Sitting on my bed, I stopped myself from breathing. I tightly covered my mouth with both hands to stop my breath. That hurts. It hurts. But soon, I’ll die. I’d been holding my breath for thirty seconds. Surely, I had to die momentarily.

However, my moment of death wouldn’t come. The reason was because breath was leaking in through my nose.

Nothing in the world works the way we want. Someone, please do something.

Chapter 03.
The Meeting

Part One

Despite everything, I had come back to life, my depression deeper and direr than Lake Baikal or the Mariana Trench from yesterday’s confrontation.

For the first time in months, I ventured outside in broad daylight and headed to the lively city. It was such a brave and heroic act, it truly deserved a shower of applause from the whole world. I wanted to praise myself.

But everything was in vain.

All that remained was hopelessness. I can’t go on like this!

Returning to my apartment, I holed up in my room and started drinking to erase the painful thoughts. Seated at the kotatsu, I tried shouting, “Sake! Bring me more sake!” That itself, however, was nothing more than an empty phrase spoken to myself, and in the dim evening, in that six-mat room, it echoed in dreary misery.

Several empty beer cans already were rolling around on top of the kotatsu. Increasingly irked by the anime songs blaring from the room next door, I rashly indulged in even more alcohol.

My head spun terribly, and I grew dizzy.

Just a little more. I’ll forget everything after just a little more.

That morning, having picked myself up after the previous day’s low spirits, I had decided to escape my hikikomori life as quickly as possible.

That’s when it hit me. I’ll find a part-time job today.

Why not? If I couldn’t begin a career, I could start with a part-time job. If I did that, my title would shift from “hikikomori” to “freeter.”[15] Both terms implied being useless, but freeter sounded far healthier than hikikomori. So, I decided to search for a part-time job right away.

I headed to the convenience store and bought a part-time employment information magazine. Walking home quickly, I started seriously perusing the material.

Which one? Which part-time job would suit me best?

I dismissed the idea of heavy labor. After all, I wouldn’t want anything that would make me tired. Furthermore, the idea of working at a convenience store made me recoil, too. No way could I qualify for that sort of customer-service job.

Then… oh!

“Manga cafe, 700 yen per hour.”

There was no mistake: This job suited me perfectly! There shouldn’t be too many customers coming to a small-town manga cafe, after all -and when I was bored, I could read manga at the register. It seemed like a really simple job. This would be the best thing for me.