Andry's Trashbin

The piercing sound of the alarm woke me up.     I craned a hand to the side, searching for the source of the noise, before grabbing my cell phone by the cord.     Then I shut off the alarm, checked the time, and with a heavy sigh, closed my eyes once more.     …Hang on. This is weird. Like, really, really weird.     According to the clock, I had slept for eleven whole hours today.     So why am I so deathly tired? This is such a rip-off. This high-school teenager, at the peak of her flowering, has just given up the entirety of her late night—a costly loss indeed—and yet the relief this had granted her body was downright paltry.     What could have gone wrong? Am I not as flowery as I’ve led myself to believe? Maybe there wasn’t much I did while awake besides play online games, but the price I had paid for this sleep was dear, too dear.     A sense of malaise settled over my body, sending frantic danger signals: “Stop! Think it over! If you don’t sleep some more, you’re gonna die!”     

Within the dim, dusky corridor, I stood, accompanied only by my shadow.     Until just a moment ago, I could hear the radio station leaking out from the headphones hanging around my neck.     Now all I could hear was noise. That, and something that resembled a person’s voice.     Something had plainly changed. Concerned, I tried putting on my headphones.     —The crackling, intermittent voice slowly, gradually began to form coherent speech.     It sounded like a press conference held by the president of some country or other.     It was an exaggerated voice, affected for speech purposes, and a machinelike interpreter lagging a bit behind.     The static made listening difficult, but one could still manage to discern it.     “…It is with heartfelt regret that…by the…today…the Earth will…to an end.”     When the voice came to a stop, it was greeted with a steady stream of shouting and seemingly meaningless gibberish.     Even through the headphones, the blubbering, panic-driven desperati

“A Story that Makes You Want to Cover Your Eyes”    Hello. This is JIN.     How did Kagerou Daze: In a Daze treat you?     This project came about when I was invited to write a novel that linked up with “Mekakushi Daze,” my first album. I based it largely off the story elements of four of the tracks in that album.     Going forward, I’m planning to write out the stories from the rest of the songs in future novels.     Of course, if this novel winds up being a flop, I might end up writing an (only somewhat) sexy high-school slice-of-life comedy starring a harem of totally normal girls.     …Not that I would complain too much about that, though.     This novel marks the first time that the characters from the songs receive full names. I think I did a good job making them sound neat, giving them last names modeled after the Japanese words for flowers and so forth.     As I was researching these names, I came upon a type of rose known as “chin chin.”     Rather chic name, isn’t it? It remi

August 15th. The end of a long, long day was at hand.     I’d have never guessed we would actually spend all of it at the amusement park.     Ene was one thing, but having my sister and her friends join me was something I never could’ve predicted.     Something had to have gone terribly wrong somewhere.

The water softly coursed down my body, lapping at each and every curve. It was the shower I had longed for ever since early this morning, but I never expected it under these circumstances.     Here I was, in a shadowy organization’s secret base, myself and my phone covered in hot tea, deluged with apologies all the way to the bathroom.     It sounds all the more strange when put into text form. I suppose truth really is stranger than fiction…or a TV drama script.     Once out of the shower, I returned to the main room, wiping my hair dry. TheF three of them turned toward me for a moment, but quickly returned to normal.     The old clock hung on the wall ticked away, its pendulum swinging back and forth.     It was just past eleven thirty in the morning.     “Hey, thanks for lending me these clothes and everything…”     “Nah, nah. This was our fault in the first place. But, man, what a dilemma…”     “You sure said it…Ah! No! I mean, it’ll be fine! It’ll be totally okay! Right?!”     Mar

When did it begin?      When did it all originally begin?      I was supposed to travel from the countryside to the house of Hiyori’s relative for my summer courses.      That was what was supposed to happen, I think.      What was the name of that guy with the white hair in that house?      I seem to remember it being something really weird.      Not that I have any business saying that. My name—Hibiya—that’s pretty weird to some people, too.      He was really tall and laid-back.      Maybe I should ask Hiyori. She probably remembers the name.      But I feel like I asked her a thousand times already, a long time ago.      What was that name again…? Ah, it doesn’t matter.      Come to think of it, where did Hiyori go?      I know we left the house together.      Have I ever wound up by myself like this before?      I feel like I have…or maybe I haven’t.      Huh…Now it’s starting to rain.      I’m pretty sure this is the first time…      Amid my constantly repeating dream,      the