They are known as "visitors," or "otherworlders," and they bear knowledge of things that do not exist in this world.


Their memories from the past are burned into their souls, due to a powerful will.


Luck is on your side, truly.


What rights would one possibly expect in this, of all worlds? Do not entertain such fantasies in this realm, little one. The only law that reigns here is survival of the fittest. Might, as they say, makes right.


Perhaps she hails from the same area as you. Oh? I dunno... Where I come from, nobody's that strong, you know? Perhaps, but many otherworlders come here bearing special powers.


Something I picked up on as we spoke was that this dragon... I think he really liked humans. He kept calling them 'wimps' and 'garbage' and such, but from the way he put it, he never deliberately killed anyone who attacked him.


To tell the truth, I do not need any core at all... You can keep a secret, I trust?


No worries about Veldora dissipating away in my stomach. I was starting to think this could actually work.


Seeing him gone suddenly made me feel very small and very solitary.


If we could have them deploy even one of their paladins, the Empire wouldn't be so quick to move... Not needing to prepare for monster attacks would buy us some time, at least.


They cannot help everyone, nor even their own flock.


I reminded myself of a jellyfish, kind of.


Ah... Is this where I'm going to die...?


Help me, Mom...


You called for me, you gave up on me... I can't believe you ignored me! That's cruel!


I don't want to die! Not yet! But...I can't... I can't let my old self disappear!


I can't take it anymore. It's too scary; it's too hot. Help me, Mom...


Damn it. It's not letting me off the hook! We didn't need to exchange any words


Should I fight it? I had this killer finisher that I'd spent the last week training for, didn't I? It's just that…you know, fighting a monster like this would take a bit of an…extra oomph. In other words, I was crapping my pants.


But hang on. Get a hold of yourself. Thinking about it, I've been through scarier stuff before. Remember Veldora? Compared to that dragon, this guy… Hell, maybe it's not so scary after all. Maybe this is all gonna work out!


What kind of idiot gets himself lost in the very first cave? That first easy-peasy cave's supposed to be a springboard that helps you dive into the experience, isn't it?


Survival of the fittest and all.


These supersonic waves were so useful. I thought I remembered reading something about a weapon that used sound waves.


A wise man keeps away from danger, as they say.


Not that I minded being left alone. Getting a wolf's sense of smell would be neat, though.


But will they understand me? I focused my thoughts on my still-newborn voice and gingerly tried a few words.


I was impressed that plain old Japanese worked on these guys. With all the politeness they gave me, I figured I should return the favor—but given how terrified some of them were, I might as well show off the confidence they thought I had.


At the same time, I tried to find a way to extinguish the mystical aura around me, futzing around with the surrounding magic to try to push it back in.


Might've been a rude question, there. Upon further questioning, the named goblin they'd lost turned out to be both the elder's son and the older brother of the scouting party.


That's how a feared monster should rightly act!


I reflected on my past life. When someone asked me to do something, I always did it. Even if I bitched and moaned about it at first, even if the guys at the office yelled at me about it, I was never able to say no to my manager or clients.


Even if they fled the village right now, they'd practically starve before the day was through.


I wanted to bring some swagger into this, and now I'm gonna!


The strongest creature in the world, after all, is a human being with a little intelligence!


Yesterday's enemy is today's friend, and all that. They had to learn that the hard way, but at least everyone was on board.


That which does not kill me makes me stronger


Back in their regular goblin days, they'd eked out a living off fruits, nuts, edible plants, and whatever monsters and animals they could hunt down.


I had the ears of everyone in the audience. Looks like that worked well enough. I was sure some of them wouldn't listen to reason, but it's best to try to nip these things in the bud, anyway.


It felt as though my mind belonged to someone else. The terror was unbearable. But… In another moment, it all fixed itself. Ifrit's consciousness filled my soul anew, bottling up my anxieties and my fear.


My entire body surged with maddening regret and sadness—and then, like nothing had happened, I was serene. No tears spilled from my eyes, even though I wanted to cry. No madness overtook me, even though I wanted to lose myself in it. No voice escaped my throat, even though I wanted to scream.


Did the magic-born titan take over my mind, too? My heart was buried in a swell of terror, and then instantly, the calmness came back. I was no longer even a person. No matter how much I wanted it, I would never attain the kind of happiness others were entitled to.


From that day forward, I stopped crying. I had already cried all my tears out anyway. There was nothing left to shed. I had lost something far too important to myself on that day. And Leon, my demon lord, simply looked on coldly. Quietly. Never punishing me.


No place in the world boasted as many weaponsmiths and merchants, and yet it sounded like the farthest point in the universe from any kind of conflict. A bit ironic, maybe.


I supposed that even in this world, you could afford to be neutral only if you had the muscle to back it up.


Compassion is its own best reward, and all that. I'll get karma back for it someday.


Really, though, what was that? I was completely undamaged. Was that skill name just for show?


I looked down at them, wondering how they were ever going to clean up their undergarments after this—trying to keep my new reality at bay for just a few more moments.


Curse that damned minister! He rubbed his forehead as he imagined himself taking a hammer to the man and sighed. A lot of sighing lately.


They seemed to prefer letting other people use them instead. That was how they wound up entrusting their shop to someone who stole it from them, falling into the trap of an apprentice jealous of their natural talent, getting bullied by the government after they botched a ministerial request…


Mildo, the taciturn third brother, had denied a request from Vester to build a house for him. The minister had taken it personally, badgering him about it to the point that Mildo had had to go into exile with Kaijin. Sounded like a stupid grudge to have.


Promises are made to be kept.


Honestly, it was getting a little frightening. No way they could've known, but...what if they had? Or was that just my paranoid, lower-middle-class upbringing coming out?


Why did I have to be so mean to people all the time? Not even my death and rebirth had cured me of that habit.


You create a lot of problems for yourself otherwise. All the bravado in the world wasn't going to solve them, was it?


As far as the minister was concerned, Kaijin could make a comeback in the military and threaten his position at any time. That kind of thing. Didn't he deserve the death penalty, really? Maybe not, but...


I concluded that it must've been a coincidence.


I was a tad nervous about that as I opened the door to his punishment room.


Being king around here seemed like a terribly lonely job to have.


Fear, pure fear, dominated Vester's head.


When did I go wrong? When I grew jealous of Kaijin, or before...?


He didn't know. All he knew was that he had betrayed the king's trust.


Food one can look forward to is one of the first steps toward an advanced culture.


I wondered how much he had to sacrifice to maintain that ideal in reality. In a way, it was frightening. It took a lot of spirit, I'm sure, to be a leader like that.


I wanted to be the sort of person who could manage that.


But it was true—having someone take an interest in me and listen to my story made me happy. It left incontrovertible evidence that I had been alive all this time. I could throw out my chest and proclaim to the world that I had lived, even if it was just in someone's memory.


The droplets slipping down from behind the mask must have been my imagination. I made myself believe it was true as I watched her leave. Because I know I'll see you again... The thought made me want to grow stronger than ever before.


If I abandoned them, I would be no different from my demon lord. So I worked as hard as I could to be an ally to the weak.


Rose-colored glasses would just get in the way when you were leading a pack of monsters. You had to keep a cool head around them.


It was amazing how I could think about killing people as if I were wondering where to go for lunch, though. It came as a surprise, but—hell—it beat hemming and hawing over every life decision I made. Kept it simple.


Helping out someone in need is a nice thing, you know?


Pardon us, I guess. I just didn’t expect we’d be saved by a monster tribe.


They were, after all, growing by leaps and bounds. I wasn’t expecting every diplomatic effort to go perfectly with these hobgobs. Settling down back in my tent, I began patiently waiting.


Was building this town near the cave mouth a mistake?


These guys were a lot more good-natured than I gave them credit for at first.


No country had any legal right to this land, so it wasn’t as if anyone could force us out.


Well, what if I told you that there used to be loads of it…and I swallowed it all up?


What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.


I was a bit concerned about the wood and other supplies we had piled up, but there wasn’t much I could do for it now.


Whether that theory was right or not didn’t matter right now. The problem was the force behind those attacks.


It was just that— It had been several years since I'd retired from the adventurer life. I was a full-fledged teacher, leading the next generation of our trade as I helped out the society with its work.


I figured that I should believe in her. That her iron will could clear the darkness in her soul and transform her into a great woman.


All I could do was pray for Hinata's continued safety.


For someone charged with training new recruits, nothing could have made me happier.


The world I was born in had almost been razed to the ground by war. Had it recovered to the point where it could create people like him—people who never seemed to have a care in the world?


I felt the satisfaction of a job well done.


Hopefully he was willing to forgive this one final act of selfishness.


I had never heard of anything like it on this planet. It was a bizarre settlement. But it was bursting with energy. The residents, despite being monsters, truly seemed to enjoy working on it.


Still, there was something inviting about the space this slime created. The strange creature somehow made me recall memories of my own hometown. My heart felt full.


Ifrit had been waiting for this moment. I could feel his will taking over mine. It's happening… I'm going to ruin all of this, too… If only, one last time, I could just—


Thus, the girl was reunited with her mother. It marked the end of what had been a long, long journey.


And if I didn't need to reproduce—I was still fuzzy on that, but if I didn't, then why bother with genitals at all?


Was I letting myself get in such a panic? I'd just have to accept the truth about what happened down there.


But to Gobta, it was just another day.


Having a full stomach did wonders for Gobta's spirits.


In the end, he decided to pick up a tree branch he found at the side of the river, let it fall to the ground, and travel the way it pointed.


Nothing could have made him happier.


When it came to romance, goblins never took things slow.


Concepts like beauty and ugliness would normally be dependent on the race or species one belonged to. There were no absolutes.


