Back then, I didn't really care about anything.

I usually just did what they told me to do, not because I was scared of them, or because I wanted to please them.

It was just that there was nothing else that I wanted to do, I just did whatever they told me because I had nothing else to do.

I wasn't sure if that was what all the other people did as well, I guess I wouldn't know.

There was practically no way of knowing whether someone was from the Side Rooms or not, especially the more capable ones, they would blend in perfectly into society once they were let out.

Despite being isolated, they would be able to instantly assimilate into normal interactions with other people, well not exactly, most of us were taught how to communicate perfectly with others, although we often lacked the feeling which was behind those words.To this day, I can still feel the disconnect from others due to the distance in my words.

I often lacked the empathy to properly feel for others, I would always just end up pretending I felt things which I didn't, in order to fit in.

It wasn't exactly like I felt a need to fit in, or that I stressed about having friends or whatnot, it was just what I was taught to do.

It felt natural to me, in a contrived way.

When I eventually 'graduated' from the side rooms, I was taken in by this foster family.

I had no idea who my actual parents were, however, these foster parents of mine were very nice to me, they treated me just like they would treat their own child.

Although they spent a lot of their days at work, so my interactions with them was still quite limited.

I never really felt like I was out of place at home, which was something that lots of other foster children faced.

I took the scholarship test for the school I currently attend, it wasn't hard at all, after an interview, I quickly got accepted with a 100% scholarship off all the fees.

I didn't really have a plan for the future at this point.

It was necessarily that I needed to worry about my financial security or whatever in the future, that wasn't really a concern for me.

The main concern was that I would live my entire life haven't never really achieved anything.

I distinctly lack a desire that other people seemed to have.

I didn't care to be famous, I didn't care to help others, I didn't care to become rich.

I worried that I would live my entire life just not caring about anything, being nothing but an empty shell that was produced by the Side Rooms.

​ After a little bit of time, we all finished out meals.

"What do we want to do now?" Asked Ichika.

I assumed that we all just wanted to go into the mall and walk around, although there wasn't exactly anything in particular I wanted to do.

However, just being around everyone was fun in it's own way.We finished up and paid for our meals.

After a significant amount of time, waiting for each of our turns to pay for our separate meals, we made our way back outside.

We walked in a big clump, towards the large entrance of the mall.

This was the largest mall in our city, there were three large sections and four stories, each with lots of shops and restaurants and things to do.

There were a few main attractions for high school students to go to.

There was an arcade which was the most popular out of them all, although the price was rather high in comparison to some of the other arcades in our city.

There was also a large indoor laser tag place, it was decent if you had a few people to go with.

Aside from that there was also an indoor pool which was connected to the mall, a bowling alley and several other random entertainment areas.

We had a little discussion about what we wanted to do.

In the end, we decided to go to the arcade for a little while, although Teru suggested that we played a round of laser tag after, which we all agreed to.

Rin said he needed to leave early because he had something to do after.

We walked past a plethora of stores, there was a very large quantity of clothing stores, it seemed there was an endless number of them, I was surprised by how much variety simple clothes could even have.

We decided to take a short pit stop to a small bookstore in the mall, it was known for having some relatively underground and non-mainstream titles.

We all dispersed and looked around the store for things we likes.

Teru and Ichika both seemed to be looking at quite generic light novels, Rin looked at a book about the biography of a soccer player and Derrick seemed to be aimlessly looking around.

I made my way straight towards the romance section, it was my go-to after all.

I looked around, there were a lot of titles which I had never even heard of before.

Despite coming to this bookstore a few times a month, it always managed to get new titles which I had never seen elsewhere before.

There was a few interesting one, "Maia Melancholy" and "How to Raise a Psychopath" were both interesting books.

H.Z was a pretty famous author around these places, although this store seemed to have even some of his least well known books, that he had written when he was much younger.

They were a different style to his more recent novels, they were darker and had more intense themes, although flicking through them, they still had the same charm that the newer ones had.

I decided to grab both of them and quickly yet discretely made my way to the cashier.

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