Case 02: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Isekai (Nagatsuki Version)

——Get hit by a truck, and you’ll be reborn in another world with a shot at a new life.

Stories like that are all around us these days, but do you believe in them?

My name is Tappei Nagatsuki. I make my living as a writer—some of you may have heard of me. Knowledgeable readers will be all too familiar with the flood of “isekai” stories out there, and I’m afraid the series I write is one of them.

Because I’m an isekai writer, I was invited by SAKKA KEIHAN to contribute my own small scribblings. Whether they show up as scribblings or not is up to whoever sets the type in the book, but that’s the phrase that most accurately depicts my present state of mind.

Be that as it may...

Isekai—how easily we lump an entire genre together using a single word, yet that word refers to all manner and make of worlds. Readers well versed in the bounty of the website Shosetsuka ni Narou will be all too aware of this.

Lately, the naysayers have become fond of saying, “All isekai stories are the same!” but this could not be further from the truth. Each isekai is literally “another world”—each different from the last. As the writer weaves a web of words or gives it shape within their mind’s eye, their created world takes on a unique form—only one of the countless potential fantasies that lie waiting to emerge from the pen of every writer.

Declaring these to be “all the same” is preposterous, presumptuous, and foolhardy. Seeing the smug looks on these isekai appraisers’ faces as they pick through the isekai offerings (as if examining newborn chicks to identify their genders) makes me want to smack them upside the head with an ultimate attack from another world.

Personal grudges aside, having been asked to join this project, I must do my duty.

SAKKA KEIHAN’s topic du jour is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Isekai. The concept is clearly based on the absurd notion that anyone who writes about isekai must know a lot about them—but that is some caveman logic at work.

A common delusion about the creative process is that one’s own experiences form the backbone of your work. Assuming this is remotely true, how can you write a story where the entire premise is that you “get isekai’d,” that you go to another world??

Getting isekai’d yourself would seem to be the best approach.

Venturing into another world is not so easily accomplished, though. We have a plethora of isekai stories these days, but the protagonists generally have to meet grisly fates in order to get from their homes to the new worlds the stories take place in. Usually with fatal consequences; in other words—they die.

It may begin with a truck, like I said above. Perhaps they work themselves to death, or get shoved onto train tracks by someone with a grudge against them, or they die of shock after being nearly run over by a tractor during a laughably unnecessary attempt at heroism. Or perhaps they might simply find themselves in another world on the way home from a convenience store—well, that last one was an exception, but generally speaking, their death is involved.

It was at this point in my thought process that I realized what had appeared to be an invitation to contribute to SAKKA KEIHAN’s latest product was, in fact, a roundabout way of bumping me off.

One cannot write for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Isekai without substantial knowledge of other worlds. Anyone going into an isekai armed with a half-assed guide would almost certainly meet a swift and terrible end. And I’d be held liable by the coordinators of said isekai, put on trial, subjected to testimony by demi-humans speaking a language I can’t even understand, magically framed for crimes I never committed, transferred from an isekai holding cell to an isekai jail to an isekai prison and forced into an isekai prison break. Which sounds like a lot of fun, really.

But idle speculation will not help me here. I’ve already accepted the job.

It may have been something I did lightly, but backing out of a job once accepted would swiftly become public knowledge. “He ditched a job he’d signed onto!” Once word of that gets around, it’s unlikely new jobs would ever come my way again. The members of SAKKA KEIHAN have the power to make that happen. I have underestimated my opponents.

And so, I, Tappei Nagatsuki, am faced with a critical choice—either to lay down my pen or to forge ahead despite the consequences.

——I find myself by the side of an expressway.

Cars whiz past me at tremendous speeds. All I can hear is the roar of the wind. It’s terrifying.

But no author can bear to lay down their pen once they’ve picked it up. I would rather face the perils of an isekai than face those consequences.

To write for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Isekai I must venture forth and discover the true nature of isekai for myself. Like a detective examining the scene of a crime, attempting to solve all the mysteries within, I am headed to another world.

If I never return, this message will likely be destroyed by the members of SAKKA KEIHAN. These writings may never see the light of day. Yet, I write them anyway—because I am a writer.

Damn you, Hoko Tsuda! You got me this time!

