Iguana no Musume

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I am pretty sure this collections contains 5 stories, most of them revolving around character analysis and in general just a window on human nature and in a lot of cases parental relationships with their children. All of these stories are amazing, I read them from different collections, but I remember I was fighting tears when reading the first three.
Bittersweet is the theme of the book.

1. Iguana no Musume (Iguana Girl)
This is one of the most realistic, terrifying and touching representation of a scape goat child. Rika is that child. When she is born her mother sees her in the shape of an iguana and ... for this reason will treat her always as the second choice, while dearly loving her other daughter. Rika grows up always being criticized by her mother. It was incredible hard but so satisfying to see that things are not easily black and white and loving your mother will in many case be with you even in these difficult situations.

2. Catharsis
Another heartbreaking parental story. The protagonist is a young man preparing for college, but since his best friend died he had been running from home day after day. The story touches on the need to sometimes break contact with your parents, with apathy and depression and mourning. The scenes that depict the meetings between the protagonist and the parents felt so realistic, incredibly human.

3. Gogo no Hizashi (Afternoon Sunshine)
Another bittersweet story, this time exploring a woman who is realizing she might be a stranger in her marriage. She then meets a younger man in her cooking club and starts to feel like life has returned, like she is young again and she can live once more. Oh boy, that ending. Please, just know be ready to fully cry while reading this volume.

4. Gakkou e Iku Kusuri (The medicine to go to school)
The story follows the life of a high school student who one day wakes up to find all the people around him turning into objects and animals. They still talk to him, but all their faces have become unrecognizable. The only people who still look human are his best friend and the girl he has a crush on.
This one was a bit harder for me to understand, slightly enigmatic, but I do believe it is trying to explore the need for connection, and to really see others for who they are.

5. Yuujin K
A very short story (I think only four pages) about two young men, one clearly in love with the other and bullying him through school years.