Colorful Sight

(Track 3 of Colorful Sight) "One day my mindless routine at the Academy was broken when I saw someone I didn't know in the staffroom.  The enigmatic newcomer had an unusual vibe which immediately attracted my attention and my curiosity.  Somehow, she kind of reminded me of an old friend...a special person from my past.  Then I recalled that she was a new member of the faculty.  Coworker A.  I paused, as perplexed as I was fascinated, wondering what to do next.  And then she turned and Looked at me.  Not a glimpse, but a level Gaze that went right through me to my very soul.
I felt a strange sense of...familiarity...that terrified me, and yet fired up my curiosity at the same time.
And the world began to change."
(From The Academy Annals)

Sudden Engazement

恋慕隠れん坊
(Track 13 of Colorful Sight) "Coworker A's 'marriage' to her Mentor had apparently fallen apart after only a couple of months.  The society was still keeping me out of the loop, but I overheard a lot.  At any rate, she'd left him, and now she and he were barely on speaking terms, which made working together awkward.  And then her behavior became erratic.  For a time she kept disappearing between classes.  I'd hear the Mentor organizing posses among his inner circle to try to find her.  Tellingly, I kept hearing them talk about my schedule.  They'd go over when and where I had my classes and decide who would walk by to see if she'd show up.  For the record, I never saw her.  But more than once students in my classes did.  And sometimes I'd hear her characteristic footsteps in the hall or stairwell.  And then there was the love poem I found on the blackboard.  This strange 'hide and seek of love' went on for a few weeks, and it made me sad.  I knew that she'd tried very hard to get over her crush on me back when she and her Mentor had first become involved.  Apparently she hadn't been successful.  Poor soul."
(From The Academy Annals)

Renbo Kakurenbo

(Track 9 of Colorful Sight) "In those days there was a member of our faculty...of my department...who was clinically insane.  He was both a delusional narcissist and a psychopath.  He was religiously obsessed with a controversial (and widely debunked) educational theory and saw it as his enlightened mission to reform our English program so that it was entirely based on that theory.  To that end, he engaged in a constant campaign of harassment, bashing, conflict, bullying, public shaming, and even threats either to 'correct' the members of the English department or drive them to quit.  He caused so much trouble...indeed HARM...to so many people (myself included).  He was only kept on the faculty because he'd threatened to sue the school if he was fired.  Anyway, in that year he and Coworker A were made to work together as a team for our school festival, and to my horror he wound up falling in love with her.  His initial moves left her terrified and upset.  But while her closer confidants were confident it wouldn't go anywhere, I was seeing something very different in the staff room.  Several teachers were constantly encouraging him to keep after her and giving him advice on how to win her over.  I heard it mentioned that some hoped they'd get married so that she'd have to quit.  I also heard it mentioned that they hoped his romantic overtures would help her get over her feelings for me.  At any rate, I was shocked when the Psycho came into the staff room one day and gave a speech to everyone bragging about how he had "finally gotten" her.  I knew it was really none of my business, but until she finally turned him down flat I couldn't help being worried.
Actually, I was worried sick."
(From The Academy Annals)

Psycho Savior

(Track 12 of Colorful Sight) "Three days after the school festival that year I was suddenly and inexplicably shut out of the staff room society.  I would literally come in the door and conversations would stop or become hushed.  Some would watch me as I went to my desk and then continue in whispers, others would relocate, and still others would obviously change the topic and return to the original when they thought I was far enough away.  After a time, certain teachers would even warn the others when I arrived.  The atmosphere in there was highly charged, but no one would tell me what was up.  At one point there was a party which many if not most of the high school faculty including almost all of my grade team attended, and there was much laughing and joking about it the next morning, but when I asked what was up I was told irritably to mind my own business.  Was I being bullied?  Or was I being punished because I'd been so worried about Coworker A before the festival?  At any rate, being a foreign barbarian, I wasn't going to react with Japanese stoicism; I wanted to know what the hell was going on.  I pretended to be enthralled in my work when actually I was listening intently to every word around me.  I immediately found a common theme.  It seemed that after Coworker A had finally turned down the Psycho for good, she and her Mentor had become not just romantically involved, but engaged.  In fact, the inner circle was talking as if they were already married.  Everyone knew this, obviously, and they were all talking about it, but it seemed that I alone was being kept out.  Discrimination, ostracism, punishment, or an attempt to keep me out of the picture?  As if to add insult to injury, after a while there was a literal announcement that Coworker A would be staying away from the staffroom as much as possible for an extended period in order to avoid seeing me.  (Yes, my name was specifically mentioned.)  She was looking pretty miserable.  I was already battling depression, and all of this just made it worse...and in any case, I figured that the most merciful and compassionate thing for me to do would be to cooperate by staying away myself and minimizing our chances of meeting.  Inevitably, she and I wound up bumping into each other once at the staffroom door, and the look on her face before she hid it behind the books she was carrying will haunt me forever.  After a while she started looking better, and I thought I had finally figured out the world...when suddenly I started bumping into her in all kinds of unexpected places, and she not only regarded me in a warm and friendly manner but openly flirted with me.  That just did not compute.  I asked a teacher in her grade team that I trusted what I should do and was told that I had misunderstood everything.  But then I overheard that teacher relaying everything I'd said to the Mentor.  He did not look pleased.  And things quickly got a whole lot crazier."
(From The Academy Annals)

