“This is.. the Gunjo Broadcasting.. clu…” *Static*

“Is anyone…” *Static*

*Static* “See you next week…”

And the story begins…

Those words, although simple or even mundane, contained far more meaning (well, at least that’s what I felt after reading Cross†Channel).

Cross†Channel is a Japanese Visual Novel (What is a Visual Novel?) which I had the chance to come across and enjoy, thanks to the hard work of  the FlyingShine and the translation group Amaterasu.  

Depicting a not-so-normal summer at the Gunjo Gakuren (Blue Marine School), we get acquainted  with the different characters of the story, each having their own reason for enrolling into this ‘particular’ school…

The protagonist, Kurosu Taichi (which we are portraying) is a highly ‘different’ individual (Why different? Read the Visual Novel to find out!), but with his slightly perverted pranks and silly gags, I found him to be a pretty fun character. His name, Kurosu is a play on the words “Cross” which links to the concept of the story. Yes, crossing boundaries and understanding each other is never easy! Even although the world now is smaller due to technology, we can easily reach anyone on the other side of the world, and yet we humans are still a lonely existence…

I think that’s pretty much all I can say without giving away the story.

The soundtrack is surprising warm and soothing it complements the the visual novel well

The following section will contain my thoughts on the story itself, so for those who do not wish to be spoilt on the story do not click the hide/show link.

The happy days…

With this chapter closed. It’s time for me to move on.

*Stretch* It’s been a nice week… See you next week :D

Well, well where should I start?

The trip to Kinokuniya was quite fruitful, I finally bought the novel I was collecting plus the Negima manga (The wait for 20% discount is finally over!). Was disappointed when I couldn’t find the novel for Bakemonogatari(化物語), which I regret not purchasing when I saw it a while back, I was crazy enough to try look for the Japanese version of the novel, that itself was not successful as well (I found the shelf, but was lazy to look through the titles >_<).

Visited the new Sommerset 313(why the name 313? That I never figured out) and it was there where I got the watch from the picture you see above, as a fantastic present from my Poly friends (Thanks again guys :D), it’s uberly(is there such a word?) shiny!

The day ended with me meeting up with an old secondary school friend, with his jokes and stuff we had dinner, started this discussion about what kind of girls we would like and stuff XD. It was real fun tho.

Wow… Looks it I managed to turn this into a very normal and boring blog post…

Oh well,  let me end this with a doodle I drew on the MRT trip:

If Light governs over Darkness,
then Darkness must be the mother of Light,
amidst the shine of Light,
is the Darkness that lay under foot,
Are you the Light? Or are you the Darkness?
Or perhaps…

Boy… Was I surprise when I saw this.

The amount of updates I get after weeks of immersing in school work?

Perhaps it’s time to do it the zen way. Anyways, the good thing is that some of the anime TV series I am waiting for is going to start in a bit, yay!

Train travels to school has been tolerable so far, thanks to the book Lila (sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), which unfortunately I had finished reading earlier this Thursday.

Time to look for another distraction on the train ride.

I was back from disposing the rubbish for the day, and just happened to look next to the shoe rack. Something just looked different, I counted the number of shoes on the floor.

One, two, three… Eh? Three!?

There was supposed to be four shoes there. Worried I might have counted wrongly, I did another count…

Still ended with 3! I touched the empty space to make sure my shoe didn’t just turn invisible or something. Nothing. It wasn’t under the rack either.

Took the shoes out of the shoe rack to check. Still nothing. Panicking inside (those were  new shoes ), I stared at the remaining shoe of the pair, now that one is missing I would need to buy a new pair. Sigh.

Ah, there is still another place! I looked at the window ledge (I air out my shoes there sometimes), cluttered with the foldable clothes hangers on grills of the window, I lifted the clothes that were put out to dry. Nothing again.

Gathering all the people in the house, I questioned if any of them saw my shoes. One said he saw it earlier went he went for work (that morning) but didn’t see it when he returned. The other said she didn’t really take notice of the shoe, but was very sure she did not air that particular pair that day.

It wasn’t possible that the shoe managed to disappear into thin air… That would meant one of them lied, or didn’t tell the whole truth. It couldn’t be stolen by a stranger (who would want just one shoe?), and the house was locked at all times.

A closed-room mystery. These words popped into my head. 

So I recapped what I knew:

• Only 3 of us have the keys to the house
• Person A was out at work till evening, saw the shoes in the morning and didn’t see them when he came back
• Person B was in the house whole day, didn’t go near the shoes except when she took down the hanged clothes when it was raining
• I saw the shoes in the morning after Person A went out, but it went missing when I took out the trash (night time)

The only possible period where the shoe went missing is from morning to evening that day (it was such a big gap!), I tried to recall the order of events earlier :

1. Person A went out for work  (Shoes were still there)
2. Person B hanged up the wet clothes to dry
3. I did my homework in my room
4. Started to pour heavily
5. Took down the shoes that were on the window ledge
6. Person B came by and said she will take down the clothes
7. I went to close the other windows in the house
8. Rain stopped
9. I fell asleep
10. Person B went out for lunch
11. Woke up and had lunch
12. Nothing special happened, fast forward to night time
13. Realized shoe was missing after disposing of garbage

It’s unlikely Person A or B lied, so the few possibilities I could think of is that either someone broke into the house (but still why take only 1 shoe?) or somehow I had sleepwalked and hid my shoe.

A search throughout the whole house turned up nothing. Getting annoyed that this was leading nowhere, I looked once more at the “crime scene”. The shoe had not turned up there, was I supposed to believe some house elf took my shoe as a trick?

Feeling defeated, I sat down next to the shoe rack, and found myself looking at the at the clothes hanging on the window grills… And what do you know, I saw my shoe hanging at on the sides.

After an hour of search, I finally found my shoe! I could have sworn I didn’t see it there when I was looking through the hanged clothes, but since the clothes around it was dark in color too, it blended in.

How did it get there? I figured that Person B dropped the clothes hanger near the shoe when she was in a hurry to get them out of the rain, the shoelace hooked up to the side of the hanger, not realizing that, she hung them back when the rain stopped (including the one that the shoe hooked on).

Smiling at how it was just pure coincidence, it’s very much true how life sometimes is indeed stranger than fiction :D  

Case closed.

It’s those wacky questions that makes life so interesting… or not :D

With news of the Endless Eight arc finally ending for the anime: Suzumiya Haruhi Season 2, I can’t help but to think of the fans’ reactions when the DVD release finally comes out, happiness or re-fuelled anger?