I'm a 34-year-old homeless NEET.
A chubby, ugly bastard who fancies himself a nice guy, right in the middle of regretting his entire life.
Up until about three hours ago, I wasn't homeless—
Just your run-of-the-mill shut-in veteran NEET—
But when I came to, my parents were dead.
I'd locked myself away and skipped the family meeting, so they wrote me off as nonexistent.
I fell right into my siblings' scheming, and they kicked me out of the house in spectacular fashion.
I'd mastered the art of floor-slams and wall-slams,
living like I owned the place—nobody was on my side.
On the day of the funeral, right in the middle of bridging (looking at nude photos), my brothers and sisters burst into my room in their mourning clothes and shoved a written disownment in my face.
When I ignored them, my little brother took a wooden bat and smashed the hell out of my PC—my most prized possession in the whole world.
I went berserk in a half-mad rage, but my eldest brother holds a black belt in karate, so I got my ass handed to me instead.
When I collapsed into a pathetic heap of snot and tears hoping they'd lay off, they threw me out in nothing but the clothes on my back.
Clutching my throbbing side—ribs probably fractured—I shuffled through the town streets.
The torrent of abuse from my siblings still rings in my ears.
Unspeakable vitriol.
My heart was completely shattered.
What the hell did I even do?
I just skipped my parents' funeral and whacked off to unedited loli pics—I took them with a digital camera when I bathed my brother's daughter……
What do I do now?
No—I know what I have to do, at least in my head.
Find some part-time work, get a place to live, buy food.
But how?
I don't know how to look for a job.
Well—I sort of know that I should go to Hello Work.
But it's not like I spent over ten years as a shut-in for nothing.
I have no idea where Hello Work even is.
And besides, I'd heard that all they do is refer you to a place.
You take your resume to the place they send you, and you do an interview.
An interview? In these clothes—stiff with dried fluids on the sleeves, stained here and there with blood?
No way in hell I'd get hired.
If I were the employer, I'd never hire some lunatic showing up looking like this.
I might feel some sympathy, but I'd absolutely never hire him.
I don't even know where to buy resume paper.
A stationery store?
A convenience store?
There might be a convenience store within walking distance, but I don't have any money.
Let's say I cleared all those hurdles, though.
Let's say I somehow borrowed money from a financial institution or something, bought new clothes, and picked up a resume and writing implements.
I'd heard that you can't fill out a resume without an address.
I'm screwed.
At this point, I finally realized my life was completely, utterly done for.
"………Haaah."
It started to rain.
Summer was almost over—it was getting chilly.
The cold rain soaked effortlessly through my sweatpants, worn out over years of use, and mercilessly sapped my body heat.
"………If only I could start over."
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
It's not like I'd been trash from the day I was born.
I was born the third son of a reasonably well-off family. Two older brothers, an older sister, a younger sister—fifth child out of five.
In elementary school, people praised me for being smart for my age.
I wasn't great at studying, but I was good at games, could handle myself in sports, and was a class clown.
I was the center of my class.
In middle school, I joined the computer club, used magazines as reference, saved up my allowance, and built my own PC.
The family, who didn't know a thing about computers, looked up to me with nothing but admiration.
My life went off the rails in high school—no, starting from my last year of middle school.
I was so consumed by my PC that I neglected my studies.
I thought studying was pointless. Useless. Wouldn't help me in the future.
As a result, I ended up enrolling in a high school notorious as the worst of the worst in the prefecture.
Even then, I thought I had what it took.
I believed that if I put my mind to it, I was different from all those other idiots.
I still remember what happened.
I was lining up at the school store to buy lunch when some guy cut in right in front of me.
I stood up to him out of a sense of justice and told him off.
It was an act of recklessness born from a warped sense of pride and a personality overflowing with eighth-grader syndrome.
The guy was an upperclassman—one of the most dangerous students in the school, bar none.
After school, I was beaten until my face was swollen beyond recognition and nailed to the school gate in nothing but my underwear.
They took plenty of photos.
If I'd been a pretty girl,
they probably would have raped me senseless, taken photos to blackmail me, and made me their personal sex slave.
Unfortunately, I was just a chubby otaku creep.
Those photos were spread throughout the school with ease.
No negotiations, no demands—just for the hell of it.
My social status plummeted to rock bottom in an instant. They gave me the nickname "Hokey" and made a laughingstock out of me.
Within a month, I stopped going to school entirely and shut myself away.
My father and brother saw what had become of me
and tossed out irresponsible platitudes like "be brave" and "hang in there."
What the hell was I supposed to do?
In a situation like that, who could possibly keep going to school?
I shut myself in.
I shut myself in resolutely and completely.
All my classmates my age must have been laughing at those photos of me—nude, strung up, with a close-up of my crotch.
I stayed locked away, playing online games.
Every now and then I'd use P2P software to download erotic games, emulators, and manga.
With the internet and a PC, there was no end to the ways I could kill time.
Influenced by the internet, I picked up interest in all sorts of things and dabbled in all sorts of hobbies.
Built plastic models. Painted figures. Started a blog.
My mother, as if supporting my every whim, handed over as much money as I asked for.
But I lost interest in every single one within a year.
I'd see people better than me and my motivation would evaporate.
From the outside, I must have just looked like I was having fun.
But locked away alone in my dark shell, left behind by time, there was nothing else I could do.
No—looking back now, that's just an excuse.
I was just messing around.
