How I Made Friends by Pretending to be a Delinquent to Avoid Bullying

Bullying is absolutely unforgivable. There is no reason why it should ever be okay to bully someone. However, in my case, there were times when I was bullied for reasons that were entirely my own fault. I don't hold a grudge against anyone, and I want you to hear this as a funny story.

For example, in elementary school, I was the center of the class thanks to my natural cheerfulness. But I was a tyrant: I'd try to make people laugh while they were drinking milk to make them choke, or if I was losing at a card game, I'd scatter the cards to end the game, thinking it was funny. Even if you say that's just a child's sense of humor, looking back, it wasn't funny at all. At the time, I thought I was getting laughs, but in reality, I was probably just being humored because I held power in the class. When the classes were shuffled, everyone started ignoring me. I was hated so much that even though I was clearly thin, I was subjected to the mysterious bullying of being told I was "way too fat." It seems that falling from "Great Millionaire" to "Great Pauper" happens in real life, not just in card games.

Still, I didn't learn my lesson and kept acting up, so eventually, people started thinking, "There's no one else this crazy, maybe we should just find her interesting?" and before I knew it, I was back at the center of the class. So, I've lived a pretty extreme life, experiencing only being the popular kid or the bullied kid.

As I got older, I finally learned to read the room a bit, and these incidents decreased. But I must have stepped on a landmine somewhere. The moment I became a high school sophomore, several kids from my previous class started ignoring me, and I heard rumors that they were viciously bad-mouthing me on accounts only close friends could see. Looking back, I think, "The person who went out of their way to tell me that is actually the biggest enemy."

Being ignored in elementary school is hard, but being ignored in high school is much, much harder and feels irreversible.

After thinking it over, I decided to put on a face that said, "I'm not alone because I'm being bullied; I'm alone because I've gone delinquent." I decided to insist that "I am not isolated; I am solitary."

However, since I attended a prep school with a deviation score of over 70, there were no "yankees" (delinquents) around, and I didn't know how to act the part.

To appeal the fact that I was "delinquent," I constantly glared at everyone, moved with motions that suggested I might kick a chair if I got angry, and wore my clothes a bit sloppily. In class, I tried to sound like I was thinking, "Shut up, teach." Following the tropes of delinquent dramas, I even tried to eat my lunch on the rooftop, only to be despondent when I found the door locked.

As you can probably tell, from the outside, almost nothing was happening. My grades were bad even when I tried, so that part at least looked a bit delinquent.

If someone like that is in class, people don't think "delinquent," they think "Does she have bad eyesight?" or "Should she go to the nurse's office because she looks tired?" Even worse, they might have thought, "Is this a late-onset case of eighth-grader syndrome?" or "Did she just rewatch Gokusen?"

I'm sure no one thought I was a delinquent, but I succeeded in gradually shifting the narrative from "being ignored" to "she doesn't want to associate with anyone," and the unpleasant interactions decreased significantly. It actually worked?

Even so, I was a full-fledged delinquent in my heart, so while everyone was working hard on preparations for the school festival, I decided to slack off and read manga in the corner. Looking back, I think, "That's exactly why you were the problem."

But then, an incident occurred. I wasn't reading a delinquent manga like Crows, but a very non-delinquent manga called Honey and Clover. A few people called out to me, "Oh, Natsui-chan, you read Hachikuro?" Being a natural show-off, I immediately started blabbing, "Oh, Hachikuro is great! The scene where Morita-senpai draws a dragon with soy sauce is too funny! In the movie, Yusuke Iseya did that and I died laughing!"—a completely non-delinquent response that got a laugh. This became the catalyst for me to start blending into the class.

However, still a delinquent at heart, I skipped the actual day of the school festival. Then, I decided to take my boyfriend at the time to the cafe my class was running and act like, "Oh, I'm a customer, so can you serve me? lol." It was the absolute worst. Why do you even have a boyfriend, you jerk? It turns out it's possible for the person about to be bullied to lower their likability this much. I told you, in my case, it was my fault.

But when I went to school the next day, everyone was saying, "Who was that guy!?" "Natsui-chan makes faces like that?" and "She's way too kind to her boyfriend." Because my attitude had been so bad for months, it acted as a "set-up," and for some reason, my likability went up. From then on, I was able to hang out with everyone normally. I want to tell my classmates from back then: you should have just kept ignoring a person like this.

And so, I somehow succeeded in fitting into the class.

I've written this in a very upbeat way, but there were times when it was truly painful. It was just luck that things turned out this way, but if you're going through a hard time, it's okay to think of yourself as "solitary" rather than "isolated."

Recently, I've been writing an insane amount of essays to promote my new book!! Please buy the book!! Read my past articles too!! This book contains 24 essays that I spent 300 times more time writing than this. I write about living alone, part-time jobs, and coffee, so you can enjoy it in a similar way! I've made the subculture stories so that you don't need much prior knowledge!

Natsui @ Book 'Living with Subculture as an Amulet' on sale 3/2!

@natsui_tanoshi

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Jan 11

[Important Announcement! Please RT, Like, and Bookmark!]

I've been writing on note, and someone from KADOKAWA who read it contacted me, and now I'm publishing a book! Yay! I'm sorry I suspected it was a scam at first!

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