Staffroom Pariah

(Track 7 of Colorful Sight) "It was April, the beginning of that fateful school year, and I was at the Academy's annual dinner party to welcome new faculty members and say farewell to the departing ones.  Before the party started, I was sitting at a table chatting with my Australian coworker when I noticed that Coworker A was sitting alone at a table on the opposite side of the room, and she was watching me levelly.  I turned and looked at her, and when we made eye contact across the room, suddenly a bizarre explosion(?) of noise, light, and color ripped through my head, overwhelming my consciousness, blotting out my thoughts, and leaving me dazed and disoriented for half a minute.  Some have since suggested that perhaps I'd had a mini stroke, but considering the timing I wondered only half jokingly if she'd psychically attacked me...or cast a spell on me.  Whatever it was, that night, and almost every night for many months afterward, she appeared in my dream.  What was spooky was that, for the first two months, all her dream apparition did was watch me.  No matter what happened in the dream otherwise, she would be somewhere just standing and watching me.  After that, she finally started speaking, but always to other people, not me, though I was always the topic of conversation.  Sometimes I couldn't see who she was talking to, but sometimes it was women from my past, such as former coworkers, acquaintances, and people I'd known in college, who had had feelings for me that I had either refused or been unaware of until after they'd gone.  It wasn't until several months after that weird mind blast that she finally spoke to me directly in a dream...and it was a plea for help.  An ominous figure had entered the picture."  (From The Academy Annals)

Dreamlink A

(Colorful Sight track 19) "The next day after I'd sent that emotional message to Coworker A, my grade chief told me that she wanted to have a conference with me, but that he and one other teacher (a member of her babysitter brigade) would be present for reassurance.  I eagerly hoped that that would resolve the current problem.  To my surprise, she didn't talk about it at all.  Rather, she started off by claiming that all of the past episodes involving her that I'd been concerned about, as well as the current relationship I'd thought she was in with the Guard Dog, had never happened, and that it had all been a misunderstanding.  What she said ranged from difficult to flat out impossible to believe, and I explained the reasons for my skepticism.  She just kept asking me softly why I wouldn't believe her.  Meanwhile, the other two teachers kept insisting adamantly that I should just accept that it had all been a mistake, forget it all, and move on without further question.  It was all terribly surreal, and I began to ask what her true message and intentions were.  She looked at me with puzzlement and said there was no reason why we couldn't get along.  Time constraints ended the meeting.  The grade chief seemed satisfied, as did Coworker A, but the other teacher (babysitter) told me angrily that Coworker A wasn't my friend, she didn't need my concern, and I should just leave her alone.  That was strange...because I HAD been leaving her alone."  (From The Academy Annals)

Believe What I Say (The Surreal Meeting)

(Track 10 of Colorful Sight) "The Mentor was a veteran teacher who started at the Academy the same year I did, and for over 20 years he and I got along really well, almost like friends.  (Almost.)  He was a tall guy and athletic, but also a gamer nerd.  Ostensibly neurodivergent, he had a strong sense of responsibility and got irritated if things weren't done the proper way (in his view).  He liked to help people, and was a good man in that respect, but was famously self-centered and not known for empathy or social skills.  He was also a notorious womanizer and was especially fond of chasing the young, new teachers.  When Coworker A arrived, she was put in the new grade team he headed, and since she struggled, he took her under his wing and mentored her like a big brother.  There was a lot of dark muttering about his true intentions, but for the first few years at least his behavior toward her was perfectly innocent.  She came to trust him deeply, and while shy and withdrawn among other teachers, she opened up and became very talkative and animated in his presence.  During that fateful year, it didn't take long for me to notice that, in her bubbly staffroom chats with him, my name got mentioned a lot.  But while he patiently responded to her constant questions and observations about me, I could sense the rising tension.  After a while, his attitude toward me became colder and eventually turned into open resentment...to the point that faculty and administrators alike advised me to stay away from him.  Sadly, that grudge appears to have continued to some extent to this day."  (From The Academy Annals)

