Rikako Ouryou

Unless you know despair, you cannot know hope.

Chastity and grace... Traditional virtues that have been lost. They comprise the educational ideology of Ousou Academy. They're priorities that are not valued in boys, only in girls. After having them instilled in us, we're shipped out as a brand-name product — "refined, sheltered maidens" — and purchased by men who seek a classic piece of furniture called "a good wife and mother..." for a formality known as marriage. Students in this school are all components that will be processed into a piece of artwork called the "lady."

That's a lie. Everyone here is the same. They don't notice anything. They don't say anything. They don't think anything. They are mere shells of their former selves, soon to disappear like the melting snow. This epidemic leads innocent people to their deaths, and yet, its pathogen will never be eradicated. This is the disease called serenity, a form of death that people have wished for.

In this era, the System determines everyone's aptitudes and we all have no choice but to live by it and be satisfied with whatever "happiness" is forced upon us as we are unable to make our real dreams come true.

Perhaps it really is the fate of artists to be struck by such inspiration.