September 26 2023: 9:56 PM

Right

Okay

Lemme just read where I got to last time so I can pick things up with an apparently seamless transition. As if it won't take me an age to write just one sentence.

In fact imma copy and paste the last line here so I dont constantly have to go back and check:

I didn't read any more after finishing the first entry. I closed her diary shut and I put it on my bedside table, abandoned with the half-hearted promise that its abandonment was to be permanent bacqeegqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqhunujgvqbeqg3qu

That last part is from when I fell asleep, and my face hit the keyboard. A rare thing nowadays.

Ok. I've just read the first entry to Yukinoshita Yukino's diary, written on the 4th February 2018, and I've just nodded off out of shame for peeking at something so personal. The shame is amplified by the simple fact that this person, who earlier that day I've seen have a breakdown in Pirellis, is clearly at one of her lowest points.

The next morning, I woke up in the Liberty Hotel room. The weather outside was mild and overcast, as was the case for most of my trip to New York. I remember how I'd accidentally left my window open and the cold air of the Big Apple had permeated all except the space beneath my duvet.

The proverbial elephant in the room was, without a doubt, the diary on my bedside table. It loomed there like a shadow across an otherwise idyllic family lawn- picket fence and all the rest.

My trip had been refreshing because it had successful banished all signs of troublesome realities. I'd spent my time wandering and dreaming and drinking coffee and generally concerning myself with nothing. The arrival of this diary, this disturbance, would have been annoying were it not so tantalising.

The single entry of her diary had read like the opening of a mystery novel. The first line- "My name is Yukinoshita Yukino"- was mundane and predictable, but with the evocative sight of her tears in Pirellis, it read like "Call me Ishmael" or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…".

An uncomplicated declaration of her name had become an irresistible opening hook. In spite of myself, I wanted to read more. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know Yukinoshita Yukino.

The care-free spirit in me, on the other hand, wanted this mysterious woman and her diary out of my life as quickly as possible. Perhaps it knew instinctively that this woman would latch onto my lungs like smoker's cough and, once she'd conquered them, never let go.

Either way, New York had emboldened said care-free spirit and thus it was that inclination which I obeyed. After getting dressed and ready for the day, I headed back to Pirellis. My hope was that Yukinoshita Yukino would come back once she'd realised the absence of her diary.

By midday, I was sitting back in my favourite seat in the corner, which allowed me both impenetrable privacy and a near perfect view of all the customers. Of course, I was hoping it would give me a near perfect view of one customer in particular.

Not a very inspiring plan, to wait at Pirellis in the hope she came back, but what else did I have? I could read more of the diary and see if she mentioned an address, but I'd already decided not to intrude on her writing any further. The notebook hung restlessly in my large coat pocket, silent but demanding.

For awhile, all I did was sit there, vainly hoping and vainly waiting, guzzling lattes like, well, like a coffee addict. I recalled how she'd been drinking peppermint tea yesterday, and decided that it suited her. Or that it suited the ignorant impression of her I'd gleaned from the first diary entry.

And what had I gleaned from her diary entry? Her name was Yukinoshita Yukino. She had Japanese/American dual citizenship, and her choice to write the diary in Japanese and her formal voice and her ultra-rigid style told a specific story. This was a woman caught between two worlds. She was stranded in a metropolitan sprawl that didn't feel like home, but knew with instinctive certainty that Japan wouldn't feel like a home either.

She worked at Whitecross Publishing and was a successful career woman; a success that completely alienated her from colleagues. Or maybe that was just her natural state. Loneliness seems to gravitate towards some people like moths to a lightbulb.

Oh, and she wanted a cat. And she hated the fact that she was writing a diary.

I don't blame her. Writing a diary is the surest form of evidence that you have no one to talk to.

I wouldn't know anything about that, would I? Of course not. This is a recount, Computer-Chan.

Fucking hell.

Yukinoshita Yukino. Yukiyukiyukiyuki.

That's a pretty good visual representation of the way her name was echoing in my head. Anyone else who, like me, is frequently a victim of their curiosity will know the struggle.

