4.5 Chapter 0: Prologue

Even so the Summer Vacation heads towards its end. Sazae-san syndrome. I wonder if you've heard of that word before.

If I had to explain simply, it's the despair of having to face Monday occurring after watching the Sazae-san that starts in the evening of Sunday. In the same vein, as the end of the summer vacation approaches, a lot of students also face a similar despair. They think things like 'if only the vacation had been longer' or 'if only I had gotten to play a bit more'.

But I don't think that way. In life, the time you get to play to your heart's content is restricted mostly to your student life. Assuming the retirement age is 60 at it lowest and 18 is the age when one enters society, the years that one is required to work would come up to 42 years.

That is a much longer time compared to the 12 years it takes to go from elementary school to one's high school graduation. Once that has passed, one would then be bound by society and lose one's freedom. And in some cases, one continues to be bound by their work even after having passed their retirement age.

Of course, there are naturally people who are born free from these restrictions. Some are born to wealthy parents and sometimes some succeed as entrepreneurs. Shortcuts to life such as those also exist, but the chances of those happening are like the chances of winning a lottery and one needs to understand that.

As a result, for over half their lives, most people have to sacrifice themselves in the name of contributing to society. Looking at it from the perspective of those in society, being a student itself is like enjoying a summer vacation for them. However, there are many students who become adults without appreciating that fact.

And once they reach ages of 30 or 40 years, they look back at those times and think things like 'I had so much fun back then'.