An advanced alien lands somewhere in a search for energy to power her spaceship, and before long she comes across a young girl. The ship's energy runs on emotion, and as the alien's species doesn't give as much as an emotional output due to being able to easily switch between a physical form and a body of information, the girl is a perfect fit to help power it up.
Well, almost.
The girl is rather abrasive at first and she pokes and prods at the alien. On the other hand, the alien frequently gets into rather unsavory conversations with the girl. However, they eventually put aside their differences and start to form a great bond, but it looks like the girl has some pretty big issues of her own...
This story is written in its entirety in a 2chan thread by an anonymous poster. An archived version of the original Japanese story can be read here
, and an English translation by vgperson can be read here.
This story provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: The girl's father sexually molests her, and her mother physically and verbally abuses her because she's dissatisfied with having to raise her daughter.
- Accidental Murder: The alien pointed out even though the girl did want to kill him, the murder of her father was an accident. She pushed him while they were in the bathroom, and he slipped and fell in an unfortunate place, killing him in a matter of seconds.
- Accidental Pervert: The alien, a LOT. When they first meet, she places the equipment for generating energy from emotion somewhere presumably unsavory on the girl, so the girl accuses her of being a pervert, though the alien putting it somewhere strange is likely justified due to their different biologies. In later conversations, she reveals she's a lot more open about sexuality than the girl is (even though her sexual wants have dwindled due her body being half information), so the girl gets uncomfortable with this really fast, and pokes at the alien, which she knows hurts her.
- Accidental Proposal: At the end, the girl insists the alien take responsibility for her, which the alien mistakes for a marriage proposal.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Downplayed. A boy at school likes the girl and confesses to her, but she doesn't reciprocate and turns him down. However, the girl's friend liked the boy as well. Let's just say her friend did NOT take well to him liking the girl.
- All of the Other Reindeer: The girl is ostracized both by her classmates and family - the former because her bad hygiene due to parental neglect attracts bullying, and this gets worse later due to her "friend" being jealous over her crush liking the girl instead, and the latter because of her mother being a Resentful Guardian and her father molesting her. It isn't until she meets the alien that she makes a genuine friend.
- Ambiguous Gender: The alien, initially, until the girl asks and the alien confirms she's a woman. This is discussed by the girl:Girl: Given it’s you, I was expecting you to say something crazy like "We don’t have gender as such"...
- Celibate Hero:
- The girl is rather averse to the idea of both romance and sexuality. As mentioned under Accidental Pervert, discussion of sexual activity and functions is a bit of a Berserk Button for the girl and whenever the alien brings up the subject, the girl is quick to shut her down. When a boy confesses to her and the alien discusses the prospect of the girl entering a relationship, the girl becomes disoriented with the subject and makes it clear she has no interest in pursuing any relationship of the sort - she further asserts this later after the alien brings her to Earth, when the girl asks the alien to "take responsibility for [the girl]". The alien misinterprets this as a confession of love, but the girl angrily shoots down the idea of a romantic (and potentially sexual) relationship with her. As mentioned under Does Not Like Men, this is possibly justified in that she's had a history of sexual trauma at the hands of her father, so it makes sense that she'd be so averse to the idea of a sexual relationship, or any relationship with a boy for that matter.
- Played with the alien, and by extension, a majority of her species. As her species is able to function as individual bodies of information detached from a physical body of any sort, sexual and romantic needs have significantly dwindled, and even the process of mating is largely non-sexual and non-romantic in nature. She further explains she doesn't feel that her lack of attraction to anyone is a particularly bad thing, but it also means that she doesn't have much experience with feelings of romance and is unable to discuss it on a personal level. In a marked contrast from the girl, however, this also means she's a lot more open about sexual subject matters, but tends to view it from a more objective standpoint in that she's curious about how it affects a person (and also how it helps the girl produce more Metaphysical Fuel) rather than deriving any pleasure from it herself. At the end of the story, this is a bit more up in the air when she misinterprets the girl as having romantic feelings for her, and instead of turning her down, she suggests that they get married and perhaps even form a sexual partnership despite her own lack of sexual needs (though she points out they wouldn't be able to procreate).
- Condescending Compassion: The girl makes a friend at school, who only befriended the girl because her friend took pity on her and saw her as being lesser and more pathetic. When her friend's love interest confesses to the girl, she takes it horribly because her expectations of the girl were betrayed and starts bullying her - see Not Good with Rejection below.