It was with that new goal in life that Gobta spent his single night in the Dwarven Kingdom.


Gobta was too busy trying to widen the gap to care.


Maybe I shouldn't have tried to act all cool back there— There was no point regretting it now.


He felt as if he heard a voice that rang like bells. That he heard that voice, that he *could* hear that voice, felt like salvation to him more than anything else, so—


I guess if I keep this up, it's no different from locking myself up in my room back home.


With a knife involved, fighting was out of the question. No matter how you might train yourself, if you were stabbed, it was all over. All things in life are transient.


Oh, so there are rats in this world, too, Subaru thought. I hope they aren't big, like monster rats or anything.


It wasn't fear that overwhelmed him; it was more the feeling of emptiness that this would all end without him accomplishing anything.


In the midst of this overwhelming despair, feeling as if he had been abandoned by everyone and everything...


That's an otherworldly fantasy for you. Everyone has quite the severe view on the concept of empathy.


Am I just going to be abandoned here in this alley? was the negative take. Well, I suppose I was going to die, and now I'm not, so I should be super grateful, was a more positive thought.


You can't do anything about what you don't know.


If you live like that, you're just going to keep losing until there's nothing left.


She's cute when she's stubborn, but it's foolish to let your stubbornness get the best of you and make you lose sight of your goals.


I mean, it didn't look like they were dangerous or anything.


It was only safe because I had them under control. If you had done that to an inexperienced spirit mage, it would have been awful. In the worst case, the spirits could have gone berserk and… BAM.


Well, to put it one way, I may look pretty cute… but it would only take two seconds for me to turn you into a pile of dust.


I would never use Puck for something like that. If I were going to be violent with you, I'd handle you myself… Ugh, it really looks like they aren't going to answer me anymore.


So you don't know where you are, you don't have any money, you can't read, and you have no one you can count on. I'm starting to think you're worse off than I am…


Taking another look at you, you actually look like you're in pretty good shape. Um… Uh… Subaru.


I don't really get what you mean by 'cooped up in your room,' but you're from a high-ranking family, aren't you?


If I'm wrong, just tell me I'm wrong. If you don't, it's just going to be more embarrassing for me.


You don't have to think that hard about it, you know? If it's something you can't talk about, I won't question you any further.


Let's just calm down a minute.


You know, that kindness of yours is a great virtue, and given the fact that I myself was saved by that kindness I really don't want to say this, but do you have any idea what situation you're in right now?


But don't you see, Subaru? Look at her, she's crying.


If you don't want to stick around with me, that's just fine. Thanks for everything you've done, Subaru. I'll figure this out on my own…after I help that little girl.


Even if we got my badge back, I'm sure I would have regretted not helping that girl. Don't you think it is better to both help the girl and get my badge back?


Now we can be in a good mood as we continue to search.


If we run around without some sort of plan, we won't get any results.


"So in other words you don't want to be in front. That would really, really make it easier on me, though." Satella sighed yet again in the face of Subaru's energetic readiness to flee.


"All right! Let's do this! It's about time I do something to show you what I'm made of!"


"What are you so excited about all of a sudden? I can see up your nostrils."


However, this little episode had a different ending than the last few.


"I'm sorry for pushing you so hard, Puck. I'll do my best from here on out, so you just get some rest."


At her core, Satella was too direct and honest herself. If something was twisted or bent, she couldn't help but try to set it right.


This was a girl who could not bring herself to lie for any reason.


After all...it was just night a minute ago, wasn't it?


It was enough to make him feel like he was going crazy.


The feeling of guilt was even stronger than the feeling of pain he had felt when he himself was attacked.


Subaru thought back to Puck's words right before he disappeared. The promise Subaru made with that cat certainly wasn't a joke.


At the very least, he didn't want them to be.


In this world, evil never triumphs!


Last time we came here I was talking with Satella, and my eyes were on her most of the time, so I guess it's no surprise I don't remember the way very well, damn it,


Don't be scared. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. Are you an idiot? …Well, of course I am, but do you think I'm really going to come all this way and then go back empty-handed?


But still, you should be proud of yourself! That was good form there! So how about it? Do you feel like letting any of that stuff inside you out now?


Tsk-tsk-tsk. It's true, I may not have any money. However! In this world, you do not necessarily need money to obtain things. There's this wonderful system called 'barter'—haven't you heard?


I want to pay someone back. I'm someone who always feels like they have to return a favor. I'm one of those modern kids who can't handle the feeling of being indebted to someone. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. So, even if I have to take a big loss, I'm going to take back that badge.


I want to take a loss. Isn't it obvious? I want to pay someone back. I'm someone who always feels like they have to return a favor.


Why does everybody have to insult the drinks?! I'm showing you some kindness here...!


I've come here prepared to have everything taken from me. Just watch me as I lose it all.


I see, I see. If that's the case, then why not? If this mitia can sell for more than this badge, then I couldn't be happier.


It wouldn't be right just to judge everyone based on the actions of a few bad eggs.


I don't mind, even if that's the way it is. ...Actually, it'd be best if it were that way.


I can't just let myself be in a position to be talked down on price, you know? It's the wisdom of the weak.


Elsa silently opened the mouth of the bag, and turned it over. What came tumbling out were several shining blessed gold coins. Felt's eyes sparkled as she saw the coins layer on top of one another, and even Rom made a sound in his throat.


Elsa placed her white fingers on top of the bag she had placed on the table.


Elsa shrugged but did not look all that displeased herself.


Elsa bowed once gracefully toward the body, as if paying her respects.


As Elsa said this, she twirled the kukri around and pretended as if she were practicing the proper cuts to butcher Felt.


Elsa's ecstatic smile suddenly turned, and her eyes were filled with hatred as her arm bent back.


In this aroused state, his breathing abnormal, Subaru launched another mindless attack…but he was again struck back.


As Subaru looked down he could see the blood flowing out of his abdomen and staining the floor bright red.


With his hand still grabbing at her ankle, Elsa knelt down beside Subaru and looked him in the eyes.


Subaru could feel Elsa's voice vibrating his eardrums, torturing him, savoring him, pitying him, affectionate for him, loving him.


In this space, not knowing exactly when the light of his life would be extinguished, Subaru could not separate himself from the fear of death.


When will I die? When will I die? Am I still alive? Am I not already dead?


How do you define life? Can you even say that I'm alive in this state, lesser than any insect? What is life? *What* is death?


Why is dying so frightening? Is it really necessary to live? No? I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared.


As an absolute and unconditional death grew ever closer, Subaru's mind instinctively rejected it.


At the end, that rejection filled everything that Subaru was, and as his vision whited out, he thought… Ah…I'm *dead.*


Subaru felt as if all of the other sounds had disappeared…but that was no illusion.


The reason why Subaru thought Satella would be upset and the real reason she was upset were different.


Subaru had absolutely no idea what was going on. He couldn't understand what she was saying.


If Subaru called her name again, he would simply be making the same mistake twice.


Even small-time villains like this had a sense of pride, he thought.


All of the wounds on Subaru's body had disappeared; the rips and bloodstains on his tracksuit were gone as well. In Subaru's hands, inside that plastic convenience store back were his unopened chips, waiting for Subaru to eat them.


So, it's one of those things, huh... Whenever I die, I start back at square one in my initial state. At least, that's the way it seems.


When you do the same thing three times, there are a couple of things that you begin to understand. Well, more like after three times you'd have to be incredibly stupid not to understand those things. I may be a little stupid, but not that stupid.


There's probably a pattern here. Some kind of inevitability. No matter how many times you do something over, at least a few things will never change. Or at least there's some sort of strong force that tries to keep things that way.


I guess I really am a product of the modern age. Even though I always used to make fun of people like this when I sat in front of a computer screen...


But you know, I hate it. It feels terrible. I know those two are far from being saints, but knowing that someone you know is going to be killed...that's just impossible to ignore.


Buddha only has the patience to save you three times.


For the majority of people, the risk of interfering when thugs like those are involved is too great.


If someone like that was walking around in the capital, there was a good chance that Reinhard, a guard, had noticed.


It had been over ten minutes since Subaru had started his lookout, and it had already been nearly an hour since he had started his fourth run.


In the end, I've really got to cling to life as long as I can. Well, I suppose that goes without saying, though.


No sense in worrying about things that can't be helped. This is where Subaru's decisiveness shone.


When people are afraid, they smell afraid. Right now you are afraid…and also angry, it seems…at me.


If I don't do this, I'd have to sell my body. Anyway, so what's it going to be? Or do you have some other business for me?


Despite that, he seems to be quite doting on a certain foulmouthed young girl, always giving her milk and all…


What did Felt really mean when she said she'd leave everything to Rom? Rom treated Felt like she was a cute granddaughter of his, and he felt so strongly about her that he was ready to lay down his life for her. But how did Felt feel about Rom? Subaru didn't want to think that that bald old man, whom he couldn't bring himself to hate, was just being used by her.


Felt said if she were "going alone," she might be able to make it. This meant that she had someone else in the slums she couldn't leave behind. For Felt, who held such a feeling of animosity toward the people of the slums, there could only be one person she could feel that way about.


Everything suddenly made sense to him. The second time around, Felt and Rom seemed to treat each other like family. Both were killed by Elsa, but even as they were dying they must have been thinking of each other. Plus, Felt had saved Subaru's life in the nick of time once before as well. If Subaru felt indebted to Not-Satella, then he should feel indebted to Felt as well.


He would change the fates of not just Not-Satella, but Felt and Rom as well…all of the people who had moved his heart.


Life has its limits. You've got to treat every second of it as precious, and it's a shame to waste any—


In reality, it's two against one,


From my perspective, most people I deal with are like babies to me.


