Giving advice was a sensitive thing. Maru dug up an old memory. He didn’t remember exactly what kind of situation he was in, but he could clearly remember the woman’s words filled with conviction.

-My words will never reach you since they are always said in vain, but I will keep saying them. Maybe one day, I’ll reach you if I try several, dozens, or hundreds of times. I cannot guarantee that my words will change you. However, there’s no guarantee that my words will never change you either. Even if my words disappear in vain, if I say them many many times, perhaps one day, one person out of the hundreds of people that heard me might have changed. I will be able to smile in satisfaction when that day comes.

Whether he heard those words from a company education session, or from a teacher when he was in school, he didn’t remember. The voice was clear to him, but the context wasn’t. He didn’t even know who those words were directed at, but he could make out the meaning quite clearly.

These kinds of words appeared quite a lot during speeches on TV programs. They were said to wrap things up after giving a speech. That the speaker would be satisfied if just one person out of the entire audience had his or her life changed because of that speech.

Most of the time, advice was useless. Maru thought that as well. If advice was effective, this world would have turned into a utopia a long time ago. To listen to others and make those...