The Melancholy of the High School Girl Light Novel Author?!
Page 7
“Um... but you said it was selling rather well, didn’t you?” she asked faintly. “You okayed the second volume’s plot, and I’ve been working on the manuscript...”
She barely managed to wring the words out of her throat, but she could hear her voice trembling. She had been told that volume 1 was doing well. They had told her to construct it as a series because they intended to keep publishing them.
“Um, well, I didn’t say it was canceled,” the editor said. “Just that it was delayed...”
“But that’s how these things work, isn’t it?” she burst out. “You see it all the time! They won’t say clearly that the book is over, they just stop putting them out...” She had lost control of her tone. The next thing she knew, tears were streaming down her cheeks. She only now realized how much she had invested in that story.
“It’s okay,” the editor said quickly. “It will be published, I guarantee. We just want you to write another story. You submitted a few plotlines, didn’t you? We were thinking of putting one of those out, first.”
That calmed Kanako down a little bit. “...Understood. Do you want the one where the hero is split into seven people?”
“What? Did you have a plot that challenging? No, I meant the one where the school gets sucked into an isekai...”
“Um... does it have to be that one?” She didn’t have much confidence in that plot. They had asked her to submit every plot she had in mind, but she had never actually planned to write that one.
“Yes, that’s what the president wants. We like the basic plot of it, but we think it’s lacking something. Could you make the protagonist stronger? One of those ‘strongest in the world’ types, maybe add some ‘god mode’ elements? Those are very popular lately. It might be hard to sell without it.”
“Yes, um... okay. I’ll think about it...” Kanako mumbled. A school story. A god-mode protagonist story. Both were fields Kanako was weak in, but she couldn’t turn down the job.
“We’d like to publish it in November in place of Demon Lord, so please start right away,” the editor said.
“...It’s the beginning of September right now, isn’t it?” Kanako was starting to feel slightly dizzy. She would have to write an entire book based on something she had only a rough plot outline for. In practice, considering everything else on her schedule, she would have less than a month to do it in.
“We’re still in startup mode, so we need to guarantee a certain number of titles,” the editor explained. “I know it’s asking a lot, but we hope you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
The conversation was over, but all Kanako could do was grip her phone and stare into space.
“What am I going to do...?”
A school story, about students.
Kanako didn’t know much about either.
✽✽✽✽✽
It was the second day of the second term.
For once, Yuichi was walking to school with Mutsuko.
“Hey, Yu, when was the last time we walked to school together?” Mutsuko seemed to be in even more high spirits than usual.
“Before I was in high school, at least,” he said. The thought of walking to school with his older sister embarrassed him. But at the same time, seeing Mutsuko so openly happy about it made Yuichi wonder if he was being too stubborn.
“I bet you’re all, ‘If we walked to school together, all our friends would spread rumors about us! It’s embarrassing!’” Mutsuko said the line — Yuichi was sure he had heard it somewhere before — with gusto.
“No, but what kind of guy in high school wants to walk to school with his big sister every day?” he asked.
“Are you saying there’s something embarrassing about siblings walking to school together?” Mutsuko put a hand to her chest with exaggerated indignation.
“It’s less that we’re siblings and more that you’re embarrassing!” he shot back.
As usual, Mutsuko’s theatrics — giving no consideration to what anyone around her thought — had made her the center of attention. It was hard to ignore someone overreacting to everything at peak volume.
Just as he was starting to regret his decision to walk to school with her after all, Aiko joined them. “Morning!”
Nero was beside her, in his dog form, just as he had been yesterday. Nero had decided to serve as her bodyguard until she got to school. Aiko had awakened as a vampire, if still incompletely, which meant that the denizens of the world of darkness now had their eyes on her. Yuichi didn’t know the full story, but he had heard that some people might try to kill her.
“Noro! You said you saw something weird in the sky? What about now?” Mutsuko asked eagerly, broaching the subject the moment she arrived.
Aiko looked up at the sky above the school. “I... guess I can’t see it now. It was the same way yesterday, though. After I left the school grounds and turned back, I couldn’t see it anymore.”
“Well, we’d better get up to the roof and have a look!” Mutsuko declared. “Let’s all meet up there during lunch break! Oh, and while we’re up there, maybe we can have lunch around the armor?”
“What kind of plan is that?” Yuichi asked. “Besides, wouldn’t other people go up to the roof during lunch? The fallen armor might cause a big commotion...”
But there was a commotion already in progress.
As Yuichi reached the school gate, the first thing he saw within was a large crowd of students, looking up at the sky and talking to each other. Getting a bad feeling in his gut, Yuichi swiftly passed through the gate.
“There! There’s something hovering!”
“What? Are you sure you’re not crazy?”
“What? Am I crazy, too, then? There’s obviously something there!”
“I don’t understand a single thing you guys are talking about!”
The atmosphere felt a little bit dangerous. Yuichi looked up at the sky like the rest of them, but he couldn’t see anything.
“Ah... I actually can see it...” Aiko arrived next to him, and looked up at the sky.
