Chasing After Rainbows

It was getting cloudy when I left school, where darker clouds appear to be in the direction of where I live. While the station I am at is underground, most stations on the line are not. At where I would be alighting, there's practically no shelter between platform and home as the station ticket concourse is the only sheltered area along that stretch of the road. I'm guessing it would be raining heavily with winds over there, so it seems unlikely I'll get home dry. Getting to the train platform took a lot longer than usual as my thinking ability was hindered by the newly acquired persistent feeling as I thought about directions to the right platform. It's not painful or like a headache, but more like the body wanting something it doesn't have. The station is massive as many lines intersect here.  There are no escalators, but thankfully I don't have to lift up my leg  much to climb up every morning.  Elevators are available, but are inconveniently located...

I thought about what happened with the student council and the tour of the school's disused sports facilities. I didn't understand why things were the way they were. The sight of a group photo of males earlier, even if if it was brief, was sufficient to trigger a new unfamiliar feeling inside me that heavily affected my ability to concentrate. Hitoshi pointed out the rate of increase of intensity is based on how long I have visually seen males, multiplied by the number of them, and add that on top of any preexisting amounts I had prior to that. Whether I saw them in person, which is unlikely in this world, or through a medium, does not make any difference. If I had seen a page that had three separate photos of men for five seconds, the increase in intensity is the same as seeing one man for fifteen seconds. The problem here is that I saw multiple images of an all-male a baseball team pasted onto the ceiling that I saw by accident when I happened to look in that direction af...

This special of Yononaka no Okugi (story 7) I had been publishing since the beginning of the year was originally intended as a one-part long special talking about the background of how the post-evolution world of my stories works from a viewpoint that does not fit with the main story. It intertwines with other stories like Alternate Dimension (story 2), but yet have unique stories that are not just alternate viewpoints of the same thing. Keep in mind that I was travelling around Keihanshin, Hiroshima, and Sapporo around that time, so my piorites were to to focus on the travelling. I did manage to write a lot of it, but I need to edit it before publishing it. In the process, entire sentences were rearranged and redone. Because I had written so much, I had to divide it up to have something published to my blog. Even at the time of writing, there's still more of I hadn't published yet. I tried to write a new Part 6 for Yononaka no Okugi , but what I had written turned out more...

Hitoshi supported me as we headed back towards the school building and into the student council room. This was supposed to be as simple as when we came from there, but the struggle with this newly acquired feeling in me that is difficult to concentrate with had me quite confused. "Don't worry, Fujibayashi. This is normal for anyone who has seen images of males. Try to get used to it like it's nothing or it would be difficult to concentrate on studies, though that can be an uphill struggle if you never had it before, or, in my case, intensity being stronger than I have ever felt before. Try not to see or think about them and it won't get worse... though that is kind of unavoidable with your quest in finding out the past." We both struggled to make it back to the main building as we both were unable to think well with this persistent new feeling. Eventually, we find ourselves in the student council room. We were thinking too much of our new feelings that we did ...

Hitoshi seemed as if what she said to me was not enough to convey what she wants. "Oh right. You are born after it happened, forgive me if you don't know what I'm talking about. Hmm... It's difficult to explain without you having already feeling it first hand, which you probably had not. Would it be okay for me to show you pictures of that time so you would know? I have to warn you that what you feel as a result from seeing it may not subside for years, and possibly affect how you would think", she said. Since I am clueless, but curious, I agreed. It's a sacrifice and maybe a privilege that most post-evolution people would most likely not experience. She told me that they are in that small derelict building standing by itself at a corner that nobody ever goes near. I've seen this place from far, but have never gone up close because there was no reason to go there. Hitoshi talked to me as we head there. "This open area are where are all the outdoor ...

It wasn't easy to find anyone whose given name is not in katakana. Looking at my class registry, none of my classmates have it. I don't have access to that of other classes and you can't tell how it's written by simply hearing hearing it. Most people assume it is in katakana since it is common with most people of an age group. I can't think of any examples of names I have seen before that are in kanji or hiragana. Well, when exam results came out, they did put out a list of names of the students here The problem with that the notice has already been removed before I came to be aware about the world before the transformations, so I didn't pay attention to who they were. If my memory serves me correctly, none of the top few had non-katakana names. ...hold on. I walked past a poster that had the name of the student council's vice president on it. I only know her family name by sound, but when I saw 井ノ 一詞 for Hitoshi Inosaki being written down, it gave me a w...

To avoid alerting people on what I am up to, I would only head to the library when no one wants me to join them to walk home or somehow only get released from school late enough for the library to be closing. I do not know why I do not want other people to know about it, but something tells me that I shouldn't tell anyone. The school library is smaller than the local community library. It shouldn't take that long to find any kind of book relating to my school, but... There are only four school yearbooks on the shelf, and all of them are of those who graduated earlier this year and the three years immediately prior to that. For a school that is established about half a century ago, this is shocking. My guess from this is that it either happened four years ago, or after the graduation of five years ago. So that should also mean that people who were in this school at the time the transformation happened should be in the books between two to four years ago. I wonder if I can ...

It has been days since I saw the magazines that opened up my perspective about what the world was like in the recent past that I previously never knew about. I hadn't told anyone else about it because I don't know how they would react to it. It is also hard to convince them too as the current world looked as if it has always been that way for years. Neither have I yet to find any convincing evidence which, in an age where pictures and video could be edited easily or, if looked at without context, be misinterpreted. The magazines aren't a reliable source for what life was like and what the publisher wants you to do or buy, but they do tell you the fashion, trends, or whatever makes you feel good or desire for in those days. There's hardly anything else that would tell me what life was like, no matter how difficult it might had been. I need more sources to confirm if my suspicions, but where? There are too many places to look at, but I know for sure that my local and sc...

My name is Naomi Maeda (前田ナオミ), and I am a year 2 student of Kaisei Middle School (海星中学校). I think I am 13 years old, but I oddly seem to have no memories any further than me being in my first year here... Why can't I remember? Seems that I'm not the only one as my classmates are asking that same question. I know a group of older girls which, as my memory tells me, I get along well. Everyone has their own rooms in an apartment or house that is shared with other people. I don't know what's the difference between those and a dormitory or how I ended living there, other than having more relaxed rules and limited rooms per house. It's strange how they have the same family name as me, but don't look alike. Then again, Maeda is a rather common one. The house is an area in Katsura City (桂市) where there is actually a direct train from my school to the station within walking distance from the house. The house is littered with pictures and reading materials from man...