1. "Ah."
2. I fell asleep as soon as I got home, and woke up in the middle of the night.
3. I could still smell body soap from the love hotel on my hands.
4. "What time is it...?"
5. Now that I thought about it, I never licked her ears...
6. My ears still felt soft.
7. That's not all you need. It turns out sex is communi- cation...
8. "...I thought so long as I had a body with genitals it'd all be fine, but..."
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1. The whole experience was like looking up at the giant wall separating me and other people from up close.
2. "Ah, they left me some dinner!"
3. I was so nervous yesterday I could hardly eat.
5. "Thanks for the food!"
6. "!!"
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1. I'd heard that first kisses taste like lemons.
2. "Aaah-hh!"
3. So I figured maybe it was true.
4. "Well, not that I'd know, but..."
6. So many people in the world have already had their first kisses, and that's what they say they tasted.
7. There's probably a better comparison, but of everything in my breakfast, first kisses felt most like the tomatoes.
8. "Never mind the taste,"
9. "First kisses feel like tomatoes."
11. Now I'm one of the "people who know", aren't I...
12. "...... That's right..."
1. But finally I'm one of those "People who know", huh...
2. I'd spent 28 years struggling with how much importance I'd given to sex...
3. "Hahaha hahahaha hahaha!"
4. "Heheh heh,"
5. "...Kukuku.... ...Pfft... ...Eheheh... Mhn..."
6. "What the fuck was I even worrying about this whole time!!"
7. "It's so easy-!!! It seems so damn simple now-!!!"
8. "Haha hahaha haha!"
9. "But who cares... I didn't have to sacrifice myself, and now I can see this weird thing for what it actually is."
10. "So happy!"
11. "Ahh- I'm done, you got me... Prevailing trends in society are no match for me..."
3. I started reaching out for things that alluded more freely to sex, things I'd never considered I had any right to be reading.
4. Back when I first started drawing, my intense response to sex was like a young child's.
5. "...se..."
6. "...se..."
7. Never mind saying the word, I had trouble even writing or typing the word "Sex".
8. ...actually crop up all over the place.
9. Now that I actually stop and look around a little, things like "Sex is high-level communication", "It exposes everything there is in a person", and "It's a place where your heart is laid bare"...
10. "I'm sorry..."
11. "I didn't know..."
12. It really was an advanced kind of commun-iucation...
1. There's no way there's something like that down there, of course, is there...?
5. Then I started looking for my hymen.
7. "What, is this renkon or something?"
8. There were some drawings of where period blood comes from, too.
9. I found diagrams of the vagina's entrance.
10. After some searching,
11. On Yahoo answers there were loads of questions asking "There's something weird in there" or "My finger doesn't fit", so maybe it's different for each individual person?
12. Maybe without a hymen I don't have something that everyone else has, but...
13. I'd much rather they taught me about this stuff in sex education.
14. "Eh, that's where pee comes from!? How'd I go 28 years without knowing that?"
15. Anyway, there were far too many theories on hymens,
16. "I don't know anything about my own body!!"
1. Thinking about it rationally, I only read guy on guy stuff, so there's no point comparing them...
2. Incidentally, it wasn't anything like the ero-doujins at all.
3. Was I looking for something I couldn't find in a female body? Or rather, that didn't even exist in the first place...?
5. A mysterious hole frequently mentioned in bl works, with a location, shape and function apparently entirely separate from the butthole.
6. Anything slides inside with ease, getting wet, and all kinds of advanced features
7. Maybe what I really wanted was some erotic fantasy like the 'yaoi hole',
8. "But why...!?"
9. Now that I thought about it, I'd never read anything which had lesbian sex in it.
11. And for all my insistence that I shouldn't be thinking about sex, this was the one kind of fantasy I allowed myself.
12. I'd completely disregarded straight or lesbian stuff, and only focused on the male on male side.
1. But when that's all the information I had, maybe I was bound to end up hurting someone going in with all my weird expectations.
2. "It's impossible, isn't it?"
4. "Eh, this technique..."
5. I didn't think I was being so heavily influenced by the books I read.
6. Having everything you know about biology and the way your body works come from fiction is really messed up...
10. Problem was, that while I knew what everything looked like, I didn't have any accurate knowledge to go along with the drawings.