- Death by Falling Over: How the girl's father died. See Accidental Murder above.
- Does Not Like Men: The girl considers boys to be "kinda scary" and would prefer it if they ignored her. Possibly because she was sexually abused by her father, even if she can't remember it at the time.
- Driven to Suicide: After realizing she's been living in a fantasy world after killing her parents, the girl stabs herself in the abdomen. While her attempt is successful...
- Bungled Suicide: ...the alien turns her into a body of information and prepares her a new physical body, which allows her to continue living.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The girl was abused by her parents (sexually by her father and emotionally by her mother), bullied at school for a multitude of different reasons, started believing her fantasies of living a happier life after she murdered her parents were real, and that backfired because her life was so unhappy, she couldn't even experience true joy in her imagination. Once this realization hits, she commits suicide, but the alien saves her in time to put her in another body so she can continue living. Afterwards, the alien puts the girl on her spaceship and they travel off to another planet. While the girl does have some getting used to in her new form, she finds the new planet - Earth - rather interesting, and the both of them are left with hope for the future.
- Earth All Along: Inverted. We're lead to believe the girl is a human and that the alien landed on Earth, but it turns out the alien is actually a human in a distant future where humanity has made many more developments and can now explore space. At the end of the story, the alien takes the girl to Earth, explaining this isn't the alien's birthplace, but the origin of her ancestors.
- Emotion Eater: A variation. The girl's emotions are used to power the alien's ship, but this doesn't weaken her ability to feel emotion by any means.
- Happy Place: Deconstructed and subverted. After killing her parents, the girl dreamt up a fantasy world where she had supportive adoptive parents and kind classmates, and because her mental state had pretty much crashed (the alien describes it as the girl's mind being "half-destroyed"), she could no longer differentiate between reality and her fantasies. However, because she'd never experienced genuine happiness, her supposed happy place instead turned into reliving her trauma and she had no way to snap herself out of it at that point.
- Human All Along: Inverted with the girl, who's technically the real alien by our standards. Played straight with the alien, who's actually a human in a distant future where humanity has developed drastically, and can now explore space.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes:The girl, who's later revealed to be the actual alien by our standards, as the alien is a human in a distant future, insults the alien's appearance and pokes her in a way that hurts her, though the girl later regrets insulting her. That said, she doesn't really understand a lot of things about the alien's being, culture, and society, likely because the alien describes things in very eloquent ways...and being put off by it is only taken further once she's put into a human body for herself. However, after the girl apologizes for insulting her, in turn, the alien comments that the girl looks odd to her as well. The alien also makes commentary about the girl's culture being shy about sexuality (which she often forgets, to both of their dismays) and wonders if leaving family members' corpses in the bathroom is a norm in the girl's culture.
- I Lied: When it's revealed that the girl's experiences of being abused are just a fantasy based off of her old but real memories, the alien insists that, she, too, is a figment of the girl's imagination and takes her leave. However, she returns to save the girl in the middle of her suicide attempt and tells the girl she lied about being imaginary, that she was the girl's only piece of reality.
- It's All My Fault: Discussed. The girl blames herself for everything bad that happens that even tangentally involves her, even the things she couldn't possibly help. The alien repeatedly tries to make her see how overly harsh that is, but the girl quite eloquently argues for the virtue of choosing to take responsibility even when you don't have to. While this is a sign of how broken she is, the alien is also moved by the nobility of it.
- Matricide: The girl, shortly after murdering her father, also murdered her mother. While her father's death was unintentional, murdering her mother was very intentional.
- Metaphysical Fuel: The alien's ship runs on emotion for fuel, and she uses the girl to power up her ship because she has such an expansive emotional range.
- Minimalist Cast: There are only 6 characters, including characters that don't have any dialogue. Only 2 characters - the alien and the girl - actually have dialogue.
- Miss Imagination: The girl. After she murdered her parents, she tried to dream up a fantasy world in which she had supportive adoptive parents and friendly classmates, and got so absorbed in this world that she was convinced it was reality. However, this ended up working against her favor. She didn't know what true happiness was like at all, so she couldn't even fantasize about being happy, and her fantasies came to be her way of reliving harsh memories.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The girl, after realizing she's responsible for killing her parents. She cries and says that she still loves them both, even though they didn't love her the same way, and hopes they can restart and get along in the afterlife. Afterwards, she attempts suicide.