“That’s amazing!” Mutsuko cried. “What is it? An upside-down castle? I see castle walls, but there doesn’t seem to be much emphasis on defense... hmm, can’t identify the architectural style, but I guess it’s less of a castle and more of a palace, huh? A style-over-substance thing?”
“Huh? ...Sis, you can see it?” Yuichi asked.
“Huh?! I don’t believe it! Yu, you can’t see it?” Mutsuko said with a theatrically teasing tone.
“Dammit! I feel so left out...”
It didn’t seem like everyone could see it, which meant the students gathered around the gate were divided into those who could and those who couldn’t. It seemed like there were more students who couldn’t see it, but enough of them could that it couldn’t be dismissed as lying, or a figment of their imagination.
“I wonder what’s going on here...” Yuichi strained his eyes as he looked up into the sky above the school, but nothing had changed. He still couldn’t see anything.
Having a castle floating in the sky was definitely a bizarre situation, but that was all it was. It didn’t seem to be affecting the students on the ground in any way.
Of course, none of the students were so obsessed with the bizarre castle that they were willing to be late to class, so the chaos rectified itself naturally.
It was quite the subject of conversation inside the school, too, but since there was no proof, no amount of discussion could resolve it. Those who could see the castle eventually began giving up on trying to convince the others that it was there.
“Sakaki, didn’t you promise to come by my restaurant?” Tomomi was waiting in front of the classroom with a smile on her face. Thinking it wasn’t a subject to be discussed in the classroom, Yuichi led Aiko and Tomomi to a landing on one of the less popular stairwells.
“I forgot. Sorry.” Yuichi hadn’t given much thought to Tomomi’s one-sided promise. He had gone home with Aiko and eaten at a different restaurant instead.
>
“Wow, you are so good at making it feel like it’s the end of the conversation. Truly amazing, Sakaki...” Tomomi had been angry, but Yuichi’s attitude had taken all the fight out of her, it seemed.
“I guess it’s why he’s so shameless about it...” Aiko said.
It upset Yuichi slightly to hear even Aiko say that.
“Well, if you forgot, you forgot,” said Tomomi. “But could you seriously come by after club today? I want to hear the rest of the story.”’
“Okay.” Yuichi nodded after she pressured him. At any rate, it probably would be good for them to talk about it. She might know something that would be useful to him.
Lunchtime arrived.
With lunchbox in hand, Yuichi and the others — Mutsuko, Aiko, and Natsuki — headed for the roof.
Once they arrived, Yuichi immediately took stock of the situation. The armor that had fallen there yesterday was gone, and the other students on the roof showed no signs of panic at all.
“It’s gone,” said Aiko.
“Yeah, gone,” Yuichi responded lightly, then went to check the spot the armor had fallen the day before. There was quite a bit of damage to the floor, but that was no infallible proof that something had fallen there.
“It’s not here! You said it fell here?” Mutsuko’s disappointment was plain to see, which made Yuichi feel slightly guilty, even though he hadn’t actually done anything wrong.
“It did, but... hey Noro,” Yuichi said. “Is there still a castle in the air?”
“Yeah... huh? It feels like it’s gotten bigger... is it descending?” Aiko said in confusion as she looked up at the sky.
“Do you see anything, Takeuchi?” Yuichi asked.
“Nothing,” said Natsuki, looking up at the sky, too.
“What could it mean? Did someone carry the armor away?” Yuichi wondered.
According to Kanako, the armor was quite heavy; about 30 kg. It should have caused quite a commotion if someone had found it lying there.
“I see,” Mutsuko began. “The lack of commotion indicates that someone quietly carried it off before it was discovered by the student body. That would be the logical thought. But!” She raised a finger, her expression that of someone about to raise a brilliant counterpoint. “Consider this: what if the armor stood up on its own, and walked away in the middle of the night?!”
“That made perfect sense, right up until the ‘but’!” Yuichi exclaimed. If that counted as a legitimate hypothesis, then nothing was off limits.
“Um, but we can’t say for sure that that didn’t happen...” Aiko murmured. She must not have found anything odd about the idea of armor walking off on its own.
“Maybe there was a commotion in the morning, and it was carried to the lost and found?” Natsuki pointed out, cool-headedly.
Given the fuss about the flying castle that morning, it was possible that the commotion over the armor had just been overshadowed by that. If so, they could find out more by going to the teachers’ office... but “Did you find some armor on the roof?” would be a difficult question to ask.
“Maybe the owner came out of the sky and picked it up?” Aiko offered, sounding like she was trying to propose anything that came to mind.
“It’s more logical than claiming the armor just walked off somewhere...” Yuichi was starting to get a vaguely uneasy feeling about all of this.
After class, they headed for their club room.
They entered the old school building and walked up the creaking wooden stairs to the second floor. At the far end of the corridor was the survival club’s meeting room.
The old school building was used for the liberal arts clubs, but Yuichi didn’t know anything about the other clubs that met there. All he knew was that the newspaper club’s room was next door to theirs.
As usual, the room was filled with random clutter. Kanako was sitting at the long table, resting her head upon it. Her gaze was distant, which wasn’t unusual, but there was something especially listless in it today.
