These pages were found in the aforementioned notebook titled 'Hifuu Club Activity Record' but appear to have been pulled out of a different, smaller notebook and glued into this one. As before, these pages were handwritten and spelling mistakes have been corrected. This section was preceded by an introductory page that simply read:
***PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL, DO NOT READ UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES***
-.-.-.-.-
The popular girls in my class have started paying attention to me now. That's all I need. Up until now, all the girls in my class had been ignoring me. I ignored them right back. I can't imagine anyone in middle school has anything worthwhile to say.
The boys still tried to talk to me at first, shouting out my name across the classroom during lunch or trying to strike up a conversation before class. I just ignored them and looked away and by the end of May none of them were trying to speak to me anymore.
These girls who keep trying to talk to me though... I should discern what their intentions are. If they are just going to harass me verbally, then I can ignore it. If they intend to get physical, well then I'll just have to find a time when no one's looking and I can hurt them easily enough. Doing that once should be enough to train any dumb animal not to mess with me.
I'm against corporal punishment in general, but for creatures who lack the ability to reason sometimes there's simply no other option. Teachers that engage in such brutal methods are demonstrating themselves wholly unqualified for their position, however, and, in my opinion, should be put to death as useless drain on society. In general, if all teachers were to be disposed of in such a fashion, I think humanity would be much better off, not only from all of the resources that would be freed up from not having to be spent on such a useless class of people, but from the societal improvements that would result from not having any more adults whose job it is to simply hang around and tell young people what to do. The entire point of teachers is to indoctrinate children into the boring grind of the world of work anyways, so I don't see why they can't be disposed of. In general, any plan that would eliminate a large number of humans from the world would probably meet with my approval though. I had had high hopes for the prediction of the Mayan calendar that the world would end in December of last year, but it turned out to be yet another disappointment.
Come to think of it, there have been many failed predictions of the world's demise. Even the day I was born was supposed to be one of those doomsday events, predicted not only by financial institutions around the world, but Nostradamus himself. For there to be so many predictions of a coming extinction shows that humanity has a latent desire to become extinct. It's only fitting that the majority of a species with such a desire should die off. Of course, although there have been a great many close calls, somehow mankind has avoided destroying themselves thus far. Given that there continue to be predictions of an upcoming apocalypse though, one can only assume that this continuing ability to survive that humanity shows is due to an vast and all-encompassing incompetence that prevents people from realizing their dreams of self-annihilation. Such an incompetent populous is also worthy of extinction, but unable to achieve it. The world is an unjust place.
Why am I harboring such dark thoughts about the extinction of the human race, you may ask? Well, its a natural response to the monumental and pervasive boredom in which I find myself immersed. Not only the material of the classes here in junior high but all the people who surround me are endlessly boring. I know many of them from elementary school and, having watched them grow, I have little hope for the trajectory of their lives. Both those who went to my elementary school and those who I met here in junior high for the first time are all copy-and-paste people, nearly identical clones of eachother, all with the same vapid interests and boring manner of speaking. Having people from so many different backgrounds here all be so boring suggests to me that everyone in Japan, and perhaps everyone in the world is cast from the same dull mold, so why not let humanity go extinct then? Nothing of value would be lost.
I wish I were at home right now. At home there is only Kaoru to talk to, but even though he is a boring, normal person himself, he has three years more life experience than my classmates, making him a much more interesting conversation partner. He also has a lot of manga and novels to read, and those at least provide a temporary distraction.
Recently, my brother joined the PC club at his high school, and he seems to have met a few people there with whom he shares some interests. As a result, he often comes home late now, staying after hours for club activities. This makes it easier than ever to sneak into his room and peruse his bookshelf, but recently his taste in manga has been trending more toward books where the only features distinguishing the works are the impressively short skirts and improbably large breasts of the heroines. Fantasies of that sort I can do without, but I suppose that's just to be expected of a boring, normal boy like him.
-.-.-.-.-
After school I've taken to wandering around town before heading home. My first stop today was the bookstore, to see if they had any new books on the occult. They have a few volumes dealing with urban legends, but they seem to mostly just be compilations of creepypastas taken directly from the internet. I've yet to find a single bit of serious scholarship on the nature or veracity of urban legends like these. This is probably because doing serious and important research like that takes time and money and it's been deemed financially irresponsible. That's the excuse for why most interesting things get ruined or abandoned.