At the very least, I could have declared I wanted to become a manga artist and started drawing terrible web comics,
or said I wanted to be a light novelist and posted some stories online.
There were plenty of guys in the same situation as me doing exactly that.
And I looked down on all of them.
I'd skim their creations, scoff, and play armchair critic—"This is worse than garbage."
When I hadn't done anything myself……
I want to go back.
If I could, I'd go back to elementary school—the best years. Or middle school.
No—I'd settle for even one year. Two years.
If I'd just had a little more time, I could have done something.
I quit everything halfway through, which means I could pick any of them back up from the middle.
If I'd been serious, maybe I wouldn't have been number one, but I could have gone pro.
No—forget it.
It's pointless.
Utterly, completely pointless.
There's no point in thinking about this.
"Hm?"
Through the torrential rain, I heard voices arguing.
A fight?
I don't want to get involved.
Even as I thought that, my feet were already carrying me straight toward them.
"——So, it's your fault that——"
"It's you who——"
What I found were three high schoolers who seemed to be right in the middle of a lovers' quarrel.
Two boys and one girl.
Oddly enough, they were wearing the classic uniform styles—one in a gakuran, one in a sailor suit. Not something you see much these days.
It looked like a serious blowup. The tallest boy and the girl were at each other's throats.
The third boy was trying to mediate, to calm them down,
but neither of them was in any mood to listen.
(Oh yeah—I went through something like that too, back in the day.)
In middle school, I had a childhood friend who was reasonably cute.
"Reasonably cute" meaning about fourth or fifth in the class, roughly.
She was on the track team, so she kept her hair short—basically a pixie cut.
If you walked through town and passed ten people, two or three would probably glance back at her. That kind of face.
Back then, I was completely hooked on 2D.
I was the type to say "track team means ponytails" without a shred of hesitation.
For me, she was plain at best.
But she lived close by, and we ended up in the same class for both elementary and middle school often enough,
so we had plenty of opportunities to talk, and we bickered a lot.
Even in middle school, we walked home together more than a few times.
What a waste.
The me of today would get three quick shots off just from those keywords alone: middle schooler, childhood friend, track team.
Incidentally, I'd heard through the grapevine that she got married about seven years ago.
Well, "grapevine"—it was a conversation between my siblings that drifted in from the living room.
We hadn't been on bad terms or anything.
We'd known each other since we were little, so we could talk without any pretense.
I don't think she was into me or anything,
but if I'd studied harder and gotten into the same high school as her,
or joined the same track team and gotten a recommendation admission,
maybe a flag or two could have been set.
If I'd confessed seriously, we might have at least dated.
And then we could have done lewd things in an empty classroom after school,
or bickered on the way home like those guys.
An eroge world, through and through.
(When I put it that way, those guys are seriously living the dream. I ought to blow them u—huh?)
That was the instant I noticed it.
A truck. Barreling straight toward the three of them at full speed.
At the same moment, I saw the driver slumped forward over the steering wheel.
Drowsy driving.
The three of them still hadn't noticed.
"! ! ! !"
"Aa—a—d-danger—watch out!"
I tried to scream, but my vocal cords hadn't produced a decent sound in over ten years.
Between the pain in my ribs and the cold of the rain, they contracted even further.
All that came out was a pitiful, trembling voice, drowned out instantly by the roar of rain.
I have to save them, I thought.
Why me? I also thought.
If I don't, I'll definitely regret it in five minutes—that's what I instinctively knew.
I'd see the three of them launched into the air by the truck, crushed to pulp,
and I'd regret it.
I should have saved them.
So I had to save them.
I was probably going to die homeless in some ditch before long anyway,
but at least in that final moment, I wanted to feel even a sliver of satisfaction.
I didn't want to be full of regret right up to the very end.
I ran—more like tumbled forward.
My legs, which hadn't done a decent thing in over a decade, wouldn't cooperate.
For the first time in my life, I wished I'd exercised more.
My broken ribs screamed in agony, trying to stop me.
For the first time in my life, I wished I'd eaten more calcium.
It hurt.
It hurt so bad I could barely run.
But I ran.
I ran.
I made it.
The boy who'd been arguing noticed the truck bearing down and pulled the girl into his arms.
The other boy still hadn't seen it—he'd turned his way.
He was frozen, stunned by the sudden shift.
Without a second's hesitation, I grabbed the unaware boy by the collar and yanked him backward with every ounce of strength I had.
He went tumbling out of the truck's path, dragged along by my hundred-kilo frame.
Good.
Two left.
The instant I thought that, the truck was right in front of me.
I'd planned to reach out from safety and just pull them away,
but when you pull someone toward you, Newton's third law sends you forward.
Obviously.
It didn't matter that I weighed over a hundred kilos.
My legs, already shaky from sprinting at full speed, slid forward without resistance.
The moment before impact, I thought I saw something flash behind me.
Was that the fabled life flashing before your eyes? It was too brief to tell.
Too fast.
Was it because my life had been so hollow?
I was launched by a truck with more than fifty times my weight and slammed into a concrete wall.
"Gkha……!"
Every molecule of air in my lungs was expelled in an instant.
My lungs, screaming for oxygen after the sprint, seized up.
I couldn't even make a sound.
But I wasn't dead yet.
The fat I'd so generously stored over the years had saved me……
Or so I thought—because the truck was still coming.
I was crushed between the truck and the concrete like a tomato, and that was that.