△▼△▼△▼△

“Are you for real? It wasn’t, like, to save a child or anything heroic? It was just so you could write something ‘authentic’ about other worlds? You seriously just dove in front of a truck without a second thought, like a total idiot? There are way too many people like you out there these days.”

“Uh, basically, yeah,” I admitted. “You get this a lot? Sorry...”

“It’s getting to be a real problem in my line of work. Didn’t used to be, but there’s just so many these days. Whatever your motivations were, you’re technically all classified as suicides, so it’s a mess to clean up.”

The lecture went on like this for the better part of an hour.

Having flung myself in front of a truck with a curse on my breath, this seemed like a dream come true. I’d never seriously thought that a truck would actually send you to an isekai. But just as I was coming to terms with this new lease on life, the woman across from me pursed her divine lips.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself!” she said. “You haven’t been given permission to enter an isekai yet.”

Her role in this was clear enough. But I had to ask.

“Um, you’re...a goddess, right?”

“That’s right. Don’t I look like one?”

“No, you definitely look the part.”

The woman in front of me had skin like polished ivory and hair as blue as the sky. She wore the kind of dress you never see outside of JRPGs, and was carrying a bizarre staff like the boss in a final dungeon. She looked to be maybe twenty. I couldn’t imagine what else someone like her could possibly be, but...

“I feel like standards of goddess quality are slipping.”

“Ohh?” she growled, a vein throbbing on her forehead. Like a total hoodlum.

Describing her appearance was a difficult task. She wasn’t ugly, but neither was she so beautiful you were automatically like, “She must be a goddess!” She was just sort of...in-between. And her vibe made it totally clear she wasn’t open to any comments about her appearance, but I’d done it anyway.

“I could take it or leave it.”

“I can be a goddess or a devil to you, depending on how much respect you show me.”

A threat! She was threatening me!

“Lemme be clear, the only reason I’m even here with you is because you wannabe isekai-ers are making a mess out of our whole system.”

“What kind of mess?”

“Because there’s so many of you outers trying to get to another world, the gods and goddesses can’t handle the workload. So they had to bring in second-rate goddesses like myself to help process you all.”

Second-rate. The fact that goddesses were rated at all was just depressing.

“Oh, so this whole low-quality vibe going on here is because you’re second-rate?”

That would mean the rankings were decided by their faces. That made some sense, but I’d rather not have known.

“Yes, yes, fine, I admit it. When we go up a rank, we automatically become more beautiful. It’s like pay-to-win mechanics. The more money you put in, the better your equipment and customization options.”

“I dunno about calling the way you look ‘equipment.’ But calling plastic surgery ‘pay-to-win’ is certainly novel phrasing.”

The way she put it definitely made it sound like goddesses had to whale to get hot.

“You’re all having work done?”

“We prefer to call it elevating ourselves to the ideals our rank demands. If I go up a rank, I’ll obtain a pretty face with double eyelids and duck lips.”

“Oh, like character creation in a Western game.” Those games often let you muck around with your appearance at the barbershop, instead of only at the start of the game.

“Anyway, because bozos like you keep hurling yourselves in front of trucks, we’re swamped. It’s a real nightmare.”

“But the harder you work, the closer you get to being a first-rate goddess, right?”

“Peeling human pancakes off the asphalt and flipping them into other worlds? You think people with any real status do this job? Gods of creation are all busy looking after entire worlds themselves. Processing each individual soul totally gets farmed out to the deadbeats.”

That made a lot of sense. It’s like the people who go around cleaning up dead dogs and cats off the side of the road. It’s necessary work, and we should be grateful that somebody’s doing it, but it’s not really gonna be handled personally by members of Parliament.

“Also, in my line of work we call the truck-divers ‘outers,’ which stems from the word ‘drop-out,’ meaning people who have given up on life.”

“Are you trying to start a fight?”

“I dunno. Not like I’d lose. I only start fights I know I can win!”

Without dropping her staff, the goddess started shadow boxing. Those punches looked pretty snappy. Like a single one of them would turn me to dust.

“But that’s enough jibber-jabber! I’m the goddess Loqua, and I’m here to bring blessings to you pitiful outers.”

“Loqua?”

Even her name was cursed with low quality. With a name like that and a second-rate status, my hopes for the kinds of blessings I’d get from her weren’t very high.

