The day I became a hikikomori

XIX

It's been a long time, right?

Happy holidays, btw—fuck, I've been writing this for a while.

Anyway, two days ago I went to the bank to make a deposit. It was 10 pm, and there was one person there; he was using the only ATM that received deposits. I hate when that happens bc I then look like a thief or something for just standing there and not using the other ATM's. Sometimes the person turns around and I tell them that I just want to make a deposit, and some other times they just don't notice me—or maybe they just pretend—until they are leaving, and I then go straight to the ATM.

This time the person there turned around.

And it was an old classmate from college.

He was ecstatic, and I was pretty happy too, ngl. He was one those people who're always joking around, and maybe teasing people, but in a fun, friendly way, you know. There was never ill intent in his jokes.

From then most part went exactly like you think it went:

"Hey, bro. what's up!!!", he yelled with a big smile on his face and approached me.

"Heyyy!!!"

We hugged effusively.

"Holy shit, bro. From all places we could meet. WTF?!"

"Yeah, I know. It's crazy".

And then he asked that obligatory questions: "so, what you up to? What are you doing?"

Those questions have benn terrifying me for years. Why? Bc my answer's always the same: a lie. I would always tell them that I was working in the family business; I mean, what else I was supposed to say? That I've been doing nothing? That I've been wasting years of my life on nothing at all, using my literary ambitions as a coping mechanism? That I had a couple of jobs before, but I couldn't even keep them for 6 months?

Those questions always reminded me of my reality, of my constant failures, of the house of cards I've been building to distract myself, of the fact that I'm still the same kid I was during college.

But this time was a little bit different.

This time I proudly told the truth.

I guess I haven't told you either.

Sorry.

Anyway, the truth is 1) I'm still selling Funko Pops, but 2) now I'm an investor in a Showroom. If you don't know, a showroom is a store where we rent space to little businesses. Let's say you sell notebooks or something, but you don't have the inventory of the earnings to rent and fill one store or one place at the mall, so you come with us and only rent a shelf or two for a small fee.

We opened in the middle of November, so we didn't miss the holiday shopping and the local equivalent of Black Friday—it lasts the full weekend, and its roughly called "the good weekend". But we're far from being ready: we barely painted the place; the furniture we're currently using is really old and a bit shitty; there's a lot of space we're wasting; we're still working on the name and logo, and bc of that we barely have any advertising; we haven't decided yet in the interior decorations and design. Also, we're still in the process of getting the store's license—according to the law, we have a year to get it, but we shouldn't take that long—we don't have a proper checkout system, or a unified inventory system, and we don't know exactly how much the rent fees are going to be, or how many space we'll have when we finish remodeling, even though we already have a couple people interested in renting.

So, yeah, we're far from done.

Anyway, let me tell you the whole story:

Back in 2019 my uncle opened a store near my house. The place was owned by the family, and we've been renting it for a while. In 2020 because of the pandemic, he closed it, and never opened it back even when he could—that store was more like a hobby for him. In September he opened another store somewhere else, and my dad convinced him that, since he wasn't interested in the first store anymore, and it have been practically abandoned, my sister-in-law and me could use it.