It was an urge I gave into. Just like I was succumbing to another coffee, I reached into my coat pocket and took out the diary. That damn book.

'Purchased from Staples' was all it said on the front cover. No hint of who it belonged to until you opened it to the first page. No hint of the impact it would have on Hikigaya Hachiman, or any old sucker who'd picked it up, until you started reading.

And read I did, because I was still holding out for the mysterious woman's return, and if she walked in I could just put the diary away. She wouldn't see me reading it because of the angle of the table. No one would think twice about me reading some random notebook. I could browse her histories, her hobbies, her feelings, and no one would care.

No one except me. I cared about what I was reading. I read more and more, the same way you read a page-turning thriller at the airport, and in turn began to care more and more and more about Yukinoshita Yukino. Like any good book, I got more invested. The more I learnt about her character, the more I found her entrancing.

Coffee disappeared down my throat as I gobbled up the insights into her life. My eyes moved avidly across the pages as I learnt about her family- Yukinoshita Haruno and all the rest.

My mind raced as she told me, unbeknownst, about all the secret things she told no one else, because she had no one else to tell. Her love of a plushie toy called Pan-san. Her favourite cat breeds- Turkish Angoras and Russian Blues. Her once teenage pipe-dream to change the world.

Hours must have passed as I became intimately acquainted with Yukinoshita Yukino, all without ever seeing her face, or hearing her voice. All the while being sat in a coffee house with a latte at arms length. Even if she had walked into Pirellis, I doubt I would've noticed. There could have been an earthquake going on outside and I wouldn't have noticed.

All in all, it must have been four hours or so. Enough for me to get through more than three quarters of the diary. That's with me re-reading passages- she wrote a lot, and in an intensely formal cadence that demanded you paid attention to every minuscule letter. And I had no qualms doing so, just as I had no qualms committing time to my favourite light novel series.

Four o'clock. That's when I stopped, a little breathless and with empty coffee cups languishing on my table like casualties in a drawn out war. The diary had conjured a notion of Yukinoshita Yukino so fierce, so lifelike, that she may as well have been sat opposite me, across the battlefield.

I looked at that conjured notion the same way I'm looking at the conjured notion of her in my bedroom. Tonight, as I'm writing, I am once again imagining her stood there, at the foot of my bed, her hair like twisting black twine, her eyes like blue spotlights.

One thing that I'd read in the diary, above all, stuck out to me. It was an entry whose date I can't recall, nor any of the entries around it. Only this episode. I think it was the episode that made me realise that the 'character' I was reading about, this Yukinoshita Yukino, was in fact not a character. She was a real person.

She'd been talking, in that strange and lilted formality of her's, about her favourite place in New York. Or put more precisely, the only place in New York that she liked. So often the city was the focus of her frustration, citing its enormity, its inhabitants, but this place alone was removed from her antipathy. Even more than her actual apartment.

It was a forgotten little viewing platform on the side of the East River, not far from Brooklyn Bridge. Virtually no one but the most informed locals knew about it, due to the way it was sandwiched inbetween two buildings. Yukinoshita herself only discovered it on an aimless walk, like Alice discovering Wonderland.

And truly, she saw it as her Wonderland. Not quite the strange and unsettling world down the rabbit hole, but wonderful all the same. It was quiet and nonplussed with the roar of the city, overrun with moss that infected the concrete platform and the view of the churning East River was soulful and soothing.

Most importantly, it was all but deserted, and anyone lonely enough to write a diary would find that a treat. She frequented the platform whenever she was feeling less than her best, which as I quickly learnt from the diary was nigh on constantly, despite her many efforts to hide it.

Yukinoshita Yukino would always frame her sadness like this: Today has proven itself to be a day of innumerable tedious irritations, all of which have contributed to me feeling slightly under the weather.

She could never say it. She could never admit to herself that her days felt more like a jumbled assortment of moments, all of them amounting to nothing, than a 'day'. Part of the reason the diary became so absorbing to read, and so sad, was because it became the narrative of a woman who couldn't admit to herself that being alone, as she had always been, was making her miserable.

