Summary: A treatise on Hikigaya Hachiman's mind, an essay depicting his life in response to the question, "What do you think of yourself?"
Characters: Hikigaya Hachiman, minor Shinomiya Kaguya
Rating: K
Tags: slice of life, essay
Disclaimer: Characters are property of Watari Wataru, ponkan8, and Akasaka Aka.
Hikigaya Hachiman is a terrible person.
That statement could be read with sarcasm; it could be stated. It is most certainly a point of contention and perhaps an opinion. But it is nonetheless true in any way one might speak. Source: Me, Hikigaya Hachiman.
The reasons as to why I think such of Hikigaya Hachiman, however, cannot be listed nor numbered. There are too many marks to count, and not many in favor of him. But then again, if you ask anyone, I guarantee you that not a single one will tell you there is good in me. Not even my best friend, Shinomiya Kaguya would say so.
Now, I know what you might be thinking: that name sounds oddly familiar. Like, really oddly familiar. As though you may have seen it on the internet, in a news article, on a window, or perhaps on a street sign, or even on television. And you would be correct if you thought of any of those things.
Shinomiya Kaguya is the foremost daughter of the conglomerate of the same name, after all. Isn't that scary? It is, isn't it. Trust me, it gets eerie when you actually know her and struggle to contain yourself; half of these "smiles" are mock pouts and hints of puffed cheeks just carefully manufactured into ideal images.
It wouldn't do to have Shinomiya Kaguya look out of place, would it.
How do I know such a person? Ah, well, that's a secret. One you might get to know eventually. Anyway, let us return to the topic at hand: Hikigaya Hachiman is a terrible person.
Question: Why is that a point that must be stressed? Answer: Because no matter how much I do, it does not make up for the things I've done. I simply move on from my mistakes and my problems. It does not make me "better." It just makes me different.
You might be wondering then, who is a good person.
And I would say to that: no one. But that's also another topic for a different paper. This one is about me, myself, and I. And as many teenagers are, I am full of self-loathing and doubts, and questions about who I am and where I belong.
Kaguya has no qualms about reminding me of such. Her place in this piece is well warranted; I must include her in this discussion because to exclude my single friend is to exclude the largest part of my life. Shinomiya Kaguya's role in defining me is to remind me of how human I am.
According to her, I am the subsequently named things: I am someone who is bright, but not a genius; I am someone who has talent but lazes about rather than making use of it. I am not someone who is handsome, but I possess attractive qualities about myself, in spite of my mediocre appearance. I have more than four humors, though some of them are not family-friendly. Above all, I am someone who wants more than I have but does not want many of the things I hold.
My friend reminds me of my imperfections just by existing but her very existence also gives me elation; she is not afraid to attack me nor is she above reproach in spite of her station. She is proud and fierce when she must be and yet she is humble and capable of taking insults to the face without batting an eye. There are hurdles she faces that I can never understand, much like she will never even come close to absorbing the idea of my middle-class poverty relative to her wealth.
Her worldview does not coincide with mine, and for that, I am grateful. But what does intersect is our lives. Shinomiya Kaguya laughs like any other child, gets angry like any normal human, gets upset and distraught when her plans go awry. She is not perfect. She is not immortal. She is not impartial. But she charges on.
I believe they call people like this "winners."
And I am not one of those people. Yet I have every resource to do it. That is not to say that I am a statue or immobile, that I am incapable of progress. But rather, I allow progress to come to me than permit myself a wade in that river.
Irrespective of those efforts, life goes on; that long and winding road never ends, to be frank, and many of those paths are thorny with no strawberry fields forever. There are many times where it's just a hard day's night and many nights where I have turned to Kaguya and told her, "I want to hold your hand." Just a squeeze to validate the fact that everything is real. That everything is in my ears and in my eyes.
I give up often before I can begin, and that weakness in heart, mind, and soul, is part of the reason I think so lowly of myself and why I can never win against my best friend's paramour. I can never look her in the eye and tell her I want her for myself.
And yet I stay by her side and torture myself into helping and hurting her chances with said paramour all the time. Why I am in this position, I do not know. But what I do know is that I am the source she approaches most often, even though she has a personal servant who attends to her every need and whim. Perhaps it is because like said paramour, I am of the male species. Whatever this weakness might be, it is exploitable - therefore, it is being exploited. With this one simple fault, I have become the one with more leverage in this relationship in spite of the balance of power being tipped on her end of the scales.
As I said before, Hikigaya Hachiman is a terrible person. Source: me.