September 22nd 2023, 9:13 AM

Katsomoto Koto is not necessarily a bad person. He has none of the overtly irritating qualities that would make me dislike him, such as arrogance, or smugness, or extreme and obviously fake modesty, or an insistence on retaining their own opinion. Essentially, this is me saying that I dislike all forms of extroversion. He actually possesses several personality attributes that I would tend to grudgingly admire; for the most part, he is blunt and honest about his opinion, defends it well and enforces it accordingly, and never descends into the hyperbole or the pandering of your average sycophant at Shogakukan Publishing. Ironically, it is exactly the fact that he is blunt and honest that I dislike him.

Reading back on what I've just written, you'd probably get the impression that I'm a misanthrope. After all, I did say that I hate people who compromise and pretend, while then contradicting myself by claiming that I also hate the polar opposite of this. And you'd be absolutely right in thinking that. I am, undoubtedly, a misanthrope. There are only three people that I have loved, or still love, in my life. Yours Truly, Hikigaya Komachi, and her. And, just to spite him, you can be reassured that Katsomoto Koto is just about as far from establishing himself on that list as humanly possible.

You see, I realised very early on in my stint as a light novel author (bearing in mind this was when I actually had inspiration) that you quickly become to perceive every comment about your work as a personal insult. Negative review in the paper? That's slander. Positive review on a blog? That's probably also slander. Praise for my 'writing talent' from a fan? So impossibly wrong. Deserved critique of the fact I can't meet a single fucking deadline from my editor? Yeah. That's the worst, most slanderous piece of slander that ever crossed a man's tongue. I really should call my lawyer. Not that I even know the guy's name.

But- and how pathetic is this- Koto Katsomoto is also probably one of the few people I genuinely trust. His advice, or his words at least, are not as flimsy and easily blown away that they remind me of playing card pyramids. Those kind of words, the sheer, empty ones, come from my fans, my critics, and a great many other people I wouldn't be able to name. If I relied on the texts of Katsomoto, which I often do, their foundations would not crumble at my touch, but would hold firm, because I know they have that cementing honesty. Sometimes, they hurt, yes. Sometimes, they are jagged and draw blood, but I'd rather they draw blood than fail to scratch the surface.

Yet after our texts on the 19th, I really despised him. Sincerely and deeply. Really really fucking despised him. If that conversation had been conducted in person, my fist would've landed firmly in his (incidentally very snub) face. I don't need to be told that I'm not okay. I don't need to be told that the life of Hikigaya Hachiman is more of a colossal, wasting wreck than the fucking Titanic. I don't need to be told than when it's night and I'm obviously not sleeping, I feel so tired and exhausted with everything that it's like I really am aboard the Titanic, with water surrounding me like a veil of sapphires, and I swear I can hear a melancholy symphony of violins, announcing my inevitable drowning like a king's fanfare.

Sometimes, a lie is the most beautiful thing that can bless your ears. Not the kindest, or the right thing. Not even close. But still beautiful. I've learnt that lesson a great many times, from a great many different people, so don't go feeling special about yourself, Katsomoto Koto.

You know what else can be beautiful? Melancholy. Yet another contradiction in the huge, overwhelming contradiction that is humanity. Sometimes, melancholy can be wonderful, because it can inspire you to improve yourself or better the life of another, or help you to get in the zone for a chapter. Melancholia is a poignant fuel for any author, as the strongest emotions are the best to feed off, and there's none stronger than sadness. You can write for hours and hours and hours if you're feeling something, even if that something isn't generally perceived to be good.

I'm melancholy pretty much all the time, but I remember the melancholy that I felt at the beginning of New York impossibly clearly, like the feeling was bottled within me as the finest of wines, ready to be uncorked and enjoyed again at a moment's notice. It was soft, like being wrapped in a duvet of musing, made hot by the temperature of the equally boundless musings in your dreams. I felt it from the view at the top of my apartment, and even stronger throughout the first three days.

You know what I did for those first three days? Absolutely fucking nothing. And my God, it was the most perfect nothing I've ever enjoyed in all my days. I spent hours wandering through the labyrinthian streets of New York, taking in every sight and face that walked past, observing but not enjoying or judging. Just looking. A lot of the time, it feels like I live the entirety of my life balanced ungracefully on the periphery of that very life, and that was certainly true for those hours. I was the ghost chained to the lamp-post at six o'clock in the evening, flickering faintly as if I and that burning yellow light were the very same entity. I was the speck of dust blown up by the workman's drill repearing an imperfection on the tarmac of a main road.

In short, I wandered around and found things. Most of the stuff I found was stuff I could've found back home in Chiba, but there was no discrimination in the profundity of my enjoyment. There was, however, one little place that I kept on coming back to, over and over again. Once, in the second day I think, I spent something like six hours there, again doing very little and absolutely revelling in doing very little.