If Yukinoshita Yukino's strangely infantile denial, far below her intelligence and icy wit, reached a point of snap in one of her 'Wonderland' entries. If writing in that moss-ridden retreat, looking at the East River, she would always find the time for more honesty. I can't bring back the words from my memory- not with any accuracy- but I can try.

I know how Yukinoshita Yukino writes better than anyone. I feel fairly certain it went something like this:

While it is most distasteful to me that this recount has deviated so frightfully from its original purpose, I would like to take the time to say that, if it has become a diary, I will not deny as much any longer. I will use a diary for the same reason that everyone uses a diary, and vent, because at this point I have many things to vent about.

In the same way I am forced to admit that this document has become a diary, I am now forced to admit that

That looking at my life for what it is, it resembles very little what I would wish a life to resemble.

It is either too long or too short, too tiring or too comfortable, and with too many people or indeed too few. My prior interactions with other people have resulted in a life where talking to others is so frightening that I avoid it all cost, but so lonely without them that I hate myself for being so pathetic.

Other people are not frightening. They are just other people. But I have been mocked or ignored or judged too many times to feel that I am anything but alone in this world.

I am alone, and being too frightened to change that, I must go to sleep every night with the knowledge that wherever I go, Japan or America, Tokyo or New York, I will always be alone.

Because I myself can't change them, and no one else wishes too, and a person who lives such a pointless life as mine probably deserves their own loneliness.

How did it ever come to this? I can only concede that my eyes are watering up. Thankfully there is no one in the whole of New York who will see me, here on this little platform, and curse me for thinking that, because that isolationist mentality of mine is exactly the problem.

I am alone, with nothing but this diary. You are all I have.

Even if the rest was wrong, a reinvention it for my account, it's unquestionable that the last line I wrote was correct. Those really were Yukinoshita's words.

The memory of reading that line, as I sat in Pirellis, is one of those memory that lingers like a bloodstain on a T-shirt. The kind of stain you can never wash out.

After finishing up around three quarters of the diary, and leaving Pirellis, I spent the rest of the day walking. It was a walk no less aimless than the other walks I'd taken on my trip to New York, but processing everything I'd read disconnected me so deeply from my body that each step was taken on instinct.

Sunset crept up on the city as I, immersed in a headspace consisting of Yukinoshita Yukino's life alone, thought about what it all meant. What I was supposed to draw from her ramblings, and how they should impact me. Cars screeched and people whistled. I walked.

It's very true that, in essence, I never really stopped walking for the rest of my stay in New York. I could tell you that at some point in the twilight hours, I returned to The Liberty and fell asleep, but that would be pointless, as for the remainder of the trip my activity was in all essential regards the same.

For the second week in New York, all I did was think about what I'd read and, ever so slowly, a couple of entries a day so as to savour things her beautiful secrets, read the last quarter of the diary. Only the location changed. Sometimes it was the Liberty, sometimes it was a cafe, sometimes it was bus hopping.

That was a past-time I developed exclusively for the second-week in New York. At some point in the late morning hours, when the sun was beginning to approach its highest point, I'd catch a bus and just sit there. I didn't care where the bus was going. I'd ride it until it reached the very end of the line, with nothing but the diary in my possession.

Reading and thinking blended into one singular obsession, manifested in that two word Japanese name which became near omnipotent to me. Tourists and workers would hop onto the bus, sit in silence or ramble in hurried in English, and then jump off only to be replaced by the next. Myself, the New York avenues in the windows and the contents of those written pages were the only constants.

She finally wrote down the address of her apartment for some reason, but I never considered going. That would mean I'd have to give the diary back; I would never find out what happened next. I learnt new things about her: she was promoted at Whitecross (which only made her more unhappy), and she still never bought herself a cat.

At one point, during those days of bus hopping, I managed to fall asleep. The metallic clunks of the worn down bus had the same effect on me as a poorly made film. Who knows how long I was asleep for? I only woke up again because the bus driver shook me to say we'd reached the last stop.

Maybe if he hadn't, I'd still be asleep now. Maybe that dream of Yukinoshita Yukino had the potential to be endless, and without the grunted interruption of the driver I'd still be sat on that bus, lost in an orgiastic reverie with all the permanence of a coma.

