Inner worlds. Religion. Illness. Creation.

　I read a book written by a cancer patient fighting for his life.  A record left behind by a boy who died sixteen years ago, at only sixteen years old.

　As death drew closer, his jealousy toward the living grew stronger. “I can’t forgive people who commit suicide. I want to live in their place. I want to shove the people always crying that they want to die off a rooftop myself.” He also wrote that he hated people like NEETs, people with no will to live. He wanted to live. He should’ve been able to spend his youth as an ordinary otaku high schooler, and someday turn his love of programming into a career.

　I’m grateful he left behind his honest feelings and released them into the world. Even though he died at sixteen, he still feels completely like someone from my own generation. He wrote that he wanted to see the theatrical film of Mobile Suit Gundam 00. I watched it when it came out. It became a work I could never forget because of how deeply its message about dialogue stayed with me. But he never got to see it.

　It’s not unusual for people undergoing treatment to post extreme thoughts online.

　Anger toward the medical system. Toward distant readers saying whatever they want. Like him, some direct their anger toward “God.”

　Naturally, there are states of mind you can only understand when standing at the edge of death. So being allowed to read those inner thoughts, even if I paid for the book, still feels like a privilege. Lately I’ve realized something about myself. I’m obsessed with people’s inner worlds.

　I chatted with a manga artist friend at a café.

　Apparently the NEEDY anime screening stirred something in him too, because he later wrote a long blog post about it. Like he wrote there, he’d been depressed after getting rejected over and over.

　There’s only so much someone like me can say, but I tried reading his draft storyboards. His personal tastes came through in a good way, and it honestly made me happy. It definitely has a style that would divide people. But if it ran in a magazine that already embraced niche tastes from the start, I think it could really work. So I told him that.If you’re trying to appeal to a broad mainstream audience, editors will inevitably start talking about “a protagonist the general public can relate to.” And every time that happens, the work drifts further away from what the creator actually wants to make. He’d already written about that frustration himself.

　Anything made by someone whose personality or circumstances I know, no matter what form it takes, becomes fascinating to me. Even tweets felt that way.

“This person writes like this.”

“This is how they behave publicly.”

I love observing the balance between someone’s subjective self and the version visible from the outside. I write diaries every day and recklessly throw my inner thoughts into the open. In my creative work too, I always end up writing about inner worlds.

　And when it’s someone else doing the same thing, just seeing the form their output takes is enough to stimulate me.

　Everyone is afraid of attracting weird people now. Public figures and creators keep posting less and less about their daily lives. I think that’s really sad. Those small everyday mutterings, separate from their actual work, feel almost like creative works themselves to someone like me.

　So whenever someone close to me tries to create something, no matter the form, I want to support them. And if they ever feel like asking me for advice, I’ll always listen.

　Anyway.

　That hospitalized high school boy wrote, “I can’t forgive people who commit suicide.”

Then afterward he vented his jealousy toward healthy people living ordinary lives, criticized an unfair God, and lashed out at religious people who entrusted their beliefs to that God. Apparently religious missionaries came to his house while he was recovering at home.

“So will your God save me?”

That single sentence was enough to send them away.

　And honestly, I feel the same.

　Religion carries countless contradictions when viewed from the modern world.

　If there’s an all-knowing, all-powerful God, then why do wars happen? Why does illness exist? Why are people like him, innocent people, forced into meaningless suffering? Most answers eventually become some version of:

“God is testing humanity.”

 But there’s an even larger contradiction.

　The “world” described in the original Bible only covers places like the Middle East and Europe. Barely half the planet. Of course it does. The Americas hadn’t even been discovered yet. It presents itself as a text meant to “save all humanity,” while never once accounting for the other half of the world that still remained unknown. If God, or Jesus, truly knew everything, then shouldn’t they have acknowledged that civilizations and indigenous beliefs also existed on the other side of the planet?

　And when Eurasian civilizations finally did discover those people, the tragedies that followed were exactly the kind of thing that should have been prevented. Was that also part of humanity’s “test”?

　And yet, I still think religion is necessary.

　Does a life without religion automatically become fulfilling?

　Of course not. The suicidal people I mentioned at the beginning are mostly nonreligious too, especially in Japan. Most religions treat suicide as taboo. If anything, deeply religious people often hesitate the most before taking their own lives.

　But none of that means anything to a teenage boy wasting away day by day in a sterile hospital room, coughing up blood.

　People all carry different circumstances and environments. Including the suicidal person drawn toward rooftops.

　There are as many original emotions and states of mind as there are human beings.

　No one can perfectly understand them all. Not even God. Because even if God did exist, he’s obviously abandoned the management of humanity with a careless “it’s just a trial.” Meanwhile faith itself grows weaker every year, losing ground to smartphones.

　I want the internet to remain a place where people expose the truths they struggle to say in real life, where complicated coincidences overlap with one another and occasionally transform into art.

　The person endlessly spiraling over suicidal thoughts. The patient who hates them while dreaming of tomorrow. The devout believer. All of them deserve to exist. And naturally, there should also be people who aren’t interested in exposing themselves directly, and instead pursue those feelings through creative work.

　Every sensibility is original.