The cafe was called Pirelli's. It was tucked away in some obscure turn off from a Manhattan road that I can no longer bring forth to memory, but the cafe itself, in contrast, has aged within my mind incredibly well, and I can still feel it's old wooden tables and taste the strangely scintillating aroma of its coffee, fossiled on my fingertips and around the edges of my nostrils. It was hilariously quaint, with a painted sign that was beginning to curl and fall down to the pavement, and waiters that could barely speak a word of English and definitely weren't Italian, but that worked fine for me as studying English in class, let me tell you, is a whole different gig to speaking it. Thinking about it right now, my preparation for that trip was unbelievably dreadful. It's a wonder I even survived. In fact, it's a wonder anyone manages to survive, regardless of situation or appearance or nationality. Not even an optimist can deny that, throughout history, humans are universally linked by suffering.

My favourite spot in Pirelli's was right in the corner, as this was the best spot for what quickly became one of my favourite pointless pastimes while at the cafe: watching all of the other customers. The corner was the perfect angle, for I myself was obscurred from the view of the other tables by a pillar, but by leaning slightly to the right, I'd be granted a full and joyfully intrusive view of them without they themselves being granted a joyfully intrusive view of me. I could spy on them without shame and without restraint. Perfect. I would always get one of two coffees; one, an Americano in celebration of my current location, and two, a latte in celebration of my fabulously brilliant taste. In my hand would be the light novel or the English language book I bought from a second hand bookshop after much gesticulation with the owner, and was attempting in vain to understand.

Heh. I think you're probably beginning to see where all of this nonsense about New York began to inspire Love and Coffee. Let's see: we have a cynical, disillusioned main character trapped in a society that he confesses to abhor, with an irrepresible urge for coffee, and a favoured cafe by which to drink said coffee. Volume One of Love and Coffee was structurally very simple- three encounters with three other girls who attend Etsuji's highschool, all of which also come to the cafe regularly for their own personal reasons. Each of them have a base dilemma which, Etsuji being the reluctantly helpful individual that he is, he helps to try and resolve before the volume is over, growing closer with all three as it progresses. Hilarity, misunderstandings and various degrees of idiocy ensue. Of course, the ending was already a foregone conclusion. The dillemmas aren't resolved, thus giving Etsuji further reason to talk to them in later volumes and more development for the pairings.

Of course, I'm saying all this presuming that, if one was to read this recount for whatever reason, they'd be doing so with previous knowledge of Love and Coffee. The similarities will be breathtakingly apparent to one who did, and to be brutally honest, I can't be bothered to waste time filling in any more blanks for those without that knowledge. Go and read them (effectively giving me more money) if you want to understand my ramblings to a more intrinsic degree. It was in Pirelli's that, for the first time, I saw Yukinoshita Yukino. The fourth day of my trip to New York.

Unfortunately, writing of Love and Coffee has only served up a painful reminder that I shouldn't be writing about Love and Coffee instead of assuming the identity of Nagatomo Etsuji once more. In a paltry attempt to lend routine to a life abysmally lacking in it, I tend to fail in making progress on Love and Coffee in the morning, usually from ten to twelve o'clock. It's five past now, so I'm procrastinating already. I was procrastinating by writing this at all.

What's more, I am melancholy, as we previously established is the normality, but that melancholy is not of the strength required to write, nor even appropriately think, of my love.

God. I was just thinking about how much I fucking hate Nagatomo Etsuji. What does that tell you?


SCHEDULE OF HIKIGAYA HACHIMAN: DO NOT IGNORE

Monday 20th September 2023: Write Love and Coffee. Remember to tweet about the new Love and Coffee merchandise again. Phone Komachi. Try to get some damn sleep.

Tuesday 21st September 2023: Write Love and Coffee. Call Katsomoto? Phone Komachi. Try to get some damn sleep.

Wednesday 22nd September 2023: Write Love and Coffee. Phone Komachi. Try to get some damn sleep.

Thursday 23st September 2023: Write Love and Coffee. Phone Komachi. Try to get some damn sleep.

Friday 24th September 2023: Write Love and Coffee. Remember to tweet about the new Love and Coffee merchandise again. Phone Komachi. Try to get some damn sleep.

Saturday 25th September 2023: Write Love and Coffee. DEADLINE FOR PHONING KOMACHI, IF YOU DON'T DO THIS YOU ARE THE MOST EVIL FUCKING PERSON ON THE PLANET, FUCKING CALL HER, IT HAS BEEN TWO MONTHS. Try to get some damn sleep.

Sunday 26th September 2023: Home interview thing. Write Love and Coffee. Try to get some damn sleep. If previous deadline is not met, phone Komachi.