11. I sometimes think I'd be really fucking shocked if I found out what the female body is actually like.
12. "......"
13. "It's awful!!"
14. "Ehh!? She's nothing like I imagined her!!"
15. If I were a guy who was surrounded by fantasies like these without any real sex education,
16. But that I was never given any of the facts in the first place.
17. "I'm awake..."
19. "Don't wake her up!"
21. I'm repeating myself, but the problem here isn't the fiction,
1. I noticed my memories of that day were suddenly becoming all romanti- cized.
3. As the days went on,
4. Aside from my reaction.
5. And so very similar to the erotic doujins I read...
6. ...I see, everything we did was so lewd and wonderful,
7. I'd intended to draw some kind of report manga since before I even went, but...
8. "I need to write this down before it gets warped into some romantic fantasy!!"
9. "There's no way they're going to take this."
10. "The story's super boring and I can't write interesting characters."
11. "I wanted the art to look nice, but it's all over the place."
12. By chance I was in the middle of drafting something for work.
1. I don't understand other people so well... What would I want to read?
2. What could I draw that people would want to pay money to read?
3. Now that I think about it, that's almost all I read.
7. "How do they write stuff like this?!"
10. I want to read other people's secrets. Authors who write things they could never talk about to the people around them...
11. "I want to be able to draw like that too."
12. "Things that make readers hardly able to believe I can publish them."
13. "Things about myself...!"
1. She's going to be showing up all the time, so I should make her kinda cute, too.
2. Guess I'll go with a character that's me but doesn't really look like me.
3. And so many people were kind enough to read it and share it with their friends.
4. "Thank you so much!"
6. I released my manga on Pixiv.
7. "I can't stand this pressure!"
8. "None of it feels real!"
9. "All these numbers are insane to me..."
10. At first I was so anxious and afraid,
11. "Read more... Please!"
12. "I feel like I'm finally alive right now..."
13. "I've always wanted this!"
14. But it soon turned to happiness.
1. "Gyaa-hh!!"
3. And at last, the place I'd been to caught on.
4. And instead of getting angry, they even helped share my work.
5. "Aaahhhhhh hhhh!!"
7. I figured I'd just delete it if they got mad at me, so I confirmed it with my account.
8. reading individual emails and going to meetings with publishers.
9. "I'm off to a meeting!"
11. But I didn't have to think too hard about the repercussions, and I just spent the days,
12. Almost like the report was compensating for my lack of conversational skills, since everything was already on the table...
13. I actually had fun. It felt easier meeting with them knowing they'd already read through these really embarrassing things about me.
1. Maybe the reason I'd been so bad at dealing with people in person, had been how hard I was always trying to make them like me.
2. "I feel so satisfied and happy right now..."
3. "I haven't really been honest with anyone about the real me before, huh..."
4. "Yeah, I guess that's right..."
5. That I'd been back to thinking there was nothing left for me to do but die.
6. Around then I'd been struggling so hard to write anything interesting...
1. "Wait, maybe I can really write about myself...!!"
2. I think the report was helped a lot by my subject matter.
3. I figure in a day-time drama, this'd be the point the protagonist's future opens wide before her, and the cheerful soundtrack starts playing in the background.
4. "I might've just found a way to make this work...!"
5. "I'm so glad I wrote this! I want to do more, and more...!"
11. In my tenth year after leaving high-school, finally the ever-present 'Die' option was on hold from my list of actions.
12. "How... How do you wake up every morning, how can you be so punctual...?"
13. It had always been so hard for me to understand how everyone else was able to do it.
1. "Om Nom Nom"
2. "It's so sweet!"
3. I'd been sure it was because they were all drinking that "sweet nectar" that nobody had told me about.
4. "S... It's so sweet! Om nom nomm nom!"
5. "Mngh! It was real after all!"
6. It felt like a tap had been turned on, and it was suddenly all flooding into my mouth.
7. I know this sweet nectar is going to be something different for everyone.
8. A reason to live, something that keeps you going, a place in the world...
9. It might be inside my heart, or on the outside...
10. But the place you really belong isn't some concrete thing like a chair, but more fluid and indistinct...
1. "Aah"
2. Anyway, it felt like sweet nectar, so that's what I'm calling it.
3. That sweet nectar was being around good friends, and having them appreciate me.
4. Back in my high school days, when I was still waking up in the mornings,
5. "......"
