Once I casually turned on the TV after just being out of the bath, all channels broadcasted the same content.
The same phrases are repeated through the TV speaker.
The onscreen text changed into a constant stream of the same words.
『To all citizens: Please take the aptitude test at once.』
After that it asks to inform acquaintances and family members, who don’t watch the broadcast, to take the aptitude test.What happened in the last few hours? Didn’t they tell people to not take the aptitude test just a while ago?
Is this actually a surprise show that has ordinary people participate? Is a hidden camera filming me somewhere?
Did a television station go as far as sending a spam mail to my smartphone?
The spam mail that caused a simultaneous electronic sound at the university. The ones who received it were no extras, but definitely university students whose faces I recognized.
Would they mobilize that many people to trick an ordinary person, and moreover, a loner like me?
Impossible.
Above all, it’s impossible for them to get the news sites and blogs, which I visited a while ago, involved in this, too.While feeling slightly anxious, I picked up my smartphone.
I operate my smartphone and open the spam mail — the 『World Salvation Project』.
And then, summoning my courage, I clicked 【Start】.
『Please answer the questions below. It doesn’t matter whether your answers are true. In case you lie, it will be recorded that you opted to give wrong answers.』
There’s plenty of health care apps on modern smartphones. Pulse rate and blood pressure. They are equipped with functions arbitrarily measuring even the distance and speed one walks.
It’s totally possible to run a simple lie detector, using those functions, I think. As a matter of fact, there’s dozens of such apps.
Q1: Is there anyone you want to protect on this world?
1. There’s more than 10
2. There’s more than 5
3. There’s more than 3
4. There’s more than 1
5. There’s no one.
Hmm? If there are 12 such people, 1, 2, 3 and 4 apply, don’t they? Well, it might be fine to pick 1 in that case, but…I wonder, does the aptitude test include the wish to retort on such minor details?
By the way, I have parents and a younger sister. My family is important to me. However, if asked about someone I want to protect, it’s slightly different. Rather am I, who’s still a student, not someone that has to be protected? My sister is a high school student. Telling me, her elder brother, to protect her, triggers feelings of slight discomfort.
In that case, a girlfriend? There’s none. Children? There’s no way I have those.
Huh? In my case the answer is 5?
For some reason I’m reluctant to pick that.
Having said that…in the end I chose 5 — no one.
Even after that the vague questions continued.
“Are you satisfied with your current life?”
“Do you like this world?”
“Are you overflowing with dreams and ambitions?”
“Are there any people you hate so much that you want to kill them?”
And so on.
The questions “Are lies necessary?” and “Do you think that lies are unforgivable?” mean the same, don’t they? A lot of questions similar to those two cropped up. By the way, I chose 5 for all the replies.
Once I answered 500 questions, the tendency shifted towards psychological test-like questions.
With what person are you going to sympathize in various situations with 5 people called A, B, C, D and E? What kind of character can you tolerate the least? It continued with those question types.
And, just when 5 hours had passed – drastically exceeding the stated 3 hours – I finally finished answering all 1000 questions.
『Thank you very much for your efforts, Kurosaki Shion-sama. Your aptitude is 【Chaos】. Kurosaki-sama, who desires freedom and chaos, next you will be guided into the 【Awakening Period】.』
…Eh?
And then I fainted.