“I can see by the look on your face you doubt my blessing quality. Would you rather just get started with no blessings from me at all, then? If you know anything about isekais, you know what a risky move that is.”

“Urp.”

Yeah, she had a point there.

I need hardly explain the tragic fate of anyone sent to another world with no special qualities. Going to another world without any powers is like going back to school in the fall without doing your summer homework. People roll in sometimes with an “It just seemed pointless” attitude, but pointless or not, it’s homework: you gotta do it, don’t start fights with the very concept, you only have yourself to blame if you don’t do it.

“You seem to be working through some issues there. Do you want a blessing or not? Or would you like to just get turned to dust right now?”

“You sound like you’re offering to microwave my lunch...”

But even a blessing offered in that tone was probably worth it. My attitude was to take anything people had to give me (except for germs). So I was in.

“So what’s this blessing you’re about to bestow on me do?”

“Hold on, lemme check the manual.”

She had a manual? While I gaped at her, the goddess pulled a tablet out of her pocket and opened up an eManual.

“Man, the swipe detection on this thing has really gone to hell,” she grumbled.

“Could be because your fingers have dried out from old age.”

As people get older, lack of oil on their fingers makes it harder to turn pages, so the elderly often have to lick their fingers every time they flip a page. Isn’t that educational?

But the goddess just glared at me.

“Basically, you can pick from the second-rate goddess lineup, and some stuff related to your conditions at the moment of death. Hey, wanna watch a replay?”

“A replay of my death? Hell no.”

“You’re sure? It’s a doozy. You flew to pieces. It totally traumatized the hell out of a group of passing schoolgirls. They’re gonna have that image burned into their minds the rest of their lives.”

“Stop! It’s not my fault, it’s Tsuda’s!”

“Eek, you’re scaring me! Why are you so upset all of a sudden? I don’t get men sometimes...”

“Urghhh... Even from a low-quality girl, that hurts...”

She was cowering, shaking like a leaf. This hit me right in the heart. My outburst hadn’t come out of nowhere, but trying to explain why I’d gotten so angry didn’t seem like it would help. I was already on edge enough here.

“So, you said something ominous about a ‘second-rate goddess lineup,’ so...I guess your rank determines how I’m gonna end up?”

“Yeah, basically just goddess gacha. Second-rate goddesses are pretty average all around...but hey, it’s better than getting a third-rate goddess or a dark god! Way better.”

“Don’t put dark gods in the gacha then, damn.” Weren’t they basically the opposite of a goddess?

“Demon lords and dark gods are as swamped as gods and goddesses these days...”

“I feel like a second-rate dark god would be way weaker than a second-rate goddess, somehow.”

“Anyway, you do get bonuses based on how you died. Like, if you saved a child or sacrificed yourself to save the world, then you’d get way better blessings. Just...in your case, all you did was traumatize some innocent high school girls and cause a temporary traffic jam, and the economic impact of that was...”

“Hngg, I really wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings.”

Having a goddess talk sense into me now seems a little after-the-fact, but either way it was pretty clear that I hadn’t died well. They talk about ruining one’s reputation, and this was certainly that. You could also say I’d shit the bed. However desperate I’d been, there was no excuse.

“If only the truck that had hit you had been a rare one...but there’s just nothing interesting about it. If it had been one of those decorated trucks or even a semi, you might have gotten something from it... There’s also an artistic score based on the splatter pattern, but in your case...”

“Are you sure you’re a second-rate goddess? Not a dark one?”

“Ew, no. I’m a goddess. A proper goddess,” she insisted. Her voice dropped to a low mutter. “These days.”

“What was that last bit?”

She looked away, whistling. She was weirdly good at it.

“So if you’re going that far down the list, the bonuses I get once I’m reincarnated have gotta be pretty lousy, huh?”

“Not to be a stickler, but ‘reincarnated’ is so old-fashioned. We just transfer you these days. I mean, frankly, making a whole baby to stick your soul in isn’t cost-effective. Like, rather than waste a baby regrowing a mediocre soul, it’s much better if the baby just grows up as a baby. It’ll have faw mow optiony-woptionies.” She lapsed into baby talk towards the end.

“Having a goddess explain the distinction between isekai methods is weirdly insulting...”

