Tatsuhiko Takimoto - Welcome to the NHK!

I’d work, and then I’d shut myself away—earn my living expenses, and then shut myself away. This lifestyle continued and, with frightening speed, time went by. While I kept working, it turned to winter.

It was the winter of my fifth year as a hikikomori. This year felt thoroughly cold—probably because I had previously sold off my kotatsu to the secondhand shop. Even covered head to toe with a blanket, I still was freezing, always shivering uncontrollably. At that point, in place of a body warmer, I decided to try using the laptop computer, which Yamazaki had left behind when he moved.

“It’s an off-brand Pentium 66 MHz notebook computer. I didn’t want to have to carry it, so I was going to throw it away. But seeing as I have it, I’ll give it to you, Satou”, he’d said.

He’d left with those words.

I set the laptop on my stomach and turned on the power. A noisy whirring indicated that it was operating, and an anime wallpaper appeared on the liquid crystal screen. Being an older machine, it generated an amazing amount of heat. Soon, I warmed up and began to grow sleepy.

Just then, I recognized a familiar icon displayed on the computer’s desktop.

It looked like the executable file for the erotic game that Yamazaki had been making. Positioning the cursor on the file, I clicked to open it. The hard disk started groaning. After a long loading period, the game began.

I played it for several hours. And then, I understood… I understood that this was a terrible, terrible game.

The genre was an RPG, but it was an extremely cheap RPG, with about one hundredth of the first Dragon Quest [35] Called Dragon Warrior in English, it's a very old Nintendo RPG game. game’s content. It wasn’t an erotic game any longer, and the story was utterly ridiculous—basically, the concept was something along the lines of “a journey about love and youth taken by soldiers fighting against a giant, evil organization”. The game told the story of an average young man who becomes a warrior to fight evil and protect the heroine. This wish-fulfillment scenario eventually bypassed the player, continuing meaninglessly on and on and on.

I was dumbfounded.

Come on, what idiot could have come up with such a stupid scenario? It was me. I was the very person who had written the original outline for the story.

I grew sad. It was a bittersweet sadness, because I thoroughly understood the scenario of the game: Soldiers taking a stand against evil.

This had been our exact desire; we had wanted to fight an evil organization; we had wanted to fight villains. If a war had broken out, we would have joined the JSDF [36] The Japanese Self-Defense Forces, established after World War II, are Japan’s military branches. right away and launched kamikaze attacks. That definitely would have been a meaningful way to live and an attractive way to die. Had there been villains in the world, we would have battled them. Fists raised in the air, we would have fought. There was no mistake about it.

There weren’t any villains, though. The world was just complicated in various ways, and there weren’t any obvious villains to be found. It was excruciating.

Our personal desires had become the framework for the game. As I progressed farther into it, I realized that it actually had a wonderful story. It was a simple, beautiful story. Right now, in fact, the main character, fighting an enormously powerful enemy, vowed to protect the heroine.

“I’ll protect your life!” Heedless of his own safety, he prepared to challenge the gigantic enemy, and the final battle began. I was nearing the end of the game.

There were three battle commands: “attack”, “defend” and “special attack.” No matter how much I attacked the last boss, I couldn’t do any damage. Naturally, just trying to defend myself didn’t help, either. Finally, I had no choice but to use the special attack—the final death blow. Using my own life energy, I sacrificed myself in order to deal a mortal wound to the enemy. There was no other way to defeat the final boss. So, the hero of the game held his “Revolutionary Bomb” in his right hand and went to perform his special attack.

However, at the very, very end—at the exact second the hero executed his special attack on the final boss—the game suddenly froze! The game window closed, and the text editor started up. Yamazaki apparently had left a letter that seemed like an excuse.

“There really isn’t any other way to destroy the huge, evil organization than to use your special attack. You can gain victory only if you choose death for yourself because the giant, evil organization actually is made up of our entire world. Because the second you choose death, the world disappears into nothingness, the evil organization, too, disappears into nothingness. Then, peace will come to you. Still, I didn’t blow my own head off with a bomb. That was my choice. No, it definitely isn’t that I just didn’t want to go through the pain of drawing the CG for the game ending or that I got downright tired of making a terrible game. Nothing like that…”

At first, I tried to smash the laptop. Then, I changed my mind. I had watched Yamazaki desperately work on this game, but the final shoddiness of it hit me pretty hard.

What in the world could he be doing right now? This question suddenly began to bother me, but I decided to try and forget it. I hadn’t heard any news from him since he left, and I didn’t feel like contacting him, either.

Those idiotic days from that period in my life had ended long ago.

Christmas came once again. The city lights twinkled.

The guide stick grasped in my right hand, too, lit up in the darkness. Tonight's work was traffic control in the parking lot of a new department store that had opened near the station. Because the entrances were equipped with fully automated ticket machines, I had absolutely nothing to do. When it got crowded, I tried helping out the machines; but each time, I just ended up swinging my stick back and forth.

There were no accidents, nothing happened, and Christmas Eve marched on in safety.

About an hour before the store closed, a car came by. The car itself was the sort of Japanese model found anywhere, with nothing special to note about it. However, because the interior lights were on, I recognized the girl sitting in the passenger seat. I saw her clearly.

Startled, I tried to push my cap down over my eyes as much as possible. The car passed me without hesitation, so there hadn’t been any recognition. But I felt that my high school acquaintance, sitting in the passenger seat, had looked my way, just for a second.

Of course, that, too, was just a delusion.

My shift ended, and I changed out of my uniform and put the guide stick and helmet into my bag. Swaying back and forth on one of the last trains of the night, I headed toward my apartment. On the way, I stopped by a convenience store to buy alcohol and the like.

I decided I should try getting into the Christmas spirit. Walking up the steep road that led to my apartment, I drank a beer. I hadn’t had alcohol in a while, so it took effect quickly. Somewhat shakily, I slowly hiked up the long, sloping path. In the distance, an ambulance’s siren pierced the otherwise quiet night. I finished my second beer.

Merry Christmas.

By the time I passed the park, my gait had been reduced to a drunken stumble. Walking carefully, I could avoid swaying drastically, but I figured I might as well just walk like a drunk. I increased my pace and wobbled from telephone pole to telephone pole. I tripped over a stone and almost fell. I staggered and was about to collapse in the middle of the road when, right in front of me, an ambulance rushed past.