I patted her on the head.

  “So...did you have fun?”

  She looked away.

  “It was fun. Though it would have been even more fun if Yuuko had been there.”

  “I think that would have been less fun for Shinji-kun, though.”

  She looked down.

  “That’s true...”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Of course I like Shii-chan. He’s cute. He’s one of my friends. That’s all he is to me, though.”

  I guess things went about as well as I expected.

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “Yeah... I said I would prefer it if we stayed as just friends and then he cried. A lot. It was kind of embarrassing. Everyone around us looked at me like it was my fault. It’s not my fault he went and got so attached to me.”

  She crossed her arms in a huff.

  Even if you think that, you probably shouldn’t say it. It seems rude to Shinji.

  “Don’t you feel sorry for him, even a little bit? I feel like you’re dismissing Shinji-kun’s feelings.”

  “I’m not happy about it. But if I let everyone else’s problems become my problems, I would have nothing but problems. You, Yuuko, Mom, and Dad are all important to me. Unfortunately for Shii-chan, he doesn’t make the cut.”

  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Fuyuko like this.

  “I don’t know...”

  She sighed.

  “He’ll be fine. He’ll get over it and be better for it. I’m not a monster—I made it clear that there wasn’t anything wrong with him.”

  “I guess...”

  She slowly shook her head.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Onii-chan. Although, you are a guy, so I guess it’s to be expected...”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You can’t expect a girl to humor you just because you asked her out. I went on one date just to see if I liked it, and it didn’t work out. What do you want me to do? Just keep dating him assuming I might eventually come to like him? Do you think that he’s entitled to my attention just because he likes me?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far...”

  “You might not think that consciously, but unconsciously that’s what it amounts to.”

  “Maybe...”

  “I get where you’re coming from, though. You can’t help but empathize with him. Anyone would be afraid of being rejected after working up the courage to try and advance their relationship with someone.”

  “That might be part of it... But I feel like if a girl asked me out, I would probably end up going out with her even if I didn’t love her back. Like...I might be happy just being able to make her happy, you know?”

  I feel like that’s how things would have played out if Yuriko actually asked me out.

  Fuyuko looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Onii-chan, you’re too nice. I don’t know if you thought that would sound cool or something, but it just sounds lame to me. You should value yourself more.”

  I guess I am an idiot.

  “Sorry...”

  She slowly stepped forward and embraced me.

  “You think that other people are more deserving of happiness than you, so you’re willing to suppress your own desires to be what they want you to be. But you can’t live like that forever. You might be satisfied for a while, but one day you’ll realize that you’ve become empty inside, and it’ll eat you from the inside out. I don’t want that to happen to you. I want you to be yourself. To live for yourself.”

  I don’t know if she’s right or wrong.

  Better not to think about it too hard.

  She patted me on the back before pulling away. Holding me at arm’s length, her eyes peered directly into mine.

  “You can do that for me, can’t you? Promise me. If you don’t, I’ll never forgive you.”

  I avoided her gaze.

  I’m already running away.

  “I’ll try.”

  I can’t promise any more than that.

  She let go with a sigh and muttered something under her breath.

  “I guess that’s the best I’m going to get...”

  This heavy atmosphere is killing me.

  “When did you become such an expert on romance anyway?”

  A grin spread across her face as she puffed out her chest.

  “I’m the cutest there is—of course I’m popular. I’ve just never told you or Dad about any of the guys who’ve asked me out because I knew you two would be weird about it.”

  She’s not wrong there. I seriously thought about tailing them on their date. It shouldn’t surprise me that she hides things from me—I hide plenty of things from her.

  “Sorry...”

  She waved her hand dismissively.

  “None of them amounted to much, anyway. I mean, I’m still in middle school—I’m not expecting to find a life partner already. I would have told you if things ever got more serious.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “How could I seriously go out with someone if you two didn’t get along with each other? It’s an important hurdle to cross. Nobody’s had to attempt it yet, though.”

  I remembered how I felt the morning after the concert.

  “I wouldn’t mind having Shinji-kun as a brother-in-law...”

  She gave me a weird look.

  “My feelings are important too, you know.”

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t mean it like that! I wasn’t trying to guilt you into reconsidering Shinji-kun—I was just saying a passing thought. The most important thing is that you find someone that’s right for you. Even if I don’t get along with them, you should still consider them. Wasn’t that what you were telling me, that I shouldn’t put other people’s feelings above my own?”

  She pouted.

  “That’s one thing, this is another.”

  My little sister is incomprehensible...

  “Whatever, it’s your life.”

  She nodded.

  “Now you’re getting it. It’s my life—that’s why I’ll do things the way I want to do them.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  I wish I could do that...

