Book 25. Novel. Ace of Hearts. This is Beta. I've decided to become king in the dream world. Don't get in my way.

  Hmm. Why? β suddenly recalls the happy days of the past. Trips he took with his family, days when he returned home to see his grandparents. For some reason, tears well up in his eyes. Why did I run away from studying?

Beta. This is Kota. Your Alpha group is lively, but Misaki is worried about Beta going out of control. Why hasn't Beta been coming to school lately? What is he doing now? I'd like to know.

This is Beta. I don't need to go to school anymore. I've already attended enough days, and I don't see the value in studying at school anymore. Instead, a fun playground has opened, and I work there. It's a volunteer job, though.

This is Miyori. As Kota said, I want the betas to come to school. It seems like you have a lot of secrets, but I want you to come back. The alphas in your beta group are making a fuss, saying that your alpha group is in danger of collapsing. What are you doing now?

This is Beta. Please leave me alone. What I'm doing now is always lying down and sleeping. Just sleeping. I might not be feeling too well. There's something called a dream world. You guys might not understand, though.

Lately, my dreams have become unusually real. They're called lucid dreams, and although I know I'm dreaming, I've become able to move freely within them. While I'm asleep, it's so real that I can't distinguish it from reality. It feels the same as when I'm awake. But I know I'm asleep in a dream. This is Ten.

For some reason, recently, various Alpha groups have been talking about dreams. Apparently, they eat food in their dreams, and it's so delicious it feels like reality.

But, I was thinking, do they feel pain? If they do, I don't want to. In fact, it seems they do feel sensations. However, there have been no reports of pain from other Alpha groups. They live in a dream world with a mechanical mind.

This is Beta. I'm sick of studying. Because dreams are more fun. Soon I'll be working and competing with others for achievements as a member of society. That kind of life isn't for me.

I had wasted so much time studying, and now I was starting a new game of achieving other accomplishments. It felt like I was starting from square one again, and I really hated life. So I went to a nearby shrine and prayed to the gods to see if something could be done. I sometimes go to this shrine for the first visit of the year, but I was fed up with studying because it was making me neurotic. Seriously.

Until recently, I really enjoyed studying. I was always the best in the Alpha group, and everyone praised me, so I couldn't help but enjoy studying. But when I became a high school student and the competition for entrance exams began, I stopped enjoying studying. I began to question whether I really needed to study.

As my teachers at school tell me, once you graduate from university and enter the workforce, you'll work. Studying will be the foundation for success when you start working, so my teachers told me that if I study hard now to build a foundation for my work, I'll have an advantage in my new job. If I want to get a head start, I need to go to a good university and study hard.

My homeroom teacher taught me that in order to get many things in society, you need to get promoted at work, and that in society you can get almost anything if you have a job.

This is a beta version though. I was about to give up when I thought the competition would continue, so I went to a shrine to pray, and then I started having those dreams. I feel like even if you study hard and go to university as a foundation for becoming a working adult, you only really get one person's worth of success.

Money isn't everything, like there are super rich people out there, but becoming famous, getting rich, getting a good job, marrying a famous wife... I don't know if that kind of social success is really that important. I felt a lack of emotion after I started dreaming.

In my dreams, I go around calling myself the Ace of Hearts and claiming to have a mechanical heart, but Miyori and Kota don't understand. I want to step down from this competitive stage. But my parents won't allow it, and I still have to concentrate on studying for the entrance exams, which aren't even fun. Even after graduating from university, a different game begins, apart from the competition for academic achievement.

This is Beta. I've decided to become king in the dream world. Don't get in my way.

This is Ten. Beta. I want you to calm down for a bit. Everyone in class is saying you're really brilliant, so why are you so desperate? Our group, including Beta, is showing signs of falling apart, so I want you to do something about it. I want you to stay the Beta you've always been. I don't want you to escape into a dream world. I believe in dreams too, but do you really believe you can become a resident of one? I want to hear your true thoughts.