Shut-In Of The 'Dead' Chapter 1: Prologue of the Hikikomori

I, Takemi Kazuichi, twenty years old, am a hikikomori.

Now, before you go lecturing about my life decisions, let tell you that I didn’t choose this life. This life chose . My classmates back when I was a young kid were violent. I would always get beat up and thrown in a ditch sowhere, and many a ti I’d avoided death since they brought knives to school.

What sane person brings knives to school?!

I am an orphan, so you’d probably already know that no one cares if you’re an orphan. The only ti one cares is when there’s an election coming up and candidates would visit to bring food. That’s it. Now I don’t know how it is when it cos to other orphanages but our caregivers... well, they couldn’t care less. Even if you’re literally crawling on the floor since your classmates dislocated your legs, they’d just prompt you on the chair and call a doctor or sothing. They won’t ask how or why you got the injury. In fact, they’d rather not talk to you at all, not when they could help it.

For quite so ti, I enjoyed being beaten up. I was the smallest in our class, probably because we only eat oatal three tis a day. One thing I learned from being small is that it’s not cute at all. I saw in reality shows that small people were called cute, but in our class, a small person is nothing but cute. I was their plaything, even the girls gang up with the guys to bully .

So yeah, that happened, and I decided to um... drop everything. It’s not like the caregivers require us to go to school... and the food there in the orphanage is free despite being oatal three tis a day.

And that’s when my transformation began.

I stopped going out of the orphanage, and I stopped going to school. In fact, I’d rather stay in my room and read books than go outside and socialize. Don’t get wrong, the other orphans were sweet, they talked to and befriended , but I was too preoccupied with the bullying I’ve experienced that I laid everything down on them. It ca to a point where no one wanted to talk to , and I wanted to talk to no one.

When I was sixteen, I was adopted by my rich parents. They loved dearly... until they died. They said it was a plane crash that killed them. In any case, my life turned upside down before it even started looking up. Just when I almost overca my fear of going out, I was thrown back into my shell. Reality punched straight in the guts, and my parents’ relatives didn’t help. They complained that I shouldn’t have gotten all their wealth, that I was a good-for-nothing kid who didn’t deserve anything. They wanted to rewrite the will, or at the very least, they wanted to distribute my wealth to them, the leeches they are.

Truth be told, I couldn’t care less about my parents’ relatives. They were only there for when I got the wealth. Co to think of it... they never treated like a relative, whereas I treated them for the aunts and uncles they are.

Long story short, I didn’t give them anything. They didn’t even get to lick a single cent from . I kept everything for myself, and not once did I regret my decision. But then, I started distrusting people for the second ti in my life. My phase of being a shut-in had relapsed... and now I’m staying in this lonely mansion all by myself. My relatives would visit from ti to ti, but I never showed them in my house. So of them even tried breaking in, but one call to the police with video evidence made them back down. I didn’t want to see them, and even if they wanted to see , they won’t because I chose not to.

The only thing I watched was movies, and the only gas I play were single-players. One might find it hilarious but I didn’t even have a single social dia account. I was living the life... I was living the life of a lone wolf.

And money? I don’t need to worry about money. I have money to last three lifetis, and I’m not sharing it with everyone. And even if my money were to run out, I have a vault full of diamonds and a vault full of gold in the basent. I’m not even kidding, I have so much money I’m literally drowning in them.

Of course, I knew that if I were careless, I’d lose my money in an instant. That’s why I invest them here and there, and I worked my way into stock trading. It was complicated, to say the least, but I understood it and now I’m earning money faster than I could spend it— couple that with my parents’ wealth and I’m basically untouchable.

For the past two years, I lived my life as a comfortable and rich shut-in, oblivious to what was happening to the world. The nuclear war might even happen right in front of my doorstep and I wouldn’t be aware of it after it was already over... that’s how peaceful my life was.

Now, I’m well aware that my peaceful life won’t last long. Even though I’m a shut-in, I knew that one day I’d be forced to get out of this house for good. At the very least, I want to go out on my own terms. I don’t want to be forced by anyone. I’m having enough fun with my peace as it is, and I won’t allow anyone to disrupt that peace, much less destroy it.

Little did I know, life had sothing in store for . And it all happened because of that one mont.

That one mont when she showed up on my doorstep, all bloodied up with her hand severed.