“So rather than making your soul hijack some poor baby, we just flush your mincemeat body directly over to the other world, saving us resources and time. Two birds, one stone. Totally green. That’s all the rage, right? Ecology! The Green New Deal! LOHAS! LOHAS!” She chanted this last bit like a mad woman, pounding her staff on the floor, hair whipping all around. It was horrifying.

“Recycling is cool and all but...you are gonna put me back together, right? I don’t wanna pop into a new world looking like a pile of hamburger and instantly die. That’s like a buggy game.”

“Yeah, games like that suck! Like, did anyone playtest this shit? Pfft.”

“It’s not funny!”

“Why you all mad? Not getting enough calcium? LOHAS! LOHAS!”

Words were a product of human evolution, a communication tool that allowed us to accept each other without the need for violence. But now they’d become a miscommunication tool that incited stone-age savagery. If she didn’t stop chanting, our rational discourse would give way to irrational violence. When the rational and the irrational merge, shit gets wild.

Battling the temptation to release the wild thing within, I matched the goddess’s fishy smile with a phony grin of my own.

“Can’t wait to see this new world! I wanna enjoy my blessings to the fullest!”

“I know, right? I knew a simpleminded nincompoop like you would totally fall for a lazy surface-level sales pitch. Now here you are, dancing around naked with joy like a total putz!”

“I’m not going that far!”

“I can’t believe anyone would actually dance naked in front of a goddess! The nerve! The audacity! The cojones!” She turned red, covering her face with one hand while peeking expectantly at me through her fingers. It was obnoxious.

“You may be a second-rate goddess, but you’re still a goddess! You have to maintain at least a basic level of self-control. Did you leave that behind in your mother’s womb?”

“That lady? I ain’t seen her since I tore my way outta that belleh.”

“That’s how orcs are born, not goddesses!”

Never mind her ranking, this goddess had no divinity in her at all. Admittedly, this did jibe with some myths I’d heard...

“Ugh, you’re wearing me out,” she groaned. “How about we get down to brass tacks? Which blessing plan do you want?”

“Do I get a choice? What plans are available to a pile of trauma-inducing meat chunks run over by a boring truck?”

“Hmm, what about this? You get massive boosts to all your stats...but you’re a fly.”

“That just sounds like someone really screwed up during character creation...”

But these gimmick builds could be really effective sometimes. It might be kinda fun.

The goddess had me sit next to her so we could both look at the tablet’s screen. Damn. She actually smelled good. How irritating.

“Don’t even think about falling for me.”

“Rah!”

I snapped and punched her in the face.

The goddess gaped at me in disbelief.

“S-Sorry, my hand slipped.”

“While yelling, ‘Rah?!’”

She wasn’t buying that excuse. A moment later, the list of transfer bonuses on the tablet screen refreshed. My rash action here had incurred a penalty on my score, giving me a much worse set of options. In fact, now there was only one item where there had previously been a list. It said:

“Throw a dart, get isekai’d!”

“Nooooooooo!”

The goddess pinched her bleeding nose and shot me a malicious grin, then she tossed the tablet over her shoulder. It hung in the air behind her and grew in size, changing shape to become a giant roulette wheel. A vast swath of options was on it—and suddenly a dart was in my hand. The message was clear.

“I-I have to pick my future by throwing a dart?! This isn’t Kaiji!”

“The fact that you get any options at all here is way more humane than anything in that series! Especially considering you punched a goddess!”

“Wait, wait! That was the first time in my life I’ve ever done anything like that! I swear!”

“You’re already dead, so this isn’t part of your life! Let’s get this wheel spinning!”

“Stop, stop, stop!”

As she spoke, iron shackles snapped closed around my feet. I was trapped in place, turned into a dart-throwing machine.

The roulette wheel began to spin. I didn’t get a clear look at all the options, but—

“I’m a bug in most of these?!”

“Were you aware there are millions of species of insects in your world alone?”

“Are you trying to make me panic?!” I howled.

Her only response was a triumphant smirk.

My destiny lay somewhere on that spinning wheel. A chill ran down my spine.

Objectively speaking, my fate had been sealed the moment I’d jumped in front of a truck. Everything after that was just a bonus round with a chance at a new life.

Okay, so I was already dead. What’s the worst they could do to me? Kill me again?

I shouted my war cry.

“Damn you, Hoko Tsuda!”

