I would fall and smash into the Sea of Japan.
The ending was very near—just like in the erotic game that Yamazaki made, I would use my special attack on the N.H.K. To protect the heroine, I would rush forward into the final battle. I had wished for that game scenario, and I was going to die exactly the way I had wanted. It was the greatest happy ending.
Soon, I will be saved….
***
Then, it happened. Suddenly, something came to mind that concerned me. The ending of that game—no matter how I tried, I couldn’t remember it. Did the hero of the game defeat the evil organization? In fact, was there even an ending at all?
Someone said, “There’s no way to win.”
It might have been a dream. I already might have lost consciousness some time ago. As I danced through nothingness, the pitch-black Sea of Japan and a bright, starry sky stretched out before my eyes.
And then, I saw them. They were mocking me.
My body would start falling soon. I would die. That had to happen.
But they said, “Remember.”
On this bluff, where there had been too many incidents, construction to prevent them had already been completed. The Revolutionary Bomb disappeared without going off.
I screamed, “Is that how you do it?! You cowards!”
No answer came back to me.
Final Chapter. Welcome to the N.H.K.!
It became spring.
Of course, I was holed up in my room.
Why?! Why am I holed up?! Get hold of yourself! Do some honest work! I tried taking out my anger on myself in this way; of course, it’s never so easy to escape from being a hikikomori.
I still suffered from the neuroses that attacked me, the desire to kill myself that would boil silently to the surface, and all the other sorts of problems I faced (my rent being raised or my favorite convenience store closing). On top of all that, I had my security guard job tomorrow. It was a complete pain in the ass.
I was depressingly worried.
Regardless, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom outside my window. New college students walked past the front of my apartment. I felt as though I had been abandoned by the whole world, as though I were being mocked by the entire human race.
For example, Yamazaki had sent me a postcard recently. A photograph printed on the card showed Yamazaki, smiling widely, with a beautiful girl. He’d written, “Oh, I think I might be just about ready to get married. My parents have been bothering me for a while to get set up with someone. (In the countryside, we get married early.) And because I didn’t really have a choice, I had a meeting arranged just once, and look! She’s perfect!”
It seemed to have become an age in which even an erotic-game-loving lolicon could be blessed with happiness.
Die. Go to hell.
Next was the New Year’s card sent by the female upperclassman: “Our house is a huge mansion. We’re in love. I’m about to have a baby.”
She really seemed happy.
Go to hell.
And on top of all that, Misaki’s life, too, now was moving in a truly upward direction. When she had returned to her uncle’s house, naturally, she had been severely scolded. She seemed to have sunk into a reflection about the incident that was deeper than the ocean. Eventually, at some point, she came to talk to me about it. “How do you think I could apologize properly?”
“Shouldn’t it be enough for you just to live a healthy life?”
“I’ve caused more trouble than I can even completely understand, so that just won’t cut it, okay? I need something to, you know, wholeheartedly demonstrate my gratitude and apologies.”
“You uncle is a rather wealthy man, isn’t he? If so, then what about studying and going to college? Thinking back, didn’t you pass your college entrance exams?”
I just gave her some appropriate advice without thinking about it too deeply. Then, several months after that, my advice had become part of her reality. She was planning to begin college starting this spring. Of course, the school was obviously one that even I could have attended based on exam percentile, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise, but…
Either way, that girl would be a college student while I remained a freeter and a hikikomori.
Ah, I can’t take it. Go to hell, all of you!
They say that curses come home to roost. So, I forced my feelings back down and tried wishing for everyone’s happiness, “Even if you fall into hell, keep trying, all of you.”
I, too, planned on trying, little by little.
The reason for that was on a scrap of paper I had here.
It was a contract, made from a page ripped out of the secret notebook. To fulfill the contract, I had no choice but to try.
***
That night…
I had jumped, and then I’d landed abruptly. I had landed on top of the wire netting set up around the cliff to prevent accidents. The frame had been buried into the rocky cliff itself, making a hook shape. As expected for a sightseeing spot, they had gone out of their way to mount the fence in such a way that the beautiful view was left unspoiled. And as expected for a sightseeing spot, there was absolutely no fault to be found with the safety measures.
I wanted to cry.
I cried.
