When it comes down to it, I guess I never really lived my life. I think that’s why I can’t remember my name anymore; in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t deserve to have one.

  As far back as I can remember, I’ve been kind of a loser. Or maybe a total loser. Or maybe a complete and total, overwhelming failure of a loser. Something like that, anyway. I even came from a long line of losers. My grandpa’s biggest claim to fame was getting banned from every casino within a fifty-mile radius of our hometown. My dad? Being unable to hold a job or take responsibility for anything. My mom worked through most of my childhood at the same company, staying later and later as I grew older. When I was a teen, I started to suspect it was less that she needed the overtime and more that she didn’t want to come home to the disappointing men in her life.

  My teenage years were the same as my early twenties, and also my early thirties. I did the bare minimum—at school, at work, in life—then came home to lock myself in my room, eat junk, watch anime, and read trashy light novels and webcomics or play their equally trashy games. The only thing I would have considered myself an expert in was lore for series most people overlooked based on having any sort of taste. My ‘specialty’ was ero light novels that somehow made their way into other traditional media. It was always surprising when a game made to be played with one hand managed to move you to real emotion or tell an interesting story.

  Before I died, I had been working part-time at Toil & Bubble, a witch-themed, full-service carwash. Yeah, it did as well as you’re probably imagining. I restocked vending machines, swept the lobby, and made sure the squeegee buckets always had fresh soap—all in my black uniform and wide-brimmed hat. You know, exciting stuff. When I wasn’t existing at work, I would spend all my money on whatever new trash was currently airing.

  Friends? I had a few people I would game with occasionally, but our talks were always strictly business: who are you picking, where are we camping, how much XP do you need to level. You know, stuff like that.

  A girlfriend? I had given up so long ago on that dream that the only women I knew besides my mom were either 2D or coworkers who could barely remember my name. It wasn’t like one of those shows where I had an allergy to real women or would start nosebleeding whenever one was in my presence; I just didn’t even know how to make platonic male friends, so a romantic female friend was completely out of the question. To be honest, becoming a trash can would’ve seemed more realistic to me even before everything happened.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Oh yeah, I’m a trash can now—did I mention that? Well, we’ll get there. I just wanted you to know what kind of person I was before then.

  Everything changed one summer afternoon after work. My supervisor had let me leave early on account of all the additional high school kids we’d hired to cover the seasonal rush. If I were a normal thirty-year-old, I’m sure this would have been horrible. For me, a quasi-NEET still living in my childhood room, it just gave me some extra time. The newest Crown/Last Decree spinoff light novel had dropped, and I wanted to take my time enjoying it.

  Crown/Last Decree was a personal favorite. It had originally started as a hentai doujin, believe it or not. The author had written a series of three featuring his heroine, Tomoe, getting into, well, compromising positions with the usual fare: orcs, wolfmen, tentacles, living walls, etc. Somewhere along the line, however, he had found a love of worldbuilding and went on to publish a real light novel. From there, it had become something of a cult classic: 18 light novels, 3 webcomics, a Super Smash Bros-style game, and even a gacha in the works. It would never be a household name, but it had a very large and committed following, of which I was a proud member.

  The newest light novel was supposedly a spinoff in which Tomoe fought the Demonic Shepherd Berith for the first time. I was pretty excited; this was an event that had been referenced before but never described. Plus, this was when Tomoe met her ally Jassin the Priestess, my favorite character. Dare I say, my waifu. I could hardly wait, and each step closer to home seemed like an eternity.

  Maybe that’s why I never noticed the two-ton truck barreling toward me.

  Yup, just like in the shows. It was almost too late when I noticed, but somehow my slacker body was able to jump to the side at the last moment. Seriously, I could literally feel the wind whistling past me as the white truck careened by. I almost managed to breathe a sigh of relief, but then something even more unlikely happened: it skidded into a turn, flipped 180 degrees, and came right back at me. I turned to run, maybe dive into an open doorway or alley or behind a dumpster, when I was greeted by the last thing I would ever see on this mortal coil.

  A second truck, driven by a white-knuckled, screaming man, was barreling straight toward me. I accepted my fate, opened my arms, and let the two trucks make a "me" sandwich.

  My last thought? How much I was going to miss my gaming chair.