With the very fiber of my being behind it, the dart flew straight and true...and stuck in the wheel. The goddess made a very impressed noise, but only because she knew the results were bound to be horrible.

If I had to be a bug, at least let me be a female praying mantis. I didn’t wanna have sex once in my life and then get eaten, so definitely not a male one, please not a male mantis...

“Lessee here, the punishment for punching a goddess in the face is... Gah!” The goddess’s face looked exactly like a certain meme that used a panel from Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, depicting a horrified reaction to Guan Yu’s arrival.

“What, is Guan Yu here?”

The shackles on my feet came off, and I dashed over to the wheel and saw...

“‘The Lucky Bastard Bonanza! Anything you want, as much as you want!’”

“I can’t believe you hit that, at those odds! That’s like you writing a top 100 seller in a world already overflowing with isekai series!”

“Aw, shucks, thanks!” Luck is important, but luck alone won’t get you there. Writing light novels isn’t like playing roulette.

Anyway...

“As many bonuses as I like? You mean that?”

“Wh-What are you gonna make me do? You’re not gonna turn this into some sort of porn doujin, are you? I don’t wanna be in porn!”

“Oh, shut up! Wipe the blood from your nose off your face, at least.” A bloody nose was definitely not a turn-on for me. Besides, I was busy jumping on this stroke of luck. “Aw, yeah! I’m going to ask for so much stuff!”

“Quit drooling, you uncultured swine. Whatever, ask away.”

“Can I assume the world I’m heading to is a sword-and-sorcery fantasy world? I don’t wanna stock up on super magic and skills that let me master any weapon, get ready to cheat my way through every fight, and then discover I’m in a kingdom-building economic sim. I’m also concerned about language barriers and religious conflicts...”

“Ugh, isekai authors...”

Oh, please. Anyone who writes this stuff has to think up all kinds of hooks, so if we ever end up going to another world ourselves, of course we’re going to want some proper safety margins. Anyone would!

“Are there any limits to the cheat powers I can ask for?”

“Like the wheel said, anything you want. We’re coughing up anything and everything your limited imagination can conjure up.” This made it sound like I could ask for a way to eliminate her and still get it, but I decided to sacrifice this desire for the sake of my own future. No matter how tempting, it wasn’t worth the risk of blowing this by pissing her off again. Steel thy heart. Control your base urges.

“And I can be as specific as I like with the terms of the cheats?”

“Yes, fine. See, I’m a goddess, and we can basically do whatever we like, so... I mean, we don’t really understand what it feels like to have limits? Like, cheat skills? How is that different from breathing?”

“Wow, now I want to destroy all goddesses...” Of course, I didn’t say that out loud, but I was really thinking it. Despite her stratospheric levels of arrogance, I fought off the urge to ask for that once more and listed out the cheat skills I had in mind.

Namely...

“Super regenerative powers, supersonic speeds, and flesh capable of withstanding those speeds! The power to tear apart steel, drink lava, and shoot lightning bolts! I wanna fly, be able to turn into a dragon, and use any and all magic! And um, um, mastery of any and all types of weapons...”

As I rattled off the list. the goddess’ expression went:

expectant→annoyed→bored→asleep

Her ears remained functional even in her sleep, because her hands kept moving, like supersonic automatic writing, writing a list of my wishes on the floor with the base of her staff.

When I was done with my order she said, “Oh, are you done? Uh... Wow, you’re greedy. I guess if you’d never had anything good happen your whole life you would get carried away.”

“Oh, be quiet! And don’t even think about just randomly assigning one single power from this list or anything like that, either.”

“Tch.”

“I heard that!”

Close one.

I could imagine nightmare scenarios, like getting regenerative powers and superspeed but not getting a body that could withstand them, so every time I moved the sonic boom would destroy my body and I’d have to fully regenerate it.

“At least me specify required combos... Even a second-rate goddess can handle that, right?”

“Huh? What are you talking about? I can grant you the whole damn list, no prob. Who do you think I am? I should punch you.”

“For the first time ever, I actually respect you! Seriously, you’re gonna give me all of these? Jesus!”

“Ha, damn straight. As greedy as you were, your ideas are still woefully confined to the territory of mere mortals, shackled by the tedious chains of common sense, but to you I offer the blessings and salvation of the goddess!”

She raised her staff, and its tip began to glow. I closed my eyes, but I could feel a warmth settling over me. I opened and closed my palms, savoring the sensation.