Like many of the details from New York, I've used that dream as inspiration for Love and Coffee. Yes, I'm talking about the famous one from Vol 5 which all the fanboys have been wanking themselves off over, where Mei, Kagami and Akane all merge into one woman and Etsuji calls them 'beautiful'.

The 'real' dream, the one on the bus, was nowhere near as symbolic or profound or whatever utterly misplaced adjective they've been calling it as. The version in L and C Vol 5 isn't even intended as foreshadowing. It's just a poor replication of the original. Y'know, like the rest of Love and fucking Coffee.

All that happened in the original was that I saw three separate versions of Yukinoshita Yukino- the three most distinct 'iterations' of her that had emerged from reading the diary.

There was a Yukino sat in her apartment, staring at the wall and dreaming of taking on the responsibility of a pet. There was a Yukino marching through Whitecross, ordering her colleagues to work while they whispered rude rumours behind their back. And then there was a Yukino in Pirellis, hunched over her table, tears dripping down her face and onto the notebook.

Simultaneously, these three iterations turn and look at me, and I in the dream am unable to react as they stand, leaving the apartment and Whitecross and Pirellis, erasing the tears or the sadness or the anger, and approach me slowly. I, only half conscious, can do nothing as they kneel down, all three of them, and look me in the eye.

Suddenly, there are no longer three but one, Yukinoshita Yukino herself. They whisper something to me.

"You are all I have."

Then, I am woken up by the bus driver. Though the dream is only the symptom of my feelings and not the route, the evidence is there. The evidence of 'my feelings'. I have fallen in love. I am in love with this character in the background of my life. This 'Yukinoshita Yukino'.

How did it happen?

Is that not why you write a recount? To figure out the route, the answerable meaning, of what you are recounting?

As I'm typing, I

How fucking ridiculous. As I'm typing this, I suddenly feel calmer about these feelings of mine than I ever have before. Not once during the writing of Love and Coffee have I felt as at peace with the 'Yukinoshita Yukino' within me as I do now.

You want to know why, Computer-chan? It's because of that moronic, brain-dead fan fiction I read. 'A Latte Please (With A Hint of Love)'. Again, that's only the symptom of a broader truth. I'm talking about my fans.

How is Hikigaya Hachiman, falling in love with the Yukinoshita Yukino conjured from a story in a diary, any different from definitelynotetsuji? How is it any different to the all people who've read my light novels, made me a fortune, and fallen in love with the distorted fucking waifu of their choice?

Yukinoshita Yukino, Kanawa Kagami, Machiko Mei, Arakaki Akane… they're all the same person, really. The same miserable, pointless love, and the same miserable, pointless delusion.

Now I'm thinking about that home interviewer. Kawa-something or other. She said it, and she hit the nail on the head. She said that Love and Coffee is, at its heart, a sad story. How true. It's a pathetic, sad story about a person in love with a delusion. With the idea of a woman.

And a sad story, like happy stories and bittersweet stories and every kind of story imaginable, has to have an ending. This awful recount essentially ends with me leaving New York, and dreaming up the beginning of Love and Coffee Volume 1, but there's one final, sad chapter that needs to be written down. Things aren't complete without it.

Because you see, Yukinoshita Yukino's diary had an ending too. Not a traditional ending; the last entry was simply the last thing she wrote. The 'entry' she wrote in Pirellis, where once again, there was no one to see her being miserable. Except for me.

This time, I don't have to invent half the words, because I still have it. The last entry of Yukinoshita Yukino's diary was the only one I took with me. I ripped it out of the pages and carried it back with me from New York, because doing so felt absolutely vital. For both of us.

I don't like to read it very often, despite it being the last token of the woman I've shaped my life around, because reading it would ruin anyone's day, let alone mine. But just for the completion of my idiotic little recount, I'll write it out. The words need to be here. They were the words that brought everything together.

This is what she wrote in Pirellis. I can still see the blotted dots where tears fell on the page.

I have lost sight of something.

I cannot determine nor inform anyone what I have lost sight of. Only that I have lost sight of it. Things have never made sense because that is the nature of things, but now a key component within me does not make sense either.

