The Virtue Score

The number appears above your head the moment you are born.



Small. White. Floating.





They say no one could see it once.



Twenty years ago, a number rose above every human head.



The Moral Rating System.



A government project. A corporate one. No one remembers which came first.



It was meant to stop violence. Fraud. Cruelty.



It did something else instead.



A seat given up.

A coin dropped into a cup.

A stranger helped.



Every kindness, weighed. Every weight, displayed.



People began to become good.



At least, in numbers.





Six in the morning.



Soma walked the corridor of his building. Damp concrete. The hum of a fan somewhere above.



The lower districts were always this color — grey, and getting greyer.



But there was a way up. There was always a way up, if the number climbed high enough.



On the landing, an old woman struggled with a bag too heavy for her.



Soma took it without a word.



"…You didn't have to," she said.



The number above his head shifted.



30,842 → 30,847.



Five points.



He walked on. He didn't look up again.



This was simply how the world worked now. Someone falls — and before a hand reaches out, a number is calculated first.





At work, lunch hour had become performance hour.



A woman held her phone like a torch.



"Today's good deed stream — live now!"



A bento, handed to a man with nowhere to sleep. A child, comforted. A donation. A smile, held just long enough for the camera.



So inspiring.

A true good person.



Her number climbed by the thousand.



Soma ate in silence.



"You should stream too," a coworker said, laughing. "You'll never make it up, otherwise."



He smiled. Said nothing.



He helped people every day. Quietly. A bicycle, righted. A child, walked home. A seat, given to someone who needed it more.



No one watching.



His number barely moved.



What does it mean, to be good?



He no longer knew.





Under the overpass, a man he'd never seen before.



A soup kitchen. No stream. No camera.



Just a thin man, ladling broth into the hands of people who were cold.



Soma stopped without deciding to.



"Can I help?"



The man looked up, surprised. Then smiled.



"I'd appreciate that."



His name was Makabe.



He came back. Again. Again.



Makabe never looked at his own number. When people thanked him, his face didn't change.



"Don't you think about what you're getting from this?"



Makabe stirred the pot.



"Someone helped me once."



"Who?"



"A stranger. I never knew their name."



Steam rose between them.



"So I'm just passing it on."



That night, Makabe's number surged.



The people he'd fed had quietly recommended him — the rarest kind of point, the kind that could not be performed for.



By morning, his number had passed Soma's.





Something dark settled in Soma's chest.



Makabe was good. He knew that. He believed it completely.



That was exactly why it hurt.



Years. Soma had spent years. Quiet, unwatched, uncounted years.



One night, he opened a forum and typed in Makabe's name.



An old job. A divorce. A small, old failure, taken out of its context.



He posted it.



Plays the saint. Look at his past.



A small flame.



Then a fire.



Exposed: the fake good Samaritan.



The comments came like weather.



Makabe's number fell.



Soma's rose.



And then every screen in the city lit at once.





ETHICAL ANOMALY DETECTED



SELF-SERVING VIRTUE RATE EXCEEDS TOLERANCE THRESHOLD



Someone laughed. "What does that even mean?"



Then the numbers began to fall.



Deduction.

Deduction.

Deduction.



"I gave to charity!"

"I volunteered!"

"I did everything right!"



It didn't stop.



Soma watched his own number collapse.



He understood, finally.



No one had wanted to be good.



They had wanted to look good.



The world had been broken long before the screens said so.





Days later, Soma stood in line before the great elevator.



So close. A hundred points from the threshold.



But the number kept falling.



Around him, the same — pale faces, watching their own numbers bleed out. No one spoke. It felt like standing inside a ship, sinking slowly toward something none of them could see.



An old man beside him said, almost to no one:



"…What was a good person, anyway?"



No one answered.



The light above the elevator went dark.



Permanent shutdown.



The way up was closed now. Maybe it always had been.



Soma looked up at the grey ceiling.



And then, without knowing why, he remembered.



He was very small. He had fallen, and was crying, and a woman he had never seen before knelt down and pressed something soft against his knee.



He never knew her name.



He couldn't remember her face.



Soma closed his eyes.



Above him, the white numbers faded quietly into nothing.