Heat the Pig Liver - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – Heat the Pig Liver

I guess you could say the third time’s the charm as I finally woke up in a hospital bed.  It was snowing outside the window.  It didn’t seem like much time had passed since I ate the raw pig liver.

The hustle and bustle around me passed through my brain, and I kept staring at the ceiling like I had lost my soul.  After a while, my mother came into the ward and said something to the effect of “How long are you planning on sleeping?  Get a hold of yourself.” before quickly finishing her formalities and headed home.

When I finally got up, I looked at the IV tube and air conditioning equipment, and noticed that this world just has a lot of things.  On a small desk nearby were gifts from some friends.  I picked up a box of sweets and glanced at the Japanese written in fine print.

How many days have I slept like this?  No other period in my life will ever be able to surpass what I’ve felt over these past few days.

Only the sense of loss remained in the hospital bed.

After my examination, I was told I could go home.

I was alone on the way back.  The world appeared to be celebrating Christmas, but it didn’t matter to a non-normie like me.  As soon as I heard the train departure melody, it felt like my entire being was crushed by the reality that I had returned to my everyday life.  When I came to my senses, I was already wiping the tears with my sleeves.

My life had changed.

Due to being hospitalized, I was unable to take the required exams and was definitely going to be forced to repeat a year.

But it wasn’t all bad.  When I tweeted about the fact that I was hospitalized and forced to repeat a year because I ate raw pig liver, I was able to satisfy my desire for recognition by earning around 3,000 retweets and 5,000 likes.

Still, the pain of loss didn’t heal.  I felt like my heart remained trapped in that world, Mestria, to the extent that I would look for traces of Jess in shops and newspaper corners during my travels.

Also, whenever I watch a romance drama now, I immediately start crying.  My otaku friends really liked that, and my circle of friends gradually expanded.  A video of me crying at a friend’s house while watching an anime movie instantly got 50,000 retweets on Twitter.  It received a storm of replies with comments praising me, such as “He laughed normally,” “An unhateable otaku,” “It must be fun to have this kind of person as a friend,” and “Seems like someone who could become an Olympics announcer.”

Sure enough, otakus are not creatures that should fall in love.  While I was doing otaku activities, I started believing that it was just a wonderful dream and ended matters there.  There’s no way a scrawny four-eyed shitty virgin would ever get together with a cute, blonde, and younger girl, even as a mistake.

However, I would like to say that at least as a memorial, I wrote a novel about my adventures in Mestria and uploaded it to Kakuyomu, an online novel posting site.

}TL Note: Kakuyomu is actually made by Kadokawa, the parent company of this novel’s publishing company (Dengeki Bunko / ASCII Media Works)

It seems like a decent number of people read the work which described my oinking days with Jess-tasso in a dignified and elegant style, and it received some recognition.  You can even receive comments for each story, huh.  I really appreciate everyone that read my story.

Well, in conclusion, this is the last thing I wish to convey to you all.

─Heat the pig liver.

Otherwise it’ll hurt, you’ll end up in the hospital, and you’ll have a strange dream that turns your world upside down.  It’s a painful experience, so be sure to cook it before eating.  You got that, everyone?

I’ve said this many times before, but I’m not kidding.  Heat the pig liver.

Even now, there are times where I feel like my stomach is going to be torn apart.  Even though I won’t ever know if she really existed, when I think about the girl that I’ll never be able to see again, I can’t stop crying.

If you don’t ever want this kind of experience, heat the pig liver.

Promise me.

One day, when March was approaching and the smell of spring was in the air…

My Twitter account received a message.

─I’ve read your novel.  If you don’t mind, may I DM you?  I would like to talk about the contents of the story.

Looking at his profile, he appeared to be living a stoic otaku life as a working man.  I wondered why he specifically wanted it to be DMs, but I figured I would be able to hear his thoughts on my novel and started exchanging DMs.

However, it was not what I had expected.  He briefly mentioned the novel’s story, and started asking if we could meet in person.  He told me that it was important, and that he would treat me to a parfait.

Perhaps it was due to my usual otaku activities, but I wasn’t particularly against meeting people from the internet.  He sent me a photo of a luxurious parfait that costed nearly 2,000 yen and invited me by writing “be faithful to your desires.”  So I ended up going to meet that person.

On the day of the meeting, three people showed up at the café.  The man I was in contact with had a long face, a beard, and wore a pair of black glasses – he seemed to be a very kind-hearted otaku.  He said he was a mechanical engineer.  Next was a female college student – she was an otaku that had a short bob hairstyle, wore red glasses, and appeared to smile a lot.  Lastly, we had a high school boy – he was light-skinned, wore thick glasses, and seemed like a person that excelled at studying.

There were only glasses wearing otakus.

Well, that’s fine.  Talking to them while I ate my large parfait, I learned that the three of them were very familiar with the contents of my novel.  No, it wasn’t just that.  They started adding to the story on their own and were talking about things that even I didn’t know about.

“The north declared independence and are rebelling against the royal family-”

“The strength of the Yesma hunters have grown considerably-”

“Nott was captured and sent to an arena-”

I was thrown into confusion, and it became a scene where I had to stop eating the parfait partway through.

I then finally realized that these three otakus were claiming to be people that have returned from Mestria.  And for some reason, during this conversation, Nott seemed to have become a super celebrity.

The bearded man told me that in order to protect the Yesmas, they needed the pig’s strength.  The revolutionist, Nott, needed the pig.  I was in a daze, unable to tell whether this was a dream, reality, or even just a joke.

But his words made me nod involuntarily.  His explanations made my upper body lean forward.  At his shocking invitation, my hands clenched tightly.  Hot blood circulated through my body, heating my liver.

With a serious expression on his face, he said.

“How about we return to Mestria together?”