It appears that the MC died by karō jisatsu (過労自殺, suicide from overwork), which is classified as a type of karōshi (過労死, death from overwork) by Japan's government agency as a form of work-related harm.
The problem of overwork is very very, VERY common among Japanese people. Many overworked themselves to the point of, when they are watching subway train arriving, they had the thought of "if I step one step furthur I don't need to go to the company tomorrow anymore, isn't that wonderful?!", so they, just died in such a situation, unconsciously. It's very horrifying.
There's a manga that describe this social phenomenon (and the mental problem it caused) of overworking in Japan society. The title in Japanese is 『「死ぬくらいなら会社辞めれば」ができない理由』 (roughly translate to: "Just resign from work if you're about to die", the reason it's undoable). I'm unable to find a English translation of the title, unfortunately.
This is a reporting about this manga from Buzzfeed News (in Japanese):
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jp/harunayamazaki/shinukurainara
Though Western people may less be likely to find themselves in such situation (I support IWW btw), I still hope everyone who find their work very hard for themselves read this manga.
Update: Oops. Didn't notice it's a college of sorts and MC a grad/undergrad student at first.
If so, it maybe harder for her (than typical jobs) to escape from burning out, since her degree is at stake now. Being an grads/undergrads that's doing research under a mentor also has the risk of exploitative mentors putting all the work or even psychologically abuse students. With no way to escape, many such students died by suicide.
last edited at Dec 21, 2024 11:09PM