Three Days of Happiness

would be preferable to a long thin life.
“Now, here’s the question. This Something who longs to live a
human life must have assigned a per-year value to your remaining
life, yes? ...I’ll tell you in advance, there’s no right answer. I want to
know what you think, and how you came to that answer. Now, talk
with your neighbors.”
The classroom began to buzz with conversation. But I didn’t take
part in any of it. To be exact, I couldn’t.
Because like that smart-aleck who came up with the answer about
lifetime expenses, I was one of the class stinkers.
I pretended I wasn’t interested in talking about it and just waited
for time to pass.
I heard a group sitting in front of me talking about “If a whole life is
about 300 million yen...”
I thought. If they were 300 million, then...
I wouldn’t think it odd if I were 3 billion.
I don’t remember what the results of the discussion were like.
Barren arguments from beginning to end, that much was certain.
It wasn’t really a simple enough theme for elementary school kids
to tackle. And if you got a bunch of high schoolers together, they’d
probably bring sex into it somehow.
At any rate, I clearly remember one girl with gloomy prospects
fiercely insisting “You can’t assign a value to a person’s life.”
Yeah, if you were selling the chance to live the same life as her, I
wouldn’t give that a value, I thought. Probably ask for a disposal
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