However, it was clear that if one hit, it would do far more damage than if a stone were thrown.


But while Subaru was kind of hurt by her nonserious reaction, with spit flying, he shouted one more time.


Compared with Subaru's shouting and stomping, Puck's voice was aloof and detached.


As a popular male, it really is tough on me. I can never put the girls to sleep. However, you know if you stay up too late it's bad for your skin.


My foot… As soon as Elsa tried to take a step, she fell forward, catching herself with her hands on the ground. Elsa's right foot had been frozen to the floor.


You don't have the determination or power to fight. You should have just cowered in the corner like a good little girl.


To be honest, that's exactly what I want to do right now. I don't want to stay another second in this violent space.


You're fifteen and I'm seventeen. Out of all of us, you're probably the youngest one here. So it's the right thing to do to give you the highest possibility of getting out of here alive. It's what's only natural.


Without even looking back, Elsa swung her blade and broke the ice to pieces. 'I've started to get tired of this little game… Are you sure you'll be able to keep me entertained?' asked Elsa in a low voice, with her smile the color of blood.


As Subaru gazed at her smile, he felt a shiver run down his spine, and looked over at Not-Satella to make eye contact.


In one way, Not-Satella looked as though she was just about ready to give up; at the same time she looked ready to accept the fact that Subaru was weak and wouldn't help much.


To Subaru, Not-Satella was someone who, no matter how tough things got, would never look down and give up.


Because that was the way she was, Subaru had worked so hard to see her smile. Subaru had died several times and come this far in order to save her.


The red-haired young man Reinhard turned to face Subaru, who was still toppled over on the ground, with a slight apologetic smile.


People don't tend to lie to people who've saved their life.


If I lose my fangs, I'll fight with my nails. If I lose my nails, I'll fight with my bones. If I lose my bones, I'll fight with my life.


In that case, I'll just have to have you forsake your ideals.


Because I'm using spirit magic, he can't fight full force. At least not until I finish my healing.


Forget a corpse, I don't even see any trace of her left… This is all just from one swing of your sword?


The way you say that, it sounds like you had experienced all of that at one time.


She was simply smiling because she was happy. That was all there was to it.


As Subaru closed his eyes in silence, the girl looked as though she wanted to say something, but before she could open her mouth, Subaru pointed a finger up to the heavens.


Emilia then stood up and nodded. "I'm done treating him. He's probably made it past the worst of it."


Well, that might have happened if things were as they were before, but I don't feel like I have it in me anymore. So while only a little bit, I'll forgive you for his sake,


Just so you know, I'm only returning this to you this time because I owe my life to you all. I don't think I did anything wrong, and I have no plans to stop.


Emilia seemed to realize this as well, and after lowering her eyes for a few moments, she stuck out her hand without another word. Understood. …I was asking for too much.


Listen, Hikigaya. What was the homework I assigned you in class?


That's right. So why does this sound like the prelude to a school massacre? Are you a terrorist? Or just an idiot?


Do you have any friends?


I see! So you don't after all! Just as I thought. I could tell the minute I saw those rotten, sordid eyes of yours.


This is Hachiman Hikigaya from Class 2-F. Um…hey. What do you mean, 'join the club'?


"I refuse. Seeing those lewd eyes of his brimming with ulterior motives, I feel a threat to my person."


Haves giving things to Have-nots out of the goodness of their hearts is known as volunteering. Giving aid to developing nations, running soup kitchens for the homeless, and letting unpopular guys talk to girls... Lending a helping hand to people in need. That is what this club does.


Indeed. There's nothing you can do about them at this point, anyway.


You're right. That was a mean thing to say. Your parents are surely suffering the most.


Now your practice conversation with an actual person is complete. If you can speak with a girl like me, you should be able to speak to most ordinary people.


Oh, so you're aware that you're a pimple?


The problem is he isn't even aware of his own issues,


From what I can see, you are markedly lacking in humanity. You don't want to change


I would only be changing to escape reality. Who's the one running now? If you're really not running, then you wouldn't change. You'd make a stand right there. Why can't I affirm who I am at present and who I was in the past?


If that were true, then no worries could be solved and no one could be saved.


You can't move forward if you don't change.


Life isn't just about fun. If it were, there wouldn't be any sad Hollywood movies. There is such a thing as finding pleasure in tragedy, you know.


You kids really are twisted after all. There are parts of you that I don't think will conform well to society, and that worries me.


No matter how far you go, in the end, people can never really understand one another.


Well, it's not like I don't see your point. You can have fun on your own. I'm actually disgusted by the idea that a person can't be alone.


You're alone because you want to be, so it's irritating when people pity you for it.


Do you even know what it's like, having people like you?


See? You would attempt to exclude that individual, wouldn't you? Just like an irrational animal…no, inferior to one, even.


In the world we live in, the greater a person is, the more difficult his or her life becomes. Don't you find that strange?


She never lies to herself. I can respect that. Because I'm the same way.


We've desperately endeavored to create a society where you don't have to work, so it's completely absurd to be saying things like, 'You have to work!' or 'There's no jobs!'


That's not something you need to be embarrassed about. At your age, being a virg—


Whether or not your wishes are granted depends on you.


It's the difference between giving a starving person a fish and teaching them how to fish. Volunteer efforts are, at their core, about putting that ideal into practice, and not just about producing results.


Perhaps the best way to describe it is that we encourage self-reliance.


Words relating life and death, in particular, can be particularly impactful.


If you aren't prepared to take someone's life with your own hands, then you should never say you will.


Yukinoshita's words were both sharp and so utterly correct that they allowed no counterargument.


Effort is a great solution if it's done right. Those who fail do so only because they cannot imagine the effort it takes to be successful at achieving their goals.


Yuigahama's voice caught in her throat. She'd probably never been slapped in the face with such a sound case before.


In other words, she lacked the courage to risk loneliness in order to be herself.


Put simply, Yukinoshita had talent, but because of her talent, she didn't have the slightest understanding of how the talentless felt.


No matter how many times you do it over, you can't shore up that deficit.


If you have love…love is okay!


The goal of hurdling is not to jump over the hurdles. It's to reach the finish line with the best time. There's no rule saying you have to jump to get there.


If you set the bar too high, you'll never betray yourself if you put in effort, but you may end up betraying your dreams.


Even if you do make an effort, your dreams won't necessarily come true. It's actually more likely that they won't. But the fact that you tried alone is comforting.


You aren't betraying yourself if you put in effort, even if you end up betraying your dreams.


Everyone should pamper themselves more. If everyone's a failure, then no one's a failure.


As man is a thinking reed, he ponders things without even realizing. And precisely because the loner does not expend mental resources thinking about other people, his thoughts become that much deeper.


This means that loners come to have different thought patterns than more social types, and sometimes that leads them to unique ideas that ordinary people wouldn't come up with.


I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Computers aren't just for sending e-mails. There's also the Internet and Photoshop. What I'm saying is, don't judge people based on that sole trait.


It was just like the kind of hollow laughter you hear on a variety show laugh track. It was awfully loud, as if they'd just been cued to [laugh here] by the teleprompter.


Hey, hey, that looked really rough. What is this, a feudal society? If you *have* to tiptoe around like that in order to become a normie, I'm fine being a *loner* forever.


Her voice sounded like a stifled sob leaking out, stuttering along haltingly. With each word, Yukinoshita's shoulders twitched, her eyes opening very slightly to glance into the classroom.


It was even more awkward than usual. Before long, most of the students started formulating excuses like they were thirsty or had to go to the bathroom or whatever and left.


The only people who remained in the end were Hayama and Miura's clique and some curious rubberneckers.


I had no choice but to jump on the big wave rushing out of the room. Or rather, I should say that had it gotten any tenser, I'd have found myself unable to breathe.


He was surprised, but he was waiting for me? What was that supposed to mean? I was the surprised one here.


I guessed this was the kind of thing high school students were supposed to do, though.


High schoolers take part in a broader range of activities than middle schoolers do, showing interest in clothing and cuisine and the like.


His trench coat fluttered vigorously, rustling as he stretched his chubby face into an exaggeratedly handsome expression and turned to face me.


He was completely in character with the Master Swordsman General identity he'd created. Just watching him made my head throb.


Actually, it hurt my soul more than it did my head, and Yukinoshita's and Yuigahama's daggerlike stares hurt even more than that.


When you're used to getting insulted and abused, you just get good at striking back, or rather, compartmentalizing it. What a sad skill. I'm crying right now.


Well, originally, there were seven gods in the world. Three gods of creation —Garan, the Wise Emperor; Methika, Goddess of War; Hearthia, Protector of Souls—three gods of destruction—Olto, the Foolish King; Rogue of the Lost Temple; Lai-Lai the Paranoid—and the eternally missing god, the Nameless God. These seven gods are eternally repeating cycles of prosperity and decline. This is the seventh time they've remade the world, and to make certain that this time they can prevent its destruction, the Japanese government is looking for the reincarnations of these gods.


Everyone, at one point or another, lies in bed at night and imagines they have some kind of hidden powers and that one day those powers will suddenly awaken—entangling them in a battle to determine the fate of the world—and keeps a Diary of the Celestial Realm in preparation for the time that will come, and writes a quarterly report for the government about it, right? You don't?


I've also outgrown training with self-defense weapons made from rubber bands and aluminum foil. I've stopped cosplaying with my dad's long coat and my mom's fake fur scarf.


It is indeed reasonable to want to give shape to the things you've continually yearned for. It's also perfectly normal to think, *Well,* I daydream a lot, so I can *write!* Furthermore, if you can make a living doing what you love, that's a very fortuitous thing.


