Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Valley Quest ❯ Looper ( One-Shot )

Everyone reads my novel and thinks the happy ending was fake, and my other works only did modestly well. Two of them got anime, but they were only so-so and once I was forced to rewrite the proper ending and it got published and made into an anime, hardly anyone actually liked it. I was decried as a money grubbing fraud. My career as a literary writer was basically over. It was enough money to help me get enough education in business administration that I found a job with a large corporation’s HR department. I had every kind of mental affliction by then, having lost at love, twice over. My reputation was so bad I was glad I published under that silly and painfully obvious pseudonym. Who would ever think Wataru Watari would be a real name? C’mon. I did the same for the girls in my life, with only a few of them getting real names, no-hopers like Iroha and Haruno. The ones I cared about? They got pseudonyms, with the given name being the short form of the family name. Super obvious, right?

Work was abusive. It was my job to review difficult employees, a middle rank position with better pay, but it also meant that I would follow up with the lower HR employees tracking problem employees and see if the Personal Improvement Plans actually did or not. And if not, track the next steps of penalties towards the employee. We were a big company, so we were methodical about this. Many chances to save yourself. Naturally this didn’t apply to my own department. We were supposed to be the smart ones. The psychologists. But we only studied psychology because we wanted to know what was wrong in our own families, and in my family what was wrong was ME. Or the world. I was sold a bill of goods by my education saying everything was a certain way, when it really wasn’t. The reality of life is everybody is selfish and will throw others under the bus if they wished.

The mirrors in my home are strategically covered so I don’t have to see my own eyes. I can see my hair to comb it, and enough of my mouth to shave, but my damned eyes are why I’m truly alone and always will be. Because there is nothing real, only pain.

It is my job to fire people. That’s the ugly fact which I hate about my job, and about myself, and why I covered my mirrors in my tiny economy apartment. I do this job with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of emotional investment. There’s no dividend in caring. There’s no percentage in doing a better job than your superiors can see. If it doesn’t get me a raise or an easier and less painful employment, why bother with sympathy? People who work here insist they matter, but I’m in HR. We know better. They are numbers, objects, things. I process them in, change accounts, calculate return on investment and compensation schedules, and process retirement costs and compile cost reports for my superiors.

I hate my life.

It was almost a relief when the man I fired that morning pushed me in front of the train.

Almost.

I hate you God. Let my younger life die with me. I don’t need to remember my failures. I don’t need to remember… Yui.