Chapter 0: Epilogue

I’m a 34-year-old unemployed vagrant with no fixed address.

A chubby, ugly nice guy currently drowning in life regrets.

Just three hours ago, I still had an address—technically.

I was a veteran shut-in NEET.

Then I woke up to find my parents dead.

Since I holed up in my room and skipped the family meeting, I was treated like I didn’t exist.

Thanks to my siblings’ cunning scheme, I got beautifully kicked out of the house.

I had mastered floor-slams and wall-slams.

I used to act like I owned the place.

Not a single person took my side.

On the day of the funeral—while I was mid-bridging masturbation in black mourning clothes—my siblings barged into my room and shoved a disownment letter in my face.

When I ignored them, my little brother smashed my computer—the thing I loved more than life—with a wooden bat.

I freaked out and thrashed around, but my older brother’s a ranked karate practitioner and beat the shit out of me instead.

I pathetically sobbed and begged, but they threw me out with nothing but the clothes on my back.

Clutching my throbbing side (probably broken ribs), I trudged through town.

My siblings’ vicious insults from when I left still rang in my ears.

Words too cruel to bear.

My heart was completely shattered.

What the hell did I even do wrong?

I just skipped my parents’ funeral to jerk off to uncensored loli pics (taken with a digital camera when I bathed my brother’s daughter).

…What do I do now?

No, my brain knows the answer.

Find a part-time job, secure a place to live, buy food.

How?

I don’t know how to look for work.

Well… I vaguely know you’re supposed to go to Hello Work.

But I didn’t spend over ten years as a hikikomori for nothing.

I have zero clue where the nearest Hello Work office is.

Even if I found it, I’ve heard they only give you job referrals.

You take your résumé to the interview.

You expect me to show up looking like this—sleeves crusted stiff with suspicious fluids, bloodstains everywhere?

No way I’d get hired.

If I were the interviewer, I’d never hire some lunatic dressed like this.

I might feel a twinge of sympathy, but I’d still reject him.

I don’t even know where to buy résumé forms.

Stationery store?

Convenience store?

I might stumble across a convenience store if I walk long enough, but I don’t have a single yen.

Let’s say, by some miracle, everything works out.

I somehow borrow money from a bank or something, buy new clothes, get résumé paper and pens.

I’ve heard you can’t fill out a résumé without an address.

Checkmate.

Right here, right now, I finally accepted it.

My life is completely, utterly over.

“…Haa.”

Rain started falling.

Summer’s ending; the air’s turning chilly.

The cold rain soaked easily through my ancient sweatshirt and ruthlessly stole my body heat.

“…If only I could start over.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

I wasn’t born trash.

I was the third son of a fairly well-off family. Two older brothers, one older sister, one younger brother. Fourth out of five siblings.

In elementary school, adults praised me for being smart “for my age.”

I wasn’t great at studying, but I was good at games, decent at sports, and a total class clown.

I was the center of attention.

In middle school I joined the computer club, saved my allowance, referenced magazines, and built my own PC.

My family—who didn’t know the first thing about computers—looked at me with genuine awe.

My life went off the rails in high school… no, starting third year of middle school.

I got obsessed with computers and neglected studying.

I thought studying was pointless, that I’d never need it.

Result: I ended up at the absolute worst high school in the prefecture, infamous for idiots.

Even then, I thought I’d be fine.

I was the kind of guy who could do anything if he tried—I was different from the other morons.

I still remember it clearly.

I was lining up at the school store for lunch when some asshole cut in front of me.

Full of righteous indignation, I called him out.

I was overflowing with weird pride and peak chuunibyou back then; it was a reckless mistake.

Dude was an upperclassman—one of the two most dangerous guys in school.

After classes, he and his friends beat me until my face swelled like a balloon and crucified me naked at the front gate.

They took tons of photos.

If I’d been a beautiful girl, I’d probably have been gang-raped, blackmailed with the pictures, and turned into a sex slave.

Unfortunately, I was just a fat creepy otaku.

Those photos spread through the school in no time.

No negotiation, just for laughs.

My place in the hierarchy instantly hit rock bottom, and they started calling me “Hokey.”

I stopped going to school within a month and became a hikikomori.

Dad and my brothers just threw irresponsible lines at me like “Be brave” and “Try harder.”

What the hell was I supposed to do?

Who could go back to school after that?

So I shut myself in.

Absolutely, resolutely shut myself in.

I was convinced everyone my age had seen those naked crucifixion photos—especially the close-ups of my crotch—and was laughing at me.

I stayed inside and played online games.

Occasionally downloaded eroge, emulators, and manga via P2P.

As long as I had the internet and a computer, I could kill infinite time.

The net exposed me to all sorts of interests—plastic models, painting figures, blogging.

Mom supported me like it was encouragement; she’d give me money whenever I asked.

But I got bored of everything within a year.

Whenever I saw people better than me, my motivation died.

To outsiders it probably just looked like I was messing around.