Even if it's twisted, childish, or wrong, if you can commit to it, it has to be right. If having someone deny your ability is enough to make you change, then it isn't your dream, and it isn't you.


With youth, there comes walls. Speaking of walls, why is the slang term for a girl with small breasts *nurikabe*? I wonder. According to one theory, *nurikabe* are actually magically transformed tanuki—you know, the wild Japanese raccoon dog—and the barrier spirit is actually the tanuki's balls stretched out wide. What kind of wall is that? Certainly a surprisingly soft one! And doesn't that means that, paradoxically, that small-breasted girls being belittled as *nurikabe* are actually really soft? QED, proof complete. Stupid. At any rate, that wasn't the kind of thing Hayama could figure out. That miraculous hypothesis was only made possible by my extraordinary sensibilities.


No, you don't. I stand out like a field of glittering stars against the night sky.


Let's take a little break.


I see. They're in the same class, so it's obvious they would go together, huh. That sort of thing always left an impression on me.


I think it's something that often happens with tiny clubs. A weak club couldn't scrape together enough members, and a club without enough members would have no competition to make it to the slot of a regular.


We were pretty far apart, so his voice was drawn out and slow.


Yes. In middle school, I returned from abroad to Japan. Of course, I was transferring in, and all the girls in the class, or rather, the whole school, were desperate to eliminate me.


If you just can't beat someone no matter how hard you try, it's no surprise you would try to hold them back and drag them down.


Depending on how you interpreted that remark, it could have meant something disparaging, like So you can't do it? Unfortunately, there was someone in that very room who would take it that way.


Agh, Yuigahama had flipped that weird switch in Yukinoshita's brain. Yukino Yukinoshita would accept any challenge head-on and beat it down with all she had.


At the end of the day, all this community known as the Service Club did was scrape together a bunch of weaklings, and all these weaklings were doing was doze off inside that little walled garden.


If what ailed us was something that could be wiped away through such a shoddy effort, none of us would have been sick in the first place.


If that troublesome process was what they called youth, then I didn't need any of it. Enjoying yourself among some tepid community is basically just stroking your own ego. It's deceit. The worst sort of evil.


In the end, we were made to do pushups for the whole lunch hour, and I writhed around in bed late that night in muscle pain.


Agh, here come the stupid curls again. Are your brain cells twisted up


I just wanted to prove this one thing: that loners are not pitiful people, and that being a loner does not make you inferior. I was completely enlightened by the knowledge this was purely for the sake of my own ego. I was superenlightened. So enlightened I could teleport and breathe fire and stuff. But I didn't want to deny the validity of who I was then or who I was in the past. I would never say that my time spent alone was a sin or that being alone was evil. And that was why I would fight in order to prove the truth of my justice.


Agh...what a mess. As I was coming to my wits' end, a certain someone tossed a rude and irritated remark at me.


The things she said might be incredibly cruel, but they were always true. So she honestly wasn't doing it for me. That doesn't necessarily mean that she didn't like me, so I was okay with that.


If you feel like you want to get better, you


But if you can master anything from the start, you would never even practice in the first place, and naturally, you would never build up any staying power.


You couldn't get how scary it is every time there's a test and you have no one to ask what's on it; you just silently study and then face your results head-on.


You guys lie, deceive, and distract yourselves from it all by chattering It's so hot and It's so cold and No way with your friends, but I endured that all on my own.


Yuigahama mumbled, barely opening her mouth. I couldn't hear her at all. Speak properly, come on. You're acting like me when a clerk at a clothing store tries to talk to me.


And for people


But I had fun. Diligently going to the library to finish brick-sized fantasy novels, listening rapturously to radio personalities speaking when I happened to switch on the radio in the middle of the night, fishing for heartwarming articles within the wide electronic ocean ruled by text… I found all of that, encountered all of those things, precisely because I spent my days alone. I was grateful and moved by every single one of those experiences, and though they brought me to tears, they weren't tears of lamentation.


People like me or Yukinoshita or Yuigahama or Zaimokuza. I'm sure things like friendship and love and dreams and so forth are wonderful to many people. Even feelings of skittishness or anxiety can be seen in a positive light, I'm sure. That very outlook is what they call youth. But at the end of the day, that's exactly why contrary sorts like me wonder if maybe people just enjoy being enraptured by the buzz of youth or whatever.


Real youth is when two guys stop by a fast-food joint like Saizeriya after school and loiter around until evening, surviving only on fountain drinks and focaccia, desperately bad-mouthing people and complaining about school to kill time. Stuff like that. That is the real teen experience. I've gone through it myself, so it's absolutely true. But that kind of experience wasn't so bad. Mixing melon soda and orange juice and calling it melonge and getting excited about it, going on field trips and playing mah-jongg in a brutal atmosphere with three other guys, seeing the girl I had a crush on with her boyfriend and me suddenly going quiet… Now I consider those good memories.


Thinking that naughty, rage-inducing girl's a tsundere… Tsundere is a Japanese term that combines the terms tsun-tsun ("prickly") and dere-dere ("bashful"). It refers to a character who is prickly and irritable on the outside but secretly sentimental.


She's like something out of Alcatraz or Cassandra. Why couldn't a Savior of Century's End show up right about now? Alcatraz is one famous prison, but Cassandra is another—at least, in the manga series Fist of the North Star. Its hero, Kenshiro, is known as the Savior of the Century's End.


Maybe you're so twisted up, it reversed all your meridians. Another Fist of the North Star reference, this time to Souther, a villain whose internal organs are positioned in a mirror image from normal anatomy. One of his villainous projects is the construction of the Holy Emperor Cross Mausoleum, a pyramid built by child slave labor.


You have a full-blown case of second-year head swell. Second-year head swell (kounibyou*, literally, "second year of high school disease") is a term Ms. Hiratsuka invents here to tease Hikigaya. However, it's based on an existing term, chuunibyou (literally, "second year of middle school disease, translated in this book as "M-2 syndrome").


I miss the purity of the Muromachi era… In Japanese history, the Muromachi period refers to the time between the mid-1300s to the mid1500s, during which Japan was ruled by the Muromachi shogunate. The period ended with the collapse of Japan into smaller factions, a violent era known as the Sengoku or "warring states" era, to which Zaimokuza is referring here.


I think he's just taking the name Hachiman and thinking of the Bodhisattva Hachiman. Hachiman is a god of war in the Shinto tradition; with the arrival of Buddhism in Japan he was integrated into that faith as a bodhisattva, a human who has attained Buddhahood.


The Seiwa Genji clan zealously worshipped him as a god of war. The Seiwa Genji were a powerful line of the Minamoto clan of Japanese nobility for hundreds of years, tracing their lineage back to the Emperor Seiwa. The Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates were both descended from the Seiwa Genji, and the Tokugawa shogunate claimed the lineage as well.


Being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world—not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn't know could exist. To take a situation where everything seems to be absolutely fucked and still somehow make it good.


Bravery is common. Resilience is common. But heroism has a philosophical component to it. There's some great "Why?" that heroes bring to the table—some incredible cause or belief that goes unshaken, no matter what.


We are a culture in need not of peace or prosperity or new hood ornaments for our electric cars. We have all that. We are a culture and a people in need of hope.


Heroism isn't just bravery or guts or shrewd maneuvering. These things are common and are often used in unheroic ways. No, being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none.


Hope is the fuel for our mental engine. It's the butter on our biscuit. It's a lot of really cheesy metaphors. Without hope, your whole mental apparatus will stall out or starve.


If we don't believe there's any hope that the future will be better than the present, that our lives will improve in some way, then we spiritually die. After all, if there's no hope of things ever being better, then why live—why do anything?


The opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. If you're angry or sad, that means you still give a fuck about something. That means something still matters. That means you still have hope.


Hopelessness is a cold and bleak nihilism, a sense that there is no point, so fuck it—why not run with scissors or sleep with your boss's wife or shoot up a school? It is the Uncomfortable Truth, a silent realization that in the face of infinity, everything we could possibly care about quickly approaches zero. Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all.


All meaning, everything we understand about ourselves and the world, is constructed for the purpose of maintaining hope. Therefore, hope is the only thing any of us willingly dies for. Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it, we believe we are nothing.


To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. "Control" means we feel as though we're in control of our own life, that we can affect our fate. "Values" means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that's worth striving for. And "community" means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things.


Without a community, we feel isolated, and our values cease to mean anything. Without values, nothing appears worth pursuing. And without control, we feel powerless to pursue anything. Lose any of the three, and you lose the other two. Lose any of the three, and you lose hope.


His inner world no longer possessed lightness and darkness but was instead an endless gray miasma.


We've all had the experience of knowing what we should do yet failing to do it.


The truth is that the human mind is far more complex than any "secret." And you can't simply change yourself; nor, I would argue, should you always feel you must.


We cling to this narrative about self-control because the belief that we're in complete control of ourselves is a major source of hope.


You get to control the meaning of your impulses and feelings. You get to decipher them however you see fit. You get to draw the map.


The problem isn't that we don't know how not to get punched in the face. The problem is that, at some point, likely a long time ago, we got punched in face, and instead of punching back, we decided we deserved it.


Pain causes moral gaps. And it's not just between people. If a dog bites you, your instinct is to punish it. If you stub your toe on a coffee table, what do you do? You yell at the damn coffee table.


Sadness is a feeling of powerlessness to make up for a perceived loss. Anger is the desire to equalize through force and aggression. Happiness is feeling liberated from pain, while guilt is the feeling that you deserve some pain that never arrived.


Our Feeling Brain creates our values around our experiences of pain. Experiences that cause us pain create a moral gap within our minds, and our Feeling Brain deems those experiences inferior and undesirable. Experiences that relieve pain create a moral gap in the opposite direction, and our Feeling Brain deems those experiences superior and desirable.