Relatedly, it's also the reason why those few books that do contain actual, worthwhile research and proper academic investigation tend to be really expensive. It's incredibly irksome to me that in this age of unprecedented freedom of information on the Internet we still have to deal with publishing companies maintaining tight and close-minded grips on information and locking up scholarship like this in paper books. Now that mankind possesses the technology, everything should be published for free on the web. At the very least, books like this should be available as e-books so I don't have to bother lugging them around and can read them on my phone. Then we could get on with eliminating all teachers.
In the end, I left without buying anything and wandered away. I ended up going to a video arcade. Most girls my age don't bother with places like this, or stand at the periphery and play the crane games and casual attractions that arcades stock around the outside of the shop. For me, what I want is a way to vent my stress, so that means my coins ended up once again disappearing into a light gun game.
Razing Storm is the best for this, and ends up eating most of my money. Even if the gameplay is nothing special, the sheer amount of destruction unleashed on the game's environment combined with the physical sensation of shooting the arcade cabinet's motorized submachine guns is incredibly satisfying. After I finished with it, I played through a few songs on Music Gungun as well. I wish this arcade still had The House of the Dead or Time Crisis, but those games are out of fashion now, and once again probably unprofitable, seeing as I could beat them both on a single coin. Sometimes I wonder if I should have been born in the US. I've always enjoyed shooting guns, and I hear that over there they let you skip grades in school.
All in all, I passed the time after school in a typical fashion.
-.-.-.-.-
An unusual thing happened after I ran out of change. I was walking around on the music games floor, debating whether or not to exchange another thousand-yen bill for coins. I'm not sure what made me stop in front of the DrumMania machine, but I felt an odd sensation as a woman who looked to be a college student, or around that age anyway, walked up and sat down at the console. She was a strikingly fashionable woman, not that I would normally care about such things, with the sort of reddish brown hair that had to be dyed but still managed to look natural, or at least plausible, cut into a fetching, androgynous style. She was wearing a checkered shirt with a purple tie and a white jacket that radiated a sense of cool but managed not to come off as smug or unwarranted. She seemed supremely confident, I guess you'd say.
She took off her jacket and draped it over the shabby chair the arcade had set up in front of the machine before playing, looking up at the screen with an eager sort of anticipation on her face.
The moment she picked up the sticks, I was riveted to the spot and couldn't look away. I've seen people play DrumMania before plenty of times, and even admired those who can play something so fast-paced with skill. What she did at that console was more than playing a game though. Hitting every note perfectly on max difficulty wasn't even a challenge for her, and really seemed like more of an afterthought. It was the way she added flourish while playing, spinning and waving the sticks like living, dancing creatures between notes and adding rhythms freestyle that weren't even in the score. It was more than even that though. She played beautifully, grinning up at the screen and leaning forward as the songs intensified. Sitting among the electronic pads surrounding her, it was clearly more than a music game to her. It was very much a live musical performance, filled with improvisation and panache, the work of a true virtuoso. I wasn't the only one watching, either. At least a dozen people must have gathered around to watch her performance as she blazed through the hardest tracks the arcade cabinet had on offer. Watching her profile as she worked her way through the setlist, what captivated me the most was the clear indication that, amidst the flashing lights and rocking booms that had everyone surrounding her nodding to the beat, she was, without a doubt, having more fun than anyone else in the arcade the whole time, pouring herself into her performance with a manic abandon that almost seemed like an ecstatic trance.
It was, unquestionably, an impressive performance. But I honestly felt like it was something more than that too. More than anything else, it felt like magic. In a matter of minutes the crowd watching her play had grown from a dozen people to as many faces as could fit themselves into the aisles of the arcade, all crowding around behind me, pressing against one another to try and get a look. The moment the last of her songs was finished, she leaned back against her seat with a satisfied sigh and wiped away the sweat standing on her brow. The crowd erupted into a spontaneous burst of applause that completely drowned out the words 'Game Over' from the cabinet's speakers.
When she stood up from the machine she still had a wide smile on her face. Not the fearsome grin she had worn when playing through the songs, but a truly satisfied, slightly smug expression. She pulled her train pass off of the cabinet and slung her jacket over her shoulder, holding it with two fingers as she stood up.
Without even thinking about it, I found myself following her out of the arcade. It was the first time in ages I had been so genuinely captivated by another person. It wasn't until I had trailed her down the street and into a McDonalds that I came to my senses. Specifically, it was only after she had ordered herself a combo and turned to me, asking "You want anything?" that I realized where I was or what I was doing.
"What?" was all I could manage to say.
"Go ahead, order something. You followed me all the way here, so I'm guessing you want something from me, right?"
And that's how I met Ms. Raiko Horikawa for the first time.