Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei

[OverMaster]

Help is on the Way.

"Good evening, how may we help you?"

"Ah, good evening. My name is Itoshiki Nozomu. Is this the Suicide Help Hotline?"

"Yes, Itoshiki-san. Please tell us about your case, and we will send any sort of necessary help your way."

"Thank you. I have to assume you would have the best specialists in Japan."

"Naturally, sir. Our experts are the top graduates in the area."

"That's good to know. I place a very high value on education, being a schoolteacher myself."

"Yes, plenty of those contacting us work at the field of teaching. You are free to tell us of anything affecting you, we have a vow of confidentiality. The conversation is being recorded strictly for possible future therapeutical issues."

"Therapy? Oh, no, I don't need any therapy. I just need a technician sent to my home."

"A... technician? We don't call them that way, Sensei, they are doctors."

"I see. So they apply injections, then?"

"Only in the event you are diagnosed and reciped for such purposes. Medication is an alternative to be explored only once--"

"Medication? I was talking about toxins."

"... I beg your pardon?"

"Yes, you know, I have resorted to all manners of poisons, yet always failed, so I figured out I might as well resort to experts. How big is your success rate?"

"Our... success rate at what?"

"Why, at successful assisted suicides, naturally. I won't mind the exact means much, as long as not much of a mess is made. I like to think I can endure physical pain remarkably well, as long as it's not prolonged. But of course, surely you will use sedation of the highest quality, sorry if I have--"

"S-Sensei! We don't HELP people kill themselves! We help them NOT kill themselves!"

"... then why do you call it a 'Suicide Help Hotline'?"

"... because we help people not to commit suicide, naturally, that's something everyone--"

"Then you should call it the Anti Suicide Help Hotline! I have just wasted precious, valuable time I could have used immolating myself! I'M IN DESPAIR! A CARELESS SOCIETY THAT MISLABELS IMPORTANT SOURCES OF SOCIAL HELP HAS LEFT ME IN DESPAIR!"

"...!"

"... anyway. Sorry for taking some of your time too, and please have a good night."

*Click*

I hung the line and took both hands to my head.

"Mariko-chan?" asked Kotono from the next booth. "What's wrong? Another one killed himself over the line?"

"... this time? I wish!"

 

[OverMaster]

Sign of the Gun.

I'm an old fashioned man, and everybody who knows me knows that.

I don't do online social interaction. I do, however, have a foreign pen pal, an American.

Now, to be an American and be as out of touch with 'the times' as I am, this American obviously needs to be a social outcast. I'd rather prefer writing to and being written by a normal, productive member of society such as myself, but such a person, in America, wouldn't be resorting to letters in this day and age, and contrary to what the saying says, you can't choose your relatives or friends, at least not when you aren't like most people.

This person... he still writes in a typing machine of all things, and he's a hardcore Conservative. I believe he lives somewhere in the Midwest mountains. He obviously hates me just for being a foreigner, but given that obviously nobody wants to deal with him in real life, he is stuck with me as much I'm stuck with him.

When I told him of my goal in life, he just asked me, "Well, why don't you use a gun?"

"Paul," I wrote, "I'm a Japanese. We don't have access to guns."

"Bullshit," was his reply. "You are rich, aren't you? Rich men can get themselves anything they want, no matter where in this fucking world."

I conceded that point, "but it's a matter of principle. I strive to be a decent, law abiding Japanese corpse, and I won't use a gun. Tell me, are they effective anyway?"

He was, for the first time, actually happy to write me, and sent several letter installements enthusiastically preaching on the virtues of guns as a tool to solve every problem. There was nothing guns couldn't solve in the hands of a good American, and guns were so effective, that even a Jap like me should be able to off himself with one.

I didn't want to offend him or his faith, so I politely wrote him I'd think on the subject, and changed the subject.

Obviously, this didn't fool him. "Nozomu, you're a fucking spineless dweeb" he accused me, before moving on anyway, and the topic wasn't touched again.

---

Last month, after two months of failing to receive his letters, his brother-- a brother I'd never been told about before-- wrote to me. Paul had shot himself in the head in his woodlands cabin, and they found him a week after the fact. The brother told me Paul had left me some books on alt-right nonsense in his will, and so they were included in the package.

I still haven't bought myself a gun, even though I'm certain I could have one imported. I don't think I ever will. That's not the Japanese way, for Kami's sake.

Besides, I'm sure I'd have more of a success if I ever manage to read through all those books in their entirety. Just going through their prologues makes me sick, even if, out of respect for Paul, they remain, safe and sound, in my bookshelves, all the way at the bottom.