Chapter-1. The Night Before Disaster

Confession emails are, as it turns out, much harder to write than middle school essays about "My Summer Vacation." After all, essays don't carry the weight of potential public humiliation. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, fingers tapping at his phone screen with the urgency of a desperate novelist racing against a deadline, 14-year-old Hikigaya Hachiman was locked in a battle of willpower.

Type. Pause. Grimace. Delete. Repeat.

If this process had a physical form, it would probably resemble constipation.

The recipient of this literary tragedy-in-progress? Orimoto Kaori. A girl. A real girl. A girl who, astonishingly, could hold a conversation with him without wincing at his infamous dead fish eyes. For that alone, Orimoto could qualify for sainthood—or perhaps, a psychological study.

"She actually wants to talk to me. She even replies to my emails! Is there a deity I should be thanking for this miracle?!"

Such thoughts swirled in Hachiman's head, thick with delusion. He knew how his classmates saw him: a silent weirdo cursed with eyes that could suck the joy out of a birthday party (a hypothesis confirmed during his own summer-birthday tragedies). Yet here was Orimoto, chatting with him as if he weren't just another faceless NPC in the story of her life. Naturally, Hachiman interpreted this as a sign.

It was time to confess. And if the words weren't perfect, well, what better way to impress a girl than by quoting literary genius?

Hikigaya's childhood was extremely lacking in companionship and the care of his peers. His birthday was on August 8, which fell during 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 found him disgusting and refused to dance with him. No one liked to look at his dead fish eyes, and naturally, bullying began.

Perhaps because of his dead fish eyes, others were a little afraid, so the bullying Hikigaya Hachiman suffered did not escalate to physical confrontation. Instead, it manifested as cold violence, such as deliberately ignoring him, calling him by the wrong name, or giving him insulting nicknames.

After entering junior high school, the situation didn't improve. Hikigaya Hachiman faced a trifecta of issues. He was discriminated against and bullied because of his lack of social skills and dead fish eyes. Due to the discrimination and bullying, he became withdrawn. His withdrawal further worsened his relationship with his classmates and his social standing.

To sum up, Hikigaya, who had just been promoted to the second year of junior high school, 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 replies to the emails I send her! Is there really a girl in the world (other than Komachi) who is so nice to me?"

Hachiman roared in his heart when he received the email. He regarded the etiquette of normal interpersonal communication as a great blessing.

However, in reality, Orimoto was just a carefree club idol. She was willing to chat and exchange email addresses with any classmate. Hachiman was just one of countless classmates who chatted with Orimoto Kaori every night. And because Hachiman always treated these interactions as grand as the first blind date of an older virgin male, he took a long time to think about sending an email, leaving Orimoto with little impression of him.

But it didn't matter; Hikigaya was about to do something that would make Orimoto Kaori remember him for the rest of her life.

Whether the email confession was not solemn enough, too frivolous, or unable to convey sincerity, these were not problems for Hikigaya. Before his dream was completely shattered, he always believed that he and Orimoto were heading in a two-way direction.

"Hello, Ms. Orimoto. After meeting you, the fire in my heart has been ignited by you. Please help me extinguish it, for I am powerless on my own."

Yes. A line from Dazai Osamu's *The Setting Sun*. Romantic. Poetic. Utterly incomprehensible to anyone not steeped in post-war Japanese literature. This, Hachiman reasoned, was genius. If she got it, she'd fall for him. If she didn't, he could always feign intellectual superiority and say it was a joke. Foolproof, right?

With a trembling hand and the enthusiasm of a man diving headfirst into a pit of spikes, Hachiman hit "send."

... ...

Kaori Orimoto couldn't quite understand what Hikigaya Hachiman meant by his message. Though she wasn't particularly literary-minded and spent most of her spare time socializing, she still found the sentence he had written to be quite pleasant. 

"Is Hikigaya-san really that talented at writing? This sentence sounds like it was crafted by a great author," Kaori wondered to herself. Curiosity got the better of her, and she decided to look up the sentence on Google to see what Hikigaya was up to.

"From Dazai Osamu's *The Setting Sun*... Comparing the love in one's heart to a flame... There's also a hint of passion in the shyness..."

As Kaori repeated the analysis she found, her expression grew more complicated. "Is Hikigaya-san confessing his feelings to me?" she began to suspect, becoming increasingly certain of her guess.

"This is really significant. Hikigaya Hachiman actually likes me and confessed his love!" Alongside her shock, another question surfaced in her mind: Who is Hikigaya Hachiman? 

Of course, she hadn't truly forgotten him, but Hikigaya's behavior that day was so different from her previous impression of him that she struggled to connect the dots between the person who sent her a love poem and the Hikigaya Hachiman from her class.

