An Ordinary College Girl’s Night

　A sudden urge to die hit me. But it was the kind of trembling where I couldn’t bring myself to contact anyone around me, and that only made it hurt more. More than anything, I wanted someone—anyone—to listen to me, but… I was already at my limit, so I sent a DM to an idol girl I used to really love.

　“Umm, hey… I want to die.”

　What do you mean, “Umm, hey…”? Why am I trying to sound cute right now? What the hell even am I?

　My favorite idol… well, “idol” isn’t exactly the right word. She’s not really that kind of scale. She mostly posts selfies on social media, and they’re sort of—how do you put it—dark? Sickly-cute? She looks so cool even though she always has this really bleak expression on her face… and I especially love that her hair is purple. Purple is the edge of the rainbow, the color of madness. It feels somehow sacred, overflowing with the charm of deep, shadowy darkness. Anyway, I’m getting off track.

　She’s the type who has tens of thousands of followers because of those selfies, and sometimes does real-life events or guest shifts at concept cafés. I took a cheki with her once. She hugged me. To her, I’m just some background extra girl she probably doesn’t even remember anymore. But I keep it tucked into the back of my phone. It’s my treasure.

　I saw this girl whose eyes looked like she hated the whole world so much, and I thought maybe she’d understand how I feel too. So I sent the message in a haze.

　But once I calmed down and thought about it, what a vulgar thing I’d done—shoving the weight of some nobody extra girl’s urge to die onto someone who’s probably already carrying so much herself. Sure, maybe she would understand my sadness and pain. But even so—forcing some ordinary person’s misery onto her like that. Stealing her precious private time for it.

　Ah, she’s probably going to be disgusted with me.

　She finishes a long day of work, finally opens social media to relax a little, expects a work message or maybe something from another creator, and instead finds: “Hey, I want to die,” from some random no-name college girl. Something like that would make her want to die. Or maybe it’d be more like, “I’ll kill you, you stupid brat.” I hate that. I don’t want her to hate me. I don’t want her to hate me. I don’t want her to hate me…

　But, well, it’s already sent, so there’s nothing I can do. And she’s the kind of person who says mentally-unwell-sounding things online, so maybe this sort of thing is already part of the job for her. Some stranger girl’s cry for attention. Some horny guy sliding into her DMs. A flick of the finger, instant delete. Three seconds later she’s back in her glittering timeline and her flood of likes. That’s all, right?

　No—what the hell am I doing, acting like that makes it okay? Even if she deletes it in a few seconds, that doesn’t change the fact that I did something unnecessary. And besides, if she deletes it, that would be sad too. My urge to die isn’t even worth three seconds to someone famous.

　Well, of course it isn’t.

　I don’t care even a millimeter about some stranger’s urge to die either. I’d just think, Why don’t you stop fishing for attention and get your shit together? That’s right. In the end, the only thing to do is get yourself together, so what am I even doing? My pain and my worthlessness have nothing to do with anyone else. The ordinary urge to die of an ordinary college girl. Ah—I don’t have a single special thing about me. In a world overflowing with this many girls on social media, there isn’t even a one-percent chance I’ll somehow be loved.

　Ahhh… that’s why I want to die, but putting it into words makes it sound so cheap.

　“I want to die because nobody loves me!”

　That is so not interesting.

　If this were a report, they’d needle me with, “Is there anything original in this research?” over and over until I was cornered. I’d break down crying on the spot. Then people would make fun of me: “A girl who cries the second things get hard, lol.” People who are really amazing even have interesting ways of suffering. Or not “interesting,” exactly—more like they’re elegant, and cool.

　That selfie girl I like was muttering late at night about her anguish over her own identity, then deleting it. So cool… I want to suffer over where my identity is too… But that kind of lofty stage is way out of reach for me. If I break down my urge to die, it’s more like: “I’m in trouble with my credits,” “I’m sick of my friend bragging about her boyfriend (and yeah, I’m a little jealous),” “I’m about to fall into the swamp over some male streamer,” stuff like that—

　Aaaahhhhhh!!!!!

　And I’m so mediocre I don’t even have the courage to scream that out loud. I’ll never become one of those interesting women who can suddenly run outside and scream and thrash around and make a scene. I’m sure those girls on the other side of the screen would dance around with a can of Strong Zero in hand, upload a video of it, and that would be cool too—their purple hair swaying eerily, even the spray of spilled Strong Zero shining beautifully in the moonlight.

　And while I was thinking aaahhh…, I got a notification.

　From her.

　My eyes shook left and right as I opened it, and it said:

　“I can’t really do anything, but let’s both do our best.”

　A message from her—from that girl who shines among the stars. A private little special thing, glowing in the message box, just for the two of us.

　I cried a little. Then I bought as many of her chekis on BOOTH as my allowance would allow, washed down my sleeping pills with Strong Zero, hugged my pillow, and drifted off to sleep.

　Good night, world.