It is me who is the problem. Not New York City, not my family, not even my colleagues at Whitecross. I have to confess that is has always been me who was out of place, who was wrong, who didn't make sense, and who needs changing or erasing.

I am lost.

No one's life means anything, but it appears to me now as I write in this unreadable scrawl where each word I leave on the paper is as meaningless as the next that my life has found its way to a special kind of empty nothingness and that there is no hope within me that it will ever not be this special kind of empty nothingness

I can't anymore

I just can't

I give up.

I don't have the energy to even make myself heard. I've never been in this cafe before, Pirellis, and I doubt I'll be coming back now that I've embarrassed myself in public like this. If there were anyone here to see me like this, I think I would never live down the

And that was it. That was where she broke off.

I read this on my last night in New York, at seven thirty. That was the exact time. I knew full-well that it was my last night. I'd planned to read the last entry on the last night because then I'd know the ending and, in theory, it would be too late to find her. I could keep my distance, and return to Chiba without my existence becoming little more than a shrine to her fictions.

I would read the last entry, and not be racked with guilt and another feeling that terrified me, and leave Yukinoshita Yukino behind as an admittedly large footnote to an admittedly horrible journey.

I

I


September 27th 2023, 1:11 AM

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

Answer: I'm sorry, the person you are calling is not available, plea-

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Rin-

Koto:

Hachiman: … Can I tell you a story?

Koto: … *long sigh* … What's the time, Hachiman?

Hachiman:

Koto: Well, since you're not answering, I'll tell you myself. It's 1 AM. Y'know what that means?

Hachiman:

Koto: It means that I'm tired and I want to sleep, largely because I've been wiping up the stupid mess which you call a home interview and which, by the way, was really shitty of you-

Hachiman: Can I tell you a story?

Koto: -like seriously, I asked you to do one thing Hachiman, one thing, which was to make my job easier for the first time in years, and you just went and-

Hachiman: Look Katsomoto-kun, can I tell you a story or not?

Koto: What, a… a story? Are you even listening to me? Oh who am I kidding, of course you're not listening, you never listen to anyone.

Hachiman:

Koto: Well, what is this fucking story, and why is it so urgent that I have to hear it?

Hachiman: … It's not a nice story. It's definitely not a romantic comedy. But I need to tell it. It's one of those stories that needs telling. And you're my editor. You're the one who tells me whether my stories are good or crap. Or you're supposed to anyway. We both know my shit is successful enough that people will tell me it's good regardless.

Koto: … Right, how much have you had to drink? Do I need to send someone ove-

Hachiman: I've only been drinking MAX Coffee, and don't you fucking dare send someone over. I'm just tired. Tired, and desperate to get this damn story of mine over and done with. I've given up writing it, so saying it aloud is now my only option. Once it's all out of my system, finally I… finally, I'll be able to do something else. Like write Love and Coffee.

Koto: So you admit you're not writing it at the moment-

Hachiman: How about this? I'll finish Vol 6 in the next month or something if you take the time to listen to me.

Koto: No you won't-

Hachiman: No I won't, you're right, but I'll try. That's the most important thing, right? I'll try if you listen.

Koto: … Fine. Deal.

Hachiman: Good.

Koto:

Hachiman:

Koto: …. Well? Are you gonna get on with it? I wasn't joking. I really am tired out of mind-

Hachiman: So am I. I haven't slept properly in weeks. I'm just trying to collect my thoughts.

Koto: What is this story anyway? Have you decided you're gonna be the next Tolstoy and started writing some grand realist masterpiece?

Hachiman: No. It's just a recount I've been writing.

Koto: What, like an autobiography?

Hachiman: *breathes in* … Something like that.

Koto: Well, get on with it.

Hachiman: … Okay.

Koto:

Hachiman: It's about a man. And a woman. Like most stories. But this man and this woman are different, and the reason they're different is that they're both deluded.

Koto: Deluded about what?

Hachiman: About each other. Actually no, that's not the right. Only the man. The man is deluded about the woman. The woman is just there. She just exists. The man is the only one who is deluded.

