Chapter Text
What is it to be human?
It is to live.
It is to feel.
It is to grieve.
It is to love.
It is to be loved.
To be human is to feel numerous emotions—simple or complex. To be human is to be happy, to laugh and find joy in things and people, whatever the source may be. To be human is to be sad, to grieve loss, and to cry in pain. To be human is to be curious, to wonder how things work, and to seek answers to the questions running inside your head.
To be human is to live and have a purpose, to reach your dreams and see the world with the eyes you were born with. To be human is to work tirelessly for a goal. To be human is to be desperate. Although a lot of humans have either abandoned their purpose or given up on their dreams. Perhaps it’s because of pain, of grievance. Perhaps it’s because they’ve lost motivation. Perhaps it’s because they’ve lost the burning passion and desire. Perhaps they’ve lost the ability to feel.
Nevertheless, they are still human—because they feel.
The way they feel, I believe, is what makes humans human. They can feel sorrow, they can feel pain, and joy. They can be as meek and as bold as they can be. They can feel troubled and have a plethora of problems. Some choose to persist, some choose to give up.
Speaking of problems, the scholars here in Sumeru have long troubled themselves.
Of studies.
Of questions.
Of fate.
Some scholars experience troubles that result in loss or grievances that make them miserable. Some scholars turn their troubles into questions; they would desperately seek answers to solve them as if it were a mathematical equation. Some give up, some continue. I myself have experienced troubles, irritating ones. But these troubles borne by scholars would be enough to make a murderer out of them.
But I do not understand.
I simply do not understand.
Why are they so persistent with whatever goal they have?
Why are they so resolute in facing their troubles, let alone solving them?
Why do they go on?
Most of all, why are they so desperate?
Whether or not it will lead to success or failure, their minds in the process of it baffles me. They move like the rushing waters, with thundering motivations. They continue digging and forming their own rabbit hole, filling that tenacious curiosity of theirs. Whether or not they’ll end up insane or lose themselves in the end, these scholars chase it as if they’re a dog following the orders of their owner, which is their troubles and goals.
I have seen some scholars failing thousands of times, yet I have ought to see a large number of them giving up and spiraling into despair. Thus, I asked myself: If such scholars can go on without going mad, without killing others, without killing themselves, without surrendering to melancholia, and continue pursuing knowledge regardless of what kind;
Is what they are chasing truly genuine?
I’ve thought about one answer I’ve yet to confirm to be true: hunger.
These scholars are hungry not only for food but for knowledge. They crave the satisfaction of knowing and learning because it fills their hungry, starving brains. But are they truly starving and hungry? These scholars are already in the Akademiya; they’re already smart enough to answer complicated questions and formulate theories.
There’s enough, but for them, it is never enough. Why do they endlessly consume the abundance of information? They do so, non-stop. Greed, I thought, that it may be the reason for that. They desire something endlessly, they want to have something, and when they have it, they are wanting for more.
It’s not an exaggeration if I were to say that all humans are like this. Because they are. They’re full of greed, so much so that they’re willing to undergo the troubles that would send any living being to their deaths. Why are they so greedy? That even if they weep, sob, and bleed, they’ll all continue what they’re doing. I wonder how they sleep at night, knowing that the reason for all that they’re going through is simply because of want.
Ah, such is the complexity of humans.
And I find it excruciatingly ugly, but perhaps that is why they’re human.
They wish to go through all that, willingly—even if they don’t admit it—just because of want. They’d blame the gods for their sufferings, ask questions such as “Why me?” when they’ve inflicted it upon themselves. Some take responsibility, but they frequently place the blame upon others and act as if they were the victim. How arrogant.
No.
No, I don’t think I’m quite right.
It’s not just scholars.
It’s not just humans.
It’s every living being.
Every single one of them—
Even if they’re a god.
You may say that I am a lunatic—which I am—that I do not understand the why. You lot may get ticked off, saying that that is simply because they live and exist. But why even exist at all? What is the point in living? I bet even lunatics would call me insane, but my apprehension of such concepts seems to be completely off compared to others.
What is it to live?
It is the same as being human: you feel, you grieve, you love, you experience troubles, you seek answers to the questions. You hold ideals, you hold and form beliefs.
Gods hold ideals, they form beliefs for their people, and their people would follow them. Take the god in Inazuma, for example, the Electro Archon who pursues the ideology of eternity. Perhaps Buer, the god presiding in Sumeru, whose divine idea is wisdom—fitting the nation’s scholarly pursuits. I personally fancy the Anemo Archon’s idea of freedom, such is the spirit of a windborne god.
And these divine beings live—they’re somewhat different from humans, but possess the same characteristics of feeling.
I wonder how they look at themselves in the mirror, god or not. I wonder how they look at their faces and are not surprised and realize that the person they are looking at is the source of everything they’ve gone through. But in truth, I envy their ability to look at their faces in the mirror.
I can never recognize or make out my own.
It’s this blurred image that I cannot recognize—a terrible reflection of an image that is myself. I cannot see the color of my eyes, the shape of my nose, or whether my hair is long or short. I cannot see the image of what I currently am; the fact that I cannot remember my appearance long ago doesn’t help at all. It’s pitiful, laughable even, that I can’t even make out my own face.
So it’s no surprise I can’t remember other faces at all.
Not the faces I’ve encountered for nearly 500 years.
Not the people who dare disturb the Irminsul.
Not the god who asked me to protect the Irminsul.
Not the traveler whose actions saved Sumeru.
Not their companion.
Not even the former harbinger—whom I’ve momentarily forgotten until Nahida restored my memories—who I consider the biggest fool of all.
I think I’ve seen his eyes; they held the most humane emotions, the most vulnerable of them. And yet he’s not human—his body, at least, for he was formed by the hands of another god. As to the reason why I consider him a fool, though…
It is because he denied his human heart and emotions. I remember the exact words that echoed in the roots of the Irminsul:
“So I said good riddance!
I denounce the world and laugh at its face.
My chest will never again be defiled by worldly filth.
I will scrub away every last trace of human emotion.
Then it will be empty, a blank slate.”
A fool, a joke. He wishes to scrub away every human emotion that dirties his so-called non-existent heart. Laughable, utterly laughable.
He is the living being whom I’ve seen to be the most human.
And I envy that.