The Happiness Engine
I think people only seek out love from others because they can't love themselves.
CAST: KOISHI, CHEN, RUMIA, MS. KAZAMI
SETTING: Girl's Locker Room, Gensokyo High
The scene opens with KOISHI, CHEN, and RUMIA switching into their gym uniforms.
CHEN
Just don't look, okay?
RUMIA
Don't worry, you're not hot enough for that.
CHEN
Haha… you're so funny…
RUMIA
If you say so.
KOISHI
Woah. You got a fat mark.
CHEN
Wha..? No I don't!
KOISHI
No, you do, look. It's that little line right above your belly and below your ribcage.
CHEN covers up the mark with her arms and scrunches up a little bit like she's about to throw up.
CHEN
Are you calling me fat?
RUMIA
What do you think, genius?
CHEN
Why are you guys being so mean to me, today? What did I do?
KOISHI
No, no. Everyone has a fat mark, so it's okay.
CHEN
But… you guys don't…
KOISHI
I kind of do. If you squint really hard.
CHEN
You're just trying to make me feel better, aren't you? I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life!
RUMIA
Is that so? Bitch, join the club.
CHEN
How could you be so 'whatever' about it? Oh my god—I'm hyperventilating—what if I never get married because of how fat I am? I don't want to be a fat loser with no boyfriend…
RUMIA
Whatever, dude. Marriage is just an establishment that our parents groomed us to want because they're a bunch of sheeple who don't know anything about anything. The only relationship I'm going to be a part of is the holy matrimony between a running toaster and lukewarm bath water.
KOISHI
… Does something cool happen when you put those things together?
RUMIA
Don't worry about it.
The girls hear a pounding at the door to the locker room and then the voice of their PE teacher, MS. KAZAMI. No one else is in the locker room except them.
MS. KAZAMI
Thirty seconds! I'll give you all thirty seconds before I give you all zeroes for today!
CHEN
A zero!? My mom's going to kill me…
RUMIA
If only.
KOISHI
My mom's dead.
Laugh track. Fade to black.
A woman shuffled down an empty highway in the dead of night. In one hand, a bottle. In the other, a gun loaded with one bullet.
Occasionally a car would veer past her at the last second, honking its horn before disappearing into the distance as a vanishing pair of red eyes in the darkness.
She didn't know who she was. She didn't know where she was. She wasn't even completely sure what she was doing. She was a philosophical zombie—a person only in name.
Her face was flushed. Her head spun. She was empty, but somehow she felt like everything was feeling great. Like she could go over the hood of a car going over eighty miles per hour on the highway, and get back up like nothing even happened. Life was just fine.
Her index finger wrapped dangerously around the trigger of her pistol. She wondered, briefly, how much longer it would take until someone finally just… ended her. Decades of progress gone in a single overwhelming action of violence. She always wanted to die in a car crash. Or blow her brains out at a Christmas party.
She didn't get much further until a car pulled behind her, its headlights casting her in a long, gangling shadow. A short siren issued from the vehicle. The woman didn't even flinch. Instead, she turned around slowly—like all of her synapses were fried beyond recognition and her muscles were pounded to mush.
Behind her was a police vehicle. When she turned around, they put on their lights. A voice came over a loudspeaker and rattled around in her head, intensifying that horrible, horrible migraine she had.
"Dr. Yakumo? Is that you?"
…
The next she remembered, she was on the side of the road, waiting next to that police officer with her hands bound in zip tie restraints.
'That's not a random police officer,' a foreign voice said in Dr. Yakumo's head. 'That's the sheriff. You've known him since you were a kid. You're both getting old.'
"I didn't come here to arrest you, Yukari," he said. His arms were crossed as he leaned against the hood of his vehicle. "... Nobody wants to press charges over what you did, either. They're all just worried about you."
'In case you're wondering what you did,' the voice inside Yukari's head said, 'you threatened to blow your brains out over a bad hand in poker, but not before flagging everyone in the bar with a loaded pistol. There wasn't even any money involved. I would say that's a brand new low for you, but it isn't.'
"You've got half the damn town scared to death for you." Yukari's eyes flitted to the sheriff's holster. She wondered what would happen if she took it for herself. Ran off into the night, disappeared forever. Wake up halfway across the country, running a small bakery in a town where no one knew her. Her train of thought was cut off when the sheriff spoke again.
"... I know you're never partial to the idea, but at least let me drive you to the hospital. It would do folks a lot of good to know that you're somewhere safe."
'He means he wants to bring you to the room where they keep all the crazy people. But you're not crazy. You're perfectly sane—it's just that everyone else can't understand the vast depths of your endlessly complicated soul.'
The Sheriff stared at Yukari in the darkness, searching for meaning in her distant expression. Finally, tortured enough by the silence, he breaks it again. "You're not alone here. There are people out there who care about and love you. That shouldn't be your only reason for living, but it could be a start. If you have something you need to say, just say it."
There was plenty Yukari wanted to say. On the bizarre ennui that strangled everyone in this town into a complacency they misidentified as happiness. On the lack of direction and purpose that humanity had—and yet simultaneously the masochistic tendency of people to find meaning in suffering that had no purpose. There was war and geopolitics on her mind. Yukari was thinking about nihilism and her purpose—about the human condition itself and the endless search for meaning. She was thinking big thoughts.
