Chasing After Rainbows

If Hisakawa said that she had met my brother inside Mizuho, she must have known about his body changing. I mean, my brother and I go to the same school and, having seen a recent picture of me and my family (most likely the one taken during my entrance ceremony day last year), and knowing that me and my brother could look like the other if one of us tries to dress like one. I've seen my brother returning home directly from Mizuho, and if people saw him, they could easily mistake him as me in my school uniform, though he looks a bit different and I'm not well known enough on top of that for something to possibly happen. What I'm afraid of is not knowing if Hisakawa has already told my mother about it. Also, I knew I had the sense of familiarity when I first saw her on the plane, because she's the same person as the computer club president that I met at the Kamisugi High school festival. Her wearing a name tag that clearly reads as "Haneda Kanade" even though h

Being in a foreign country for the first time, it suddenly occurred to me that reduced food, electricity, and business hours in light of the earthquake back in March, does not apply to here at all. Buying things using a currency I'm not used to has make me feel disoriented on whether the numbers on the price tag of an item is considered cheap or expensive. They said to divide a number by 100 from the yen as a rough guess, but seeing something that costs 800yen back home being labelled as 25 in that currency, which itself after currency conversion, is worth 650yen or US$9, is making me even more confused. Waking up, having breakfast, preparing things, travelling to school, waiting for everyone to gather and brief, taking the train to the airport, having lunch, waiting for the plane to depart, duration of flight plus delays, timezone differences. All of this has made us tired from travel alone and lost track of how long we have been travelling. The sun had already set when we arriv

About half a year has passed since the earthquake happened. Everything has started to become normal again, and the mess caused by the tsunami in affected areas mostly cleared up, though there are still shipwrecked ships and empty areas where destroyed houses used to stand. Only the roads, surviving buildings, and some trees, tells us where everything was. Electricity is gradually returning back to normal, though some energy conservation measures implemented since the earthquake are still visibly in place. Sadly, it seems as if the world has stopped caring about the incident itself. There have been small earthquakes since then that were more frequent than usual, which might be possibly be and aftershock of an aftershock. There was a typhoon that nearly threatened to hit the already-damaged nuclear plant and scatter its radiation just recently, but it became weak enough to be not much of a threat when it arrived. Some boys in school have started to talk to me often since the start

We had attended Tatsuya's funeral, which seems to also include his parents who were working at the bakery below his house when the tsunami hit it. His extended family, friends, and co-workers attended too. For being his girlfriend, and quite close to him, his death impacted me the most. It left me a huge void in my heart. My willpower to find another boyfriend is weak since I had already poured my heart and soul on Tatsuya, but if it wasn't for my brother who comforted me, I would be feeling worse now. It was that day after the tsunami on returning home, dad was comforting me and my brother who... hold on. Something is wrong with my memory: dad had clearly said "my two daughters" instead of "my daughter and son" when he hugged me and my brother on seeing us for the first time since the quake. I also kept thinking that my brother was a girl that whole day. How on earth did I not notice it until now? Why did I actually see Tsukasa as a sister instead of a

As we walked into the sports hall, my brother seemed uneasy. She has been like this since we got here. Me: "What's wrong?" Tsukasa: "I was thinking if my friends are affected by this. They may be living far away from the sea, but you would never know if they were there when it happened." Me: "Me too." Tsukasa: "So, here we are. The list of the refugees here, and the list of the dead over there. I'll help you to look through the list. What's the Kanji of this Tatsuya person?" I wrote "立谷起也". Tsukasa: "Okay. Got it. That's a normal looking name, until it comes to the pronunciation. Sorry if I had made fun of you. Until you wrote down the name, I though you were mentioning his name twice." I search through the list of the refugees in here, while my brother looks at the rest. The name lists might look as if it's not listed in any particular order, but it's actually arranged according th

Waking up the following morning, it seems that yesterday was just a bad dream. Brother was the first person I saw when I left the room. I thought I had a nightmare of him being turned into a girl, and a very strong earthquake and tsunami happened. Brother: "Oh, you're awake. I completely forgotten about it when I came back, but here's the thing I collected yesterday." He brought me to his room and opened his school bag that was on the floor. He took out what seemed like video game casings with American and European gaming rating symbol on it instead of the local ones. He also took out some products that looked as if it were to be sold in many different countries, except Japan. Is this unnecessary spending? Me: "How did you order these things?

