Despair.

A feeling of hopelessness.

The sense that one has reached rock bottom and can't improve their situation no matter how hard they try.

Throughout my life I have felt many things. I've been angry, I've been annoyed, I've been happy, I've been curious, and sometimes I even feel sad. However, I can honestly say that I've never felt completely destroyed. Even when Kaori rejected me in middle school and I lost all my status, I still had Komachi back home to cheer me up. Since despair is the idea that there's nothing to look forward to, I've never felt it because I had that support at home. Even if I didn't have that pillar, I'm just not the type of person who would feel crushed due to a lack of external validation. I can always retreat into my mind if things become absolutely unbearable.

That's how it was, at least.

Now I'm not so sure. Now there's a constant ache in my chest whenever I'm reminded of my actions that night, which is all the time since my brain can't seem to forget it. Vita-chan and light novels no longer give me the rush of oxytocin they used to. Even Komachi's presence isn't able to lift this cloud in my mind.

For the first time I think I'm experiencing the "angst" that riajuu go through.

I don't like it.

My legs ached furiously and sweat poured down my face as I made my way up the huge hill in front of me. My mind wasn't really registering the pain though, since I had gotten used to excessively riding my bike.

It's been 2 weeks since the 'incident' with Isshiki, and I've yet to speak with anyone in the Service Club. That's not to say the Service Club hasn't reached out to me; the dozens of missed calls and unread text messages on my phone from Yuigahama are a constant reminder of my situation. But, I suppose that doesn't matter much anymore now that I've seen the truth.

It's quite simple really. It may have taken me some time to realize it since I thought myself different and tend to overanalyze things, but in the end I'm just a simple coward. My philosophical diatribes and metaphysical deconstructions of society are really just a defense mechanism to protect me from the reality that I was always the loser kid who got rejected in middle school. All this time I'd been lying to myself, convinced that I was successfully waging war against a cruel and oppressive society, but who am I kidding?

I couldn't even give an answer to a couple of high school girls. When the chips were down and it was time to be genuine, I crushed everything and ran away. Not because of some noble reason, or as a way to sacrifice myself for the greater good, no nothing altruistic like that. I came to the conclusion that addressing the feelings that I myself had created was too hard. So I did the same thing I did back in middle school, I ran away, retreating into the inner recesses of my mind where people don't get hurt and there's nothing expected of me. Even now I'm still running, still pedaling on this god forsaken bike to who knows where.

Yukino asked me to save her, but she really should have known better.

I couldn't save Hayama's clique.

I couldn't save that little girl from the field trip.

I couldn't save the school festival.

I couldn't save Isshiki's first love.

I can't save anyone.

I can't even save myself.

I tried to avoid eye contact with others as I trudged through the hallway to homeroom. I'd made a habit of avoiding contact with anyone besides my family, afraid that I might be asked questions I can't answer. Uncomfortable questions will lead to uncomfortable rumors, and before I know it it'll be middle school all over again.

Best to just cut my losses at this point, that's all a coward like me is good for anyway-

CRASH

"Oof. Hey, watch where you're going Hikigaya. If I didn't know any better I'd think that was on purpose."

Great. Now I'm running into the last person I wanted to see. Literally.

"S-Sorry. I promise it won't happen again Hiratsuki-sensei."

"It better not, or I'll have to show you my ultimate taijutsu!" She said with a smirk on her face as she offered me her hand in assistance.

Stupid woman and her stupid manga references and her stupid beautiful smile and her stupid kindness-

"Yeah, I don't think I want to experience that. Your Primary Lotus is already more than I can handle."

Stupid me and my stupid jokes and this stupid ache in my chest-

"Don't you forget it! If you're late to homeroom I may have to give you a not so subtle reminder."

"Will do sensei." I finished lamely as I turned around and started walking away, desperately hoping to end this awkward situation.

"Hey, Hikigaya."

Her voice stopped me in my tracks. The mirth that was previously there had transitioned into something almost melancholic.

I didn't dare turn around, afraid that she would somehow see through everything if she could get a glimpse of my face.

