I didn't make a prologue, so this is my first chapter!
- Scarred G
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
= 202X, Tokyo =
"Hoaaaaaaaaaaammmm!!! I'm so tireeeeeeeeed!!!"
I came back to my home after staying up all night until 23:30 today. It's a 35-year-old ramshackle apartment with some cracks on the exterior walls that I call my home. Even though tomorrow is my day off, the overtime I've been working recently has been weighing heavily on my shoulders.
I have enough money to pay for the parts I need for my gaming computer, but even so, I feel as if my body has been screaming for help recently. I work at a major foreign company located inside the Yamanote Line... 20 minutes by train, 40 minutes by car, and 2 hours on foot.
All the departments are very busy these days, as the topic of planning and presentations have reached a climax in the company. My department is clerical work, and during this busy season, we are usually forced to fill up Excel and Word documents with a lot of calculations and other documents.
Hehehe, I should never have joined a black company.
"Even if they bring in new workers, they leave the company so quickly that they can't take over the work at all..."
The pay is good, but the overtime is a mountain of work. So yeah, it's a black company.
The turnover rate is 40% in one year...
Almost one out of every two new graduates stops showing up after six months of employment.
This year, a student who had just graduated from a national university joined the company, but two months after joining, he resigned due to power harassment. In addition, the guy who was taking care of the new graduate was forced to write a report and do the new graduate's work for him, and as a result, he jumped into a train and died on Tanabata day. My company is really too bleak.
It is as famous as a certain major convenience store or a certain major advertising agency as a black company, and it is the kind of company that is criticized daily on the internet forums.
"I want to quit, but... is there any company I can join after that?"
I'd be happy to quit that company, but sadly I don't have many skills. The only qualifications I have are an automatic limited driver's license and a beginner's training in nursing care, which I took as a trial when I was a university student. If I quit this company, the only job I could find would be as a caregiver.
In addition, I am a virgin and single...
And I'm over 30 years old...
...Hahaha, I'm forever alone.
I wish I could forget this painful reality as soon as possible.
"Good grief, I can't do this at all... I'm going to take a shower and then I'm going to have some food."
I threw my clothes in the washing machine and took a shower. While taking a hot shower, I scrubbed my head and other parts of my body with shampoo. I can't help but feel that these hot showers are strangely difficult to feel these days. After I finished showering, I sat on the sofa and looked at the clock in my room dazedly.
"Ooh... the clock's batteries have run out already... figures those 100-yen store clocks would run out of batteries soon."
I had just bought this clock from a 100-yen store, but the hands stopped working right away.
I hate cheap watches.
I might as well buy a digital clock for a few thousand yen. Looking at the stuck clock, I started to feel faint, and I felt like I was going to be blown away somewhere.
Dangerous, I was about to go to bed without eating supper.
"Well, let's get ready for supper... err... what ingredients do we have?"
Near this apartment, there are taverns and bars open late at night where you can drink, but today I was in the mood for a drink at home. I don't want to make something elaborate, but I still want to eat well, so I'm going to make a simple men's meal from now on. I need to satisfy my stomach at least.
So, let's start the men's rice course.
While I boil a bag of soba at the supermarket for 68 yen, I prepare a bowl of soba-tsuyu (soba sauce for one person), which is sold in retail bags in advance. It is best to chill the soba-tsuyu at this time. While the chilled soba-tsuyu is in the bowl, the dried soba noodles are ready to be served.
After the soba needles are boiled, they were rinsed in cold water in a colander and cooled before being put in a bowl.
...But I'm not satisfied with only this, because ekisoba is enough for me. So I added more toppings.
First, I put a handful of dried wakame seaweed, and then I generously put tenkasu on top of the bowl. Then, I put a handful of packed green onion, which I had kept cold in the refrigerator, into the bowl. After making sure that the soba noodles are covered with the leeks until they are no longer visible, I prepared the sake.
Today's drink is a vodka-based cola that has been chilled to a crisp. It is also called "Russian coke" and has a high alcohol content. With chopsticks, I can have a man's meal in no time at all.
"Alright, then... itadakimasu."
I started to slurp up a mouthful of soba.
Hmm, it has a nice flavor, even though it's dried noodles. After that, I threw the noodles, wakame seaweed, green onion, and tenkasu into my mouth in that order, and pushed them further into my stomach with sake. I really appreciated the crunchiness of the tenkasu and green onion, which made the soba even more delicious.
I ate my bowl of soba while sipping sake, and it was around midnight when I noticed that the bowl of soba was empty.
"...What the heck, it's still 00:20... I'm off today, I'll just play some games before going to bed... wheeey!!"
I'm a bit drunk, but I don't care. I put my bowl of rice and chopsticks in the sink and washed them quickly, then sat down and turned on my gaming computer.
This is a historical simulation game that I've been into recently. It's called "Hard Of Blow Force" or "HOBF" for short, a historical simulation game in which you play as the head of a nation that has appeared in history from the early modern era to the present day.
The game is in the limelight because many history buffs are playing it. It consumes a whopping 32 GB of memory, but because of that, it is a game that allows the player to dictate in detail events based on historical facts, as well as the economic and military situation, and has aspects of both a historical simulation game and a state management game.
Thanks to this game, I was able to learn what the situation was like in early modern Europe, and I have been playing HOBF for 2 hours on weekdays and more than 5 hours on holidays, so the total game playing time exceeded 1000 hours the day before yesterday.
Well, I guess I'll be playing the Kingdom of France in the early modern era today. The reason?
Something about the cursor not moving anywhere but France since a while ago, so I'm going to play the Kingdom of France. Is the mouse aching for me to play tied up in the Kingdom of France? Or is it because I'm drunk?
Anyway, there's no problem except that the mouse won't go anywhere but the Kingdom of France, so let's just keep going.
At the start of the mode, I selected the historical state in the early modern scenario, and after that, select the random event mode...
Will the mouse be satisfied if I do all this?
The game played a description of the selected country, etc., and just now it is the national anthem of the Kingdom of France that was playing.
While listening to the national anthem, I was gradually getting very sleepy.
Huh? I always get sick, but does it come around this fast?
In my delirious consciousness, as if I were in a boat rocked by the waves, I heard a man's voice coming from the computer screen. The voice was somehow lonely and his tone didn't seem to have many highs and lows.
"I'm sorry to drag you into this, but... can you save the Kingdom of France? I have a lot of unfinished business. I want to entrust it to you... no matter what... I can't stop thinking about it. Please..."
Ah, yes.
I'm sure this is just a dream I have right after I fell asleep. I don't know who the hell is talking to me, but I might have picked up some audio from a video site. I was drunk, so I might not be wrong.
Right after I thought that, my vision was enveloped in a white light.