The Mentor

(Track 15 of Colorful Sight) "The Rogue was a younger teacher who was as intense as he was unique.  A daring soul, he did things his own way and was popular to some and notorious to others.  For some reason, he was a friend and admirer of the Psycho.  But when the Psycho finally wound up out of the picture, the Rogue decided to try to do what he could not; namely, he started making moves on Coworker A.  He went to a lot of trouble and expense to do so, but in the end whatever truck he may have had with her was brief and ended with her rejecting him completely.  After that, he threw a tantrum in the staffroom and declared loudly that, because of me, she would never know happiness.  
I know I shouldn't let such things get to me, but it did..."  (From The Academy Annals)

The Rogue / Why Should I Care (Reprise)

(Track 6 of Colorful Sight)"During the last few months leading up to that fateful school year, it was increasingly apparent that I had tragically misjudged Coworker A, and her feelings for me were far from malign.  Indeed, more and more I kept noticing her watching me.  I had to keep my distance, of course, but as time went by I not only felt as if I could feel that dark-eyed gaze upon me tangibly, but could also feel what she was feeling and see her in my mind as if we had become connected somehow.  It was crazy, but things were just getting started."  (From The Academy Annals)

Strange Conjunction

(Track 11 of Colorful Sight) "I never understood why I was so worried about Coworker A during that time.  I mean, sure, a potentially dangerous psychopath was pursuing her romantically despite being ordered to stay away from her, several members of the faculty were openly egging him on, and a couple of female teachers who tried to intervene on her behalf wound up being threatened.  There was talk in the staffroom (and later administrators told me directly) that she was terrified and didn't know what to do.  I also had no idea what the Mentor was up to at the time.  But was it really my problem?  Her Babysitter Brigade was being strangely silent and unconcerned, but they kept telling me that there was no problem, she didn't like him, nothing was happening, nothing was going to happen, everything is okay, blah blah, it's none of your business, anyway, blah blah.  Maybe they were right...but still...every time I went to sleep, even if I just dozed off a bit during the day, I'd hear her crying out in terror in my dreams and begging for help, and it was painful."  
(From The Academy Annals)

Why Should I Care?

(Track 16 of Colorful Sight) "One year after the Mentor's grade team was disbanded, somehow Coworker A and I wound up together on the same grade team (along with several members of her Babysitter Brigade).  I had obvious misgivings, but I saw it as a chance perhaps for us to reboot our working relatonship.  At first it seemed to be working; she and I were getting along better, even establishing a rapport, and she seemed even happier about it than I was.  We proved that we were indeed kindred spirits, as I'd always thought.  But then, after a few months, she suddenly turned around 180 degrees and became really cold, even rude.  While amicable with the rest of the team, she seemed to be trying not to have anything to do with me at all.  I was afraid that I had pushed my friendship efforts too hard.  Then I began to notice that she and the Guard Dog, a longtime male member of her Babysitter Brigade who was also on our team, had become much more intimate, and their behavior together reminded me a lot of the way she and the Mentor had been during that fateful year several years before.  However, after a bit I also noticed that, if he wasn't there, she would suddenly be much friendlier to me.  After a few months I heard him say quite loudly in the staffroom that they were going to tie the knot.  I figured that was that, the end of the story, but two weeks later she suddenly resumed her "stalker behavior" toward me as she had years before (which the students also noticed).  Something was obviously wrong, but I just tried to remain aloof and go about my business.  I'm not sure how successful I was...but things were about to take yet another weird turn."  (From the Academy Annals)

Unburning Bridge

(Track 1 of Colorful Sight) "This is the beginning of a story most complex, convoluted, and strange...especially because, for me at least, it is true.  Please listen as I tell my humble tale." (From the Academy Annals)

Reluctant Reminiscing

(Colorful Sight Track 2)  "Ye Olde Academy was a somewhat prestigious Japanese private school, grades 7 to 12, in a somewhat isolated location atop a granite hill in a former Shinto shrine forest not far from the sea.  I had already been teaching there for around 20 years when Coworker A joined the faculty.  Quite a number of teachers had come and gone while I was there, so her appearance went largely unnoticed by me, though I did overhear some talk that she was unusual.  But since she was assigned to the junior high section, while I worked mainly in the senior high section, I all but forgot about her.  That soon changed rather suddenly."  (From the Academy Annals)

The Academy - Intro

(Track 5 of Colorful Sight) "By her third year at the Academy, Coworker A was really starting to irritate me.  The positive rush brought by her cheerful greetings failed to make up for her otherwise unfriendly and even rude behavior.  The fact that she reminded me of an old friend made it worse.  I came to the knee-jerk conclusion that she was treating me like scum for reasons of racism.  I figured two could play that game, so I vowed not to have anything to do with her (except polite greetings) even if my job called for it despite protests from other coworkers that she was really a kind and friendly person, just shy.  But her behavior toward me still wasn't making sense.  As certain truths began to dawn on me, I realized that the others were right, and she really was just terribly shy.  Then I started to feel guilty.  (From The Academy Annals)