If someone hits us and we're never able to hit him back, eventually our Feeling Brain will come to a startling conclusion: We deserve to be hit. After all, if we didn't deserve it, we would have been able to equalize, right? The fact that we could not equalize means that there must be something inherently inferior about us, and/or something inherently superior about the person who hit us.


Whether you feel as though you're better than the rest of the world or worse than the rest of the world, the same thing is true: you're imagining yourself as something special, something separate from the world.


Without a little bit of that narcissistic delusion, without that perpetual lie we tell ourselves about our specialness, we'd likely give up hope.


Our narratives about ourselves and the world are fundamentally about (a) something or someone's value and (b) whether that something/someone deserves that value.


Our values aren't just collections of feelings. Our values are stories.


The values we pick up throughout our lives crystallize and form a sediment on top of our personality.


The stories of our past define our identity. The stories of our future define our hopes. And our ability to step into those narratives and live them, to make them reality, is what gives our lives meaning.


He realized that he valued no one—not even himself—and this brought him an overwhelming sense of loneliness and grief, because no amount of logic and calculation could ever compensate for the gnawing desperation of his Feeling Brain’s never-ending struggle to find hope in this world.


And there, on the frontiers of intellectual discovery, he tossed his findings aside to a musty and forgotten corner of a cramped study, in a remote backwater village a day’s ride north of London. And there, his discoveries would remain, hidden to the world, collecting dust.48


You don’t know. Inertia simply makes it easier to sit there and keep watching than to get up and go to bed. So, you watch.


And best of all, they become highly suggestible. Paradoxically, it’s only in a group environment that the individual has no control, that he gains the perception of perfect self-control.


People who lose faith in their spiritual God will look for a worldly God. People who lose their family will give themselves away to their race, creed, or nation.


Because it's easy to get people riled up and angry about nothing—the news media have created a whole business model out of it. But to have hope, people need to feel that they are a part of some greater movement, that they are about to join the winning side of history.


Evidence and science are based on past experience. Hope is based on future experience. And you must always rely on some degree of faith that something will occur again in the future.


Evidence serves the interests of the God Value, not the other way around. The only loophole to this arrangement is when evidence itself becomes your God Value.


Spiritual religions draw hope from supernatural beliefs, or belief in things that exist outside the physical or material realm. These religions look for a better future outside this world and this life.


Ideological religions draw hope from the natural world. They look for salvation and growth and develop faith-based beliefs regarding this world and this life.


Interpersonal religions draw hope from other people in our lives. Examples of interpersonal religions include romantic love, children, sports heroes, political leaders, and celebrities.


Each family is its own mini-church, a group of people who, on faith, believe that being part of the group will give their lives meaning, hope, and salvation.


Common enemies create unity within our religion. Some sort of scapegoat, whether justified or not, is necessary to blame for our pain and maintain our hope.


Us-versus-them dichotomies give us the enemies we all desperately crave. After all, you need to be able to paint a really simple picture for your followers.


People are either near the top of the value hierarchy or at the bottom; there are no in-betweeners in our religion.


The more fear, the better. Lie a little bit if you have to—remember, people instinctually want to feel as though they’re fighting a crusade, to believe that they are the holy warriors of justice and truth and salvation.


Humans are actually horribly guilt-ridden creatures.


If you believe God gave it to you, then, holy shit! Do you owe Him big time!


This is the constant, yet unanswerable question of the human condition, and why the inherent guilt of consciousness is the cornerstone of almost every spiritual religion.


The sacrifices that pop up in ancient spiritual religions were enacted to give their adherents a feeling of repaying that debt, of living that worthwhile life.


You could even say that that’s really all prayer is: miniature episodes of guilt alleviation.


We all struggle with the sense that we deserve to be loved.


Religious beliefs and their constituent tribal behaviors are a fundamental part of our nature.43 It’s impossible not to adopt them.


If you think you’re above religion, that you use logic and reason, I’m sorry to say, you’re wrong: you are one of us.44


If you think you’re well informed and highly educated, you’re not: you still suck.45


We all must have faith in something. We must find value somewhere. It’s how we psychologically survive and thrive.


It’s how we find hope.


To realize any dream, we need support networks, for both emotional and logistical reasons.


It takes an army.


Religions compete in the world for resources, and the religions that tend to win out are those whose value hierarchies make the most efficient use of labor and capital.


As it wins out, more and more people adopt the winning religion’s value hierarchy, as it has demonstrated the most value to individuals in the population.


These victorious religions then stabilize and become the foundation for culture.46


But here’s the problem: Every time a religion succeeds, every time it spreads its message far and wide and comes to dominate a huge swath of human emotion and endeavor, its values change.


The religion’s God Value no longer comprises the principles that inspired the religion in the first place.


Its God Value slowly shifts and becomes the preservation of the religion itself: not to lose what it has gained.


And this is where the corruption begins.


When the original values that defined the religion, the movement, the revolution, get tossed aside for the sake of maintaining the status quo, this is narcissism at an organizational level.


This corruption of the religion’s original values rots away at the religion’s following, thus leading to the rising up of newer, reactionary religions that eventually conquer the original one.


In this sense, success is in many ways far more precarious than failure.


First, because the more you gain the more you have to lose, and second, because the more you have to lose, the harder it is to maintain hope.


But more important, because by experiencing our hopes, we lose them.


We see that our beautiful visions for a perfect future are not so perfect, that our dreams and aspirations are themselves riddled with unexpected flaws and unforeseen sacrifices.


Because the only thing that can ever truly destroy a dream is to have it come true.


Nietzsche filled them all with hope, and they took turns caring for this deteriorating, broken man, hopeful that the next book, the next essay, the next polemic, would be the one that broke open the floodgates.


For all of the progress and wealth and tangible benefits that ideological religions produce, they lack something that spiritual religions do not: infallibility.


The sources of hope that give our lives a sense of meaning are the same sources of division and hate.


Hope is, therefore, destructive. Hope depends on the rejection of what currently is.


Amor fati, for Nietzsche, meant the unconditional acceptance of all life and experience: the highs and the lows, the meaning and the meaninglessness.


And then act despite it. This is our challenge, our calling: To act without hope. To not hope for better. To be better. In this moment and the next. And the next. And the next.


You and I and everyone we know will die, and little to nothing that we do will ever matter on a cosmic scale.


It means that there's no reason to not love ourselves and one another. That there's no reason to not treat ourselves and our planet with respect. That there's no reason to not live every moment of our lives as though it were to be lived in eternal recurrence.


She would liberate and free more human beings than Nietzsche and most other "great" men, yet she would do this from the shadows, from the backstage of history.


Indeed, today, she is known mostly for being the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche—not as a star of women's liberation, but as a supporting character in a play about a man who correctly prophesized a hundred years of ideological destruction.


Like a hidden thread, she would hold the world together, despite being barely seen and quickly forgotten.


She would go on, though. She knew she would. She must go on and attempt to cross the abyss, as we all must do; to live for others despite still not knowing how to live for herself.


Kant believed that there was a clear right and wrong, a value system that transcended and operated outside any human emotions or Feeling Brain judgments.


He gazed into the abyss with nothing but logic and pure reason; who, armed with only the brilliance of his mind, stood before the gods and challenged them


Adulthood is the realization that sometimes an abstract principle is right and good for its own sake, that even if it hurts you today, even if it hurts others, being honest is still the right thing to do.


Becoming an adult is therefore developing the ability to do what is right for the simple reason that it is right.


The principled values of adulthood are unconditional—that is, they cannot be reached through any other means. They are ends in and of themselves.


The most precious and important things in life are, by definition, nontransactional. And to try to bargain for them is to immediately destroy them.


It requires good parents and teachers not to succumb to the adolescent’s bargaining. The best way to do this is by example, of course, by showing unconditionality by being unconditional yourself.


Consciousness is able to take a problem, a system of a certain amount of complexity, and conceive and generate greater complexity.


Kant argued that the most fundamental moral duty is the preservation and growth of consciousness, both in ourselves and in others.


The Formula of Humanity states, "Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means."


To transcend the transactional realm of hope, one must act unconditionally.


Self-love and self-care are therefore not something you learn about or practice. They are something you are ethically called to cultivate within yourself, even if they are all that you have left.


The most dangerous extremists know how to dress up their childish values in the language of transaction or universal principle.


Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn't make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure.


A young person who has been sheltered from dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove it.


Material progress and security do not necessarily relax us or make it easier to hope for the future. On the contrary, it appears that perhaps by removing healthy adversity and challenge, people struggle even more.


They become more selfish and more childish. They fail to develop and mature out of adolescence. They remain further removed from any virtue.


Pursuing happiness is a value of the modern world. Do you think Zeus gave a shit if people were happy? Do you think the God of the Old Testament cared about making people feel good?


The philosophers of antiquity didn't see happiness as a virtue. On the contrary, they saw humans' capacity for self-denial as a virtue, because feeling good was just as dangerous as it was desirable.


Pain is the universal constant of the human condition. Therefore, the attempt to move away from pain, to protect oneself from all harm, can only backfire.


Trying to eliminate pain only increases your sensitivity to suffering, rather than alleviating your suffering.


The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading.


Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons.


The human mind operates on the same principle. It can be fragile or antifragile depending on how you use it.


When we avoid pain, when we avoid stress and chaos and tragedy and disorder, we become fragile.


Meditation is, at its core, a practice of antifragility: training your mind to observe and sustain the never-ending ebb and flow of pain and not to let the "self" get sucked away by its riptide.


The adult understands that life, in order to be meaningful, requires pain, that nothing can or necessarily should be controlled or bargained for, that you can simply do the best you can do, regardless of the consequences.