"Fuck," Yukari said instead, before emptying the contents of her stomach in a patch of grass on the side of the road. It was a vile mixture, made up of nothing but beer, pretzels, and bile. Drunk Yukari thought she could survive off of stuff like that.
'You're an idiot,' a voice inside Yukari's head said. Her internal monologue replied to itself with a succinct 'I know' without so much as consulting her, the apparent third party. Maybe Yukari really was starting to lose it.
As Yukari wretched and shuddered, half hunched toward the ground in the dim moonlight, something inside of her broke. Yukari didn't know why, but she just had to scream and cry, like every bottled up emotion poured out in one overwhelming wave. The Sheriff patted her on the back like he was comforting a child. Something about that small gesture of comfort just made her cry even harder.
"That's alright. It's better this way."
…
Later, in the hospital.
True to his word, the Sheriff delivered Yukari safely to the hospital.
They moved her to a curious little room in the ER, tucked away in the corner. The Sheriff exchanged a few words with the nurses and Yukari before taking his leave. Apparently, a small propeller plane crashed out in a corn field, and they were calling for everyone they could get their hands on.
Yukari hoped the person flying that plane died.
She was strapped to a hospital bed, her arms bound like she was a crazy person. The room was shrouded in a light veil of darkness, with the only source of light being that of the clinical white fluorescent lights spilling in from the outside. They seemed to have torn the door off this room or something, Yukari figured, because she could see through the doorway clearly. There was a nurse sitting in a chair there, just outside, only half awake and on his phone.
'He's there to make sure you don't kill yourself,' a voice in Yukari's head chimed in, even though she didn't want to know.
Yukari sighed as the hospital ambience faded into the far distance. She looked left, and she looked right. Nothing but rotting walls looming over her, all conveniently sterilized of sharp objects and other such hazards. As safe as it all technically was, Yukari figured this is the kind of place where people went to die.
In a dark room, out of sight from others as to not be a nuisance, and left with no one but your thoughts. The horrible part about it all was that the longer you spent alone with your thoughts, the more twisted they became.
But that's okay, because you're still alive. Your heart is pumping. Your blood is circulating. Air is entering and exiting your lungs at a regular rate. If you go on like this, you will be alive tomorrow, too. Everything is normal and okay. As long as you're alive, you'll be okay. As long as the cells in your body are living and dying like they usually do, you'll be fine. As long as you still exist in this world, surely, surely, surely everything will be okay.
Nobody can prove it, but you must believe. Because once you stop believing, you begin your long, long journey to the foregone conclusion. Is that delusion? Is that hope? It didn't really matter, because Yukari believed. And she felt just fine.
Yukari closed her eyes. She sunk into her bed, her body all limp and cold like a corpse. It felt like if she sunk any further, she would fall into a deep dark hole from where she could never return. It was… comfy. You could stay here forever, if you wanted.
See you tomorrow, Yukari.
CAST: KOISHI, FLANDRE
SETTING: By a moonlit lake in the heart of a neighborhood.
After going on a midnight run, KOISHI and FLANDRE notice themselves a good distance ahead of the rest of their friends. They decide to sit by the lake and gaze at the sky, devoid of stars.
FLANDRE
Spoken between labored gasps for breath. Ha… How are you so fast?
KOISHI is somehow even worse. She can barely speak through all the wheezing and gasping.
KOISHI
… Legs. I've got long legs.
FLANDRE
No fair. I want long legs, too. Saw off yours and give them to me instead.
KOISHI
… Then I wouldn't have legs.
FLANDRE
So?
KOISHI
You're right, but I don't have a knife. Or a bone saw. I left them at home.
FLANDRE
Life is just filled with bad luck.
An awkward silence passes between the two. The world is still.
FLANDRE
… Do you love me?
KOISHI
No. I mean, yes. I mean… what do you think?
FLANDRE giggles.
FLANDRE
I think you're a weirdo.
KOISHI
Thanks.
FLANDRE
I also think… that we held hands and hugged and cuddled. I think that's love.
FLANDRE
But then… I guess I'm wondering why I still feel like I always do.
FLANDRE
It's like… I can spend time with you, and do fun things with you, but at the end of the day, everything still feels so numb. Do you get what I mean? It's like my body is laughing and smiling automatically, and I'm just in the back seat watching someone else have fun.
FLANDRE
… I'm a stranger in my own body. And it sucks because I just can't be happy. Not really. It's always someone else.
KOISHI
Does this mean we're dating!?
FLANDRE gives KOISHI a tired look. They stare at each other in silence for a minute or more. In the distance, they can hear lively conversation between their other friends, CIRNO, RUMIA, and CHEN, only now catching up.
FLANDRE
Koishi…
FLANDRE
If I killed myself, would you kill yourself, too?
Laugh track. Fade to black.
Up next:
An anthology of short stories for the new generation.
None of them mean anything.
Don't think about it too hard.
KOISHI KOMEIJI'S HEART THROBBING ADVENTURE PART 21: MYRIAD EPILOGUE