My silence prompted her to continue.

"You know, if there's something bothering you don't be afraid to ask for help. Whether you like it or not there are people who want to listen to you. Don't shut them out just because it's convenient."

She knows doesn't she? The service club or Haruno must have told her everything, and now she's going to reject me like Kaori and I'm going to deserve it for being so worthless.

"Y-Yeah. I'll keep that in mind Sensei." I answered still facing away from her.

At this point I was hoping she would leave me alone. It felt like the hallway was on fire and I needed to get as far away as possible.

"I see." She calmly replied.

After a few more seconds of agonizing silence, the tension finally dissipated when I heard her heals start clicking on the ground, signaling her retreat.

I heaved an audible sigh of relief. My heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest, and I swear there was a faint ringing in my ears.

By the time I'd regained my composure and felt stable enough to start walking towards my next class, I realized it had been 5 minutes.

I'm really losing it.

I could once again feel a piercing stare directed towards me, but this time from a certain well-endowed airhead.

This is like my dark days all over again. The social isolation isn't even so bad, it's the scorn and derision from such a nice girl that cuts the deepest. Even if she won't express it, I know Yuigahama must hate me more than anyone right now, and I completely deserve it.

Looking up at the clock, I saw I still had 5 minutes left until my last class was over. Over the last few days I haven't even been paying attention in class, I've just been burying my head in the sand hoping no one will notice me. Unfortunately even that's not been going so well since my Stealth Hikki is no match for Yuigahama's Super Penetrating Gaze. I don't know how much longer I can keep ignoring everyone, at some point there's going to have to be a confrontation.

I'm such a bastard. All this time I've been saying I want something genuine but here I am distancing myself from everyone because I'm afraid of the consequences. What did they even see in me?

*RRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGGG*

The sound of the bell simultaneously filled me with relief and dread. Relief that I'll be able to escape to the solitude of my home, and dread that Yuigahama will almost certainly try to talk to me about what happened. My fears were confirmed as I can already see her standing up through my peripheral vision, totally ignoring the rest of the clique. I guess she's been getting sick of my act and is going to approach me directly, an unusual strategy from a nice girl like her who operates through soft gestures and insinuations.

Loners always have an exit strategy though.

Before she can even take one step towards me, I've already stood up, hoisted my bag onto my shoulders, and started walking towards the opposite exit. By putting myself between her and the rest of our classmates, I've ensured that she won't be able to catch up to me, since she would have to push her way through others and sprint after me through the building in order to close the distance. Yuigahama is too polite to do either of those things, so I can rest assured that there will be no confrontation today. After a bit of speed walking (and jumping down a few flights of stairs because yeah I'm actually still pretty nervous) I'm already out of the building.

"Now all I have to do is get my bike and-"

"Hikki."

Heh, now I'm imagining her scolding me. I really am going insane.

"Mou! I wish you would stop taking me so lightly! I can hear you, dummy."

"Wait, I said that out loud?!"

"Yup! Hikki has a bad habit of saying what's on his mind."

"W-Well anyway, what are you doing here?"

"Hikki hasn't been coming to the Service Club lately..."

"..."

"I really miss you Hikki. Yukinon may not want to admit it but she misses you too. Things aren't the same without you around ya know?"

"..."

"A lot of things have happened lately, but I'd really like it if you came to the Service Club today. Yukinon and I just want to talk with you Hikki."

"Shouldn't you be talking with your friends?"

"Hehe. I thought we were friends, Hikki."

"..."

"You always do this you know. You sacrifice yourself to save others. There's a part of me that likes that part of you, because it's like you're a knight in shining armor coming to rescue people in bad situations. Like when you saved Sable, even when it was dangerous and scary. But, another part of me hates that side of you. I hate to see you get hurt, Hikki. I hate it when you do these things for people and shoulder all the pain, but nobody is there to take your pain. You keep saying it's okay, but it's really not."

