Hit me right in the feels

Ouch.

I expected this when she woke up in the bathtub and didn't know why, but that was still unexpectedly brutal.

I actually feel the most sorry for Hiro, oddly enough. I think her feelings were real in high school, but they started drifting apart after she moved, as happens. Long distance relationships are hard. They had fallen out of contact for awhile, and Hiro probably thought they were over. At the very least, they are to her, though she still thinks favorably of Chiharu. She seems genuinely excited to see her at first, but switches to awkward and distant as soon as she realizes that she still considers them an item. She might even have moved on to dating Mao, but either way, she doesn't know how to handle it and responds poorly.

But then, this girl goes back home and accidentally drowns herself. I'm pretty sure the ocean promise was a dream (she seems to wonder about it in her drowsy stupor,) so all Hiro knows is she left Chiharu heartbroken, Chiharu went home, took sleeping pills, and got in the bathtub.

We see Chiharu's POV and the promise-dream, so we can be fairly sure she wasn't killing herself, but Hiro has no such reassurance. She must spend every day wondering, was it on purpose? Was it her fault? If she'd broken up properly sooner, or if she'd just behaved differently in that moment, would Chiharu still be alive? (Chiharu's mom is probably going through something similar.) That is some serious guilt to carry around.

Lame

that is why you need to sleep enough so you won't die while bathing

anyway, looks like she's now in an endless loop, keep going back to the bath and keep looking for her gf, what a really sad ending

Hiro was clearly a dick she is no innocent. Mc was there for when she needed but Hiro put her career before her. Still this outcome is too harsh

^@Heavensrun

Pretty much my take too (although “feeling most sorry” between “alive but guilt-ridden” and “dead”—I’m going to need to think some more on that one).

One thing I like about this story is that it’s more than just its narrative trick, and I want to reread it not just to see how the mechanics of the trick worked (which was extremely well), but also to get the kind of nuanced read on the circumstances and the motivations of the characters as you have done here.

In general this kind of story is pretty marginal to my main preferences and interests, but this one accomplishes what it sets out to do very, very well.

last edited at Oct 26, 2018 8:48AM

I'm sad and angry at the same time :/ Nice story but I really can't handle tragedy well

wheres tragedy tag?
is it really hard to put it in there?
cmon i dont want to read this kind of shit

Wow... Just wow.

The author handled this trope pretty well. Usually for these "she was dead all along!" stories, you can see it coming from a mile away, but I didn't see it coming at all here.

The bathtub drowning is really sad and it reminds me of what happened in Gunjo rip :(.

same as soon as saw that scene i immediately thought of Gunjo and that manga is really good

I avoid yuri with tragedy but I kinda liked this one. Stories where the reader shares the protagonist's tenuous grasp of reality interest me. It was somewhat well executed but the cause of her death confused me at first, I think it works better if it really was an accident

I think she died from "Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome" (SUNDS). (In Thailand, we call this "Rok-rai-tai"(โรคใหลตาย). Her heart stopped working during sleep. she don't even feel pain.
This is very sad.

I think Hiro really did a bad thing, that is “she didn’t do anything”. She didn’t break up with Chiharu properly. She moved to another town and never came back and she stopped contact with Chiharu. Why? If you don’t love her anymore you shouldn’t left her like that. You should end your relationship properly then you can do what ever you want. I bet Hiro don’t even know that Chiharu is dead.

last edited at Oct 26, 2018 10:48AM

I really hope there's at least depressing as fuck tag since tragedy would be a spoiler.

Actually, tags are always spoilers. But they spoil the general aspects and main lines of the work rather than the specific details. It's another kettle of fish altogether than, say, revealing the name of the murderer to someone who's about to read a mystery book. Thanks to the tags, you know in advance the mood of the story and the broad issues that will be tackled, and 99,9% of readers find it extremely helpful - as it let them pinpoint releases they will like and avoid releases they will dislike.

In the case of this oneshot, depressing as fuck is definitely needed. And no, it's no spoiler.

Well that was depressing... pretty, but sad.

oof

it's just so beautiful...and utterly heartbreaking T.T

I really hope there's at least depressing as fuck tag since tragedy would be a spoiler.

Actually, tags are always spoilers. But they spoil the general aspects and main lines of the work rather than the specific details. It's another kettle of fish altogether than, say, revealing the name of the murderer to someone who's about to read a mystery book. Thanks to the tags, you know in advance the mood of the story and the broad issues that will be tackled, and 99,9% of readers find it extremely helpful - as it let them pinpoint releases they will like and avoid releases they will dislike.

In the case of this oneshot, depressing as fuck is definitely needed. And no, it's no spoiler.

I’m not addressing any issue here, just musing on some. Tags have (at least) a double function: to alert readers that a given story might be something that they would want to read or is something that they might not want to read, and some specific tags are more often one kind than the other.

(I mean, I’m sure there’s somebody out there for whom Depressing as fuck makes for absolute must-read catnip, while for somebody else Princess carry constitutes a trigger warning. Neither of those people is me, however.)

The thing that bothers me just a little (and I’m pretty sure there’s no practical solution for it) are those stories that legitimately earn one of the “warning”-type tags for their content, but are so high in quality that people who ordinarily avoid those specific tags think it’s really a great read anyway. (Like me for this one—the way I’m generally feeling these days a Depressing as fuck tag would have kept me away from this story, at least for a while. But I’m really glad I read it.)

Actually tagging stories concerning perceived quality sounds completely impractical (what could possibly go wrong, amirite?), and maybe the only workaround is to post comments saying, “I usually hate ________ stories, but this one is great!” But I personally don’t tend to check out comment threads for series I haven’t read yet.

My only real point is that I do appreciate getting tips for really good stories I haven’t read yet, and I hate to see other people missing out on great work, so I’m just kind of wishing for a way to communicate to other readers, “Yes, it is Depressing as fuck, but in this case that’s a good thing!”

She’s at an endless loop... she hasn’t been able to moved on to the next life ooof

u guys who can figure this out make me feel so stupid
esp withthe black and white pages

whos the artist for the cover

u guys who can figure this out make me feel so stupid
esp withthe black and white pages

Not at all—first time through about all I could figure out was “she’s dead” (mostly because we see her in the tub and then she says, “I’ve been dead”).

I didn’t even register the significance of the insomnia/sleeping pills at all until much later, and it took even longer than that to get the status of the nighttime encounter with Hiro in her room.

The whole story is intentionally constructed in a variety of subtle ways to throw the reader off just enough that you can’t ever quite get your bearings but not so much that it feels totally chaotic or incoherent.

(That last part is also true of A Period of Bandaged Girls—this author is really, really good at creating an apparently plausble but creepily off-kilter atmosphere.)

last edited at Oct 26, 2018 6:45PM

In the case of this oneshot, depressing as fuck is definitely needed. And no, it's no spoiler.

Again, please do not add these tags to this release because the entire story is built to hide both of these aspects as long as possible. The anthology is Avalon bitter and so you get the context the original readers did, no more.

damn I cried. love can be so fragile...

bruh moment

summing it up:

goddamn it :(