Koto: You're talking total crap-

Hachiman: -and this man and this woman don't really know each other. They only know each other through a book.

Koto: … A book?

Hachiman: Yes.

Koto: Whaddya mean, a book?

Hachiman: … I… Okay, she's… she's a writer.

Koto: A writer?

Hachiman: Yes. She's a writer whose written this book. This… well, she claims it's a work of fiction, but it's not really a work of fiction. It's an autobiography in the guise of a work of fiction. And no one knows this except the man, because… because they live near each other. He sees her everyday in this cafe. And they get the same bus. And they also go to work in the same building, but on different floors. But they don't know each other. Not really. He only 'knows' her because he's read this book that she's published, and really it's an autobiography, and because he's read it properly and sees all the links between the fiction and the woman he sees every day, he knows that this is her. This is the woman.

Koto: … So let me get this straight. This woman is a best selling writer. She's published a book that has strong autobiographical elements, but… but no one has realised this except the man? And he's only realised this because he sees so much of her in his day-to-day life without ever actually meeting her. Like… like a 'I know you better than you know yourself' kinda deal?

Hachiman: Yes. I suppose so.

Koto: Right. And what is this man, a stalker?

Hachiman: … No. But… but he's… he's obsessed with her. Because he's read this book of hers, and he can see that she's suffering, and for some reason no one else in the world can see it… She's become a part of his life. He can't get rid of her.

Koto:

Hachiman: What do you think so far?

Koto: I think this is an extremely contrived, half-baked story, and things would go much smoother if you just told me the truth.

Hachiman:

Koto: I don't know what this truth is, or when this story of yours happened, or even what the fuck you're talking about. But if you want to rant, then rant. If you wanna disguise it as 'telling a story', then sure. Just tell me the truth.

Hachiman: … Alright. Let me start again.

Koto: I'm all ears.

Hachiman: … There's a… there's a man and a woman. The man is a tourist. He's visiting a foreign city for two weeks because he's twenty six and he's feeling existential. The woman is living in the foreign city. She's beautiful and intelligent and successful but she's also depressed, because that's how beautiful and intelligent and successful people work.

Koto: Okay. That's slightly more comprehensible. Man is a tourist in the city, woman is living in the city and depressed. Gotcha.

Hachiman: At some point in the trip, the man finds his way into a cafe. It's late in the evening, so the cafe is pretty much empty. The barista's in the back office talking to the manager or something. He's sat at a table that can't be seen from the entrance. Then, the woman walks in. She sits down and orders some tea, but then she starts to cry. She has this nervous breakdown, or something. Right in the middle of the cafe. And the barista isn't watching and she can't see the man because of the position of his table, so she thinks she's alone, and she cries her fucking eyes out. Then she leaves. But she leaves behind her diary. And the man picks it up, but it's too late to give it back to her. Now, he just has this woman's diary.

Koto: … Carry on.

Hachiman: So the man reads the diary. He reads it and he learns everything there is to learn about this woman. All the seconds of his days in this foreign city begin to revolve around the diary. The sound of onrushing cars begin to sound like the woman's name. The smell of their exhaust fumes begins to smell like peppermint tea, which he knows is the woman's favourite drink. It's as if he's a lump of rock caught in the orbit of a cold, cold star. This woman is… she's just the woman. The only woman that matters.

Koto:

Hachiman: You following?

Koto: You said this is a sad story.

Hachiman: Yes.

Koto: And you also said this is, what, a recount? A recount of your own experiences?

Hachiman: … Yes.

Koto: …. Is this what you based Love and-

Hachiman: Have you ever liked a story so much you wish it was your story?

Koto: … Sure. Pretty much everybody has. That's part and parcel of reading.

Hachiman: What story? What novel?

Koto: Love and Coffee.

Hachiman: … What?

Koto: You heard me. Love and Coffee. Your story.

Hachiman: … Shut the fuck up.

Koto: Oh for-

Hachiman: I'm serious, Katsomoto-kun. Don't fucking bullshit me. I'm not in the mood for bullshit right no-

Koto: I'm not bullshitting you. I'm being honest. I told you this when we met. Don't you remember? We got talking at the Shogakukan end of year review and you told me you'd fired your previous editor. I offered to help you out because your series changed my life. That was what I told you.

