Then the NHK logo fades in.
And for one second—just one—you believe that tomorrow might be a different episode.
"No."
You close your eyes. The dark behind your lids is not empty. It's filled with a thousand tiny screens, each one playing a different ending.
Your neighbor's plants have grown through the wall now. Vines wrap around your ankle. They aren't plants. They are fiber-optic cables from the NHK's basement server farm. They want to broadcast your failure. 24/7. A reality show where nothing happens. -Oyasumi- NHK ni Youkoso - Welcome to the NHK -
Your apartment is a 4.5-tatami coffin. Sunlight, that cruel morning interrogator, slices through a gap in the blackout curtains. It lands on empty cup-noodle cups. On ashtrays shaped like tiny volcanoes. On the unfinished light novel where the protagonist has been staring at a blank page for 117 days.
Oyasumi, oyasumi.
In the last one, the one that loops, you press the play button on a cheap boombox. A lo-fi track crackles to life. A woman's voice, soft as a razor blade, sings: "Oyasumi..."