When I woke up in my bed that morning, I was still feeling kinda sleepy.
I had nothing in particular to do that day—no games that I wanted to play, no books I wanted to read badly enough to make me shake off my weariness and win against the urge to sleep. I had no reason to get up, and there was nothing I could do about that. Once I’d decided to give in, all I had to do was let my weary brain have its way, and I soon drifted off again.
By the next time I woke up, there couldn’t have been more than a few minutes left until the afternoon. My tiredness was gone, and now I was thirsty. I sat up in bed. After looking at the clock, I reckoned that I’d slept a whole nine hours. Looks like it’s yet another day of me being a good for nothing, I told myself.
The thought made me feel uncomfortable, so I headed to the washbasin to wash my face.
The air was bitingly cold as I stepped out of the heated room. I was a bachelor living alone in a wooden, single-story house that must have been built around 1960. My grandfather, a college professor, had originally chosen it as a place to enjoy his retirement, so it had been renovated when he’d left his job. The place had previously been occupied by a quiet old couple. On the surface, the house still looked to be in fairly good shape, but unsurprisingly, it had begun to creak rather loudly as of late. Though that wasn’t an immediate concern, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live here my whole life.
I wasn’t feeling hungry, but I had to do something with the leftover rice I’d cooked yesterday. I took what was left in my rice cooker and made it into chazuke—rice tea soup.
While my food digested, I turned my attention to an online game I’d been playing recently and caught up with the community. I was beginning to get bored of the game, but it would be good enough for killing time for a while yet. Ever since I’d quit my job to become a no-lifer, I’d found myself with far too much time on my hands. A way to fill the endless days was just what I needed.
When I logged on to the game, I found it empty—it was the middle of the day, after all. So, I went back to another game I’d bought a month earlier. Since I’d already cleared it, all that remained were some required tasks for one hundred percent completion, but it had been an enjoyable game and those tasks were fun in their own way.
Back when I had a job, the time between game release cycles felt too short compared to the little leisure time I had, and the list of games I’d wanted to play would continuously grow. Once I’d quit my job and turned my life into nothing but free time, however, I’d rapidly cleared that backlog. Now, the long wait for release cycles was agonizing.
Once the sun was setting, I logged on to the online game again. After taking a break to eat dinner and take a bath, I played until around 3 a.m. By that point, I was tired, so I went to bed.
My bank balance barely declined because I lived such a simple life. It meant that I felt no sense of urgency, and each lazy day that passed was no improvement over the one before.
As fun as it was, I felt as though some part of my mind was blurry, and as though my life carried the sweet yet putrid odor of rotting fruit. It was a vaguely unpleasant feeling, but I was reluctant to break free from this dormant state and once again give everything my all. I simply trusted myself to the abundance of time, and I soon fell asleep.
✧✧✧
When I woke up the next morning, my mind felt unusually sharp and alert, as though I couldn’t have possibly slept a single minute longer. I checked the clock on the wall and found that it wasn’t particularly late. I had to conclude that my physical fatigue had lined up nicely with my body clock to allow me some good quality sleep.
After washing my face, I decided against sitting in front of my computer desk like always—it seemed a waste to stick to my sluggish habits on a day when I had such a spring in my step. I figured I’d head out somewhere to make the most of this day of strange energy.
There were a few consumables that I needed to top up. I could have just ordered everything online, but I didn’t mind going out for a walk. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do anyway.
I slipped on a jacket over my sweater, slid open my front door, and stepped outside.
The sky looked too clear to be considered winter, and the air was warm too. After a slight pause, I went back inside and took off the sweater that I’d been wearing under my jacket before going back out again.
Deserted shopping centers certainly held a lot of charm, but they had an atmosphere that somehow pushed people away. Maybe crowded, thriving stores looked more welcoming than empty ones. As a socially awkward guy with no real desire to get to know the staff, I felt a little uncomfortable in mom-and-pop stores. You know, the ones where the customer service was dependent on the owner’s good nature.
The problem with people was that whenever they met someone new, they seemed to want to classify them somehow. They’d generally ask what you did for a living, and as someone unemployed, that might have been what put me off.
All of this meant that rather than supporting the local business, I was heading for a small shopping center that was within walking distance.
As I moved away from my residential area, which was near a mountain, I approached the more densely populated urban area.
The people here were productive individuals who worked honest jobs every weekday. I used to be just like them, so the idea of living a respectable life wasn’t alien to me—I simply had no desire to go back.