In a Daze

by Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)

  I was speechless.

  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a strange, nonsensical feeling before.

  There was no more anger, no more sadness; instead, my heart was filled with sheer emptiness.

  “Hmm? Oh. Huh. That’s rough.”

  My body was still savoring the profound void in my chest when her words stopped me.

  “Rough? What’s the problem? Just look for anyplace with same-day delivery. As long as it’s usable, I don’t care.”

  “Well, about that…I know this is kind of my fault too, but…”

  “Kind of all your fault.”

  “I know you’ll probably die unless you get this stuff today or tomorrow…”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Yeah, see? So I’m looking around and all…but do you know what day this is, master?”

  “Hmm? The fourteenth, isn’t it? Probably…? Ahh!”

  Startled, I scanned the search results opened full-screen on the display.

  Every one of them read “Same-day delivery unavailable.”

  “It’s the Obon holiday. Every business in Japan is closed for the Obon break. Most of them can’t even ship out until the day after tomorrow.”

  I could feel myself growing dizzy.

  “The day after tomorrow…? Two whole days…?”

  I slumped deep into my desk chair.

  Two days. To normal people, that’s nothing.

  But to me, this was a matter of life and death.

  If you asked me to go on a hunger strike, I could probably handle that for two days.

  If you asked me to go without sleep, I could probably stay awake for two days.

  But this is different.

  This is like oxygen to me. It’s literally telling me to stop breathing.

  Can you hold your breath for two days? Of course you can’t.

  After two years of this lifestyle, that was how much, how badly I had to fuse myself, heart and soul, with the Internet. I had a cell phone, yes, but for whatever reason, we never got any bars inside the house. In fact, I used it so rarely that I wasn’t entirely sure if it worked any longer.

  The computer itself wasn’t broken, which was great, but as long as its control interface was completely dead, that metal box was as good as useless. If, for example, this girl sitting in my display were a little more understanding, it wouldn’t be that devastating an issue. I could give her voice commands, she could handle them for me, we could somehow work it out.

  But if I had to deal with her for two whole days, I’d probably get a bleeding ulcer from the stress or whatever. I’d be dead within twenty-four hours.

  I had kept myself free of a horrible bloody death up until now by sticking to a strict “ignore her” policy whenever she spoke to me. And now you want me to give her requests? If I suggested that to her, she’d no doubt eagerly agree, eyes shining bright, like a kid with a new toy.

  Even now she was staring at me intently. I could almost hear her voice already. “Well? Not much choice left, is there? Is there? Come onnnnnn…!”

  I had only two options.

  Give up the computer and die, or become her toy and die.

  “Ugh, they both suck…”

  The sense of hopelessness was strong enough to take word form as a sigh escaped my lips.

  It honestly sounded stupid when I thought about it, but I was quite confident that if I ever went offline, I really would die. No exaggeration. Seeing myself faced with this ridiculous situation, with death the only feasible method of escape, made me want to cry.

  “Ummm…”

  “What?”

  “Well…I imagine you have your own feelings about this, but I think I probably went just a little too far this time—”

  She had already started her mopey little show again, nervously swinging her legs—the same angle that had already tricked me once before.

  “Ugh. Is that the only variation in your ‘apology’ routine, or what? I’m not falling for that crap twice!”

  “N-no! No! I mean it, so just give me a second! I’m really sorry, okay? Three days, four days, no matter how long it takes! I can serve as your eyes and ears!”

  Her zoomed-in face loomed on-screen as she made her enigmatic plea.

  “Huh?”

  “So, until your stuff comes in the mail, you can feel free to use me as your keyboard and stuff! I won’t mess around or anything! I’ll do exactly what you tell me to do. I mean it!”

  She went even more extreme with the close-up, her eyes welling up a little.

  Damn…! I didn’t know she had that variation, too!

  That was all it took to get an eighteen-year-old virgin’s heart racing. I was helpless.

  Hang on, though. I’m not about to fold that easily. Or maybe I was. I was having trouble thinking straight. She did search the shopping sites for me, and she really seems to be…sorry? Is that the right word?

  As I contemplated this, I spotted some text on the screen behind her.

  Hang on…?

  On the bottom left of the screen, behind her massive zoomed-in face, if you squinted, you could see the question on the multiple-choice quiz app from earlier being rewritten.

  [Question 1:

  Answer this, master, and you can input one character of your search term!

  But be careful, because if you get it wrong, I’ll start posting “cherished images” from your secret repository one by one to—]

  “…No.”

  She tilted her head quizzically, her eyes still welling up with tears, as cute as she could muster.

  But the days of her eliciting emotions, of any kind, from me were over.

  “Behind you.”

  “Mm…? Gah!”

  Turning around in a whirl, she closed the app, then peered back with her welled-up eyes, as if nothing were amiss. She was a bit shaken, having trouble perpetuating the act, but her tears were welling up to a higher point than ever, as if to make up the difference.

  “Ergh.”

  “Um…?”

  “…Quit it.”

  “Quit what?”