  “Well, we’ve been talking for long enough. Thanks for opening up to me, Onii-chan.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  We had been talking in the entranceway the entire time and Fuyuko finally started heading towards her room. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and turned to face me.

  “Don’t go forgetting about this like you usually do. You made a promise. You have to remember.”

  With that, she disappeared up the stairs.

  Fuyuko felt different back there. I’ve never seen her that serious before. Also, it felt like she knew way more than she should. I didn’t like it one bit. It really freaks me out, thinking that someone else might know me better than I know myself. She really did seem wise beyond her years, though. Is she a time looper? Like from Cicada Season?

  That would be fitting...

  Better not to think too hard about it.

  21 - Premise & Identity

  I didn’t really want to think too much about what Fuyuko said, so I spent the rest of the day trying to make progress on my writing. I had been planning on working on it more, but a lot of stuff had happened this weekend.

  I was currently trying to expand the scene I had started writing after reading Kondou’s story without much progress.

  I like the idea, but is it even the kind of thing that I would want to write? Are these the kinds of character interactions I find the most fun? I tend to read rom-coms. This sort of fantasy, drama, light-action thing isn’t really my vibe. It’s a story I could see myself reading, but I don’t know if this is the kind of thing I could write.

  Maybe I’m trying too hard to make something like Kondou’s story. What do I like? What do I want? What do I want to say? What’s my story?

  I’ll try starting with the concepts, like Kondou had talked about. I think I want to try making some kind of high-school-rom-com-type story. So, where should I start? The heroines are important so maybe I should start by coming up with some good ideas for characters. Or maybe I should start by thinking of some kind of hook, and then the character ideas can follow from there.

  Yeah, it’s important to have some kind of hook to get people interested and make them want to read the story in the first place. It doesn’t matter how fun and unique your characters are, or how dramatic and emotional your plot developments are, or how interesting and thought-provoking your themes are, or how fresh your perspective is, or how well executed any of it is, if nobody even reads it.

  They say not to judge a book by its cover. But that’s how it goes—first impressions are everything. Are you going to read the story with an interesting premise and attention-grabbing illustrations, or a generic-sounding story with unremarkable illustrations. It doesn’t matter if the second one is better written or contains more interesting plot developments—you can’t tell that just by looking at it in the bookstore. No one had the time or money to read every new book that came out.

  Kondou might though—she seemed to try everything in order to find those hidden gems. But, not every reader can be as diligent as her.

  If something is good, then people will recommend it. This word-of-mouth spread can help—that’s how I found out about Princess & Tentacles and gave it a shot—but, the person recommending it still needed to read and enjoy it in the first place. You can kind of skirt around this if you’re an established author; people will read it just because of your prior work, so the premise has to do less of the heavy lifting if they know you can do good work. But for an unknown author, a good premise is what you need to stand out.

  Only an idiot would write a story with no hook and no marketable premise.

  ...

  ...

  “You’re already thinking that far ahead?”

  “If I do something, I want to do it right.”

  I was sitting next to Kondou in the library after school, as usual.

  She shook her head.

  “I think you might be overthinking things for the stage you’re at. Remember, you need to become a fan of yourself first. You shouldn’t need a strong premise to hook yourself on your own story. I think it would be wise to focus on short story ideas anyway, instead of trying to jump straight into a full-length novel, or even a series.”

  “Yeah. I guess that makes sense.”

  Only an idiot would write a 100,000-word novel without having completed any other writing projects before.

  Only an even bigger idiot would start with a long series.

  I may be an idiot, but I’m not that big of an idiot.

  Kondou tapped the hardcover of the book in her lap.

  “What I’m trying to say is, start small.”

  “I like when stories have a lot of plot threads intertwining, though. That’s what I would like to write.”

  “And in order to do that, you need to be able to develop a single idea. Find a singular concept that you really like and start from there. Don’t let the scope expand too much—really focus in on that singular concept. That’s what I did with the slime girl story, and I think it worked out well for me.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll try that.”

  “I hope it goes well. Once you see what you’re capable of, it becomes much easier. The start is always hard, so keep at it. I’ll support your journey as a writer.”

  A writer, huh...

  “I’m not a writer. I don’t think I have the right to be called that. I haven’t even really written anything.”

