Notes: This chapter is written purely for my own amusement. It is only mildly related to the plotline that has dominated the story up to this point. If I'm being totally honest, I said fuck it I want to write some Rumi. Which probably explains my poor characterization of her here. But it was amusing, so here we are.

Then again, according to GOF an unnamed female character does play a fairly significant role in the story, so maybe Rumi isn't completely irrelevant.

Next time I'll do better.

oOo

Interlude: Tsurumi Rumi

From the archives of Tsurumi Rumi's notes. Memoir someday!

The message "You have 24 notifications," was the first thing to pop up on my screen when I logged into the 28 Sins website.

Happy Birthday, Rumi-san!

-Leopard114

Heard it was your birthday! Hope it was a good one!

-Hikkigayaaaasensei2018

Honestly, birthdays weren't really my thing. I never understood the appeal of hosting a self-aggrandizing party where everyone was forced to cater to your whims and provide gifts for your pleasure. Even when I was younger, every time the question "What would you like for your birthday?" was put upon me by my parents, I would typically reply that I didn't expect any gifts for my birthday. This led to all kinds of guesswork and worry from them, and ultimately resulted in a plethora of unwanted toys and trinkets that are now collecting dust in the corner of my closet.

You might consider me ungrateful, or at least spoiled, but the truth of the matter is that I never really did want all the attention that a birthday provided. I mean, it wasn't as though I achieved anything; it simply marked the day I came into this world. Which, by the way, if my high school years were anything to go by, was more a curse than a blessing.

That sounded a lot more depressing than it actually was.

Online though, everything felt different. I could be different. And the well-wishers somehow seemed more genuine than the kids in my class that would actually remember to wish me a happy birthday. It was impersonal, yet personal, if that made sense.

Thank you for all the well wishes! I had a splendid day, and here's to another year with all of you at 28 Sins!

-TsurumiRumiOfficial

I finished off my comment with a kiss emoji. Honestly, a lot of the guys on the site would go crazy at that, so it's definitely worth adding to the end of that comment. Petty of me, I know, but I was almost at the 15,000 Thumbs Up achievement on the site and I really wanted to hit it.

28 Sins had really become a second home to me. Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but 28 Sins was my other family. The site started out as just another fan website for Hikigaya-sensei's Love and Coffee, but we'd quickly grown into a community that encompassed far more than just Hikigaya-sensei's work although, of course, Love and Coffee remained the site's central focus. And I'd been there right from the start.

I remember when Love and Coffee was first published. I was one of maybe five people praising the novel. Seriously. Across all the review websites and YouTube channels, I could only find mixed reviews at best. Of course, the reason for this was clear. The first volume of Love and Coffee focused almost exclusively on Etsuji. And while I consider Etsuji to be a brilliant protagonist, the reception he received from the general public was much less enthusiastic.

From cringe edgelord to incel patient 101, Etsuji garnered no shortage of unflattering nicknames.

It only solidified my opinion that most people are idiots. Seriously, Etsuji could not be more right as he was when, early in Volume One, he produces one of the greatest monologues I have ever read. I'll quote the last bit of it, since it's the most relevant bit, although I really would recommend reading the entirety of it.

"If happiness could be defined by such mundane things as popularity and material worth, then celebrities should be the happiest people on Earth. Since they are not, it should be obvious that one must find their own happiness.

And I am very much happy alone.

Yeah. Fuck the riajuus."

While I wouldn't use such crude language because I'm a lady, Etsuji really nails the idea of happiness perfectly. See, I'm perfectly happy being the kid that is excluded and secluded in the corner. My classmates; did they think that such malicious collaboration would be some sort of punishment? I am perfectly content reading Love and Coffee, alone. I am perfectly content crafting stories on 28 Sins, alone. Get the gist yet?

Happiness can't be defined because it's different for everyone. That's what Etsuji means. It's become one of many Etsuji-isms now, but I'm still convinced it is his most enlightening comment in the series, and one of the biggest draws of the series for me.

And so, I went looking for other fans of the series as well. They were hard to find, but eventually I stumbled upon 28 Sins. Back then, it was hosted on some shitty server and run by a few teenagwes who had a few yen to spare. It was the barest bones of a website, and yet it existed. I joined the community then and there and never looked back.

Of course, everyone got on board the Love and Coffee hype train right around the release of Volume Three. If you couldn't tell from the sheer amount of attention paid to it by the media, here's an interesting bit of information for you. Around this time I'd gotten promoted to moderator status on 28 Sins and gained access to the member log there. In the span of the few months after Volume Three's release, site membership grew by two extra digits. We went from a member count of a few hundred people to tens of thousands.

