Chasing After Rainbows

[Author's note: the first child is a girl, but the mother (protagonist) thinks she's a boy. The opposite is true for the second child.] Itsuki and I considered the options available for the future of our first child. No, cost isn't a problem as the both of us have well-paying jobs. What we are more concerned is the outcome of the child's future if we decide on the option, which is mostly in the unknown. I want the child to be normal, but neither do I want to restrict what my son's potential. I see that he's not studying, but yet, score full marks, so if he studies, he could be learning that older people would usually learn. This indirectly means that he could have a college degree at a young age, or maybe higher. However, him being a smart kid and having me as a parent who hold a high job position means that he could be popular, but also means harder for him to find a friend. I want him to be normal, but I'm not exactly normal myself, biologically, but t...

These past few years, I have traveled to several regions and countries that are quite far away from home. As I traveled, certain aspects about how different a place may be from what I'm familiar with is become more apparent. Things that I take for granted too. Depending on what country it is, cost of living may be lower than where I'm from. Although, if I'm unfamiliar with the currency of the country, that can be a hard thing to tell, especially if the rates are not dividable by 10 without a remainder. Well, 2 and 5 too, but that requires more thinking. However, some products, especially ones produced from my country, or an another country, may be more expensive than back home if you calculated the exchange rate of the price you see there. Although, for some places, spending $100 (around there, and something like that in other currencies, and stated price might be before/after tax, and if the store participates) would allow you to refund the tax. While planing for tra...

This month, I had taken a lot of pictures with my new camera. However, something happened about 1.5 weeks later that caused the memory card to become messed up. Cause is unknown, but I'm sure it has nothing to do with the camera itself as it wasn't in it when it happened. However this caused the data on the memory card to become corrupted. Except for those taken on two days, pictures were mostly recoverable.

I felt uneasy about Hisakawa-san telling me to meet her at the lowest level of the basement car park of a nearby shopping center. It almost feel like I'm walking into a trap. Am I really walking into one? The location of the meeting place alone seems suspicious enough to me. I was already scared enough for today from being lost in a foreign land all by myself, and again when my phone rang even though I thought it had no cellular coverage here when I checked. I checked again now: there is currently no signal again. The area where Hisakawa asked me to wait has a lot of cars parked near there, but otherwise void of people. The only sound here are from the cars driving around and some ventilation machines. Not long afterwards, I saw Hisakawa sticking her head out, calling out to me, as though she does not want to be seen by others. She seemed to have tried to crossdress like a man, but the shape of her body is too feminine to be able to pass of as a man, especially with that larg...