Hachiman: *snorts* You were flattering me to get the job. We both know that-

Koto: Do we? Have I spent a minute flattering you since then? Have I ever lied to you and told you something you'd written was good when it wasn't?

Hachiman:

Koto: Exactly. I'm not lying. Your series changed my life. Fucking deal with it.

Hachiman: Why?

Koto:

Hachiman: … Katsmoto-kun. Why?

Koto: You really don't understand, do you? Why people are so obsessed with Love and Coffee? You never have.

Hachiman:

Koto: Fine. Looks like I'm gonna have to tell a story too. I feel like I've told you this before, but… in fact, I've definitely told you before… but you clearly weren't paying attention, so I'll repeat myself. People are obsessed with Love and Coffee because it's honest. It's so honest you could probably argue that's the series' weakness. Your characters aren't predictable, but honest. Your plots aren't contrived, but honest. Your dialogue isn't cliched, but honest. That's just how it is, Hachiman.

Hachiman:

Koto: That's why people read your series. That's why I read your series. I read the first volume at a point when my days were in a downward spiral. I had friends, but I never let them be real friends. I had girlfriends, but I never let myself love them. Just waking up in the morning felt sluggish and difficult. And then I read this light novel, Love and Coffee Volume 1, about a group of characters who were so unbearably honest it brought them pain. I felt jealous of them, because I'd rather feel pain from honesty than dishonesty. You understand me? I love that group of fucking misfits you created because they showed me a better sort've pain wasn't just possible, but within my reach. So when I got the chance to be your editor, I leaped at it. For me, it's a measure of how far I've come. Every time I get to be honest, right to your fucking face, I can feel a part of myself whispering 'Well done Koto, you're doing better now, well done'. So thank you for writing it, Hachiman. Thank you for those characters I love. And stop being a prick. It's tedious. Especially at 1 AM in the morning.

Hachiman:

Koto:

Hachiman: You finished?

Koto: Huh?

Hachiman: I said, are you finished? Can I tell you my story now? Cause otherwise, I'm gonna hang up.

Koto: … Fucking prick.

Hachiman: Fine, I'm hanging u-

Koto: Don't, you… shit. Just tell me. I've had enough of you for one night.

Hachiman: So have I… I'm gonna carry on.

Koto:

Hachiman: … The man finishes reading the woman's diary just as he's about to leave the foreign city. That's a conscious choice on his part. He hasn't seen the woman again since the cafe. He could find her, return the diary, talk to her, but he's so entranced with the woman he sees in writing that any sight of a potential reality has become frightening. The man doesn't think that he's worth being a part of the woman's diary. You understand me?

Koto: Yes.

Hachiman: … But then he reads the final entry. It's his last night in the foreign city. His last opportunity. The last entry is what she wrote in the cafe when she was having her breakdown, when she thought she was alone, despite the fact the man himself was there, watching her, and doing nothing to help. He reads the last entry, where she's never been more helpless, and guilt swallows him whole. The man thinks to himself, 'what the fuck have I been doing?'. He's been contenting himself with reading, with thinking, with watching her from the opposite side of the cafe, because the alternative was somehow too frightening. But the woman… this woman… 'she needs help', he tells himself. She said it herself in her diary. She's reached the point where saving herself is no longer possible. Sometimes, you need another person to tell you the obvious things. The obvious things that you've let yourself forget. She needs someone. Anyone. The diary fell to him. The man can be anyone. That's what he tells himself.

Koto: … I think I can see where this is going.

Hachiman: Really? Tell me.

Koto: The man goes to talk to the woman, and it all goes wrong. That's why it's a sad story. Most sad stories are predictable.

Hachiman: That's true.

Koto: … But predictable doesn't mean boring. I'd like to know the ending.

Hachiman: … *exhales*

Koto: Are you alright?

Hachiman: You know I hate that question.

