How to Use a Voice
Mirai no longer chose her words carefully.
At first, she had been afraid—
afraid of hurting someone,
afraid of condemning the wrong person.
But in the end, staying silent led to the same result.
Even if you were right,
even if you were kind—
if they’d kill you anyway,
then maybe it was better to shoot first.
—
“So basically, you’re just ignoring the vibe, right?”
She posted the line in her class’s group chat.
It meant nothing.
It wasn’t directed at anyone.
And yet, by the end of the day, one student had deleted their account.
The next morning, when the teacher said,
“We need to talk about verbal bullying,”
Mirai, fiddling with her phone under her desk, thought:
“What is it you’re trying to protect now?”
—
Mirai had changed.
She had learned how to wield words.
How to sound calm,
how to sound rational,
how to sound just.
And how to lace poison between the lines.
“That sounds like unconscious bias, doesn’t it?”
“Just because it’s your personal opinion doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
“Speaking without thinking—that’s a form of harm too, don’t you think?”
All of it was true.
All of it was cold.
All of it was justice shaped like a knife.
—
“That could’ve been me.”
With that thought in her mind,
she isolated a classmate.
Someone who, like the Mirai of the past,
had tried to speak—
only to be silenced.
And Mirai, hearing the silence that followed,
felt relief.
—
That night,
she looked at herself in the mirror.
Her eyes were calm. Cold.
Just like the way Miura had looked on TV.
“Did I kill someone?”
She asked herself.
But gave no answer.
Because answering meant taking responsibility.
—
On social media, someone else was being crucified again.
Mirai scrolled through the outrage.
She didn’t “like” anything.
She didn’t comment.
She just watched.
And she knew—
that was all it took to become a perpetrator.
