In a society that has completely rebuilt its system of values, every school teaches just one thing: how to become useless.
Here, daydreaming, taking aimless walks, watching ants, and writing poems no one will read are the core subjects. The graduation exam, “Gazing into the Void,” determines every student’s fate: the top scorers advance to the “Social Surplus Tier,” where they receive lifelong support; those who pass become laborers; those who fail are erased by the System.
Kai was a top student in the old world, skilled in every kind of “useful” knowledge, but now he is on the verge of failing this life-or-death exam. He discovers that the harder he practices emptying his mind, the further he gets from true “uselessness.” When he watches classmates who are naturally good at being “useless” effortlessly win the “freedom” he desperately wants in the pure-white examination hall, he begins to suspect that a profound contradiction lies beneath this perfect system.
During the twenty-four-hour gazing trial, Kai touches the essence of existence while facing a blank wall. When the bell rings to end the exam, all the students are sorted into two groups: to the left lies the “Palace of Carefree Living,” where they will be supported; to the right, the “Division Office,” where they will work.
Kai stays where he is and makes a choice no one has ever made before.
He takes one step backward.
That step makes him an existence the System cannot categorize, an “observer” who walks beyond the rules. As everyone else moves along their assigned paths, his backward step is quietly changing a world built on the paradox of “useful” and “useless.”