  Two years. Looking back on everything that’s transpired did make me emotional in some ways, but I knew that I had only one option left to survive.

  I stood up and opened the closet door. I never even so much as took a walk around the block, so normally I rotated between only a few articles of clothing. The idea of a full-on clothes dresser seemed silly to me.

  But today, and today alone, I’m going to open this up.

  “M-master?!”

  The voice behind me was filled with shocked surprise at this unbelievable turn of events.

  I opened the first drawer, revealing a well-folded hoodie and Windbreaker.

  Memories, long tucked away, from the era when I still wore this stuff regularly, flowed in a heavy stream.

  “Oof…”

  Recalling a variety of incidents from my past, I could feel the aches from old wounds come pounding back to the forefront. I shook the cobwebs from my head, took the tracksuit jacket folded up top on the far right, and closed the drawer.

  The second drawer contained a lovingly arranged selection of cargo pants and shorts. I selected a set of khaki pants and briskly pushed the knob back in.

  “Master! Master, what’s happening to you?!”

  Removing the sweatpants I had on, I started putting on my outfit. As I did, my mind began to feel distressed, as if faced with some sudden, insurmountable crisis.

  “I’ve never seen you wear anything like that before! What are you doing…?”

  “…Shopping.”

  “…Huh?”

  “I’m going out shopping! Something wrong with that?!”

  “Sh-shopping…?”

  This was apparently not the reply she expected.

  Well, what the hell did she think I’d be doing?

  “Yeah. Shopping. I’m not gonna rely on you, so I’m gonna go buy it all myself.”

  “Shopping…! Boy, what a relief that
is! I thought you were going to commit suicide or something for a moment!”

  “I’m not committing suicide! What kind of freak kills himself because he spilled a drink on his keyboard?”

  “You, master.”

  “…Yeah, but…”

  It wasn’t outside the realm of impossibility. I hated to admit it, but I could understand the impulse.

  Amid this mindless chatter, I continued to dress myself.

  “…I guess this’ll do.”

  With the Windbreaker zipped up to the very top, my wardrobe was complete.

  These clothes all felt a little stiff. I hadn’t worn them in a while. I felt oddly nervous, as if wearing them for the first time.

  “Heyyy! That actually looks pretty good on you! Like, normally you’re a hopeless case, but…”

  “Oh? You think so? I hope this is okay.”

  “Totally okay! A real man’s man!”

  “Yeah? You’re gonna make me blush.”

  It was embarrassing, but I felt more than a little satisfied with myself as I turned toward the display. There, I saw a window filled with images of perfect-looking male models in an array of top-shelf fashions. Behind this display, I could hear her voice. “You look so, so cool! I always knew you had some fashion sense in you!”

  “Come on…You’re gonna make me lose my nerve.”

  “Hmm? What do you mean?”

  “Forget it. I know I look okay, all right?”

  I was quickly losing any nerve I might have had to go outside. But there was no turning back now.

  I took down the bag hanging in the closet and slung it around my head.

  I was set, more or less. Now for the accessories.

  “Uh, I need my wallet, and…and that’s kind of it, huh?”

  I plucked the wallet, which normally saw use only when shopping online, from near the pillows on my bed.

  “That should do it. Whew…Well, I’m off.”

  I took a deep breath, then approached the bedroom door.

  “H-hang on a minute, master!!”

  Just when my hand was on the knob, her voice made me turn back toward the computer.

  “What? Haven’t you done enough for one day? Seriously.”

  “I know, I just…um, this is your first time out in a while, right? I just figured…you know, maybe two would be better than one, so…”

  “Two? You think I got someone I can invite over?”

  Thanks to my unflagging dedication to my craft over the past two years, I didn’t have a single friend I could make contact with. Even if I did, I wasn’t about to invite anyone along.

  “I didn’t mean that, master. I mean…Well, if I were with you, I could help navigate and stuff, so…”

  She was plainly waiting for me to get the picture. I wasn’t dense enough to miss the “take me along” message, but did she want me to lug the computer with me?

  “How’re you gonna come along? If you want to join me, you’re gonna have to jump out of there first.”

  “Wha? You mean it?! Okay, I’m coming out! One, two…!”

  Smiling, she pointed at a small chest of drawers next to the bed.

  Atop it sat my touchscreen cell phone, covered in dust.

  The height of summer. “Height” was the only way you could put it. I had no clue summer was even supposed to get this hot.

  My body, generously blessed with the glory of air-conditioning until just a moment ago, was all but making breakfast-griddle sizzling sounds as the sweat poured off me.

  All of this in the space of just twenty seconds. I had begun my journey at a confident saunter, but I could feel my hit points quickly being drained.

  “Uhh, testing, testing. Can you hear me, master? Check one, two…”

  “…How about we go back home…?”

  “What? What was that? Hey, can you bring me a little closer when you talk, please?”

  “Uh…never mind.”

  The owner of that nagging voice probably didn’t know how to feel heat. I couldn’t have been more jealous.