6. So I'd always thought that was the only way I'd be satisfied, and was stuck waiting for them to come back.
7. But now I'd found it again, somewhere new this time.
1. Readers who even spread my work, wanting more and more people to see it.
2. Getting a response from the art I was able to draw, and having people be kind enough to read it...
4. I felt like I'd found what it was that was really going to fulfill me.
5. Putting out work that reaches people, and being accepted by them.
6. And being treated like an adult, were a pretty damn intoxicating nectar to me.
7. He's actually treating me like an adult!!!
12. "Ah, would you like to order anything else?"
13. Also, the fact that I was being asked things without always having to start all these conversations myself,
1. I still hardly have any friends, and haven't seen my high-school ones in years, but I'm not lonely.
2. I was free of the feeling I was being crammed into a tiny space, or that I'd never be able to grow up.
3. I would wish that I would find good work. Maybe my prayers were answered.
4. "Just let me find a good job."
5. "I don't need love or friendship..."
6. Now that I think about it, every time I would go to a shrine,
10. Incidentally, I think that being "Lazy" and being "Unable to Work" are similar but different things.
11. But not drinking the nectar, and being unable to work on an empty stomach is because you're not taking proper care of yourself.
12. "I can keep going!"
13. "I haven't just been being lazy all this time!"
14. Anyone drinking the sweet nectar who just takes their job and the people around them lightly is being lazy,
1. And times when I couldn't go on were just my failure to value and take care of myself.
2. "I can't go on..."
3. "Stop being a baby!"
4. "Maybe you're trying too hard?"
5. Looking for salvation in other places and people, relying on them.
6. Looking after myself.
7. I actually needed all this stuff...
8. Understanding exactly what it is I want to do.
9. Doing the things I want.
10. Maybe these things I'd restricted myself from doing, were exactly what I'd needed all along,
11. But actually getting on with living our own lives takes something completely different, something we have to learn by ourselves.
13. "I'm all set! Let's do this!"
14. "Stop! That's dangerous!"
15. "I wanna go over here!"
16. "Listen to me!"
18. All we get from our parents are warnings, trying to protect us from danger.
19. "Hahah, what the hell is this supposed to be..."
20. "Is this me...?"
21. Also while, I started to feel like I could draw lewd stuff, the first drawings came out kinda...
22. So while I'd never been able to draw anything lewd before, this time I managed.
23. "Unfazed"
26. I recently found out drawing things from my own imagination is way more embarrassing for me than drawing actual things that have happened to me, and the way I feel about them...
1. TL: This is a really awkward and unconventional way of trying to make the term sound polite in Japanese.
3. and ended up going with "O-sex".
6. Back when I first put the report up on Pixiv, I still couldn't muster the courage to write "Sex",
7. And well, seeing it quoted back at me so simply was really embarrassing.
8. "O-sex"
9. "O-sex"
10. "O-sex"
11. "O-sex"
12. I had quite a few responses who quoted those lines,
13. "What are your drawing?"
14. "... an essay..."
15. "I need to move out..."
17. I also thought if my parents ever read it, they'd probably die from the shock.
18. I decided I wouldn't worry about my parents dying of shock.
19. "It won't turn out to be much worth reading anyway."
20. "Well, if I'm constantly worrying about my parents' reactions..."
3. In the first place, the path to becoming this proper adult that my parents are imagining I should be runs in a completely different direction to the type of person I want to be someday.
8. I decided there was no point in even trying to please my parents anymore.
10. my parents>
11. So to write the things I want to, in a way I can be satisfied with,
14. Pushed into a corner, even a mouse will turn and bite you. Push a twenty-something into a corner, and they'll go to a brothel and publish a report about it on the internet.
15. I know once my parents find out about this it's going to be awkward. I want to move out on my own.
17. "Maybe this'll turn into a good opportunity for me..."
18. "Ahh..."
1. I know things haven't been going great for me for a while now, but I feel like they're about to get a lot better.
2. "I'm not gonna be so scared of my parents that I never live my own life!"