"Yuigahama-"

"But you know Hikki, that's not the thing I hate the most. What really makes me sad is that you feel like you have to do this stuff in the first place. Like, when you sacrifice yourself, you're basically saying that we're all useless. The only way to save everyone is to do it yourself, because everyone else is too dumb or silly to be able to help themselves, so you have to do it. I really hate that part of you Hikki, it's arrogant and disgusting."

"Yuigahama-"

"But I get it. You went through some hard times when you were younger, so you don't have a lot of faith in people. I don't know exactly what happened, but I know you think everyone is a stupid riajuu. So even though I don't like that you think people are dumb and can't change themselves, I understand why you think that way and I can tolerate it."

"YUIGAHAMA-"

"BUT WHAT THE HELL HIKIGAYA! WHY ARE YOU JUST THROWING EVERYTHING AWAY?!"

Yuigahama was suddenly on me, pounding her fists into my stomach with every word.

"I THOUGHT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FRIENDS!"

WHAM.

"I THOUGHT WE WERE DIFFERENT FROM EVERYONE ELSE!"

WHAM.

"I THOUGHT YOU TRUSTED US!"

WHAM.

"I THOUGHT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO CONFIDE IN EACH OTHER!"

WHAM.

"I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING GENUINE!"

WHAM.

The last hit almost took my breath away. Usually she's just playing around when she hits me, but these were actually hurting. A small part of me is shocked to see the normally chipper Yuigahama act this way, but an even larger part of me is disgusted that I drove her to this. I deserve all of this and more.

I closed my eyes and accepted my fate.

...Wait. I'm not getting hit anymore, what happened-

What I saw in front of me did take my breath away. Yuigahama's face was pressed into my chest, and she was weakly clutching at the corners of my uniform. She was ugly crying, I could actually feel her tears through the fabric.

"H-Hikki I d-don't want you to g-go..."

"Yuigahama..."

"P-Please, I'm begging you, don't shut us out of your life H-Hikki."

"Yuigahama-"

"I LOVE YOU."

Silence.

Absolute silence.

The wind had stilled, the chirping of the birds had ceased, everything had gone still with that confession.

Everything except my furiously racing heart, anyway.

Before I could get a word in edgewise Yuigahama beat me to the punch again.

"B-But surely you already knew that, right Hikki? You're not dumb, you could pretend to ignore it but you've known for a while." Yuigahama whispered, her voice broken and stinging like shards of glass.

She understood the facade from the beginning and still kept up that smile-

"To be honest with you I already gave up on my love a long time ago. I knew confessing would just screw up what we had built together, and I figured you would just fall in love with someone else anyway since I'm not that great. Heh, guess I was right about the falling in love with someone else part, although I never would've predicted who the lucky girl, or should I say woman was." Yuigahama continued her rant in front of this cursed school.

"I guess looking back I should have just confessed anyway, since the Service Club ended up falling apart regardless."

"Listen-"

"No you listen, Hikigaya. You listen when I pour my bleeding heart out to you. You owe me that much at least." Yuigahama snapped back, shutting me up again.

We stood there for a couple moments, staring each other down and probably not believing this was happening.

"...Listen, despite everything that's happened I don't want to lose you. You may not believe it but I've really come to like you and I don't want you to walk out of my life. Even if I can't be the girl in your heart, I can still be your friend. Not just me, but Yukinon and Isshiki too. How do you think they feel? You're one of their closest friends, they both appreciate you way more than you know. You just walked away from us, walked away from over a year of memories without even giving us a chance-"

"You walked away from me first."

"...Huh?" Yuigahama's face told me exactly what she was thinking. That I had just said something retarded, that I was being preposterous, that I was in the wrong.

She's correct, about all of it, but that doesn't mean I have to accept this phony companionship.

"That day at the festival 2 weeks ago, when I turned Isshiki down. All of you guys just left. None of you tried to talk with me or understand where I was coming from, you just went home after I told you my genuine feelings." I mumbled out, my voice starting to acquire a stone edge as my mind once again went back to that day. That wretched day where all my progress went up in flames.

