V1C5

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I guess you could say the third time’s the charm as I

finally woke up in a hospital bed. It

was snowing outside the window. It

didn’t seem like much time had passed since I ate the raw pig liver.

The hustle and bustle around me passed through my

brain, and I kept staring at the ceiling like I had lost my soul. After a while, my mother came into the ward

and said something to the effect of “How long are you planning on sleeping? Get a hold of yourself.” before quickly

finishing her formalities and headed home.

When I finally got up, I looked at the IV tube and air

conditioning equipment, and noticed that this world just has a lot of things. On a small desk nearby were gifts from some

friends. I picked up a box of sweets and

glanced at the Japanese written in fine print.

How many days have I slept

like this? No other period in my life

will ever be able to surpass what I’ve felt over these past few days.

Only the sense of loss

remained in the hospital bed.

After my examination, I was told I could go home.

I was alone on the way back. The world appeared to be celebrating

Christmas, but it didn’t matter to a

non-normie like me. As soon as I heard

the train departure melody, it felt like my entire being was crushed by the

reality that I had returned to my everyday life. When I came to my senses, I was already wiping

the tears with my sleeves.

My life had changed.

Due to being hospitalized, I was unable to take the

required exams and was definitely going to be forced to repeat a year.

But it wasn’t all bad.

When I tweeted about the fact that I was hospitalized and forced to

repeat a year because I ate raw pig liver, I was able to satisfy my desire for

recognition by earning around 3,000 retweets and 5,000 likes.

Still, the pain of loss didn’t heal. I felt like my heart remained trapped in that

world, Mestria, to the extent that I would look for traces of Jess in shops and

newspaper corners during my travels.

Also, whenever I watch a romance drama now, I

immediately start crying. My otaku

friends really liked that, and my circle of friends gradually expanded. A video of me crying at a friend’s house

while watching an anime movie instantly got 50,000 retweets on Twitter. It received a storm of replies with comments

praising me, such as “He laughed normally,” “An unhateable otaku,” “It must be

fun to have this kind of person as a friend,” and “Seems like someone who could

become an Olympics announcer.”

Sure enough, otakus are not creatures that should fall

in love. While I was doing otaku

activities, I started believing that it was just a wonderful dream and ended

matters there. There’s no way a scrawny

four-eyed shitty virgin would ever get together with a cute, blonde, and

younger girl, even as a mistake.

However, I would like to say that at least as a

memorial, I wrote a novel about my adventures in Mestria and uploaded it to

Kakuyomu, an online novel posting site.

>TL Note: Kakuyomu is actually made by Kadokawa,

the parent company of this novel’s publishing company (Dengeki Bunko / ASCII

Media Works)

It seems like a decent number of people read the work

which described my oinking days with Jess-taso in a dignified and elegant

style, and it received some recognition.

You can even receive comments for each story, huh. I really appreciate everyone that read my

story.

Well, in conclusion, this is the last thing I wish to

convey to you all.

─Heat the pig liver.

Otherwise it’ll hurt, you’ll end up in the hospital,

and you’ll have a strange dream that turns your world upside down. It’s a painful experience, so be sure to cook

it before eating. You got that,

everyone?

I’ve said this many times before, but I’m not

kidding. Heat the pig liver.

Even now, there are times where I feel like my stomach

is going to be torn apart. Even though I

won’t ever know if she really existed, when I think about the girl that I’ll

never be able to see again, I can’t stop crying.

If you don’t ever want this

kind of experience, heat the pig liver.

Promise me.

One day, when March was

approaching and the smell of spring was in the air…

My Twitter account received a

message.

─I’ve read your

novel. If you don’t mind, may I DM

you? I would like to talk about the

contents of the story.

Looking at his profile, he

appeared to be living a stoic otaku life as a working man. I wondered why he specifically wanted it to

be DMs, but I figured I would be able to hear his thoughts on my novel and

started exchanging DMs.

However, it was not what I had expected. He briefly mentioned the

novel’s story, and started asking if we could meet in person. He told me that it was important, and that he

would treat me to a parfait.

Perhaps it was due to my usual

otaku activities, but I wasn’t particularly against meeting people from the

internet. He sent me a photo of a

luxurious parfait that costed nearly 2,000 yen and invited me by writing “be

faithful to your desires.” So I ended up

going to meet that person.

On the day of the meeting,

three people showed up at the café. The

man I was in contact with had a long face, a beard, and wore a pair of black

glasses – he seemed to be a very kind-hearted otaku. He said he was a mechanical engineer. Next was a female college student – she was an otaku that had a short

bob hairstyle, wore red glasses, and appeared to smile a lot.

Lastly, we had a high school boy – he was light-skinned, wore thick

glasses, and seemed like a person that excelled at studying.

There were only glasses

wearing otakus.

Well, that’s fine. Talking to them while I ate my large parfait,

I learned that the three of them were very familiar with the contents of my

novel. No, it wasn’t just that. They started adding to the story on their own

and were talking about things that even I didn’t know about.

“The north declared independence

and are rebelling against the royal family-”

“The strength of the Yesma

hunters have grown considerably-”

“Nott was captured and sent to

an arena-”

I was thrown into confusion,

and it became a scene where I had to stop eating the parfait partway through.

I then finally realized that

these three otakus were claiming to be people that have returned from

Mestria. And for some reason, during

this conversation, Nott seemed to have become a super celebrity.

The bearded man told me that

in order to protect the Yesmas, they needed the pig’s strength. The revolutionist, Nott, needed the pig. I was in a daze, unable to tell whether this

was a dream, reality, or even just a joke.

But his words made me nod

involuntarily. His explanations made my

upper body lean forward. At his shocking

invitation, my hands clenched tightly.

Hot blood circulated through my body, heating my liver.

With a serious expression on

his face, he said.

“How about we return to Mestria together?”