"Hello, Hikigaya-san. Thank you for your kind words. I think if two people want to be together, they need to understand each other better. Right now, I don't know you well enough. Let's get to know each other more in the future. Sorry." 

Kaori was never one to beat around the bush. She typed these words quickly, reviewed her response, and sent it directly to Hachiman. While she was puzzled as to why Hikigaya had developed feelings for her, she recognized that he had indeed confessed his feelings, so she felt it necessary to respond. Her reply also expressed her willingness to get to know him better, which she thought was a perfect response. 

Feeling proud of her ability to handle such tricky interpersonal situations, Orimoto thought to herself.

...

"Not... familiar enough?!" 

Hachiman felt as if his world had crumbled at those words. He hadn't expected an enthusiastic acceptance—he knew he wasn't delusional. He could handle rejection if it came in one of the predictable ways: "I'm not ready for a relationship," "I like someone else," or even a simple "We're not a good match." Those were responses he could process.

But this? This was erasure. It felt like the kind of indifference that reduced him to a forgettable shadow in her life. 

"So that's it, huh? I'm just another NPC in Orimoto's grand social adventure. Forgettable. Replaceable. Unworthy of a name or presence in her memory."

The realization stung more than it should have. After all, Hachiman knew he wasn't special, but there was a difference between knowing that and having it shoved in his face with all the subtlety of a blaring air horn.

"Maybe I should've just sent a meme or one of those TikTok thirst traps. Anything would have been less humiliating than quoting Dazai Osamu."

And so, Hachiman did what any sensible middle schooler would do when faced with emotional devastation: he flopped back onto his pillow, closed his eyes, and surrendered to the sweet embrace of sleep.

... ...

When Hachiman woke up, something felt off. The lingering embarrassment from the previous night clung to him like a second skin, but it was overshadowed by a strange sense of disorientation. 

His body felt lighter, stronger—different. 

"Wait a second." 

He sat up and looked down at his hands. They were his, but at the same time, they felt unfamiliar, like trying on a new pair of gloves for the first time. He flexed his fingers repeatedly, then stood up with an ease that startled him. 

"I'm standing... without any pain?" 

It was only then that fragments of memories surged forward—memories that weren't his. They belonged to a boy named Hikigaya Hachiman: 14 years old, cursed with dead fish eyes, and plagued by an unfortunate confession to a girl who hardly remembered his name. 

The overwhelming influx of memories left him disoriented; for a moment, he couldn't distinguish where his own memories ended and those of this new body began. 

"...So this is how isekai protagonists feel. Except instead of dragons and swords, I get middle school drama. Fantastic." 

In his previous life, he had been in a car accident as a child that left his legs useless. Despite his family's efforts to help him integrate into social situations, the discrimination stemming from his physical disability was difficult to overcome. Consequently, he had grown distant, choosing to avoid meaningful interpersonal relationships and becoming a completely lonely person. 

He studied hard every day and spent his free time reading or watching movies, aspiring to become a writer in the future. To facilitate his short trips, his family bought him an electric wheelchair that could be operated with just one hand. This was a liberating experience for him, as he couldn't ride a bike or drive a car. 

Until one summer vacation during college, while 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 could think about how he had become too lazy to charge his wheelchair regularly, he fell out and landed on the road not far from his home. 

The flood of memories was enough to make him sit back down on the bed, rubbing his temples as he pieced things together. One thing became clear: this was his life now. Whether by divine intervention, karmic punishment, or a cosmic joke, he had been thrust into the role of Hikigaya Hachiman, dead fish eyes and all. 

And as if to mock him further, he realized it was time for school. 

... 

Resigned to his fate, Hachiman got ready for the day. After exchanging a quick goodbye with his new sister, Komachi—a girl who, by some miracle, didn't recoil at the sight of him—he grabbed his bike and set off. 

The ride to school was uneventful, though his thoughts raced faster than the wheels of his bike. He tried to make sense of his new reality, but all he could focus on was the dread of facing Orimoto again. 

"She's probably already told everyone. By now, I'm not just a background character—I'm the punchline to a joke I don't even want to hear." 

When he arrived at school, he parked his bike in the shed and trudged toward the classroom with the enthusiasm of a man walking to his execution. The door loomed before him, a portal to inevitable humiliation. 

Still, he stepped through it. He didn't have a choice. 

Inside, the usual hum of chatter greeted him, but Hachiman didn't dare make eye contact with anyone. He kept his face blank, his dead fish eyes attempting an impression of indifference, even as shame bubbled beneath the surface. 

"Just survive the day. That's all I have to do." 

With that mantra looping in his mind, he slid into his seat and stared out the window, wishing he could disappear into the clouds beyond.

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