It probably helped that a couple of the fandom's most well-known fanfic authors posted chapters on 28 Sins for feedback first, rather than traditional sites.

Nowadays the website is thriving; its popularity had reached such highs that there were now a team of paid moderators online at every moment to police the site for bots, trolls and the like.

Of course I'd made a name for myself as well, as the first and thus far only journalist to hold a private interview with Hikigaya-sensei.

I'm pretty sure I have a proud smirk plastered to my face permanently whenever I think of that.

The thing was, Hikigaya-sensei is notoriously prickly, especially with the media. He's appeared and made comments at a couple promotional events for Love and Coffee, but has otherwise avoided interviews and public speaking like the plague. So to get that opportunity felt like a true miracle, especially since I didn't have any credentials beyond being an administrator on 28 Sins. But I guess Hikigaya-sensei must have appreciated the website because he agreed to meet with a representative from the site.

Me!

oOo

I'll talk a little about the interview with Hikigaya-sensei, even though I'm sure that even years from now I'll have no issue remembering the details of that experience. It's true what they say, you never forget meeting your heroes for the first time.

I should clarify, Hikigaya-sensei isn't exactly my hero in the traditional sense, but he is the creator of the single most influential piece of literature in my life. So he might as well be.

I think what was most surprising was learning that he actually was born and raised in Chiba and that he'd attended my alma mater in Soubu High. The short biography blurbs in the light novels never went into much detail, so I hadn't known that he'd essentially lived my life, but a few years earlier. It was almost as if we were kindred spirits, in a way.

Hikigaya-sensei was absolutely a loner though. I mean, if it wasn't obvious from the fact that Nagatomo Etsuji sprung from his mind, then meeting him in person would certainly convince anyone that he preferred being alone.

Seriously, if I was a more sociable person, I doubt I would have understood much from the interview at all.

But since Hikigaya-sensei and I really are such kindred spirits, it made understanding him that much easier.

oOo

The Untold Narrative of the Man Behind the Cultural Sensation: Love and Coffee

By Tsurumi Rumi

A few months ago, I waited patiently behind a group of college students in a line stretching several blocks long at the local bookstore. It was quite early in the morning, not quite opening time for the store, and yet the store was sure to make more sales on this particular day than it would in an average week.

What was the special occasion? A national holiday perhaps?

No.

The "occasion" so to speak, happened to be the release of Love and Coffee: Volume Five.

Such was the popularity of the series that it inspired lines of eager fans awaiting the arrival of each volume release. Honestly, I had only heard of this sort of thing with Harry Potter.

As someone who has enjoyed the series from the very start, it never fails to surprise me just how much people adore Hikigaya Hachiman's series, considering the reception it once received. I had once been part of a very vocal minority praising the story, but now it appeared that the positions had been reversed.

What made and continues to make Love and Coffee ever more enigmatic and interesting, though, is its author's obstinate refusal to discuss his writing.

The level of reclusivity with Hikigaya Hachiman is quite surprising, considering his fame. He rarely, if ever, answers more than a passing question from his legions of fans or reporters. He almost never discusses the actual storyline and themes within Love and Coffee, preferring instead to simply allow his fans' imaginations to run wild. The Love and Coffee subreddit has an entire bookmark dedicated to fan theories and, as any ardent fan could tell you, that section was a place where one could lose hours arguing and theorycrafting with other fans. Most mysteriously, Hikigaya avoids conventions and awards ceremonies like the plague; every single award that Love and Coffee has received, and there are quite a lot of them, has been given to a representative from the publisher Shogakukan.

Of course, that begs the question, who is Hikigaya Hachiman?

And even more importantly? What is the story behind Love and Coffee?

This is the exclusive all-access 1-on-1 interview with Hikigaya-sensei, as his fans call him, or just Hikigaya, as he himself prefers.

oOo

The interview began quite awkwardly.

Hikigaya made quite an unassuming entrance into the cafe we agreed to meet at. Although there have been rare photos of him throughout the years, his actual face would not be easily recognizable to the average person walking past him on the sidewalk. Indeed, I am sure that a good number of people have heard of the name Hikigaya Hachiman, but there must be only a select few people that could recognize him. I was unfortunately not one of them, so we must have sat in the same cafe waiting for each other for some time before we finally realized that we were quite literally a few meters from each other.

After awkward introductions, I simply asked Hikigaya to talk about how Love and Coffee came to be. It seems this is a difficult question, because Hikigaya took his time to answer.

"Love and Coffee came to be during a two-week trip in New York," he finally answered.

That was a surprising answer, for Love and Coffee was a novel set entirely within Japan, and featured only Japanese characters. How could the inspiration for such a story come from New York, then?

The answer, as it turned out, was because of someone he met while in New York.

