How long has it been like this?

For thirty years, I’ve wandered through a tasteless life.
What could the world offer me?

“I don’t feel anything…”
“When I think about it, it has always been like that.”

Life tasted bitter, unfinished.
Walking to my office once again, I was questioning my existence.

“Even in my relationships… emotionless. I cared one day, and the next I was already bored. Waste of time.”

I walked in.
“This routine is so boring. But I have to pay the bills. How long will I be stuck in this flatness?”

My days were all the same:
Waking up at 6 a.m. Breakfast. Work. Gym. Dinner. Bed at 10 p.m.

“I go to the gym to stay athletic. But what’s the point? I’m so bored. I’m going home.”

I felt like I was chained by invisible links, unable to live “like the others.”
Walking past all those people, my eyes looked at them without truly seeing them.

I always thought I was the protagonist, and people were just NPCs, put there to “make the world real.”
Just robots with emotions — emotions that even I, the protagonist, couldn’t feel myself.

But in this world, there was something capable of making me feel a little something.

Opening my apartment door, I finally saw… my source of happiness.
She was standing there — 1m80, gorgeous brown beauty, the light of my life. My precious bookcase.

An infinite collection. I picked a book I had already read several times, but I needed to feel something.
And only this one could: The Grail, a shōjo-ai.

While my face had always been described as cold and unpleasant, it unexpectedly wore a slight, goofy smile.

“Ahh… if only life could be full of this precious feeling.”

As usual, I was walking to my office.
Suddenly, I wondered if new chapters were available on Wabtoune, an app for reading manga on mobile. Some shōjo-ai were sometimes updated there.
When I saw “Four chapters left,” my heart skipped a beat.

“Ahn… Am I really going to wait until tonight to read them?”
I already knew I would think about it all day.

A few chapters wouldn’t kill me. Maybe it would make this boring day a little lighter.
(Yes, the day had just begun — but it was already boring.)

The world faded away.
It was like slipping into a warm shell, far from the gray emptiness around me.

The story moved me, I felt every emotion the characters felt — as if I could only feel through others.

Lost in my reading, I didn’t notice that, while I was crossing the road, the driver had no intention of slowing down.

“My precious stories… I’ll never know how they end.”