Koto: Doesn't mean it isn't valid-

Hachiman: The woman's diary… there's a place that she's written about. It's her secret place. Everyone has them. The place where you go to shut out the world. The place which momentarily makes things simpler, through some kind of ritual. First, he goes to her apartment, but it's too late and he's too suspicious to be let in and she isn't answering her apartment buzzer. Then, he decides it more likely for her to be there. At her secret place. So he heads over. He walks, like he's been doing for days on end, through the dark New York streets, down to the platform by the East River where it's possible that she'll be, the secret place covered in moss, and I… I… I see her.

Koto:

Hachiman: …. I see her, Katsomoto-kun. It's the first time I've seen her since we were in Pirellis. She's standing there, her arms on the railing, watching the East River which you can hardly see because of the darkness, and I can hardly see her either. Just the back of her head. A glimpse of hair the same colour as the night. It's raining. Not heavily, but it's raining. My coat is covered in rainwater, and so is she, and I can feel the weight of the diary I've been carrying in my pocket, and my breath is loud, so fucking loud, and she hears and turns around and… and…

Koto: … Yes?

Hachiman: … and she says… "Who are you? What do you want?", in English. And her voice… her voice is so different. It's so, so different to what I imagined. I've never heard her voice before, but I've imagined it, because I've imagined this woman down to her most meandering and irrelevant memories, and I… I choke. I realise that this woman I've deluded myself into loving… she isn't real. She's nothing. She's just a story. There's the woman, and then there's Yukinoshita Yukino. And now, Yukinoshita Yukino is standing in front of me, and she's obscured from me in the rain and the darkness, and that's how it should be, because I don't know her, and I don't deserve to know her, and I feel loathing for every word I've read fill me up until I can't say anything.

Koto: …

Hachiman: … She gets frightened. Why wouldn't you? There's a strange man staring at you, and you're all alone in a secluded corner of an enormous city and there's no one nearby to save you. So she gets out her phone and she shouts to me, "If you don't leave, I'll call the police". This is where watching gets you. All I can feel inside me is shame. I loathe her irrationally and I loathe myself rationally. I step back, and she lowers the phone from her ear, and because my heart is hurting and my ears are ringing, I reach into my coat pocket and I pull out the diary. My fingers are shaking as I hold it. I look at it, and then at Yukinoshita Yukino, this woman I'll never know, and I throw the diary onto the ground in front of her. I turn to leave, to run back to Japan, to the country I should never have left. But just before I do, all those sentiments, those hollow feelings of mine, they swell up in the rain, and I think about the things she wrote, and why I came to her secret place. I say one thing. The only thing I ever said to the real Yukinoshita Yukino.

Koto: What was that?

Hachiman: I said… I said "You aren't alone". And then I left.

Koto:

Hachiman: Well? What do you think of my story? Is it good or crap?

Koto: Why did you tell her she wasn't alone? This woman… what did you say her name was? Yukinoshita Yukino…?

Hachiman: … It's so strange to hear you say it out loud.

Koto: You haven't answered my question. Why did you tell her she wasn't alone?

Hachiman: Does it fucking matter?

Koto: Well, before I know the answer, I can't say whether it's good or crap.

Hachiman: … Fine. I told her she wasn't alone because she doesn't deserve to be. I wasn't talking about me, or anything like that. The person my heart created to suit my fantasies… she wasn't real. But Yukinoshita Yukino was, and no one deserves to be alone. I must have wanted something good to come of me reading her diary, and bringing it back to her. Something. Anything. So I told her the closest thing to good advice I could manage. She must have nightmares about that moment to this day. A fucking weirdo coming up to her in the dark and telling her she's not alone. It's like something out of a fucking horror movie. Yeah. It's not a sad story. It's a horror story.

Koto: … I suppose you're doing the same thing with Love and Coffee.

Hachiman: What?

Koto: Telling people that they aren't alone. You might hate the way you tell it, but in my opinion, it's a pretty good message. And a pretty good story.

Hachiman: … After that, you're really going to tell me it's good?

Koto: Er, no. It's mostly crap. But with little specks of good. Luckily, the good specks are the important parts.

Hachiman: … Wrong answer.

Call End.