The alarm clock went off.
The blaring sound caused Hachiman to jolt awake, clutching his blanket as he tried to register WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED.
"Fuck, I told Lil Pip not to set it off at such a time…" Hachiman silently admonished Lil Pip, a manservant who is under Hachiman's service.
"The sun is barely up… Normally, this would have been a great opportunity for me to enjoy the freshness of morning air," Hachiman commented. In the good old days, Hachiman was quite fond of jogging, although he had shown much disdain towards any other kinds of physical exertion.
"But too bad Joji Sorosu had to spoil it for us folks by monopolizing fresh morning air…"
On the other end of the town, a colossal factory is busy at work through its myriad of tubes and other types of suction devices— fresh morning air is sucked into the factory while synthetic air mixture is simultaneously churned out from it. The fresh morning air is then delivered to various middle-class households, where the freshness of nature is in huge demand especially given the post-apocalypse environment.
In heavily polluted areas such as Shanghai and Stockholm, the well-off individuals could bear to pay up to a dozen coin for 1 gallon of bottled air.
Although Joji's products raised much contention over its authenticity, his business fared extremely well due to the demand for nature's greatest gift. This makes Hachiman envious— he wanted to be a businessman just as successful.
And this is not simply for his hubris' sake.
In the world Hachiman lives in, businesses are not only the economic backbone of humanity, but also the only option for individuals to secure their freedom and chances of survival.
In the world Hachiman lives in, a person bereft of any financial value might be better off dead. For the government no longer provides handouts for the impoverished. For the government no longer provides retirement checks for pensioners. For the government no longer redistributes wealth in support of the weak and marginalized.
For there is no government.
The force of nature has relinquished whatever form of collective structure that moved humanity forward over the past few millennia.
