My OP Minion System in the Apocalypse

Ah, I'm tired.

I could hear the subtle ringing of my alarm in the background.

Fuck, what time is it?

6:15 am.

Already...?

I pulled up my blanket. The cold air rushed in and I felt as if I had just jumped into an ice bath. My entire body quivered, I could feel the goosebumps rising all over my skin. My clothes, I need to get my clothes.

Putting on the white school shirt, the cold rough material sucked all of the heat from my body as I tucked it over my neck, pulling it down. I might as well have just worn a shirt made of ice instead, it would've been just as effective at warming me up.

Goddamit aren't clothes meant to make you warmer?

Eventually, I put on the rest of my uniform and began lethargically making my way out of my room. I opened my bedroom door and walked out into the hallway which was still practically pitch black. My eyes struggled to find anything to look at, it was so dark someone might have made the mistake that it was midnight.

After feeling the wall, I flicked on the hallway light and my eyes were viciously assaulted by the piercing rays of white that covered my vision.

Does life ever get better?

I don't understand, there's no point for me to be doing all this right?

Does everyone feel so miserable?

As I made my way toward the living room, I was greeted by a loud banging noise.

Fuck.

I jolted as a tense pain shot up from my toe.

I don't want to do this anymore.

~

"Hey Oliver, you're smart aren't you, how do you do this question?"

I looked down at the sheet of paper that the boy was showing me. It was a question from standard maths, or as most people called it, 'potato maths'. It was a pretty basic question, anyone with any knowledge of maths should be able to solve it.

"Uh, you have to get rid of the 'y' by finding it in terms of 'x' and then substituting it in."

"I don't get it."

I'm not sure how else I'm meant to explain it.

I grabbed a pen out of my blazer pocket and pulled his sheet of paper towards me. I clicked the pen and showed him my working out, step-by-step--with free verbal explanations on the side.

"Do you get it now?"

"Um..."

I see the issue here, there's too much to take in at once, if you don't have the fundamentals down, there's no way you'd be able to follow all of the steps.

"I think it'd be better to ask the teacher, I'm not really that good at teaching."

"Oh, I just thought that you were smart."

That's not really how it works.

***

This was my chance.

Trials for the state team.

My entire life, I've been seemingly held back. I always thought my skills were good, no, I knew they were good. I was no less capable than any person in all the teams I'd been excluded from.

I eventually made up a little story to keep my mental state from collapsing.

There's this god, somewhere in the sky, who was stopping me at every turn whenever I wanted to progress further. It was this god who made my parents stop me from attending practice, it was this god who made the coaches turn away every time I did something impressive, it was this god who pushed me down every time I was at a trial for a higher team.

It was this spiteful god who hated the thought of me ever playing for a higher team or ever being able to show the world what I could achieve.

My entire life, I was always the best in the lowest team, yet, whenever it came to getting into a higher team, something, almost like a supernatural barrier blocked me.

My capabilities were probably good enough for me to be the best player in the best team.

Was this all a delusion of mine?

Had I fallen victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect?

No, that wasn't it.

I definitely was good enough, I knew it, deep in my heart.

I tried to hide this feeling of discontent,

I tried to pretend that being the best player in the worst team was good enough for me.

Of course, it wasn't.

I hated every moment.

Every time I saw someone in the highest teams at school, I would cringe. Not because I disliked them in particular, or even what they stood for. I hated how these supposedly inferior players would get into these higher teams. Why was I not one of them?

Why spiteful god,

why me?

I had finally managed to claw my way into the final selection of the state team. I closed the world off from my vision, from my heart.

This is everything.

I trained day and night. My mind was filled with nothing but this.

This was my last and only chance to have something to show for all of my hard work, for all the talent I believed I had.

We were split into two teams.

I was wearing a white bib, meaning I was still in the 'lower' section of the team. This didn't matter, however, because the orange bib team, the 'higher' section of the team did not have enough players to fill the squad.

Around half of the white bib team would make it into the final team.

The whistle blew.

I put in my everything, my heart, my soul, every last bit of energy I had left.

The whistle blew again, signifying the end of the match.

Everyone walked off, back into the change rooms. As I took a seat on the bench and began changing back into my normal clothes. It felt weird, however, I felt a sense of imposter syndrome in these change rooms. I felt as if I didn't belong here.

So many times, I was excluded from something like this, I never felt the feeling of being in a team that wasn't the bottom, a team that actually had some sort of selection of vetting.

It was weird, why had the spiteful god allowed me to get this far?

Why didn't they stop me during the first stage of the trial, the spiteful god usually would've ended my ill-founded hopes and dreams right there.

I packed my bags and began walking back towards the car. My father had come to pick me up, indifferent as always. Whenever I talked to them about my experiences, they would just say something like, "You just don't have the talent", or "You have bad genes, go study instead", at first, those words struck me like a silver bullet through the heart.

But nowadays, those words were just white noise amongst everything else. Deep down, I knew I had the talent, no one knew better than me how worthy I was.

Well, no one except this spiteful god, who was following me around, crushing my hopes.

But even deeper down, like the Mariana Trench of my heart. I couldn't help but ponder.

Maybe I was just delusional.

Maybe my ego and superiority complex had grown so wild that I felt as if no one was better than me.

Maybe I overestimated my abilities so much, that all reason had been blown out of my brain like a shotgun hitting a can.

But.

Hey, spiteful god, if you're there, can you tell me why you hate me so much? What did I do to you?

Won't you come and talk to me for once? Instead of sitting in the sky, shooting down all the opportunities for me to reach higher, all the opportunities to achieve my aspiration, all the opportunities for me to get what my heart truly desires? Why don't you come to talk it out with me?

I'm insane, aren't I?

I'm broken beyond repair.

What is wrong with me?

Making up an entire higher being just to justify my own lack of ability.

Sometimes I think I'm absolutely insolent.

I probably did train less than all these other people, I probably didn't have as much talent as these other people.

Oh, spiteful god, sometimes, very rarely, I feel as if there can be no other explanation besides your existence.

But even more so, oh, spiteful god, I wish for your existence, however inconvenient it is to me.

Because the last thing I ever want to know is that I really just wasn't good enough.

~

[You are now being transported to The Apocalypse]

What... was this?

[You have been given the A-rank System, Information Extraction]

[Find out more in the menu]

A... system...?

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