All You Need Is Kill

by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Anyone can squeeze a trigger. Bang! But knowing when to fire, where to shoot when you’re surrounded? For the first time I realized I didn’t know the first thing about warfare.

Good ideas don’t stand a chance against good bureaucracy.

The Diet had already debated the possibility of handing over the transport of war matériel in noncombat zones to the private sector. People joked that at this rate, it wouldn’t be long before they’d outsource the fighting to civilians and be done with the whole thing.

“Whaddayou have hangin’ between your legs? A pair of ping pong balls?” “I never opened my sack to look. You?” “Motherfucker!”

Of course, there were only three kinds of battle to begin with: fucked up, seriously fucked up, and fucked up beyond all recognition.

My body had long since passed exhaustion, but a part of me maintained a heightened sense of alertness impossible under normal circumstances.

I call this 'survival mode'

“You shouldn’t assume everything you don’t understand is a message,”

There is what we desire to do, and what we are able to do. When those two things don’t coincide, which path should we pursue to find happiness?

What this nightmarish time loop from the bowels of Hell hath joined together, let no man put asunder.