I wanted to die, but I couldn’t die. If I could step out with only one foot, then this time, I could fly for sure. It was impossible. I couldn’t do it. Both of my legs were shaking violently, and the sound of my heart beating was ridiculously loud. I felt terrible, I was nauseated, and I didn’t want to be there anymore.
I was crying out for someone to do something. I was crying that I wanted to die. Kill me right now, I thought. I wished for someone to push me.
I didn’t want to go home and shut myself up in my apartment, and I didn’t want to see Misaki’s face. I didn’t want to think about anything confusing, and I didn’t want to experience any more pain. I just wanted to die right then.
I scratched my head, curled up my body, and then I bent backward. It was humorous and pathetic. I looked like an idiot. Each time the wind blew, I dropped to all fours and clung to the fence. I was frightened. I was scared of falling. I got chills just from looking downward.
Below the netting was the Sea of Japan. The waves were rough. Help me! No, don’t help me. Don’t laugh at me. What should I do? Don’t screw around with me! Don’t look! Don’t look over here! Why are you crying? I’m the one who wants to cry.
Misaki stuck her face out over the edge of the cliff and looked down at me.
I covered my face with both hands. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want any more disgrace in my life.
Stretching herself out over the cliff edge, Misaki held out her hand. She was trying to save me. The look on her face said that she pitied me. Swiping away her outstretched hand, I put my leg on the rock wall and climbed up the cliff by myself. I slipped on frozen sections several times, landing on my ass in the netting each time. On my third try, 1 succeeded at climbing about seven feet up the cliff.
I collapsed on the edge. Misaki stood in front of me.
Grabbing my hand, she pulled me toward the highway as hard as she could. She was trying to get me away from the edge as quickly as possible, and I ended up dragged along the top of the snow.
When we arrived in front of the bench, where we had been sitting a few minutes earlier, she started hitting me. She hit me over and over. In the end, I also suffered a shoulder tackle. I rolled onto my back, and Misaki leaned over me. She buried her face in my chest, letting out sobs that weren’t even words.
My right hand, which had been slashed by the box cutter, started to hurt. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.
Misaki grasped my palm. I roughly pushed away her hand, and a bit of blood splashed onto her cheeks. She didn’t even try to wipe it off. Sitting on top of me, she was crying. I tried to push her aside, but she wouldn’t break her hold on me. She pushed down my shoulders and stayed like that for a long time, trembling. Still shaking, she raised
her fists, punching my chest. She hit me over and over and over.
In the end, my face got beaten up, too.
She knew no limits. My consciousness was fading.
Raising her fist again, Misaki said, “You can’t die.”
I was silent, without any answer. So, she hit me in the face once more. “Please, don’t die.”
As I didn’t want to be punched any more than this, I had no choice but to nod. So, I nodded and somehow managed to make myself smile. Next, I thought of telling her some kind of joke. But that was impossible.
Letting out a noise, I cried.
Misaki didn’t look away from me. She just kept staring and staring.
Eventually, we returned to ourselves. At this rate, we were going to freeze to death, so we decided to put the cape behind us for the time being.
Life is painful and difficult. A lot of things really will get the best of you. It’s actually rather hard.
Having made it back onto the road, I realized something terrible: How would we get back to the station?
“It took almost an hour by taxi, which means…”
“Yeah, if we walk to the station, it’ll take until morning.”
I felt a wave of despair.
Misaki pulled at me. “There’s an abandoned home nearby, but…”
“An abandoned home?”
“My house.”
After about a ten minute walk, we came to the abandoned house. The windowpanes were shattered, and a large hole had opened in the front door. We spent the whole night in a house that looked about ready to collapse. Surprisingly, though, I don’t remember it being all that cold.
***
We talked and talked about all sorts of things in that house, where there was a missing floorboard with every step. Misaki told me about her memories of that house. Most of them were tragic, but a few were kind of nice, too.
“My first father… I don’t even remember his face, but he named me. Because there’s a beautiful cape nearby, he called me ‘Misaki’, meaning ‘cape’. It's been a rather appropriate name, don’t you think?”
I laughed.
Eventually, I grew a little tired. After I had fallen into a few seconds of sleep, Misaki suddenly shook me lightly. “In the end, what’s the N.H.K.?”