“Orihara, you didn’t come here with Sis?” Yuichi asked.
Kanako sat up as she realized Yuichi was there. “It seems the elder Sakaki is helping a friend with a lesson. She said that she’d come soon, though.”
“...Does my sister have friends at school?” The idea was a mild shock to Yuichi. He knew that Mutsuko had weird friends, but he couldn’t imagine she got along well with the regular people at school.
“What a rude thing to say,” Kanako said teasingly. “I’m one of her friends, you know.”
Kanako technically was a bit weird, but Yuichi wasn’t going to say that out loud.
“Sakaki the Younger, what are you doing here by yourself?” Kanako asked. “Where are Noro and Takeuchi?”
“They’re on cleaning duty today, so I came by early. Is something the matter, Orihara?” Yuichi added as he sat down across from her.
Kanako had always had a nonchalant air about her, and it was hard to know what she was thinking — in a different way from Natsuki’s poker face — but something about her seemed different today.
“I suppose I have something on my mind.” Kanako gave him a gloomy smile.
Yuichi changed the subject. “By the way, the armor that was on the roof yesterday is gone. I wonder what was up with that... It seemed like you knew what kind of armor it was, right?”
“It was heavy armor, the type worn by cavalry,” said Kanako. “It covered the head to the knees, which let a horseman ride a horse and fire a gun. No matter how tough they made the armor, though, advances in firearms always superseded it, so they eventually abandoned it altogether.”
Yuichi thought back. Now that she’d mentioned it, there had been no armor below the knee. So that was the full set, just as it was.
“Um, why did you want to go to the roof, Orihara?” he asked. Maybe it was rude to ask that again, after she had already refused to answer once, but Yuichi was really curious.
“I was wondering if I could kill myself now,” she said.
Yuichi froze. Was she serious?
Kanako giggled. “I knew you would be surprised. Your sister would say ‘that’s boring’ right away.”
“Um, can I ask why you would want to do that?” Yuichi ventured.
“It’s very simple,” said Kanako. “My story got an awful review on the internet. It made me want to kill myself.”
“...That’s pretty drastic...” He didn’t know what criticism she was receiving, exactly, but it made Yuichi worry about her mental state.
“But once I was up on the roof, I couldn’t find the courage to kill myself, so that just confirmed it,” she said. “It means I’ll have to keep soldiering on.”
Yuichi wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It was a problem beyond what a high school freshman could handle.
After a short pause, Kanako spoke up again, timidly. “Hey... may I ask you for a favor, Sakaki the Younger?”
“The roof again?” he asked. This was how she had asked him the last time.
“No. I was wondering if you’d go into town with me, to help me with my research.”
“Sure, but your story is fantasy, isn’t it?” he asked. “What research would you be doing in town?”
“Well... actually, they’ve delayed the second volume of Demon Lord...”
That explained why she was acting so strangely. “You mean, um, it was canceled?” That was another question that was hard to ask.
“They wouldn’t give me a clear reason... but they asked if I would write a story with a different plot. A school story and a god-mode protagonist story. So I wanted to do some research out in town. I don’t go walking around town very often, so I don’t know where it is that normal high school students like to go.”
“Sure... but shouldn’t you go with your boyfriend or something?” Yuichi asked. Kanako was so pretty, Yuichi naturally assumed she had a boyfriend.
“Um... I don’t have a boyfriend,” Kanako answered, seeming surprised by the suggestion.
“It’s just that... I don’t have any confidence that I could love my children,” she said.
“That’s quite a leap!” Yuichi couldn’t figure out how she had gone as far as children in an instant.
“Oh? I mean, I think that dating is a lead-up to marriage, which would naturally lead to children...”
Yuichi was at a loss for how to respond. Now that she’d explained it, he sort of understood, but most people weren’t thinking that far ahead when it came to something as simple as dating.
“Um, if we’re just walking around town, that’s okay, I think,” he said at last. Instead of pursuing that any further, he decided to bring them back to the original subject. He didn’t mind indulging his senior in club by hanging around with her in town for a little while.
“Really? Would this Sunday be all right?” Kanako clapped her hands together, sounding genuinely pleased. It was as if the weighty subjects from before had never even been broached.
“Sure. Where in town do you want to go?”
They decided to go to the shopping district close to the school, and that they’d meet up in the station around noon.
“By the way, you mentioned a ‘god-mode protagonist’ story earlier. Is that really your style?” Yuichi asked.
The other club members hadn’t arrived yet, so Yuichi decided to inquire about a subject he’d been curious about in the previous conversation. Although she liked fantasy, Yuichi had assumed from her appearance that she liked more peaceful stories.
“Well, my editor said it’s what’s popular right now, so I should put one in,” said Kanako. “It’s a bit of a problem for me... um, it’s not that I don’t like fighting, or anything like that...”
“Well, I know that much...” She was so knowledgeable about Warring States Period and armor, after all.
Realizing that if the conversation continued they’d end up talking about Kanako’s novel, Yuichi was just wondering how to proceed when the door suddenly opened with a bang.