But to the me who’d been left behind by time, locked inside a dark shell, there was nothing else I could do.

No—now that I think about it, that’s just an excuse.

I was simply playing.

It would’ve been better if I’d declared I’d become a mangaka and started a terrible webcomic, or said I’d be a light-novel author and posted stories.

Plenty of people in my situation did exactly that.

I looked down on those people.

I sneered at their creations and played critic: “This is garbage.”

Even though I never made anything myself…

I want to go back.

If possible, to elementary or middle school—those golden days.

Even one or two years would be fine.

If I had just a little more time, I could’ve done something.

Because I quit everything halfway, I could pick any of them back up.

If I’d gotten serious, I might not have reached the top, but I could’ve gone pro.

No, stop.

It’s pointless.

Pointless, pointless.

Thinking like this is pointless.

“Hm?”

Through the pouring rain, I heard people arguing.

A fight?

Ugh, I don’t want to get involved.

That’s what I thought, but my feet were already heading straight toward the voices.

“—That’s why it’s your fault—”

“No, you’re the one who—”

What I found were three high schoolers in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel.

Two guys, one girl.

Rare these days: gakuran and sailor uniform.

Looked like a total love-triangle shuraba.

The tallest boy and the girl were going at it, while the other boy tried to calm them down from between them.

Neither of the fighting pair was listening.

(I had moments like that too, once.)

Back in middle school I had a fairly cute childhood friend.

“Fairly cute” meaning maybe fourth or fifth in class ranking.

Track team, so super short hair.

The kind of looks where two or three out of ten people passing on the street would turn around.

Back then I was deep into 2D.

I loudly proclaimed that track girls should have ponytails.

To me, she was painfully plain.

But we lived close, were in the same class a lot through elementary and middle, so we talked plenty and bickered all the time.

Even in middle school we sometimes walked home together.

I really missed my chance.

If it were the current me, the keywords “middle schooler + childhood friend + track team” would be enough for three loads.

By the way, I heard through the grapevine she got married seven years ago.

Well, “grapevine” meaning I overheard my siblings talking in the living room.

We weren’t on bad terms.

We’d known each other since we were tiny, so we could talk without reserve.

I don’t think she was ever in love with me, but…

If I’d studied harder and gone to the same high school,

or joined the track team and gotten a sports recommendation,

maybe a flag would’ve triggered.

If I’d seriously confessed, we might’ve dated.

Then we could’ve done lewd things in an empty classroom after school,

or argued on the way home like these kids.

Straight out of an eroge.

(Thinking about it that way, these guys are living the riajuu dream. Explode—wait?)

That’s when I noticed.

A truck was barreling straight toward the three of them at terrifying speed.

At the same time, I saw the driver slumped over the wheel.

Fell asleep at the wheel.

The three still hadn’t noticed.

!!!!!

“D-D-Danger—!!”

I meant to scream, but after more than ten years of barely using my voice, my vocal cords—combined with the rib pain and freezing rain—could only manage a pathetic trembling squeak that vanished into the downpour.

I have to save them.

Why me? I thought.

But intuition told me that if I didn’t, I’d regret it five minutes from now.

I’d regret watching three people get splattered into red paste by that truck.

I should’ve saved them.

That’s why I had to help.

I’d probably drop dead somewhere around here soon anyway.

At least for that final moment, I wanted the tiny satisfaction of having done something right.

I didn’t want to die still drowning in regret.

I ran—or rather, tumbled forward.

My legs, unused for over a decade, refused to listen.

For the first time in my life I thought, I should’ve exercised more.

My broken ribs screamed in agony, trying to stop me.

For the first time in my life I thought, I should’ve consumed more calcium.

It hurts.

The pain made running awkward.

But I ran.

I ran.

I managed to run.

The fighting boy noticed the truck right in front of them and pulled the girl into his arms.

The other boy still had his back turned and hadn’t seen it yet; he just looked confused by the sudden hug.

Without hesitation I grabbed the oblivious boy’s collar and yanked backward with everything I had.

Dragged by my 100+ kg body, he tumbled out of the truck’s path.

Good.

Two more.

The instant I thought that, the truck filled my vision.

I’d planned to stay safe and just reach out an arm, but when you pull someone, Newton’s third law kicks in—you get pulled forward too.

Obviously.

Didn’t matter that I weighed over 100 kg.

My shaking legs, already at full sprint, easily lurched forward.

The moment the truck hit me, something flashed behind my eyes.

Was that the rumored life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing? It was too fast to tell.

Too fast.

Guess my life really was that empty.

I was flung by a truck dozens of times my weight and slammed into a concrete wall.

“Gah…!”

All the air in my lungs burst out at once.

My oxygen-starved lungs convulsed.

I couldn’t even scream.

But I wasn’t dead.

Thanks to all the fat I’d stored up, I survived…

…or so I thought.

The truck kept coming.

Pinned between the truck and the concrete wall, I was crushed flat like a tomato.