I read a lot of forums, and there’s this pattern I keep noticing. Women-dominated forums are mostly people dunking on scumbag boyfriends. Men-dominated forums, porn boards aside, are mostly people tearing each other apart and crying about getting cuckolded. Getting cuckolded is a weird phenomenon, yet apparently a really common one. Are that many people actually getting cheated on? Are that many people actually choosing to forgive him or her? Either way, several forums I frequent have picked up new nicknames that don’t even match anymore. Greenery Street. Thunder Bluff. Some people don’t even bother being subtle and just rename the whole forum “Cuckold Forum.” So lately my browsing is nothing but green everywhere. Halal green, betrayed green, green this way and green that way. At first I found it gross, then I got used to it. I can’t even get someone to take me on as a rebound, so what do I care about cuckolding? This “getting cuckolded” setup is common in Japanese eroge too. The Japanese call it 寝取る, NTR. Basically your wife gets slept with, which means you got cuckolded. NTR games have their fans, but most of them are the same: you get a girlfriend, she gets screwed behind your back, and in the end you either forgive her or leave her. But think about it, why is NTR always by convention the woman betraying the man? What about the man betraying the woman? We call that cheating too, but it still can’t compare to the whole green-this-green-that internet culture, can it.

The world says spring is when all things revive, and also the season for love. In this season of revival, I shook off the filth and mud I’d accumulated over winter, crawled out of my hole, rubbed my eyes that had spent years in darkness, steadied my mind, and hoped to see the outside world clearly again. At the very least, in this season of spring breezes, I ought to follow the trend and do the things I’m supposed to do. The sunlight above was blinding, the wind hitting my face carried the breath of life. Once my vision settled, I saw the source of the great light—besides the sun above, there was something gleaming gold on the ground. It was a book. On its clean cover were just two lines: a big title, SPPL, and below it a subtitle: alice the magical conductor. Nothing else.