its breath, waiting for a single piece to fall into place. It set Chuuya’s nerves on edge - the last thing you wanted when making rounds was a surprise. He kept his guard up, straining his ears for the faintest of sounds echoing down the halls, pushing his awareness into every corner of the classrooms as he passed. Still, there was nothing.
At the end of the hall he came upon a large room, too big for him to fully map from the doorway. There were rows of shelves too, stacked with books in varying states of decay. Even more books littered the floor and tables, some left open as if the student using them had only stepped away for a moment. Others were more obviously damaged, with pages torn and strewn carelessly around.
For the first time since they made camp, Chuuya wonders what must have happened at this school to cause it to be abandoned. It’s not terribly old - the flooring and lights look modern enough, not that he has any experience of his own to compare it to. Even so, he’s heard enough from the other Sheep to know this is a library and that these books are textbooks, once equal parts revered and reviled by the students that relied on them.
He moves between the tables, glass crunching under each step, skimming the contents of the books left open. He runs his fingers over the rain-warped pages, briefly indulging himself in the fantasy of imagining he was an ordinary high school student furiously rereading this chapter on…
重力 [ゅうりょく]
(gravity)
He squints at the page, scanning the bits he can understand. There’s more equations than sentences, along with a detailed diagram of the sun and the planets’ swirling paths around it. There’s a familiarity to the form, even if the math is beyond him. The natural tug that larger objects exert on smaller bodies… it’s exactly the same as his ability. He flips through the rest of the chapter, half hoping it might hold the key to understanding something deeper about himself, the ability he carries, anything that might bring him some greater understanding of where exactly he sits in this world, but all the textbook offers is more arcane equations far beyond his rough understanding of mathematics.
The next chapter starts talking about springs and other useless crap that’s of no value to him whatsoever. Frustrated, he’s struck with the impulse to rip the book apart in retribution for bringing him so close to learning something, only to box him out again with stupid academic shit that’s always sat so far out of his reach.
He tears it apart by the covers, relishing in the way the binding strains against the opposing forces, inevitably yielding under the strength of his hands. Then, inexplicably, he stops. Out of nowhere, he thinks that the scene in front of him here is a tragic waste. He once again wonders about the lives of the kids, probably just about his age, that once studied here.
Did they enjoy learning about gravity? Did the grand movements of the heavens fascinate and enthrall them? Did they come to loathe the intricate math they had to cram before the test? Did they understand how lucky they were, to have the time to dedicate themselves to figuring it all out? If he were the one in that seat, would he come to resent it too? If not for the act of learning itself, then for the oppressive structure that bound students to their studies without the slightest consideration for what sparked their interest?
He realizes, for the first time, that he might actually be lucky his life played out the way it did. Who would he be, if he had been a schoolboy shuffled through years of preplanned curriculum, doing things simply because he was told it was good to. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone along with it in the end. Maybe he would’ve carved a new path for himself out of willpower alone.
Though even if he had, such a path was bound to be full of some kind of suffering. Not that his life now was free of suffering, but he could see for the first time that being a guide for the rest of the Sheep was a kind of life he could be happy with. There was a consistency to it that aligned with his sense of self and his role filled a need that would otherwise have gone unmet.
*
The Sheep had no leader, really. The kids called him a King, but no king would lead the way Chuuya did. Where a king would assert his own divine superiority, Chuuya was almost allergic to it. Though he himself saw his leadership as the guiding force, he was less the captain and more the navigator, reporting back the state of the organization to itself without imposing his own will.
Truly, the Sheep led themselves. Chuuya may have aggregated the many perspectives within the group, but he was only a lens through which those myriad wills were focused. Of course, to him, that was what leadership was - faithfully representing and amplifying the desires of those he led.
But when that organization ultimately turns its back on him, he might come to consider other perspectives, equally flawed in their own right. He might come to question those perspectives as well, thus putting to rest any fears that he might be anything other than completely, inescapably human.
*
Looking at the half torn book in his hands, Chuuya can’t bring himself to entirely finish the job. Instead, he sates his violent urge by tearing out the chapter on gravity and stuffs it into his jacket pocket, idly wondering if any of the other Sheep know enough algebra to help him understand it.