Gravure Idol Hotaru Kusakabe, a MENSA Member with an IQ in the Top 2%, Explains Why She Became a Qualification Maniac

“At first, it was a physical ailment. I started to take more breaks. Maybe I had been pushing myself too hard with lessons and studies. Before the feeling of not wanting to go to lessons, my body just stopped moving. Even if I wanted to go somewhere, I couldn’t go anywhere.

But I never thought I hated lessons. I didn’t really understand the feeling of hatred. I had probably never expressed my own desires, like wanting to do something or wanting something, so I wondered what was going on with me being swept along like that. But at the time, I didn’t know the reason; my body just wouldn’t listen to me.”

Even so, until part way through her second year of high school, she continued going to school, but eventually, she became a complete shut-in. She quit school and lessons, losing everything. She lost her appetite and dropped 10 kilograms. There were times when she wanted to die. Moreover, her relationship with her mother was not good at that time either.

“I think my mother was, of course, worried, but I felt that she disliked the fact that I couldn’t go to school and couldn’t do anything more than the fact that I was sick. This made our relationship strained, and I felt uncomfortable at home. On the other hand, I started talking to my father, with whom I hadn’t spoken much before, after I became ill. He listened to my feelings. But just as I began to recover little by little, my father passed away.