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Link: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/my-high-school-yakuza-romantic-comedy-is-unlawful-as-expected-yoslcm.43571/reader/
Word count:76k
Chapters:48
Prologue
"Looking Back on High School Life"
by Hikigaya Hachiman, section 2-F
Society is but a lie, an evil. Those enthralled by it are constantly deceiving both themselves and those around them. They immerse themselves within the crowd of sheep, and wallow in the affirmation of their work by their bosses, in the pride earned from the fake congratulations of their colleagues and in the fake respect of their underlings. It is no wonder that High School life shares such facets with society, being the first institution in which children evolve into teenagers, and through it into adults.
High School is a miniature society, composed of hard workaholic bosses as teachers, colleagues who fake their congratulations and underlings who just are younger students that will give you as much sass as they can without caring. Everyone wants to be the Employee of the month, ensnared in a trap of their own making. Students are thus prisoners of a system that is society, even when they have not yet stepped into society.
They form bonds and tie themselves to others in cliques in order to keep themselves afloat, but when someone commits an unspeakable act they are quickly abandoned to drown, like the dregs of society. Rather than become a mechanism of society's ever-present grinding manifest, is it not better to become a self-dependent individual, an autonomous worker? Rather than neatly falling into society's desires, why not force society to come to terms with its own shortcomings by having it come to you?
Rather than a slave, a master of slaves would be better.
The only way to become such is to break free of society, and become something that stands beyond it. Only outside of the mechanism can someone find truth, honesty and righteousness.
Thus, looking back on High School Life, I, Hikigaya Hachiman can come to only one conclusion.
They are all fools playing foolish games.
The best way to win at such foolish games...
...is to not play them.
-
Shizuka Hiratsuka, his Japanese Literature teacher, was clearly angry. There was a vein pulsing on her forehead, her teeth were gritted, and she was clearly clutching on to his essay with a scathing look that meant she was inches away from crumpling and tearing it apart. She finished reading the essay and sighed in the end, letting her anger and tension go.
"Hikigaya," she said, "What was the topic of the essay?"
"Looking back on High School life," Hachiman replied easily enough. It was written at the very top of his essay too, just like his name. He knew he wasn't a true artistic talent of a writer, but even so he hadn't written the title so badly as to make it unreadable now, had he?
His professor nodded, her dark eyes narrowing on his essay as if it were filth and then dropping it down on the small wooden table between them. She sat on a plush sofa, her white lab coat definitely not part of the school's dress code, but clearly something she liked wearing.
"Then why does this read like some kind of anarchic manifest? Are you going around town spraying words against the system in the middle of the night?"
"I just wrote what I felt was proper for the essay," Hachiman said, valiantly defending his ideas with the strength of a wet tissue paper. He was going to fold the moment he was offered a chance out, of course, but the lady teacher didn't need to know that. Uh, Miss Teacher sounded way hotter than it had any right to be—
"Enough daydreaming," Shizuka exhaled curtly, somehow having lit a cigarette in the meantime. "Normally people would write about their past experiences, not about how to be successful while hating society." She smirked. "It's thanks to society that you get an education, after all," she rolled her eyes. "You're going to have to rewrite this, from scratch, and without any anarchic tendencies. Don't try taking ideas from the communist manifesto either, or I'll make you write it again."
"What is this, the Ministry of Love?" Hikigaya dryly quipped. The age did fit with his teacher, though. Maybe. Perhaps. How old was she anyway?
"Sure," Shizuka said without much preamble, cracking her knuckles together. "Want to see how much love I have in my body?" she smiled. It was not a kind smile. "Still," she exhaled a cloud of smoke, the cigarette in the corner of her mouth expertly moved as if she had practiced countless years for such a technique, "It's not like I'm angry."
Of course, because threatening body harm definitely meant that someone wasn't angry.
Her eyes seemed to center on Hachiman's face, "You haven't joined any clubs, have you?"
"I've got a part-time job," Hachiman answered truthfully enough.
"For someone so against society, you seem well-placed within it already," Shizuka said.
"Precisely because I'm well within it, I can rage against the machine," Hachiman replied with a knowing nod.
"Then, got any friends?" the professor asked next.
Hachiman remained quiet, and then shook his head. "I believe in equality. Everyone equally away from me is for the best."
"I see, I see," Shizuka nodded, and then triumphantly smirked, pointing a finger in Hachiman's direction. "You think you're better than anyone else because you're a tiny bit smarter, a tiny bit wiser, a tiny bit more mature. It's a common mistake of youth, to think they're all so wise and capable when they're just all children."
"Clearly when compared to you, the age is pretty much a guarantee of—"
A fist that was invisible due to its own speed passed an inch away from Hikigaya's cheek. If this had been an anime show, clearly there would have been a set of camera shots with sharp 'clack' noises from different angles, and his hair would have been sent in disarray through the movement of the air. That didn't happen, but Hikigaya's mind eye saw things as they should have gone, not as they had effectively been.
"I think I got your type," her eyes seemed to glaze over, half lost in thoughts. "The best way to deal with this...is for you to come in touch with your youthful side."
Hikigaya blinked. He didn't want to touch his youthful side. His youthful side didn't want to get touched by him either.
Hikigaya wasn't the kind of guy that liked being touched to begin with, so...
No touching the merchandise, please.
-
The bar in which Hikigaya Hachiman worked part-time didn't exist.
It wasn't that, on paper, there wasn't a bar. It wasn't that there wasn't a way to get a coffee, or water if one was unlucky enough to step inside without knowing where he had ended up. However, at the same time, this was the kind of place where people stepped inside knowing fully well what they were coming in for, and would leave satisfied and extremely drunk more often than not.
"You need your shifts adjusted?" the man behind the desk asked, his expression puzzled for the briefest of moments. "This Service Club thing...are they a competitor or something?"
The image of the raven-haired girl wearing one of the sleazy outfits of the other girls in the bar made Hachiman grin lopsidedly for just a slight instant, but then the face was soon joined by the character of said girl, and thus the image crashed down and burned, quite rapidly too, into ashes. "It's a school club. They're not a pachinko bar with sexy girls."
The man behind the desk nodded once, his expression smoothing over. "You know I'd hate to see you go over to the competition, Eight."
"I'm just a part-timer," Hachiman replied.
"Yeah, but you're a good part-timer!" the man replied with a chuckle, lighting up a cigarette with a quick motion. Differently from his teacher, who had used a cheap one hundred yen lighter, the guy in question used a matchstick. It made him look cool and refined. His words, not Hikigaya's.
"You didn't even interview me for the position," Hikigaya grunted. "No, actually, I didn't even want to work here."
"What? Now you're hurting me, Eight!" the man laughed. "We hit it off so well in the hospital too!" he patted his heart, a mock-sad expression on his face. "Still, I can rearrange your shifts, no problem."
Hikigaya bowed in thanks, and in order to leave and get back to his job behind the counter.
Mister Koi simply waved him goodbye from the desk, and returned to his favorite pastime.
Playing solitaire on the computer.
Link: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/my-high-school-yakuza-romantic-comedy-is-unlawful-as-expected-yoslcm.43571/reader/