For the time being, I went ahead and wrote the whole thing. I decided to write everything I could. And what came out of it was this story.

Reading back over it, my face turning red… well, how is it, really?

When I read it on days when I’m in a good mood, I think, Amazing! I’m a genius!

And on days when I’m depressed, I think, I suck to have written something like this! Die right now!

Even so, I think that what is probably true about it is simply: I wrote everything I could possibly write.

Well then, hello, everyone. My name is Tatsuhiko Takimoto. This is my Afterword, for my second book.

I owe a lot to many people this time around, too. Everyone who had something to do with this book and everyone who is reading it, thank you so very much.

I still will do my best after this. I will get pumped up and try hard.

Tatsuhiko Takimoto

December, 2001

Second Afterword

Several years have passed since I wrote, “I still will do my best after this.” I have not done my best. Proof of that is in the fact that I haven’t written a single new story. I’ve been reduced to a NEET,[41] living as a parasite on the royalties from this book.

This may be the result of trauma or something like that. Because of it, I developed a strange disease in my brain. Because of this disease, which causes everything to remind me of the trauma, it makes my brain cry out. It makes my brain cry out each time I try to write a story. My brain always is crying out—and because of that, I have become unable to write stories at all. Because of the terrible fear that I faced when I wrote this book, I no longer want to write stories and have become completely unable to write any. Oh, what a terrible tragedy! For a young and talented (at least, he thinks so) writer to have become incapacitated because he wrote this book!

You must read this now. A rare, dark mystique is hidden in this book, which holds the cursed origins I have explained above. It seems that a comedy manga writer long ago went crazy and often would disappear, but there was likely a ghastly force contained within the work that destroyed him, mentally. Because there must be some similar force within this book, it is a book that I confidently can recommend to anyone. It can even help with home and office communication. This book is optimal as a graft onto discussions like, “Hey, do you know the N.H.K.?” and then, someone will say, “The Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai, right? It’s really funny. But it made me cry a little, too.”