You close your eyes. The dark behind your lids is not empty. It's filled with a thousand tiny screens, each one playing a different ending.
"The call was from my mom. Or a satellite. Same thing."
The NHK fee collector hasn't come in three weeks. That's the longest he's ever waited. He's training. Next time, he'll bring a battering ram shaped like a TV license. -Oyasumi- NHK ni Youkoso - Welcome to the NHK -
You reach for your prescription. Not the antipsychotics—those are for "tomorrow." The sleeping pills. The tiny white soldiers that march you into oblivion.
And for one second—just one—you believe that tomorrow might be a different episode. You close your eyes
The whisper comes from the corner of the room. Not from you. From the other you—the one who lives in the mold stain that looks like a map of Hokkaido.
Then the NHK logo fades in.
You pull the blanket over your head. The blanket is a bunker. Underneath it, the world shrinks to the size of a manga panel. You hear the old woman next door watering her plants. She waters them every morning. You imagine the roots drinking, growing, plotting. She is probably a scout for the Hikikomori Eradication Project . The water is actually a pheromone that makes you want to join a cult.
"Did you answer your phone?"
Oyasumi.
In another, you don't.