Pain is the currency of our values. Without the pain of loss (or potential loss), it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all.


When we pursue pain, we are able to choose what pain we bring into our lives. And this choice makes the pain meaningful—and therefore, it is what makes life feel meaningful.


To numb ourselves to our pain is to numb ourselves to anything that matters in the world.


Money is itself a form of exchange used to equalize moral gaps between people. Money is its own special, universal mini-religion that we all bought into because it makes our lives a little bit easier. It allows us to convert our values into something universal when we're dealing with one another.


Technological progress is just one manifestation of the Feelings Economy. For instance, nobody ever tried to invent a talking waffle. Why? Because that'd be fucking creepy and weird, not to mention probably not very nutritious.


Having an errant racist thought? Well, there's a whole forum of racists two clicks away, with a lot of convincing-sounding arguments as to why you shouldn't be ashamed to have such leanings.


The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom, is through self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life.


Real freedom is the conscious decision to live with less. Fake freedom is addictive: no matter how much you have, you always feel as though it's not enough. Real freedom is repetitive, predictable, and sometimes dull.


Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their own.


When that day comes, when an AI can essentially spawn better versions of itself, at will, then buckle your seatbelt, amigo, because it's going to be a wild ride and we will no longer have control over where we're going.


AI will reach a point where its intelligence outstrips ours by so much that we will no longer comprehend what it's doing.


These algorithms make our lives better. They make our lives more efficient. They make us more efficient. That's why, as soon as we cross over, there's no going back.


Evolution rewards the most powerful creatures, and power is determined by the ability to access, harness, and manipulate information effectively.


It's like that brutal advice you sometimes hear, that the only thing all your fucked-up relationships have in common is you.


Our Feeling Brains are antiquated, outdated software. And while our Thinking Brains are decent, they're too slow and clunky to be of much use anymore.


We are a self-hating, self-destructive species. That is not a moral statement; it's simply a fact.


What if the machines realize we'd be much happier being freed from our cognitive prisons and having our perception of our own identities expanded to include all perceivable reality?


Nietzsche said that man was a transition, suspended precariously on a rope between two ledges, with beasts behind us and something greater in front of us.


Nietzsche envisioned a humanity that transcended religious hopes, that extended itself "beyond good and evil," and rose above the petty quarrels of contradictory value systems.


It is the Final Religion, the religion that lies beyond good and evil, the religion that will finally unite and bind us all, for better or worse.


To enshrine the virtues of autonomy, liberty, privacy, and dignity not just in our legal documents but also in our business models and our social lives.


To encourage antifragility and self-imposed limitation in each of us, rather than protecting everyone's feelings.


Don't hope. Don't despair, either. In fact, don't deign to believe you know anything.


Don't hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined.


I dare to hope that people will stop suppressing either their Thinking Brain or their Feeling Brain and marry the two in a holy matrimony of emotional stability and psychological maturity;


I dare to hope that one day the online advertising business model will die in a fucking dumpster fire;


We will have evolved into a great unknowable entity. We will transcend the limitations of our own value-laden minds.


Perhaps then, we will not only realize but finally embrace the Uncomfortable Truth: that we imagined our own importance, we invented our purpose, and we were, and still are, nothing.


Each of these is true, by the way.


My three-part definition of hope is a merging of theories on motivation, value, and meaning.


As a result, I've kind of combined a few different academic models to suit my purposes.


The first is self-determination theory, which states that we require three things to feel motivated and satisfied in our lives: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.


I've merged autonomy and competence under the umbrella of "self-control" and, for reasons that will become clear in chapter 4, restyled relatedness as "community."


What I believe is missing in self-determination theory—or, rather, what is implied but never stated—is that there is something worth being motivated for, that there is something valuable in the world that exists and deserves to be pursued.


That's where the third component of hope comes in: values.


For a sense of value or purpose, I've pulled from Roy Baumeister's model of "meaningfulness."


In this model, we need four things to feel that our life is meaningful: purpose, values, efficacy, and self-worth.


Again, I've put "efficacy" under the "self-control" umbrella.


The other three, I've put under the umbrella of "values," things we believe to be worthwhile and important and that make us feel good about ourselves.


Kant actually argued that reason was the root of morality and that the passions were more or less irrelevant.


To Kant, it didn't matter how you felt, as long as you did the right thing.


But we'll get to Kant in chapter 6.


See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (1785; repr. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993).


One study found that the WHO's global vaccination campaign in the 1980s likely prevented more than twenty million cases of dangerous diseases worldwide and saved $1.53 trillion in health care costs.


The only diseases ever eradicated entirely were eradicated due to vaccines.


This is part of why the antivaccination movement is so infuriating.


See Walter A. Orenstein and Rafi Ahmed, "Simply Put: Vaccinations Save Lives," PNAS 114, no. 16 (2017): 4031–33.


Some scholars believe that Plato wrote The Republic as a response to the political turbulence and violence that had recently erupted in Athens.


See The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. xi.


Christendom borrowed a lot of its moral philosophy from Plato and, unlike many ancient philosophers such as Epicurus and Lucretius, preserved his works.


According to Stephen Greenblatt, in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2012), early Christians held on to the ideas of Plato and Aristotle because the two believed in a soul that was separate from the body.


This idea of a separate soul gibed with Christian belief in an afterlife.


It's also the idea that spawned the Classic Assumption.


Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, pp. 4–18.


The comment about chopping off someone's nuts is my own flourish, of course.


Ibid., pp. 482–488.


The oft-repeated motto of Woodstock and much of the free-love movement of the 1960s was "If it feels good, do it!"


This sentiment is the basis for a lot of New Age and countercultural movements today.


An excellent example of this self-indulgence in the name of spirituality is depicted in the Netflix original documentary Wild Wild Country (2018), about the spiritual guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho) and his followers.


The best analysis I've seen of this tendency among twentieth-century spiritual movements to mistake indulging one's emotions for some greater spiritual awakening came from the brilliant author Ken Wilber.


He called it the Pre/Trans Fallacy and argued that because emotions are pre-rational, and spiritual awakenings are post-rational, people often mistake one for the other—because they're both nonrational.


See Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye: The Quest for a New Paradigm (Boston, MA: Shambhala, Inc., 1983), pp. 180–221.


A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema, and S. Schweizer, "Emotion-Regulation Strategies Across Psychopathology: A Meta-analytic Review," Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010): 217–37.


Olga M. Slavin-Spenny, Jay L. Cohen, Lindsay M. Oberleitner, and Mark A. Lumley, "The Effects of Different Methods of Emotional Disclosure: Differentiating Post-traumatic Growth from Stress Symptoms," Journal of Clinical Psychology 67, no. 10 (2011): 993–1007.


Great thinkers have cut the human mind into two or three pieces since forever.


My "two brains" construct is just a summary of the concepts of these earlier thinkers.


Plato said that the soul has three parts: reason (Thinking Brain), appetites, and spirit (Feeling Brain).


David Hume said that all experiences are either impressions (Feeling Brain) or ideas (Thinking Brain).


Freud had the ego (Thinking Brain) and the id (Feeling Brain).


Most recently, Daniel Kahneman and Amon Tversky had their two systems, System 1 (Feeling Brain) and System 2 (Thinking Brain), or, as Kahneman calls them in his book Thinking: Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), the "fast" brain and the "slow" brain.


The "willpower as a muscle" theory of willpower, also known as "ego depletion," is in hot water in the academic world at the moment.


A number of large studies have failed to replicate ego depletion.


Some meta-analyses have found significant results for it while others have not.


Damasio, Descartes' Error, pp. 128–30.


Kahneman, Thinking: Fast and Slow, p. 31.


Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 2–5.


Haidt says he got the elephant metaphor from the Buddha.


This silly Clown Car analogy actually works well for describing how toxic relationships between selfish narcissists form.


Anyone who is psychologically healthy, whose mind is not a Clown Car, will be able to hear a Clown Car coming from a mile away and avoid contact with it as much as possible.


But if you are a Clown Car yourself, your circus music will prevent you from hearing the circus music of other Clown Cars.


They will look and sound normal to you, and you will engage with them, thinking that all the healthy Consciousness Cars are boring and uninteresting, thus entering toxic relationship after toxic relationship.


In philosophy, this is known as Hume's guillotine: you cannot derive an "ought" from an "is."


You cannot derive values from facts.


You cannot derive Feeling Brain knowledge from Thinking Brain knowledge.


Hume's guillotine has had philosophers and scientists spinning in circles for centuries now.


Some thinkers such as Sam Harris try to rebut it by pointing out that you can have factual knowledge about values—e.g., if a hundred people believe suffering is wrong, then there is factual evidence of their physical brain state about their beliefs about suffering being wrong.


But the decision to take that physical representation as a serious proxy for philosophical value, is itself a value that cannot be factually proven.


Thus, the circle continues.


This is an example of "intrinsic motivation," when the simple pleasure of doing an activity well, rather than for an external reward, motivates you to continue doing that activity.


See Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), pp. 5–9.


You could say that negative emotions are rooted in a sense of losing control, while positive emotions are rooted in a sense of having control.


Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, pp. 13–14.


Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 27–54.


This also comes from David Hume, "Of the Association of Ideas," section 3 in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg, 2nd ed. (1748; repr. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Classics, 1993); and Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 2: Of the Passions, parts 1 and 2 (Mineola, NY: Dover Philosophical Classics, 2003).


This technique is known as the Premack principle, after psychologist David Premack, to describe the use of preferred behaviors as rewards.


See Jon E. Roeckelein, Dictionary of Theories, Laws, and Concepts in Psychology (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 384.


For more about "starting small" with behavioral changes, see "The Do Something Principle," from my previous book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (New York: HarperOne, 2016), pp. 158–63.


