Chapter 1: Chapter 1 Who is Hikigaya Hachiman ?
14- year-old Hachiman Hikigaya said goodbye to his sister Komachi, rode his bicycle to the school parking shed, parked it, and stepped into the classroom door. Under his signature dead eyes and poker face, he was feeling so ashamed that he felt he was about to explode.
The story began the night before . Hikigaya Hachiman sat cross-legged on the bed editing an email. His hands quickly pressed the keyboard of his mobile phone. He would think carefully for a while after typing out a few lines, delete some parts and type again. Like an online writer who can't write but still insists on writing, he racked his brains to choose words and sentences, and the process was naturally making him extremely constipated.
The person that Hachiman is so entangled with is called Orimoto Kaori. She is one of the few junior high school classmates of Hikigaya Hachiman who can chat with him. For this reason alone, Orimoto can be called a genius. In the eyes of most classmates who know Hikigaya Hachiman, being able to chat with Hachiman normally is already a special ability.
At this time was because he thought that the relationship between him and Orimoto should be taken a step further, and the content he edited was naturally a love confession letter.
Hikigaya's childhood was extremely lacking in the companionship and care of his peers . His birthday was on August 8th , which was during the summer vacation , so no classmates would celebrate his birthday or give him a surprise in class. Hachiman practiced the expression of surprise for a long time, but it never came in handy.
The debuff of Hikigaya Hachiman were his dead fish eyes , which directly caused his classmates' perception of him to gradually develop from " who are you? " to disgust. During a bonfire party in elementary school, all the girls thought he was disgusting and refused to dance with Hikigaya Hachiman. No one liked to look at his dead fish eyes, and naturally, bullying began.
Perhaps it was because of this dead fish eye that others were a little afraid, and the bullying that Hikigaya Hachiman suffered did not escalate to physical confrontation. Instead, it was cold violence such as deliberately ignoring him, calling him by the wrong name, or giving him some insulting nicknames.
After entering junior high school, the situation did not get better. Hikigaya Hachiman's problems are three-in-one. He is discriminated against and bullied because of his lack of social skills and dead fish eyes. Because of the discrimination and bullying, he is withdrawn. Because of his withdrawal, his relationship with his classmates and social standing are even worse.
To sum up, Hikigaya Hachiman, who was promoted to the second year of junior high school in this way, finally met the first girl in his life who could communicate with him normally - Orimoto Kaori.
" She actually wanted to exchange email addresses with me ! She actually replied to the emails I sent her! Is there really a girl in the world (other than Komachi) who is so nice to me? "
Hachiman roared in his heart. He regarded the etiquette in normal interpersonal communication as a great blessing.
However, in reality, Orimoto is just a carefree club idol. She is willing to chat and exchange email addresses with any classmates. Hikigaya Hachiman is just one of the countless classmates who chat with Orimoto Kaori every night. And because Hachiman always makes chatting with classmates as grand as the first blind date of an older virgin male, it takes a long time to think about sending an email, so Orimoto doesn't have much impression of him.
But it doesn't matter, Hikigaya Hachiman is about to do something that will make Orimoto Kaori remember him for the rest of her life.
Whether the email confession was not solemn enough, too frivolous, or unable to make the other party feel sincere, these were not problems for Hikigaya Hachiman. Before his dream was completely shattered, he always believed that he and Orimoto were heading in a two-way direction.
" Hello, Mr. Orimoto. After meeting you , the fire in my heart was ignited by you, so please help me put it out. I am really powerless on my own. "
The words filled with the emotions of a junior high school boy appeared on the screen of Hikigaya Hachiman's mobile phone.
This was certainly not his original sentence. Since Hachiman couldn't utter a few words after trying for a long time, he had to use the famous confession line from Dazai Osamu in "The Setting Sun".
This is a double insurance for Hachiman. If Orimoto can understand what he means, that would be great. If not, Hachiman plans to just brush it off and let it go. He was impulsive about confessing his feelings, and if he ruined the friendship that he worked so hard to build (as Hachiman thought), it would be a loss. So Hikigaya Hachiman did not plan to edit the content of the email to be very straightforward.
With an excited heart and trembling hands, Hikigaya Hachiman clicked the send button.
... ...
Kaori Orimoto really couldn't understand what Hikigaya Hachiman meant by this.
She is not a literary girl, and socializing takes up most of her spare time, but this does not prevent her, who has normal aesthetic ability, from thinking that this sentence is very pleasant.
Is this Hikigaya-san so talented in writing? This sentence sounds like a sentence written by a great writer.
Kaori Orimoto wondered in her heart. She decided to look up this sentence on Google to see what Hikigaya-san was up to.
" From Dazai Osamu's "The Setting Sun" ... Comparing the love in one's heart to a flame ... There is also a hint of passion in the shyness ..."
Kaori Orimoto repeated the analysis she found, and her expression became more and more complicated.
" Is this Hikigaya-san confessing his feelings to me? "
Kaori Orimoto looked through some more analyses and became more certain of this guess.
" This is really a big deal. Hikigaya Hachiman actually likes me and confessed his love to me ?"