“Is...that it?”

“Yep, all done. You’ve been granted that whole list of party tricks. You’re the perfect human!”

“They aren’t party tricks!”

But I could feel the power surging through me. I’d clearly ascended to a whole new plane of life. I was now almighty, a pan-dimensional being!

“It’s lonely at the top...”

“Woah, woah, woah, angsting already? Probably a good sign, really. Ready to head to your new world?”

The goddess took her staff and struck the floor at my superpowered feet. A dark glow appeared around me—I instantly knew it was a warp hole.

“This is my new world?”

“Yes! Dive on in. With your current powers, you should have no trouble handling it.”

“...I know we’ve had our problems, but... I’m sorry,” I said, scratching my cheek. I’d felt nothing but rage and loathing for her, but she’d done right by me in the end. I was grateful for that.

She just shrugged. “No problem. This is my job.”

“Oh. Well, here I go!”

I couldn’t hang around all day. She had more outers to process. Hopefully the next one would be equally blessed.

“Then have a great life in your isekai!” she said, and saw me off with a smile.

I stepped into the warp hole, ready for my great adventure. But the smile on her face was a bit too beautiful for a second-rate goddess...

△▼△▼△▼△

Then...

“Are you fucking with me, second-rate goddess? ‘Great adventures in a new world,’ my ass!”

I made a warp hole back to the loathsome goddess, and started unleashing hit and run tactics at lightning speeds. I floated like a butterfly, stung like a bee. But even at lightning speed—the goddess batted away my attacks with a wave of her hand. Damn you, goddess! Damn you, Hoko Tsuda!

“I granted all your wishes, so what’s the problem? Goddesses have feelings, too, you know!”

“Shut it, lady! Even loaded up on cheat skills, that world is insane! I tried to save a girl from a group of thugs and they hit me at light speed! I can’t keep up! I’m faster than the speed of sound but still slower than them! What the hell?!”

“Huh? You didn’t ask about the world you were going to? If you only think about yourself, you’ll get the rug pulled out from under you! Well? Wooooeeeelll?”

“Stick to Japanese!”

She’d lapsed into the language of the people of the lightspeed planet. I tried to hit her with an energy beam, but she blocked it with a barrier of darkness. I knew she’d started out as a dark god!

“This was all your way of getting back at me for getting lucky with that dart throw, wasn’t it? That’s so petty! Some ‘goddess’ you are! Is that short for ‘Gods Only Do the Dumbest, Evilest, Sneakiest Shit?!’”

“Shut up shut up shut up!” she squealed, like a teenage tsundere. She fired beams of destructive light in all directions. I avoided these by phasing into another dimension, nearing the limits of quantum physics principles that may or may not exist to unleash an attack that could destroy her very existence.

“What the hell kind of world has street thugs even a goddess couldn’t hope to beat? They broke my nose!”

“I watched them do it, and I laughed my ass off! It was the best laugh I’ve had in the centuries since I got sealed away!”

“You were sealed away?!”

Damn you, goddess. Damn you, SAKKA KEIHAN! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Isekai, my ass! All I can really say is to make sure you’re well-prepared before you ever try and head off to some other world. Don’t be satisfied with a pile of cheat skills. Make sure your new superpowers will be enough to live in the world you’re headed to!

...And try to get a first-rate goddess, not a second-rate one.

Pick a good truck, and make sure you rescue someone as you die. In this world or the next, careful planning makes all the difference.

But, kids, our world is overflowing with isekai stories, so you’d be better off reading those instead of trying to have one yourself.

Get thee to a bookstore! Take a book in hand! There you will find infinite isekais, so many tales I doubt you could read them all if you devoted your life to it! I’m sure you’ll discover at least one that’s perfect for you! And if you find no isekai story that fulfill your desires, just create one yourself. The world you personally design will become your own private isekai.

You’ll have to excuse me now. After my fight with the goddess/dark god, I’m going to rewind events to the moment just before I dove onto the expressway and peace the hell out of there. Don’t call it the coward’s way out—call it getting out while the getting’s good.

Thank you for following me this far.

Finally, I’d like to ask all readers to join me in saying the only words that can possibly bring this essay to a close.

Damn you, SAKKA KEIHAN!

Damn you, Hoko Tsuda!