"She was my muse," Hikigaya said, and in that moment he didn't seem too far off from the bitter protagonist to his own work that he had created. There was that melancholic air surrounding him that so characterized Etsuji.

"She created the story. All that was left was for me to tell it."

So who was this special someone that Hikigaya-sensei held in such high regard? Whose story were we all reading about?

"Just a girl in New York," Hikigaya says firmly, and it was clear that this was the last thing he would say on that topic.

Naturally curious about the story's future, I asked if he had already planned out the ending.

Hikigaya looked at me in surprise, as if he never expected me to ask that question.

"The ending, huh? I suppose, in a way, in my head, Love and Coffee has already ended. But that's all in my head. Who knows what the future holds?"

Of course, this would explain the innumerable delays to Volume Six. Still, it is clear that Hikigaya must have some of Love and Coffee planned, because he has been posting teasers on his Twitter. So I asked him about them.

"Heh," Hikgaya sort of ducks his head in embarrassment. "I always forget that you guys read that thing religiously. Honestly, though, all the teasers are things that have already been written down in stone. But there isn't really a definitive ending there, you know?"

I suppose he was right. None of the teasers held anything definitive as to how Love and Coffee would conclude. And honestly, I couldn't see how Love and Coffee could even end, unless Etsuji ran into a truck or something.

"So then what inspires your work now? Is it still the same girl?"

Hikigaya gave me a weird look. "You're oddly fixated on this subject aren't you? But to answer your question, yes she remains the impetus driving me to complete it."

I looked at him in askance, but it appeared as though Hikigaya had an aversion to elaboration.

Loner material for sure. Still, it became obvious that Hikigaya was carrying a torch for this girl, whoever she might be.

I didn't voice any of that though, since I'm fairly certain that someone like Hikigaya would feel embarrassment at such an unrequited crush.

We discussed less relevant things then, including our shared background. Hikigaya seemed to take a real interest in the conversation for the first time after I related that I was from Soubu, which was nice. We talked about our favorite spots to enjoy lunch, various riajuu mishaps, and even Hiratsuka-sensei. The interview slowly but surely began to feel less like a formal occasion and more like a meeting of kindred spirits.

God, I'd die of embarrassment if that was ever leaked.

I can't say I learned much more about Love and Coffee in that first meeting, but I did secure a second outing, so I called it a success.

oOo

I find it just a little bit disturbing how happy I can get over a single line of text through LINE.

"Happy birthday, Rumi! Here's a sneak preview of Volume Six! Don't leak it please, or else Shogakukan will have my hide." -Hikigaya Hachiman

I had long resigned myself to the fact that maybe I felt a teensy bit of her worship for Hikigaya-sensei, but after the third coffee shop meeting and running into him at the local mall by chance… well, something had changed.

Okay, a lot of things had changed. For example, somehow I had become the social butterfly of our awkward pairing.

Me.

The girl who spent half of her childhood being bullied and the other half shunning society, was the one actually pushing for meetups.

I even spontaneously asked him to go clothing shopping with me when I ran into him at the mall, without even thinking that maybe he had other plans since, you know, Hikigaya-sensei definitely just went to malls in his free time for no particular reason whatsoever.

Argh, I'm so embarrassed by my presumptions.

But we'd become at least acquaintances over the past few months, so I must have done something right. And then the birthday well wishes this morning were surprising. I didn't think he'd know my birthday, since I never cared to tell him about it. But he'd figured it out somehow, and sent honestly probably the best gift I'd ever received.

So yeah, I dislike birthdays. But when I got his LINE message, well maybe I didn't dislike them quite as much anymore.

Oh, and don't even get me started on that Volume Six sneak peek.

I might not consider Mei my personal choice for Etsuji's affections, but if she starts going out with that absolutely worthless doughnut Natsuo I might actually scream.

So, yeah. A Volume Six exclusive sneak peek?

Wasn't I special?

oOo

13:21 RumiRumi: That cliffhanger to the sneak peek was evil, Hikigaya-sensei…

13:53 Hachiman Hikigaya: It's Hikigaya, goddamn it. And it's not even a cliffhanger! Mei just throws a tantrum at Etsuji and leaves.

13:54 RumiRumi: But does she get together with Natsuo? Cuz I'd hate you forever if she did you know.

13:55 Hachiman Hikigaya: Guess you'll have to wait for the official release! :Grin:

13:55 RumiRumi: But Senseiiiiiii

13:56 Hachiman Hikigaya: Stop that!

13:57 RumiRumi: :pout: Only if you agree to lunch next Saturday.

14:23 Hachiman Hikigaya: Fine.

14:24 RumiRumi: :D 11, usual place.

oOo

To be continued in: The Outcome of Farewell