One way to think about "guardrails" for your Consciousness Car is to develop implementation intentions, little if/then habits that can unconsciously direct your behavior.


See P. M. Gollwitzer and V. Brandstaetter, "Implementation Intentions and Effective Goal Pursuit," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (1997): 186–99.


We're not being harmed because we suck; we're being harmed because we're great! So, the narcissist goes from feeling that the self deserves nothing to feeling that the self deserves everything.


The Treaty of Versailles decimated Germany economically and was responsible for many of the internal struggles that allowed Hitler to rise to power.


Real-life Newton was actually a raging, vindictive asshole. And yes, he was a loner, too. He apparently died a virgin. And records suggest that he was probably quite proud of that fact.


Real-life Newton's Laws of Motion also sat collecting dust for about twenty years before he dug them out and showed them to anyone.


The superiority/inferiority of a person can easily flip-flop because what remains constant is the intensity of our emotional reaction to them, caused by the size of the moral gap that is felt.


Spiritual experiences are often perceived as love, as they involve surrendering one's ego-identity and unconditional acceptance of a greater entity, a 'melding' with someone else or the universe.


As countries industrialize, their religiosity drops precipitously.


Humanism could be seen as worshipping the 'in-betweenism' of all people - that there are no inherently good or evil people, and that the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.


The Buddhist concept of dukkha, or craving, suggests that human cravings can never be satiated, and that we generate suffering in our constant quest to fulfill those cravings.


The ancient Greek concept of hope, as represented by Pandora's box, could also be translated as 'deceptive expectation,' suggesting that hope can lead to destruction.


If you are willing to treat humanity as a means to gain greater freedom or equality, then you will inevitably destroy freedom and equality.


We all require a "Goldilocks" amount of pain to mature and develop. Too much pain traumatizes us—our Feeling Brain becomes unrealistically fearful of the world, preventing any further growth or experience. Too little pain, and we become entitled narcissists, falsely believing the world can (and should!) revolve around our desires.


Growth requires engaging the pain, as we'll see in chapter 7.


There's one last component to this harebrained theory that I still haven't spoken about: inequality. During periods of prosperity, more and more economic growth is driven by diversions. And because diversions scale so easily—after all, who doesn't want to post selfies on Instagram?—wealth becomes extremely concentrated in fewer hands.


The long-term trend is toward pain reduction through innovation. But in times of prosperity, people indulge more and more in diversions, demand fake freedoms, and become more fragile.


A decline in maturity in the population will be reflected in worse elected representatives, who were Plato's "demagogues," politicians who promise everything and deliver nothing. These demagogues then dismantle the democratic system while the people cheer its dismantling, as they come to see the system itself, rather than the poorly selected leadership, as the problem.


This world is filled with flaws.


Is this what the advancement of civilization has lead to?! Urban life weeding out and killing the weak?! It's appalling!


It is your job to save people who are in trouble, not to trample them beneath your feet.


Do you think to do nothing when you see a fellow human crying?!


Because danger is hovering above this school. . .and all mankind. That is why I have emerged.


There is a devil nesting in this school. It's hidden among you now, but it poses a very real threat. It has barely begun to stir, but once it does, it will mean the end of the world.


The human psyche is open to the possibilities of both good and evil. In my opinion, multiple personality disorder occurs when one of these possibilities, suppressed by societal pressures, declares independence and begins to fight to exist.


Every person needs help when they're suffering.


When you have no dream, when you can't imagine a future, that means something in this world is flawed.


You and Miyashita Touka have your job to do, just as I have my duty. You two have to make your own world.


Suddenly, I felt a great affection for her.


She looked up at me seriously, and I bit my tongue.


Everyone wants to believe that the runaways were killed by an assassin that wanders in the shadows, fleeting as the morning mist...instead of running off to Tokyo or some other grim reality. Reality is always rather dreary. When people vanish from it, it's natural to want to connect them to some sort of fantasy, to some other world.


Even if I did say that, it was just an example,


It was like... like she was dressed for combat?!) No normal high school girl would ever dress like that. Not even a gang member. She looked more like a hitman.


But I didn't like that. Five years ago, things had all happened without me knowing about them. I only found out when everything was finished. My own will played no part in the matter. If there was danger, I wanted to see it. That's why I had chased after Boogiepop, even though there was clearly no such thing. It was all the same to me. I didn't care what it was...I just wanted to confront something. (No more blissful ignorance for me.)


When I sat there in silence, Kirima thrust a phone at me. Not one on the house' s line, but undoubtedly one taken out in her name and paid for out of her own pocket.


Her oddball behavior might be her way of preparing for her next fight, but to the casual onlooker, she just seemed insolent.


He had to stop the Manticore's slaughter. The Manticore was made from him. It was his child. She had the power of communication that even he lacked, not to mention the powers that let him blend in with this planet's ecological system.


That was a creepy type of megalomania, in which you believed yourself to be some sort of savior.


If the suspect had truly been innocent, the whole thing was a tragedy based on absurd principles, but if he had been guilty, then it was a tragedy in which justice had been utterly defeated by evil.


Yes. That was it. Justice might well prevail in the end, but ordinary people like me had no guarantee of surviving that long.


Sadly, I couldn't imagine how she would respond.


Hmm, let me see. . .for the moment, let' s put you in school. There's a card reader at the gate to get in, but I think I know a back way in.


Me? My name's Kamikishiro. Kamikishiro Naoko. I'm a senior at Shinyo Academy. You?


Don't worry. I know this kooky girl named Nagi. Anytime there's trouble, we talk to her and she usually takes care of it. Assuming you aren't a bad guy, Echoes,


She felt like there was a big, gaping hole in her heart, but she had no way of telling that her will and spirit were swiftly vanishing.


Her brain is shrinking, and she can't be bothered to make decisions on her own.


He wanted to be killed by something much more powerful than him. Even with Kirima Nagi, he had not really wanted to date her; he had wanted her to kill him.


And more importantly, she had always been alone. She'd been cloned as an 'experiment' and had no family of her own. The only person who had ever told her 'I love you' was Saotome Masami, whom normal society would classify as a crazed lunatic.


lt may have been twisted, but they were unmistakably in love.


Why don’t we just kill her?”


“Not yet. I don’t know how much she knows or how she: found out. we need to know that at least.’’


“Is that the only reason you won’t kill Kirima Nagi? There’s another reason, isn’t there?”


“You’re normal, and you shouldn’t have anything to do with this.”


It was this sort of impression that had made him fall in love with her in the first place.


Humans just aren't that great. However much our civilization advances, we can't seem to do anything to make ourselves happier.


He was sent here to test humans and see if they would be nice to him.


Isn't niceness the best motivation that someone can have?


They're farther away than our lives.


Because the story you told me leaves us no salvation.


Truth is, I'm pretty sure she never thought twice about me.


Wasn't that enough? That's all the reason I needed to love her for the rest of my life. No matter how much I fell in love with some other girl, she will always live inside of me in the way that she was then-impossible to understand, and more than a little crazy.


Life is brief, young maiden, fall in love.


I couldn't help but ask, 'Tanaka-kun, were you and Naoko-san...?'


It just occurred to me, but maybe we should use the PA system to summon Kirima Nagi. He had confirmed the presence of Echoes, and he knew that Echoes was presumably moving with Kirima Nagi. It was time to move the plan forward to stage two.


There was a sweet, strange smell in the room. The smell had been enough to knock Nakayama Haruo out, but the long, black haired, beautiful girl did not even raise an eyebrow. Of course not. She was the source of the smell.


The only reason he had survived was by the whim of a killer, the fleeting thought that perhaps she had killed too many people already.


'It's a trap?' Nagi said. She knew it too. Echoes nodded. 'That's why we have to go,' Nagi said quietly. 'We don't play into this trap and it'll change its face and make a run for it. It'll leave the school. We'll never catch it then.'


'Stop whispering cryptically at each other! And you! You aren't even a student here! I've never seen you before in my life!' I'm not bragging, but if you're on gate duty often enough, you do end up knowing everyone at school.


'I told you to explain yourself! How am I supposed to just forget a thing like this?' 'Well, well, well. I guess we see how you became committee president,' Nagi said, glaring at me. She looked like a yakuza. 'But you need to keep quiet about this.'


Nagi and this Echoes guy led us out of the lecture hall. 'Go straight home,' Nagi insisted. 'I have to give the key back,' I said sullenly. I wasn't finished sulking about not getting an explanation.


'Looking back, I'm glad you rejected me. If I had been with you, then when I met her, I would've been her enemy.' He sighed, almost happily. Nagi frowned. 'When you met who? What are you talking about?' She seemed confused.


Which is it...? He wondered inside. But only Kamikishiro Naoko could answer, and sadly, she was gone.


But the people who had saved him, the cloaked boy in the black hat, Kamikishiro Naoko, and Kirima Nagi, were all human too. Which is it? Which is the truth?


The face of someone that had lost something that they valued more than their own life. As if half of her body had been torn away. As if her capacity for joy had been pulled up by the roots.


She looked as if she could no longer perceive any meaning, like there was nothing left for her.


It can't be-?!" I shouted. There was a figure there, leaning backwards, pulling on the wire with black gloves. It wore a cape and a black hat shaped like a pipe.


I couldn’t figure out what I should say to her other lover, Kimura Akio. We would probably never speak to each other. If someday someone were to tell him, that would be- But we all had to return to our daily routine, just exactly as things had been before.


She had to say that. She couldn’t let her friend’ s death be in vain. But I couldn’t smile. Nagi hadn’t seen the end of Echoes. But I had. Clearly. That light had made it as if Saotome Masami had never existed in the first place. It had turned the nearly immortal Manticore into a burnt crisp. That was no biotechnological experiment. It had beamed itself into space, but if something like that were fired at the earth over and over again.


