The Students' Counterattack

A night with nothing to teach is longer than I'd expected.

It was the second night since I suspended the course. On my desk lay the envelope from the government, the five notebooks, and the sticky notes still attached. Nine days remained until the deadline for my answer.

My thoughts hadn't moved forward. More precisely, they kept circling the same place with meticulous regularity. The five people on paper never died. The real 〈Abyss〉 wasn't on paper. I had spent two days confirming that one fact hundreds of times.

Five minutes before eight, I closed the notebook.

Tonight alone, I had decided to take a break from thinking. I wasn't the sort of person who could watch my student's first stream while thinking about other things.

I resettled myself on the cushion and, just in case, wrote three lines on a sheet of paper.

'Objective: Watch my student's first stream to the end'

'Retreat criteria: None (but do not write a single comment)'

'After returning: Send exactly one message reporting my impressions'

Even I had to wonder what sort of dive this was supposed to be...