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. I wanted to cry.

Everything was her fault. Because of her, my great plan to escape my hikikomori life had ended in miserable failure. At that moment, I wished for the power to bestow deadly curses. That bitch… that bitch! G-G-Goddammit! I imagined them laughing at me right about then. I was sure that I’d become a laughingstock.

“Boss, today, a crazy hikikomori came to the store.”

“Huh, really, Misaki?”

“It seemed he planned on working here part time. But for God’s sake, he’s a hikikomori. Like, know your place!”

“Absolutely. There’s no way an unemployed, disgusting, hikikomori college dropout could join society”.

They were using me as the punch line for their sardonic comments. Argh, how can this he? It’s hard to forgive. No, I can’t forgive them. I need to take my revenge… must take my revenge now! I swear I’ll punish you…

As a hikikomori, however, I couldn’t think of any really effective ways to get back at them. Thus, I decided to give up momentarily and think of something different, something to make myself feel better. I wanted to forget the bad stuff and just think of good things.

Speaking of fun things, there was still the N.H.K.

Yeah, if I were feeling pain or suffering, I had merely to think of the conspiracy that the N.H.K. was engineering right beneath the surface.

If I did that, I might feel at least a little better.

N.H.K., N.H.K…

“I see! I understand!” I shouted. “That girl is a special operative for the N.H.K.!” I kept making these declarations loudly.

Despite my earlier resolve, I didn’t feel better at all.

“Dammit”, I cried before I finished my beer and shochu.

My head hurt, and the anime songs ringing from my next door neighbor’s apartment were fiercely annoying.

Before I knew it, I had somehow ended up violently drunk. My mood was headed, full tilt, toward negativity. Once again, the future held no hope whatsoever that I could detect. I suspected that, at this rate, I was just plummeting toward death—isolated, lonely, and looking like an asshole.

“That’s it. This is the end. This is the end!” I chanted.

And still, the anime songs echoed from the room next door. In the lyrics, words like “love”, “dreams”, “romance” and “hope” recurred continuously—ironically. For someone like me, having lost my optimism, it all sounded very much like mean-spirited sarcasm. The words racked me with rage and self-pity.