As it would be a long discussion, I didn’t repeat my explanation. Misaki got out from under the coat she’d been using as a blanket, and she pulled her secret notebook from her bag.
“I thought of an N.H.K., too.”
“Huh?”
“It’s dark, so can you use your lighter? Oh! It’s okay, I can read the letters, even in the darkness”, she said quickly, as she started writing something in her secret notebook with a ballpoint pen.
“Um, okay, it’s finished.” She tore out the page and handed it to me.
The only light came from the moon shining in through the window. Lying face up, I forced my eyes into focus to read the contents of the paper.
***
Contract for Membership in the N.H.K. (Nihon Hitojichi Kokankai) [40]
The purpose of the Hitojichi Kokankai:
Members will exchange hostages with each other; you offer your lives to each other, as hostages. In other words, it means, “if you die, I die, too, dammit!” If we agree to this, then we will be unable to act, like nuclear powers, glaring at each other during a cold war. And even if we want to die, we will be unable to.
If the situation turns into, “I don’t care, even if you die”, then this group’s system has failed. Let’s make sure that it doesn’t become that way!
President of the N.H.K., Misaki Nakahara
Name: _____ Member #: _____
***
“Look, sign it quickly.”
I took the ballpoint pen from her. I was troubled by it for a while. In the end, nothing at all had been resolved. It wasn’t as though anything had changed.
“Let’s look forward in life”? Are you an idiot?! We have dreams, so we’re okay? We don’t have any kind of dreams!
I wondered if I would have to go on living every day, whispering to myself, I can’t take it anymore.
Is that okay? What do you think?
I worried back and forth about this for a little bit; in the end, though, I just signed the contract.
Meanwhile, Misaki, shutting the contract back in her bag, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me close. Our eyes met at point-blank range.
And then, in a loud voice, she declared, “Welcome to the N.H.K.!”
Her overly enthusiastic expression struck a humorous chord. Fending off a fit of stifled laughter, I thought to myself, I don’t know how long this can continue, but I’ll try as hard as I can.
I made this small decision.
N.H.K. Member #1, Satou Tatsuhiro, had been born.
First Afterword
In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the hikikomori phenomenon suddenly broke out wildly across Japan.
As a sharp-eyed man, I thought I’d jump on the tide of the times and earn a ton of money. I’ll write a story about hikikomori and become famous! I’ll become a best-selling author with my hikikomori story! I’ll go to Hawaii using the royalties! I’ll go to Waikiki!
My dreams stretched out endlessly. However, once I actually started trying to write the story, I soon regretted it. It was painful.
What happens when a real hikikomori writes a hikikomori story? Inevitably, you start having to use your own experiences in your creation. You start having to write about yourself.
Of course, stories are fiction, and no matter how much one of the characters I used looks like me, he is himself, and I am myself. Even if we speak the same way and live in the same apartment, we are still unconnected. We inhabit separate worlds.
Regardless, it was still painful. It was embarrassing. I felt as though I were taking my own shame and revealing it to the whole world.
In the end, I got caught up in paranoid fantasies.
What if everyone is secretly laughing at me while I write this kind of story? I really thought this.
In truth, I still can’t read this story objectively.
Each time I reread it, I start to have light hallucinations. I break into a cold sweat.
Each time I approach one of a few specific places in the plot, I start wanting to throw the computer out the window.
At other particular points, I start wanting to run away from home to live deep in secrecy in the mountains of India.
That was probably because the themes addressed in this story are not things of the past for me but currently active problems.
I can’t look at it from afar, thinking, “How young I was then.”
This is all a real problem.
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. Beca
use 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.”
It’s embarrassing to mention something that’s selling so well, but no one knows minor works. One could say that a book around this level is indeed the masterpiece that truly could help everyone’s communication. There are jokes about all sorts of current events included, and it’s extremely useful for helping young people think about the present times. It could even be said that if you read this book, you’ll be able to understand the feelings of young people who live in our society today. Older people will be surprised, thinking, “Oh, really? Young people nowadays are like this?!” And those of the same age as the characters in the book will sympathize, thinking, “I understand! I understand! This sort of thing happens all the time!” and can enjoy reading it. At least, I think this book has as much value as its price. I promise that it would take first place in a ranking of “books that you won’t lose anything by reading.”
Welcome to the NHK! Page 18
