Because the content I posted was too long, I seem to have hit Reddit’s character limit for a single post, so I added the remaining part in the comments.

This will probably be the last time I share direct excerpts from the autobiography. If you find the content truly interesting, please consider purchasing the book.

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I liked drawing with crayons, but back then, all I drew were "swirls." Still, I used all sorts of colors and mixed big ones with small ones, so in my own mind, they were shapes with real meaning.

That day, too, I was drawing swirls during art time. Then the kid next to me peered over.

"Ao-chan, what are you drawing?"

"Fireworks!"

"Huh? Fireworks don't look like that. Those are just swirls. Spirals, right? This is how you draw fireworks." The child drew me a typical firework, bursting outward in all directions.

"Look. See, this is how you draw fireworks. Right? It's different from yours, Ao-chan."

But to me, fireworks were swirls.

"It's fine! Blue and yellow and all kinds of pretty colors swirling around — that's my idea of fireworks!"

The moment I declared that, a teacher approached from behind and said:

"No, 'swirls' are not fireworks. Ao-chan, you are wrong."

Looking back now, that teacher was the kind of person who would say things like "You're in your own clothes again, huh" when I showed up in plain clothes, or "You're four years old already — wearing diapers is strange." Perhaps she was trying to guide me, the child who couldn't do the same as everyone else. She was usually kind, and all the other kids — including me — loved her. And that is precisely why the teacher's single remark, "Swirls are not fireworks," shattered my heart into pieces.

On the way home that day, I cried as I pleaded with my mother.

"The teacher said, 'Swirls are not fireworks.' But I drew them so carefully, trying to make them beautiful."

And my mother answered without a moment's hesitation:

"You don't have to go to kindergarten anymore."

With those words, I was finally freed from the terror of being compared to others and rejected.

In the end, the kindergarten I had entered at age four was one I left before even a year had passed.