In addition to being shocked, Orimoto had a question: Who is Hikigaya Hachiman?
Of course, Orimoto didn't really forget about Hikigaya Hachiman, but what Hikigaya did today was too different from the impression she had of him, causing her to be unable to immediately match the person who sent her an email expressing his love for her in a love poem with Hikigaya Hachiman in her class.
" Hello, Hikigaya-san, I received your kindness. I think if two people want to be together, they still need to understand each other. Right now, I am not familiar enough with you. Let's get to know each other better in the future. Sorry. "
Kaori Orimoto was never a girl who liked to beat around the bush. She typed these words quickly, read them again, and replied directly to Hachiman Hikigaya.
She really didn't know why Hikigaya had feelings for her, but he had confessed his feelings to her after all, so she had to respond. She also expressed that she would continue to get to know him better. It was a perfect response.
Orimoto thought to himself, feeling proud of his excellent ability to handle tricky situations in interpersonal relationships.
... ...
Hikigaya felt as if was struck by a bolt of lightning.
He thought of countless reasons why Orimoto Kaori would reject him, such as she was too young and should at least wait until high school, and her current task was to study hard and she didn't want to fall in love for the time being. These were reasons to put the relationship on hold.
Or " I have someone I like " or " We are not suitable for each other " , Hikigaya does not think this kind of direct denial is unacceptable. His personality determines that he will not pester Orimoto. Although it will be a bit awkward if they meet again, they can still be friends.
But!! What the hell is this " not familiar enough " !!! Am I just a nobody in Orimoto's heart?! Is it hard for her to remember me even after I talked to her so much (he thinks so)?
Hikigaya collapsed . As a loner who essentially longs for communication, his biggest weakness is that he is not recognized at all.
What is " being recognized " ? Spend a sum of money on YouTube to send a super chat to a virtual anchor , and the anchor reads your ID and thanks you, this is being recognized. Post long and crude remarks under the anchor's Twitter day after day, and finally one day the anchor replies to you with a line of words, this is also being recognized.
When a person's desire to be recognized reaches a certain point, he will no longer be pure and kind, and he will use more sharp and more unsophisticated methods to gain recognition. Anyway, thanking him or insulting him is a way for him to be recognized, and the latter is easier. At this point, the person's psychology has become distorted.
Hikigaya Hachiman, who has been a loner for fourteen years, has gotten used to loneliness, but he is not willing to be alone. People are eager to express themselves and be recognized. But now the girl he most hopes to recognize him, Orimoto Kaori, is actually not familiar with him at all. He is not special, he is just one of the countless passers-by in Orimoto's life.
Suffering a huge blow, Hachiman fell into an endless cycle of self-denial. At the last moment, when he was unable to extricate himself from the dead end, his eyes went black, he fell on his back on the pillow, and fell into a peaceful sleep.
... ...
Hikigaya Hachiman opened his eyes, but the person inside him was no longer the same Hachiman.
" Is my soul traveling through time? "
(New) Hikigaya Hachiman muttered to himself as he looked at the completely unfamiliar room and body in front of him . He stretched out his hands, opened them, and clenched them, repeating the cycle. Then, he did something he hadn't done in a long time in his previous life, and he stood up from the bed.
In his previous life, he was in a car accident when he was a child and his legs became useless. Although his family tried hard to integrate him into the group, the discrimination caused by his physical disability was difficult to eliminate, so he was too lazy to waste his time on meaningless interpersonal relationships and became a completely lonely person.
He studied hard every day, and read or watched movies after class to enrich himself, thinking that it would be a good career to become a writer in the future.
In order to facilitate his short trips, his family bought him an electric wheelchair that can be operated with just one hand. For him, who cannot ride a bike or drive a car, this is a very addictive experience.
Until one summer vacation during college, when he was driving on a road he passed every day, his wheelchair suddenly ran out of battery and stopped in the middle of the road. Before he had time to think about when he became too lazy to charge his wheelchair frequently, he flew out of the wheelchair and fell in the middle of the road not far from his home.
" Damn it! My previous life ended in such a miserable way. "
Before the new Hikigaya Hachiman had time to feel sentimental about the passing of time, memories of his new body flooded into his brain like a tide causing him to pass out .
... ...
" ... So this is also a boy with a flawed personality, and he just experienced a one-sided breakup ... It's a bit tricky, and that Orimoto ... From these memories, it seems that she is a big mouth who will talk about this confession experience in her group ... Maybe she has already told others about it in an email ..."
After waking up he found out about the life of the person whose body he was occupying and the more he thought about it, the more desperate he felt about what would happen after he went to school which he felt were the thoughts of the person whose body he was in and if his own mind was overlapping with the new one and felt as if he had been this person his whole life. What made it even more worse was that it was almost time to go to school.
then
14- year-old Hikigaya Hachiman had no choice but to say goodbye to his new sister Komachi and ride his bicycle to the school parking shed, park it, and step into the classroom door. Under his signature dead fish eyes and poker face, he was feeling so ashamed that he felt he was about to explode.
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