- Nameless Narrative: None of the characters are given specific names.
- No Antagonist: While the girl's Abusive Parents and classmates are undoubtedly antagonistic, by the time the story rolls in, both are actually non-issues as the girl killed her parents and she hasn't attended school since. Rather, the real conflict comes in through the girl's own declining mental state; her sense of reality has become so distorted that she keeps reliving flashbacks of her Trauma Conga Line, and genuinely believes that all of the trauma is happening again in real-time. Ultimately, the realization that she was living in a fantasy and that she killed her parents leads to her final breaking point, which was not spurred on by any antagonistic force, but instead the alien telling the girl that her parents are long gone and trying to snap her out of another suicidal spiral.
- Non-Human Sidekick: The girl has an alien friend. Though as it turns out, the girl is not a human at all while the alien is.
- Not Good with Rejection: The girl makes a friend at school, and the friend likes a boy who doesn't reciprocate, but likes the girl instead (see All Love Is Unrequited above). Her friend took pity on the girl and thought of her as being more "pathetic". When the boy confesses to the girl thereby betraying her friend's expectations, her friend was not having it at all. She even accused the girl of being a traitor and inflicted all assortments of violence on her.
- Parental Incest: The girl's father sexually abused her, inviting her to take a bath with him just so he can assault her to his wishes. This actually led to his eventual death - after he threatened violence on her in the bathroom, she pushed him and killed him as he fell over.
- Patricide: The girl accidentally murdered her father after pushing him in the bathroom.
- Resentful Guardian: The girl's mother abuses her because she doesn't want to have to raise her daughter, even accusing the girl of making them poor.
- Self-Made Orphan: The girl killed her parents prior to the events of the story. While murdering her father was accidental (though the alien found that the girl did have prior desire to kill him), murdering her mother right afterwards was intentional.
- Speech-Centric Work: Almost the whole work consists only of dialogue between the two main characters.
- Starfish Aliens: The girl, presumably. While it's never shown what she looks like due to the nature of the medium, she does mention that she has multiple limbs, no hair, and says that everything is 'vertical' in her human form.
- Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: In vengeance for the boy she liked confessing to the girl, the girl's friend harshly bullies the girl. She hid her shoes, vandalized her textbook, and pulled off the girl's underwear and showed it to the whole classroom.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: See Earn Your Happy Ending above.
- They Died Because of You: The alien tells the girl that she's the one responsible for killing her parents.
- Transhuman Aliens: See Human All Along above.
- Translator Microbes: The alien uses this kind of technology so she's able to understand the girl and vice versa.
- Trauma Conga Line: One thing after another for the girl! First, her family was abusive; her mother was a Resentful Guardian who unfairly scolded her for things out of her control and hit her, and her father sexually molested her. More or less thanks to her ill-treatment at home, the girl doesn't bathe often and gets bullied at school for it. When she finally makes a friend at school, her new friend only sticks around out of Condescending Compassion and quickly turns around after her crush confesses love to the girl, resorting to physical violence and public humiliation all because the girl betrayed her expectations. When all of this starts taking a toll on the girl's physical being and she's on the brink of suicide, the alien reveals right then that the girl killed her parents, and all of the girl's recent memories are actually a failed attempt at creating a Happy Place for herself that twisted into reliving her trauma. After The Reveal, the alien tells the girl she's little more than an imaginary friend and leaves the girl to kill herself... that is, until the alien comes back to save the girl's life.
- Vague Age: The characters' ages are never specified. The girl (as well as her classmates, presumably) is definitely a minor, as she's still in school and the alien mentions the girl having an extensive vocabulary for her age and gives the girl a short body to match her age when she becomes a human - but it's unclear how young or old she is aside from that, though it can be inferred she's a teenager or maybe a tween. Likewise, it's safe to assume the alien is an adult as her comments on the girl's age imply she's at least somewhat older than the girl, but it's not clear how old she is, either. It doesn't help much that the alien is from an advanced race, which presumably also has advanced medicine, and is capable of switching in and out of different bodies, so it's possible she's Really 700 Years Old.
- Wham Line:
- The reveal that the girl has been hallucinating.Alien: That world of yours...is all in your imagination.
- Near the end, it's revealed that the girl is not human.Girl: I mean, seriously... How can you... HOW CAN YOU ONLY HAVE TWO LEGS?! This is just common SENSE!
- The reveal that the girl has been hallucinating.
