Inokhen Shishio

Inokhen Shishio

Just an otaku who wants to read the works of international authors :D

registered at: Jul 15, 2018
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Sep 26, 2018

For it to be your first time to at least publish a story written in a first-person perspective, I find this to be absolutely brilliant! This kind of work was really thought-provoking and it brought in all kinds of thoughts into my head so let me break things down to show you what I mean.

THE WRITING STYLE - As I could tell the moment I started reading, this story is written in a first-person perspective and narrated by the protagonist, Hiromi. The way she narrates and the flow of her words feel very poetic and high-class like I was reading from a well-educated noble, which turned out to be sort of true as I would find out later on. It also speaks volumes of her personality like for example, it said, "Oh, and it's supposed to be filled to its limit with the most expensive and delicious candy Japan has to offer. There's that, too". That's definitely a hint that candy wasn't Hiromi's motivation to win the costume contest.

THE PROTAGONIST - Hiromi Kobayakawa. You're a monster for creating such an innocent (as she sees herself) yet horrifying character! The reason why I'm saying this is because these are the traits I picked up from experiencing the story through her eyes. To sum it up, Hiromi has the horrifyingly relatable mindset of a child, but with a little intellect thrown in.

1. She's smart enough to take full advantage of her parent's incredible generosity
*Hiromi never verbally demanded anything that she wanted because it would make her seem spoiled, but did so in other ways such as staring at her future gothic lolita dress for a minute to give her parents the message without realizing it. Once her parent bought it for her just like that, she realized how her happiness is all it takes to make her parents do her bidding, and she became drunk with that kind of power. Maybe she wasn't spoiled before, but that's not the case now.

2. She believes the world revolves around her
*I felt this from the way she narrated her story, and since this is first-person, we are only learning of the world through the eyes of the protagonist. One aspect I'd like to point out is where there is detail in the descriptions and where the descriptions are vague or general. Whenever something is about her, Hiromi is thorough like when she talked about her dress, her thoughts, or the contest she was entering. On the other hand, she only gave a quick heads up on everything else like the setup of the Halloween festival. She only cared about the contest, not the festival. Also, her style of narration makes her seem arrogant without realizing it as she calls herself humble, unspoiled and other things like that, but I keep feeling like she's also looking down on others.
*This kind of personality is very relatable because even though we are the main characters in our stories as people, we as kids believed that world will always bend to our will or go our way whether we want to admit it or not. We also make our own rules and decide what stays and what goes without concern for the consequences.

In the end, Hiromi is intelligent and haughty, but also a genuine child. She doesn't care about morals or the perspectives of others. As long as she ends up happy, all is well even if others end up in misfortune like those who may have died in the aftermath of the festival, and that's what makes her so scary. Worse, it can apply to almost all of us.

And may I also add that Hiromi caused chaos without even lifting a finger!? She tried to keep the secret of her costume between herself and the contest host, but the host just had to overact and cause a chain reaction. I'd say Hiromi was just hoping her costume would be deemed scary because it looked "realistic". Because of this, I'm seeing Hiromi as someone who can become like Johan Liebert from Monster when she grows up!

THE MESSAGES IN THIS STORY
1. Parents will sacrifice just to please their kids.
*What I came up with after thinking about Hiromi's mom cutting off the skin of her arm for her daughter to use as material for her costume was that it was metaphorical for the fact that most parents will sacrifice for the sake of making their children happy, and they'll do it while hiding any pain they get from doing so, which is shown from Hiromi's mom not showing any sign of pain when she's skinning arm most likely because she's enduring it. Maybe parents won't sacrifice an arm and a leg, but this is very true when it comes to spending a lot of money or time to fulfill what their kids may want, and they sure aren't getting any of that back (aside from money, maybe). I'm sure Hiromi's dad really mangled himself, which is why he is always with a newspaper covering his face, you know, to hide what horrific things he did to himself just to please his daughter and see her smile. I know this wasn't written, but maybe the reason why he is practically glued to his sofa chair is because he chopped off his feet for Hiromi to make her shoes?

2. Kids aren't concerned with the adult sacrifices made to get what they want, and they will do what they please with it.
*This is shown when Hiromi simply throws her costume into the trash after it had served its purpose, and that was made from her parents sacrificing their flesh or other body parts to make! Those won't grow back! It's like how we once wanted a new toy, but once we had our fun with it, maybe we don't throw it in the trash but the fact that we've stopped playing with it means it would be no different from throwing it away. And throwing it away doesn't bring back what was spent to get it.

3. We want what we don't have, and once we have it well...
*This for the trophy Hiromi "won". She wanted to win the trophy badly when she didn't have it, but after she got it, she started to think of it as mere dead weight in her room.

Man, I've written so much for a comment. Just goes to show I wasn't sugarcoating when I called this story brilliant. In this single one-shot, you gave a well-written protagonist and a story that can remind me of certain morals. It's not monsters or supernatural phenomena that makes this story scary -It's Hiromi's childish mindset and the messages this story tells that are scary but very real.

If there was anything that disappointed me, it's that I can only give one "Like".

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For your Smile, My Sweet Little Girl
Chapter:1