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...

You may have come across some (fictional) stories, or a part involving, where one finds themselves in a body of something different from what they are used to. This can be to an animal, an item, or even a robot, but most authors usually restrict this concept to between humans of the same gender not too far away, and know each other prior to it happening. So what you find yourself in someone else's body and then someone else talks to you as if you are their parent/child/sibling. Psychologically, these people are complete strangers to you, but the body you are in makes you to be related to them by blood. Your original family members would also not recognize you. Methods of how that happens, or what happens later on, is different, but "waking up one morning" and "demanding to change back" are usually the typical things that happens. For the latter, it usually involves someone else who cause it to happen (usually a scientist), various difficulties (expense, co...

On one of those days my group visited a place somewhere that is quite some distance away from the city center. Not sure where, but I do know that most of the way there has nothing but high-rise apartments. Unfortunately, I got separated from them while figuring out on getting around at an unfamiliar place. I don't know how it happened, but it did. I'm kind of scared to approach anyone, who are already looking at me. My uniform kind of stands out as there aren't any schools in this country that has a similar design, judging by the students that I had seen. My mobile phone doesn't seem to work while overseas. Payphones are nowhere in sight and, even if I do find one, I don't have the coins for it. Also, I don't remember the numbers to dial to contact people who might be able to help me. People were already looking at me because the design of school uniform I'm wearing is not used in local schools. The fact that people are even looking at me makes me scared...

It has been exactly a year since the large earthquake happened in the Tohoku region. I remember a year ago when people were calling and messaging me to check if I'm okay. I'm relatively unscathed, and I don't have relatives affected by this. Tokyo was relatively unaffected, and buildings remain standing as they are designed to withstand strong earthquakes. Although, food supplies, and things like radios and batteries were mostly empty shortly after due to people rushing to buy this and/or supply routes/factories were affected by it. Outside Japan, and most foreigners inside Japan, the situation at that time was kind of exaggerated by the lack of knowledge (and spreading their misinformed knowledge to others) of what is happening, and the areas affected. The fear in these people seem to imply that the whole of Japan is affected. As for the radiation, yes there was dangerous radiation around the Fukushima 1st nuclear plant, and, yes, radiation levels in other parts ...