The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

  This happened while I was visiting Japan last summer. I was travelling solo at the time. I’d gone through most of Asia, visiting cities like Shanghai, Bangkok, Hanoi, Seoul, etc. The last place on my list was Tokyo. I spent the days sight-seeing, eating as much sushi as I could handle, and spent the nights wandering the streets, drinking with locals, and hitting any club that looked interesting. I was having the time of my life. I found myself in a more out-of-the-way club on my second-to-last night there. It wasn’t some extremely obscure place or anything. Just less-tourist heavy than the others. More populated with locals, I suppose. It was an interesting place. It gave off a grimier vibe, with its harsh lighting and aggressive techno music. It was my kind of venue for sure. At some point, I found myself sitting with a couple of locals – Teiji and Shin. Their English was pretty solid, so talking to them was eas...

  This is something that happened to me last summer. I’m opting to tell it now cause… well we’re all cooped up indoors and I suppose there’s no better time. Also, perhaps finally telling it will be somehow cathartic. But I doubt that. To this day, I can’t find an explanation for what happened. In fact, I can’t even fathom there being an explanation that I’ll ever understand. I was camping with a few friends. We weren’t terribly deep in the woods or anything. In fact, there was another campsite set up maybe 2-300 meters away from us. For the first few days, calling it a “great time” would’ve been an understatement. We were having a fucking blast. Exams were finally over, and we were blowing off steam any way we could. There were five of us in total. Neel, James, Curtis, Ahmad and Steve – me. Real sausage fest, I know. There was a lake within walking distance of our campsite, and I found myself sitting on the shore during the 3rd ...

  We all love Wikipedia, don’t we? A seemingly endless source of information, all consolidated on a well-formatted, visually pleasing website. And despite what your teacher might tell you, I can guarantee you that just about nobody’s trying to rewrite history pages with false information. Nobody has the time for that, nor does anybody care enough to do it. Beyond research and general curiosity, there’s a ton of fun stuff you can do on the site. For example, there’s the Wikipedia game, where you start on one topic page and then click on related hyperlinks until you reach the pre-specified destination page. Also, did you know that if you go on a Wikipedia page relating to any topic, click on the first hyperlink and repeat the process, you’ll eventually find yourself in a loop that always directs you back to the page for philosophy? Deep stuff, really. Now, that’s all fun and whatnot. But did you know that there’s something else you can do on ...

  I don’t know that much about Tik Tok. If you were to ask me what kind of content gets uploaded there, the first thing that comes to my mind are good-looking teenagers lip-syncing to a rap song while dancing or something. That’s what my younger sister Liz does. And she loves it. Now, I don’t know how many followers she has. That was a joke. She brags about it at the dinner table almost every night. “Oh my God mom, I just hit 5k! A few more thousand and I’ll have more than Daisy!” (Her fellow Tik Tok using friend). Do I get the appeal of it? Sure. The appeal is obvious. Doesn’t stop it from being lame, though. (Just my opinion). I was up studying in my room tonight and heard music playing from Liz’s room. This usually lasted for an hour or so. She’d film a few dances, pause the music, watch them over, and then repeat the process. I just put my headphones in and let her do it. Business as usual. I remember wrapping up m...

This happened a while ago. I’m not entirely sure why I’m choosing to talk about it now, though. Well… I kinda do. I’ll explain later. I have a bad habit of dozing off on the train. I don’t blame it entirely on myself. My place of employment necessitates that I work long, hard and obscure hours. More often than not, I find myself taking the very last train home, at around 2AM. My stop is at the end of the line, so my whole trip takes me around 35 minutes, and of course I’m tired as hell by the end of it. Also… sometimes I get drunk. It happens. It’s not like I want to fall asleep. I could get pickpocketed. Or worse. It is what it is. Nobody’s perfect. But it usually isn’t a problem. Like I said, my stop's at the end of the line, so the driver would always wake me up when he came by to do his inspection of the cars. This has become such a routine that I know each and every one of the night-time drivers by face. There’s only three...

  “GET DOWN! GET THE FUCK DOWN!!!” Stitch’s voice sounded far less threatening while being distorted by his mask. I always thought that was a corny nickname. Stitch . But we all had one, for security reasons. The less my “colleagues” knew about me the better. I went by “Grey”. I don’t think I’ll divulge my real name here, though. It was a six person crew. There was Stitch – the muscle. Wick – sharpshooter. Wire – safe-cracking expert. Casanova – the intel guy, Eagle – sniper support/lookout, and me – the de facto leader/getaway driver. The place we were robbing was a weight training equipment store that served as a front for a smuggling ring. What they did smuggle? Literally everything under the sun. Casanova had gotten in with the ring a few months prior, working undercover as they carried out their operations. He knew the general layout of the place, how many guards were going to be present at any given time, and most im...