What Am I To You

(Colorful Sight track 8) "I knew that under the circumstances trying to talk to Coworker A directly was out of the question, but I still intended to try to be a friend to her to make up for having misjudged her.  The drama that happened during that fateful year began with another teacher in her grade team, who sat directly behind me in the staff room.  That teacher was being a two-faced backstabber; while giving Coworker A motherly advice and encouragement to her face, she would start loudly smearing her after she left and calling for her to be fired.  Sometimes she even sabotaged things that Coworker A was trying to do.  I became increasingly angry, but I figured trying to intervene would make things worse.  Unfortunately, they got worse, anyway; an ominous individual had designs on Coworker A, and the Backstabber apparently saw him as a way to get rid of her.

Friendly Backstabber

(Colorful Sight track 17) "The grade our team was in charge of went on a school trip to Tokyo for three days.  On the first evening the students separated into different conference rooms at the hotel for different activities, and we teachers split up to supervise them.  When it was all done, we all assembled in the big, main conference room for the closing announcements.  I was already there, so I just remained in my chair at the back of the room while the other teachers in the team congregated by the door.  However, Coworker A drifted over to my vicinity (but not close enough for us to interact) like she often tended to do.  I suddenly felt really sleepy, and finally I drifted off into a partial dream state.  In that dream, Coworker A came to talk to me, saying, "No matter what happens, I will always be with you.  We will always be together."  I snapped out of it and found myself slumped over looking at my feet.  There was another pair of feet in front of mine.  Coworker A was standing right in front of me.  When I started to sit up she hurried away...right out the door...and was unaccounted for when the teachers got together for our final briefing.  We found her later sitting alone on another floor.  As far as I knew, she and the Guard Dog were still together, but I'd noticed that they seemed more distanced from each other than before.  It was all so confusing..."  (From the Academy Annals)

Trancespeak (The Unreal Meeting)

(Track 4 of Colorful Sight)  "I was intrigued by Coworker A.  She reminded me of a couple of old friends and felt like a kindred spirit, so I really hoped that we could become better acquainted.  Unfortunately, I was rebuffed.  Though she always greeted me pleasantly, she made it plain that she wanted nothing at all to do with me.  Attempts to engage her in conversation failed.  Sometimes she went out of her way to avoid me.  And yet there were times when her behavior toward me didn't add up.  I kept encountering her in unlikely places, as if she'd been following me, and during assemblies or school events she tended to be in my vicinity a lot.  I also saw her on occasion standing in the hall watching my lessons through the open door.  Was she avoiding me, stalking me, or both?"  (From the Academy Annals)

Evasion Or Pursuit

(Colorful Sight track 18) "I was at my annual interview to discuss my job placement during the upcoming school year.  I had requested to remain in the same grade team, but the vice principal told me that I was going to be moved.  He said that Coworker A had complained about me, mentioning a non-event that had happened months earlier and had been resolved quickly and amicably with a mutual agreement to forget the whole thing.  The vice principal said that, to prevent future trouble and to reassure her, it would be better to relocate me.  Stung by the apparent betrayal, my anger grew during the day.  Finally, in the wee small hours, I sent her an email demanding an explanation while also trying to reassure her of my intentions.  I figured she'd ignore it.  I was wrong.
Incidentally, I found out later that she hadn't really betrayed me; she had been manipulated and used as part of someone else's agenda.  But I didn't know that at the time."  (From the Academy Annals)

Second Hand Betrayal (The Too-Real Meeting)

(Track 20 of Colorful Sight)  "And this is how our story concludes...neither concluded nor resolved..."  (From the Academy Annals)

Epilogue - Stranger in a Stranger Land

(Track 14 of Colorful Sight) "As we came closer to the end of that fateful school year, I had a powerful dream that has remained with me ever since.  In the dream I had entered a labyrinth of caverns searching for something but had gotten lost.  As my torch came closer to dying, I was desperately trying to find my way out.  After a while, I became aware someone was following me in the darkness, and at first I was afraid.  But then some unconscious sense began to tell me that it was actually an ally.  My hidden benefactor started giving me advice, telling where I should turn at each branch.  Finally we approached a large chamber from which I could hear bestial cries and see shadowy figures moving.  As my nerve began to give out, my ally urged me forward.  Entering the chamber, my ally suddenly shouted a magic word, and my torch flared brightly.  The creatures there fell back and cowered, and I saw that they were my coworkers.  My ally, who I could now see clearly, was Coworker A.  She pointed out to me that there was water flowing through the chamber and suggested that I follow it.  I did so, and eventually I saw light ahead in the tunnel.  She said, "We have arrived!"  That's when I woke up."  (From The Academy Annals)

Colorful Sight

The Moody Minstrel