(Edited: 10 September 2012) It's the second Friday of the month where my brother had claimed to collect something at his other place in Mizuho. Although it's late in the morning, my brother doesn't look like he even plans to go out at all. By this time, our parents had already headed out to work. Me: "You said that your delivery of something to there is today?" There is very little time if he heads out now, and he has yet to bathe today. Brother: "Oh, they said it will arrive about 1:30pm, so I would still be early even if I head there now... Say, where are you headed?" Isn't that not much of a time difference? You have to be there already when the delivery arrives or you would have to reschedule or the product be sent back. Me: "I'm heading to the neighbouring harbour town to buy some seafood." Brother: "You mean heading to your favourite crying spot close to there, don't you? You have something to cry about

Me: "So, was the chocolate good?" This was after valentine's day. I made it myself with the chocolate that mum gave me that had some kind of biscuit in that's crunchy. Of course, I had tried some myself to make sure it doesn't taste awful. Takuya: "That chocolate was so great that it sent me to heaven! I will give you something better on White Day. Just wait." I sensed that he couldn't think of what it would be without spending a lot of money or going through a lot of trouble to get it. Maybe he doesn't even know what it would be. Me: "I'm fine with anything really. It doesn't need to be expensive or something." I said that because I knew boys would tend to overdo things when it comes to impressing girls.

Since the day I asked for Takuya's email address, we have been keeping in contact with each other more often than before. Every morning, we would meet up with each other on the train and talk about things. He too isn't in any club, but he helps with his family at a bakery store just below his house. He told me that it's facing the shore of the vast ocean, so the air and scenery there are both quite nice to be at. I went there for the first time just after Halloween and it looks like it could look nicer in the Summer, though my favourite spot closer to my house has almost nobody there and the nearest building is quite a distance away, but there are trees and caves nearby for shelter. I haven't been there much lately. As time passed, the less frequent meeting with my brother didn't seem to bother me much, to the extent that I forgot I even had an older brother. I had come to realization that my body had already become fully matured and somewhat become like my mother

Back during our kindergarten and primary school days, me and my brother were very much alike that even our parents couldn't tell us apart. As that school did not have a uniform or use those standard bags (black for boys, red for girls), it was even easier to be alike. The visible difference ended when we had to wear gender-specific clothing as part of the middle school uniform and, as a result of that, I stopped caring about keeping my hair to look the same as my brother because our gender differences had started to become obvious anyway. Since my family moved to another city far away during my transition from primary to middle school, none of my primary school friends came along, but we still keep in contact. Those who thought I was a boy or mistake me for my brother thought I was crossdressing when they saw a picture of me in my middle school uniform because I was obviously wearing a girl's uniform. It wasn't easy to convince them that I'm really a girl without my bro

So here's the daily schedule on a normal school day: have breakfast, head to the train station, and take it to somewhere south-west in an another town 1-2 hours away. There is also the chance of meeting up with friends and classmates. Even though there are several high school in the same town as where my current house is, they seem to be like a place full of students staying in this town and the neighbouring harbour town. The school rules seems so relaxed as compared to those of elsewhere that it's quite obvious in their "fashion" to the point it made both me and my brother uneasy and the question of how serious the students of the school are in studying. My brother's friends from the middle school before transferring to another have forewarned us about this. As the middle and high schools around here uses only the gakuran (for boys) or sailor uniform (for girls) as part of their uniform, anyone in town who is seen wearing any other kinds (like mine) would be qu

There's something special about the seashore that's facing the Taihei Ocean that me, and some of my extended family members used to go to back when I was in elementary school between 2000 and 2006. Since middle school, I've been heading there by myself, even during the cold winter, for a relaxing time. The beach itself being a big wide open and remote area with nothing but sand and, in the horizon, nothing but the big wide ocean and no islands visible. Looking towards the nothingness for as far as I can see and with the refreshing wind and smell makes me want to seek out what is out there. Not far from that beach along the coast, though far enough if you walk, is a town with a harbour where fishermen deliver seafood they caught out in the sea. They are quite humble in a sense that they enjoy it and not worried about competition. They have talked to me before, and they're quite nice.