  “But you’re trying. You want to be. Your identity isn’t stagnant from the moment you’re born. You have the power to choose your own identity, and being in the process of becoming that doesn’t make you less valid. Even professional writers are still growing and honing their craft. As with all skills, it’s something that has no end. Which means there’s little meaningful difference between someone who’s just starting out and someone who’s further along in their journey. You’re both on the same path. You’re both learning. There’s not some kind of threshold that you can pass where you’ll magically become a ‘writer.’ Some might consider getting published to be such a threshold, but that’s ridiculous. Professional recognition is a measurement of success within our economic system, but it’s not necessarily equivalent with actual value or an arbiter of something’s validity. Is someone who never shows their writing to anyone else not a writer? Of course not, that would be stupid. They wrote, didn’t they? How many great artists went unrecognized in their time? Were they not artists just because they were unrecognized? Did they only become artists after being recognized? That’s absurd. The essential element to someone’s identity does not lie in other people’s hands. You are what you are. If you can identify with the label in any way, then you already are one.”

  I don’t know if I identify with it. I don’t know how much I even want to write; I just thought it might be fun. After seeing her give such an impassioned speech, I didn’t want to rain on her parade, though.

  “I feel like you might be able to draw a line at someone who’s never written. It would be silly to call someone who’s never written a writer.”

  “And who in their life has never written, besides those who have never known language? If you have thoughts, if you’ve ever spoken, if you’ve ever tried to express anything through language, you’ve written—whether it was recorded for others to see or not. Putting words on a page isn’t writing.”

  I guess I’m an idiot for thinking writing has to be written down. I get what she means, though.

  “That seems to stretch the definition pretty wide.”

  “Definitions for such abstract concepts have to be wide in order to encompass all of the possibilities. I think you could make much the same argument for the definition of ‘art,’ just without the restriction of language. ‘Writing’ is just art conveyed through ‘language’ as opposed to ‘visuals’ or ‘audio.’ Even these have overlaps—you could consider a music video to be the ultimate synthesis of the written word, visual art, and music.”

  “That makes sense.”

  I think the ultimate synthesis of the written word, visual art, and music would perfectly describe a visual novel. No wonder I like them so much. Truly the pinnacle of art—at least, conceptually.

  “Point is, lots of things are far too complex to be described with simple, straightforward definitions. Simple definitions have their place for giving a general idea of something. But if you want to be intellectually rigorous in your understanding of something, such simple explanations aren’t going to cut it. Someone trying to sell you on the simplicity of their worldview is best not trusted. Well, conclusions can be simple—such as you are a writer if you identify as one—but that conclusion is only reached after a rigorous examination of what it means to ‘be’ something, as well as what it means to ‘write’ something. Simple conclusions reached through simple means are the tools of propagandists and anti-intellectuals—people not motivated by a search for truth and understanding, but a desire to control others or to liberate themselves from the complexities of reality respectively—and should face heavy critical scrutiny.”

  “Mhm.”

  I’m always saying that.

  She looked at me.

  “You get me?”

  “I think so.”

  She nodded before returning to her book.

  “Good.”

  “...”

  She turned the page.

  “...”

  I liked that we talked about stuff like this. Well, I guess I didn’t really say much; it was mostly her talking. It was interesting regardless.

  I thought back to what Fuyuko told me this weekend.

  ‘I think you two are closer than that. You’re friends, aren’t you? You should be using each other’s given names.’

  “Umm, so, we’re friends, right?”

  She looked up from her book.

  “Now there’s an interesting question.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  She shook her head.

  “I think of us as friends, but does that mean we are?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Compared to before, where we were talking about the identity of a single person, we’re now talking about a relationship between people—it necessarily involves more than a single person. Therefore, I alone can’t say whether we are friends or not. If I consider you my friend, but you don’t, can I say that we are friends?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Right? Is there any kind of objective measure of friendship? If not, then the only way to say that a friendship exists is if both parties agree to identify as friends of each other. Thus, the relationship is established and realized.”

  “Well, I think we’re friends.”

  She smiled at me.

  “Then we are. Why did you ask?”

  “Since we’re friends, I thought—well, my sister said—that we should address each other more casually.”

  She covered her face with her book and muttered something I couldn’t quite catch.

  “...Yuko-chi said that, hmm...”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can I just call you by your given name?”

  “Ah, sure.”

  “...”

  “...”

  Chiaki checked her phone before snapping her book shut.

  “Looks like it’s time for me to get going.”

  “Thanks for the advice today. I feel like our talk was very productive. I’ll try to think of a singular concept that I want to develop.”

  “Good luck with that. See you tomorrow, Akio.”

  “Yeah, see you tomorrow, Chiaki.”

  22 - ‘Double Date’

  “Hey, dude. Can we talk again?”

  Shuusuke was bothering me at lunch again.

  Would you look at that, a good crit damage accessory with promising substats!

  For some reason Shuusuke kept talking.

  “Look, I’m sorry for what I said last week. You were right—I don’t know anything about Okino-senpai.”