It’s one of many, but this “what did I do in school?” question is a pretty big trauma for me. It’s like my first love that I never asked out. Augh! I was a dirty little angst-ridden idiot without a single thought for love.


Ultimately, school is a place where you have to be with others. That’ s all. It ends without you ever really understanding much about each other, but even so, you bump into a lot of people and a lot of thoughts, and you still come back for more. Sadly, schools are not exactly set up to preserve that diversity.


I can’t help but think that’ s a crying shame, but the entire world seems to work that way, and school isn’t that unique of a place in the world. That’s why, in my dreams, I’m always thinking, “God, I really hated that guy, but now I wish I’d known him a little better.” And I do all this while sitting there in the corner of the room.


Mariko-san, there's nothing in this world that is truly decided. Birds sometimes fall out of the air, and sometimes it snows in April. Everything is uncertain, nothing is 'unnatural.'


If you jump now, you will not end up where she has gone.


Simple. You are about to end your life of your own free will. But Minahoshi Suiko did not. If there is such a thing as heaven, you will surely end up in a different place than her.


But it just isn’t healthy to get obsessed with it, you know? At this rate, you’re just going to get overwhelmed by the pressure and be in no condition to actually sit there and take the test.


All they’d ever done was study, and they didn’t know how to just let go and enjoy themselves. So they’d go off to try and pass the civil servants exam or something. They were just pointlessly limiting their options for a. . .I dunno, a decent future. They meet the person they were supposed to fall in love with, but they don't recognize how valuable they would be, and without even noticing, they wind up missing out on the most important things in life.


The reason this child was beautiful was because he had a rose within his heart.


His job at the cram school finished, he walked back to his apartment along a bustling shopping street. He couldn’t help but notice the flaws on everyone’s chests. It annoyed him, occasionally. Human effort was entirely devoted to making up for this flaw. He knew this. But he also knew that what they lacked was never in them to begin with, and it was something that could never be obtained.


Even now, she deeply recalled the feelings she had at the time. Familiar sights had flames all around them; people she knew had turned into silent corpses. A world coming to an end. A closed world. A thankless world. A world that was harsh, senseless, and brought nothing but pain. Even so, she reached out with her hand, moved her fingers, quivered her lips, and pleaded. After all, while it was a world beyond saving, it was still the only one she had.


She wanted to abruptly tear down that wall; squint at the broad, dazzling world before her; and carve into her unopened eyes the color of sunbaked skin, the color and smell of burned meat, the color of the beautiful "horns" that danced in the sky— Here was the world about to end, and what was she thinking about?


For even then, she could still remember the feelings she had at the time— Thereafter, she devoted each and every day to expunging her guilt over those feelings above all else.


Kenichi once said, life must be lived . That’s what I think, too.


I thought maids were supposed to dress modestly…but I think I’m a fan!


This is terrible, Sister. Right now, in Dear Guest’s head, you are the subject of obscene, degrading thoughts.


This is dreadful, Rem. Right now, Dear Guest’s head has become filled with completely disgusting thoughts about you.


Please forgive me, Dear Guest. Let me go and defile Sister instead.


Please stop this, Dear Guest. Let me go and humiliate Rem instead.


I get it! Whoever chose this, I get what they were thinking!


…I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to, but I’m veeery disappointed that I know it’s something meaningless.


You, ah…remember all about me, right?


Please listen, Lady Emilia. This person was terribly humiliating. For Sister, that is.


Hear this, Lady Emilia. This man has trapped and violated girls. Rem, that is.


I should be the one thanking you. You risked your life for mine when you barely knew me. Healing your wounds was the least I could do.


Do I really need a younger brother this weird?


Watching her from the side, Subaru cracked his neck slightly at being addressed.


Subaru wanted nothing more than to put his hands on his cheeks and give thanks to Mother Nature, but he abstained.


Subaru was struck senseless by the happy, carefree scene as Emilia walked over with a teasing smile.


Subaru laughed, finding it cute how Emilia tapered her lips in a pout at being outdone in their verbal jousting.


Subaru, feeling bad at how Emilia was genuinely worried, reflected upon his own behavior.


A kingdom must have a king.


It is thought that a person who cannot protect a single small badge cannot be entrusted with a responsibility as grave as an entire land.


A man should make no excuses. No reneging on his word.


You don't understand how grateful I feel. I can't repay you at all for saving my life and more, if you ask for so little!


It's not just the thing with Puck, okay? It's like when you asked me my name back in the royal capital.


At the time, I wanted to know your name. I think being in a new, uncertain land with no idea what would come the next day, if I'd stopped to think about it, there were lots of things I could've considered— But I'm a man who can't lie to himself.


My request to Rozchi's like that, too. Right now, I'm completely, totally broke. Sure, I could ask for a pile of gold, but why not set myself up so I can make a living long-term?


Which one's more your type, I wonder…Ram or Rem?


All that said, being the guardian of an archive of forbidden books… The sound of it really tickles a guy's mind.


That feeling made Subaru admit he had lost this—


Maybe it was some kind of twin "sympathy" they talked about on those supernatural investigation shows; that thing where they could read the other even when apart.


Precisely because they were twins, he wanted to see some individuality , the essence of human emotion.


Subaru thought he was just indulging in his individuality—but with such thoughts on his mind, three voices sounded as one.


Her statement, that she couldn't treat him as a simple coworker because they stood apart, stuck in his ears.


People are petty like that.


He was scared that Ram's gossipy statement would make sparks fly with Emilia in short order.


Women are happy when they're pursued.


There is beauty in enthusiasm.


I'm genuinely grateful and you joke about it like that...?


Having said all that...it's nice that you're trying hard, but how'd you get your hand all beat up like that, anyway?


But it might be troublesome for you to have me with you like...


The two laughing like that announced that their rendezvous for that night had come to an end.


Watching Subaru's self-satisfied look, a charming smile came over Emilia as she let out a little sigh.


He was looking forward to their at least engaging in the cold verbal abuse to which he was accustomed.


Subaru linked his fantasy Puck to the real one, letting his memory of the fluffy feline lead him to a happy place.


As Subaru hung his head in shame, the sisters called out with voices of concern.


The silence descended upon the room.


One after the other, after another…he desperately took deep big breaths. As Subaru gasped like a fish out of water, a scornful voice spoke from within the archive.


It’s all deceits and conceits to the very end. This is why I can’t hold a conversation with your kind.


He spitefully looked at the sun rising in the low sky of the east. This and four more and he’d be right at the appointed hour.


He shook a fist toward the sky and declared war to no one in particular. It was Subaru’s first declaration of open defiance at the “summons” and “loop” that had brought him to that world.


Subaru sank into the bathtub, put his thoughts in order without a breath of oxygen, and poked his head out of the bathtub once more.


In every sense, it was clear which twin sister had the superior ability at domestic work. Rem had first-rate skills across the board while Ram would have needed to work hard to come close to second-rate. Normally, that setup would give Ram an inferiority complex, but...


You might say that it was his bad habit to get on other people's nerves. At Subaru's reply, Roswaal closed his right eye and looked up at the ceiling with his yellow left eye alone.


Roswaal seemed to see a rare dazzle in Subaru's youth as he nodded.


Yes, it's Dark. Your connection to the other four elements is quite weak. Put differently, though, this is exceedingly rare...


It was partly pure physical beauty, but also the beauty of each and every action.


He’d surrendered to his sudden impulse, opened his mouth wide and yawned.


Time is limited to one hour.


Subaru was basically an amateur at all the chores of the mansion.


Having said that, I think taking someone for granted from the get-go is a little different… Ram’s really good at that, though.


It's really distracting.


Like possessed, except by a demon instead of a divine spirit.


Subaru remembered the image of the Red Demon and the Blue Demon hugging each other as they laughed themselves silly, when he suddenly realized there was a definite smile carved upon Rem’s face.


scars, in a way, were a good thing.


The presence or absence of scars was a great way to tell if he’d done a Return by Death or not.


No one lives as prettily as on the day they were born.


Besides that, I’ve cut my hand lots of times in front of you before, so why offer to heal me all of a sudden?


Feelings are real important here. I want my renewed hard work to completely provoke those two sisters!


Certainly, Subaru's statement had been very frivolous, but Emilia brushed it off like it had nothing to do with her. The fact that she clearly didn't see herself as the target of Subaru's affections gave him no route to follow up.


Emilia, perhaps set off by his probing the deeper meaning of her actions, remarked, "It's nothing !" as she left the window and cutely strode past Subaru.


Responsibility, or perhaps duty—Subaru was driven by an emotion he couldn't put into words.


But having thought that far, Subaru clutched his head. He'd come to understand there'd be an attack on Emilia and the others. That much was a success.


You could say that the problem with Return by Death was that you had no way to explain the information you got before you died.


Subaru himself wondered why he felt such tranquility there when Beatrice truly thought of him as nothing more than that.


He'd died a total of five times so far, but he most certainly wasn't used to it. Quite the opposite; the more times he died, the more the accumulated experience made his knees quiver from his raw fear of experiencing death again.


I think Rem fertilized that flower bed with manure yesterday...


Well, just think of it as: When bad luck is with you, good luck is not far away.


Emilia's already in Consolation Mode!


Ugh...could you not mention something I really don't want to talk about?


She should just be honest with herself. That's a cute thing about Lia, though...don't you think, Subaru?


Now Subaru's teasing me... And what is that 'tan'? Where did that come from?


F-fine. I'll accept that. Hey, don't look at me like that!


My leading lady's easy!