"Are you kidding me right now?! Hikki you can't be serious, we were all crushed. It would have been one thing if we had lost to another girl in our class, or even some girl from your past like Kaori, but our love was trampled for someone that you have no chance of getting with anyway. We lost for no reason, it was a miserable outcome where nobody won. Of course we would be a little upset, can you blame us for needing a little bit of alone time?"

"I don't call 2 weeks of no contact a little bit of alone time."

I'm doing it again

"Hikki are you even listening to yourself?! You're the one who's been running away from us, literally! I had to bust out of the classroom and chase you down just to have this conversation with you! And don't tell me we haven't been trying to reach out to you when you're the one who's got his phone turned off!"

Why do I keep doing this?

"Well, it's not like I asked for your concern in the first place. Maybe I just want to be left alone to wallow in my own pity."

"What is this?! What are you doing, why do you always have to make simple things so difficult with your analogies and your weird emotional games? Why can't you just listen to what I'm telling you!"

"Because that's all I know how to do! Ever since that day in middle school I realized I'm no good with others. I've been deluding myself into thinking I'm someone that I'm not. I've been palling around with you guys in this fake club, in this fake school, with this fake friendship, with these bullshit feelings! It never would've worked and you know it, this is the only way it could have ended. It was my own stupidity and cowardice that allowed things to get this far in the first place."

Do I even have a reason?

"What are you saying Hikki? What do you want?!"

"I want you all to get the hell out of my life and leave me alone."

No, I don't need a reason. The monster doesn't need a reason to draw blood.

"...So this is really it then. You're telling me that it's all over." Yuigahama's eyes were brimming with tears. This is like murdering an innocent child.

"Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice. I can just go back to being that guy in the corner that no one recognizes and you can go back to being in your clique, and Isshiki can be a model student council president, and Yukinoshita can go take over the world or something." I finished with a tone of finality in my voice.

"H-Hehehe. I g-guess that's it then. You can't say I didn't t-try, right? Hehe. These tears and my heart are so annoying, maybe it would be better if they weren't there hehe." Yuigahama warbled out, choking on her tears. Her face was contorted in agony; I could tell this was an event she would remember for the rest of her life.

"I-I wish I could have been the one that pulled you out of that pit you're in. I'm so sorry that I wasn't strong enough, I'm s-sorry." She wasn't even trying to rub the tears out of her eyes anymore.

"You're really one of a kind Hikigaya. I h-hope you'll be happy one day, even if it isn't with us." She finished with a broken smile on her broken face.

She turned around and went back inside.

That was the first real friendship that I've ended in my life.

I'll probably have to explain myself to Yukinoshita and the rest, and then have this conversation all over again. For some reason though, I'm finding that I care less and less about the well being of those around me.

"I feel like having ramen tonight." I said to myself aloud as I unracked my bike and started to head home.

The breeze that disappeared earlier had returned with a vengeance, strengthening into tumultuous gusts that threatened to knock me off my bicycle.

I didn't really care though. Despite the fact that I had just thrown away over a year's worth of effort, in a way I was satisfied that I could now go back to my old life.

I could go through the motions again, without having to really invest in anyone or reveal personal information about myself in order to build up 'trust' that would disappear the moment anything went awry.

My hope of having genuine relationships with others was flawed from the start. I'm not the kind of person who can make that work, and deep down I knew that.

It's quite ironic when I think about it. By falling in love with my teacher and achieving peak riajuu, I learned that I'm a spineless coward who can't commit to anything. That love, and the overwhelming fear and anxiety came with it, revealed my true nature. Isshiki's confession just cemented what I already realized; when the chips are down I can't shake the status quo.

I'm a hypocrite like all the rest of them.

Just like that Hayama bastard I'm too scared to make a choice, and so I was gonna settle for a mediocre conclusion where everyone in the Service Club was endlessly strung along by my noncommittal language. Then when we all graduated and went our separate ways, I would eventually cut them off. It would've been a gradual process I'm sure, after all I don't have the courage to just straight up ghost them. But I can see exactly how it would've gone down, starting with not showing up to IRL meetings, and then progressing to talking once every week, to once a month, to leaving texts unanswered, to blocking numbers, and so on. Within a year's time I'm sure they all would have been written out of my life.

