Chapter 25“One of the most effective rights of the Sovereign is the right to establish enforceable definitions of words,” they announced, looking out over the classroom. “At least, so Marcuse tells us. Our understanding of language is based on the world we experience, and that world is assigned its significance by those who place themselves higher than us.”
The classroom was all but empty, a handful of occupied desks on the outskirts of the room. Miki looked from Yuusuke’s empty desk to Momoka’s absent desk, and then at last to the space Mizuta Sho had once occupied in front of her, now empty like the rest of them. Day by day, the number of people thinned out, the conversation on trains growing hushed, sparse, politicians on television discussing the deaths.
They had started to call them