  With my ear-canal earphones on as I gripped my phone like some kind of walkie-talkie, I must have looked like an agent on some kind of mission.

  She had all but forced me to bring her along in the end, threatening to play that siren sound from the morning again or go on my high school’s online forum and place a personal ad using my real name.

  She was beaming as she strolled around my phone’s standby screen. Somehow I doubted she would be accepting any calls that showed up.

  I never imagined that software would be operating me one day, not the other way around.

  Although the “operator” in question is really more of a modern-day plague-spirit.

  Out on the street, I was faced with the full brunt of summer’s brutal barrage.

  Haze was shimmering off the far end of the road.

  I felt like an arctic (or antarctic, for that matter) creature suddenly thrown into the savanna.

  It was hot. Temperature, humidity; the exact statistics mattered little. It was just hot.

  “You have to be kidding me…This is what summer’s like?”

  “Weren’t you listening to me earlier? People were going to the hospital for heat stroke!…Oh, did you bring your insurance card, master?”

  “Sure did. All set for the ambulance. Eesh.”

  Before I left, I had brought along a few things to ensure I was ready for anything that happened.

  If worse came to worst and I collapsed in a pile of molten goo, at least they’d know who I am. Or was.

  “Perfect! Nothing to worry about, then! Let’s get truckin’!”

  “Yeah…Wait, no! Why are you bossing me around?! This is all your fault I’m here in the—”

  “Oh! Hey, go right at this stoplight! Right!”

  “Huh? This street? Sorry…Man, I don’t remember these roads at all. I don’t even know where I am any longer.”

  “Well, you never go outside, master. It’s been two years since you left the house, right? It looks like the local map’s changed completely since then.”

  The crushing heat prevented me from noticing, but things really had changed a lot.

  I could see a new and unfamiliar midrise building in front of me, there were a couple of new condos here and there, and what few memories of the area that remained were quickly being overwritten in my mind. Must’ve been some of that urban development they’re talking about. I’ve lived in this town for a while now, but I don’t remember it changing this quickly in just two years. That, or maybe shutting myself in my room made the gap seem that much more gaping when I finally tiptoed out.

  I was seized by the feeling that someone, somewhere, was gradually replacing my city, piece by piece.

  Maybe everyone who lives here, including me, just didn’t notice until now.

  I mulled the idea as I turned back and made a right at the intersection, finding myself on a larger street. My home was in a surprisingly handy location. There was a variety of transportation options, and the streets saw a decent amount of foot traffic. Watching the people crossing from left to right, right to left between the two buildings that flanked the street ahead didn’t seem different at all from the display I usually spent my time staring at.

  “Okay, make a left onto the main street and keep following it. Then go right and…um, master?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Got it. So, which way next?”

  “I said, go left onto the main street! Then make a right! You sure are spacing out on me, master…Oh no! You aren’t having heat stroke, are you?!”

  “No, nothing like that. It just feels kind of…weird. Is there really a department store in that area?”

  There definitely wasn’t one two years ago. Not a big one, at least. It used to take kind of a field trip to find any electronics nearby.

  “No doubt about it. See? Here’s what it says on the website: “Your hometown department store! From home appliances and electronics to our vast array of kitchen accessories, we’ve
got everything you need!”…Ooh, but they only built it this spring, I guess.”

  “Oh…No wonder I didn’t know. But why here, though…?”

  “Well, it looks like they’ve been pretty aggressively developing this neighborhood lately. If you go right here a little ways, there’s this huge hospital, and then a new school after that. A big library, too, across the street. That all got built up from the end of last year to this one.”

  “All of that?! Man, this place has really changed…Anyway, here’s the main street.”

  Leaving the side street, I was greeted with a panoramic view of my town.

  Billboards and trees lining the road. Office buildings and restaurants.

  Students in uniforms. Company staffers apologizing into their phones.

  That, and all the noise, noise, noise they were making.

  I felt something akin to light-headedness at all the emotions it conjured up at once.

  “Whoa…I think I gotta bail. Wanna go home? Yeah, let’s go home.”

  “Sure are a lot of people, huh? That’s the Obon holiday for you, I suppose. Better hang in there!”

  “You’re not even listening to me, are you…? Oh, man, look at all these people…”

  The shade from the trees that dotted the sidewalk, wider and better put together than the one on the side road, made walking a bit less of a chore, at least.

  But all the people on the road and cars passing from one end to the other were making the heat index skyrocket for me.

  I pressed on down the road, muttering into my phone, before reaching a massive intersection.

  “If you go back home, master, you know you’ll just be like ‘oooh, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die.’ Tough it out a little longer!”

  “Look, can you…ugh. I can’t do it. Talking to you just makes me more tired. Oh, it’s green. Better cross…”

  After crossing the intersection, I could see a park a small distance ahead. It was filled with playground equipment—swings, a jungle gym, a fountain, and lots of other stuff a kid would kill to play on. Moving ahead, I could see just a bit of classic big-department-store signage on top of the right-hand building, previously hidden by the sidewalk trees and such.