I thought I was different, but now I know that I'm not. Despite all my grandstanding about the selfishness and phoniness of human society, I'm influenced and molded by the same social pressures that everyone else is. I'm not some unwavering rock, I'm not an outside observer looking in and laughing at the masses as they struggle through this game we call life. I'm just another faker looking to maximize my own comfort.

In the end the only difference between me and Hayama is that he's honest about his rotten nature, whereas I was so caught up in myself that I was blind to it.

Yuigahama was right, I was acting self-righteous and arrogant before, and I couldn't even see it.

At least this way it'll be easier for them to hate me, forget about me, and eventually move on. If I wouldn't have fallen in love and had my cowardice revealed to me, then the Service Club would've turned out just like the clique. My love ended up indirectly saving me and them, because instead of having to put in the work to maintain genuine relationships (something I realize I'm incapable of), and instead of having to make choices that would trample on the feelings of others, I can just become a nobody again.

Being a loser isn't so bad. Nobody depends on losers. Nobody expects anything out of them. Losers can do whatever they want and no one will bat an eye.

So yeah, I've come to grips with myself and my true nature.

I'm a coward, a liar, a faker, and a hypocrite. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's tons of awful people in the world. In fact, the reason why we all look up to and admire heroes is because most of us just aren't that great. It's not that heroes are necessarily amazing, but more that most of us are so rotten that doing the right thing when there's nothing in it for us is so rare that it's basically a revolutionary act.

I don't have to be a hero. Hell, I don't even have to be a good person. I can just be a coward like almost everyone is.

I can be a normal guy that no one would even notice. In fact, I'd say that's quite fitting for me.

Hikigaya the riajuu! Or maybe Hikigaya the irrelevant background character?

Whatever, I'll have plenty of time to think about nonsense like this now that I have no obligations to anyone anymore.

I was almost home now.

Only a few more turns and I could get back to Komachi, Vita-chan, and an endless supply of snacks.

With every minute that passes by I'm feeling more and more relieved. What I thought was a tragedy actually ended up being my greatest blessing. There's something deeply cathartic about seeing who you really are behind all the facades, and accepting it.

In the weirdest way I suppose I've achieved something similar to self-actualization.

I stopped pedaling my bike because I'd just arrived at the final crosswalk before my house. The crosswalk was in front of a four-way intersection, so I had to stop and wait for the sign to change before I could pedal across the street.

Fortunately for me the crosswalk was practically empty, so it shouldn't be too long until I get the all clear to go ahead. In fact, the only car in the intersection was a large black sedan on the opposite side of me.

I did a bit of a double-take when I saw the car. It was one of those luxurious Mercedes saloons with blacked out windows and everything. It wasn't very often you saw such a huge vehicle in Japan, where most cars could barely fit two people inside them. It was probably a six-figure car, so whoever was driving it had to be mega rich.

Anyway, the red light holding the sedan back turned green, so the car started rolling past me, going to wherever it is that rich people go.

I was just about to start moving myself, when I noticed something odd.

The sedan wasn't driving past me. In fact, the car was pulled up right beside me, just sitting there. If that wasn't odd enough, suddenly the rear window started rolling down.

Before I could make sense of the situation, the one face I definitely didn't want to see at that moment was staring back at me with a look of delight.

"Oh my, well isn't this a coincidence Hikigaya-kun?" That sweet but deadly voice called out to me.

"What do you say, feel like going for a drive?"

The person in front of me was my greatest fear, Yukinoshita Haruno herself.

Hey everybody, I'm still not dead!

Yeah I don't know anymore man. The update schedule is just gonna not have a schedule. I promise I am going to finish this story no matter what, it just may take some time.

On another note what do you guys think about Haruno's surprise entrance? We all know she has questionable intentions, I think Hikigaya should be very careful about what he says from now on.

On another another note, season 3 is finally here so yeah. I'm probably gonna be putting my life, including this story, on hold until it's over.

Anyway I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and I'm deeply thankful for all of you who remain patient with me and my nonexistent update schedule.

Until next time.

See ya!