“I guess that’s a possibility... If she doesn’t, though, do you think she would still love me if I told her?”

  “I don’t think she’s homophobic. Even if she doesn’t see you the same way, I don’t think she would want to stop being your best friend.”

  “I don’t think so either, but I feel like I’ve been—I don’t know, violating her privacy? Since I’ve realized how I feel, I keep noticing how she lets her guard down around me compared to how she acts around the boys at school. I feel like I see a side of her that she might not want to show to a potential partner.”

  “Is it so bad that she’s more comfortable around you?”

  She blushed.

  “It’s probably because I’m able to see that side of her that I love her so much. But how would you feel if you were hanging out in your room for years with someone you thought was a guy and then later you learned that they were actually a girl?”

  Ah, much like the classic ‘reunion with your childhood best friend and it turns out that they were actually a girl the entire time’ scenario.

  I’d probably make a break for the nearest railroad crossing and the last thought to pass through my mind before being freed from this mortal coil would be ‘cute tomboy.’

  “That’s a little different, but I think I understand your point. She has certain expectations of you and treats you a certain way because of that. If it turns out that your actual self was different from her expectations, she might want to treat you differently. If these differences are too great, the past and the present might not be reconcilable with each other and could fracture your relationship.”

  “...something like that, I guess...”

  I sighed.

  “I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you—at the end of the day, it all comes down to how Fuyuko feels.”

  She sighed too.

  “Yeah...”

  “I think you should tell her, though. When Fuyuko loves something, she loves it a lot. She loves you and you love her—whether it works out the way you want it to or not, I’m sure only good things will come of it. And there’s always the chance that she’ll realize something about herself. You know how she is. She has very idealized beliefs about certain things—like what it means to be a little sister. It’s very possible that she’s never even thought to question her sexuality.”

  Yuriko looked up at me.

  “...have you questioned your sexuality?”

  Why are you making this about me?

  Not that it matters—I know my answer.

  I nodded.

  “I’ve thought about it. I know I like girls.”

  Understatement of the century.

  I love girls.

  I love girls too much.

  So much it might be a problem.

  Just seeing a cute girl feels like getting blasted in the chest point-blank with a shotgun.

  And if I let my guard down, ‘it’—

  Don’t think about it.

  On the other hand, the thought of men—

  I felt the urge to vomit swell up in my throat.

  Don’t think about it.

  Suffice to say, I can’t stand ’em. I don’t know how anyone could be attracted to them at all. Girls like Yuriko make much more sense to me. Like, how could someone not be attracted to women? It was unthinkable. They are just...better.

  Point is, I’m definitely not normal.

  But I definitely am straight.

  This was a path I had traveled down in my thoughts many times—it was a well-worn groove in my brain.

  Yuriko kicked her feet back and forth as a slight smile spread across her face.

  “I like girls too... It feels good just to say that.”

  “Yeah, guys are the worst.”

  She looked a little surprised.

  “Eh? I wouldn’t go that far. It’s not like I hate guys. I’m just not into them like that.”

  Oh. Guess I should change the subject, then.

  “That aside, even if things don’t work out, you learned something new about yourself, right? That’s good.”

  She continued to smile to herself.

  “Yeah. I like girls...”

  I think she’ll be fine.

  I stood up from the swing.

  “Well, if that’s all you needed me for, I’ll get going.”

  Yuriko turned to look at me.

  “Umm, sorry for always coming to you for advice... It feels like it always ends up with you telling me things I should already know.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s no problem. Sometimes if you’re unsure about something, you just need to hear it from somebody else before you can really believe it yourself.”

  “Thanks for reassuring me... Umm, one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  She stood up from her swing and shuffled over to me before burying her head in my chest like Fuyuko did yesterday.

  “Hypothetically, in the worst-case scenario, if Fuuko wants nothing to do with me ever again...would you still care about me? Could I still come to you for advice?”

  I held my arms out awkwardly.

  Would it be okay to hug her back? Could I ruffle her hair like I always did with Fuyuko? I don’t know, so I’ll just do nothing.

  “You shouldn’t be thinking about absurd hypotheticals like that. It won’t happen.”

  “But...what if it does?”

  She’s too similar to me.

  “It won’t.”

  “If I lose the both of you, I won’t have anyone anymore.”

  I had always wondered if she had a bad relationship with her parents. Yuriko spent a lot of time at our house, but Fuyuko rarely ever went over to hers. I didn’t want to pry, though.

  “If you really just need me to say it, I’ll say it: If that happens, you can always count on me. I’ll never turn my back on you.”

  Although, I can only make that promise because I’m sure it won’t happen.

  She let go of me and pulled away.

  “Are you trying to sound cool?”

  “Maybe...”

  7 - Writing Style

  “I feel like my writing style is kind of weird.”

  I’ve written enough now that I can say something like that.

  Chiaki fingered her bookmark.

  “Weird how?”

  “Sometimes I feel like it reads more like a visual novel than a light novel. It’s heavy on the dialogue and light on the physical descriptions and narration. And the paragraphs are short—often single sentences even—which would fit nicely into a single text box.”

  I probably read just as many visual novels as light novels. Like the Ska;Adv series. Chaos;Bed was a bit of a struggle though—it felt a little too real to me.

  It wouldn’t be surprising if they had rubbed off on me. It wasn’t my intention, but once I started reading it through that lens, it fit perfectly. Each line break indicated a new text box.

  “It’s only natural you would be influenced by the things you read.”

  “That’s true...”

  She cocked her head.

  “Or...maybe we’re mixing up causality...?”

  “?”

  What’s she getting at?

  “You write in the style of a visual novel because you read them—that’s the assumption we just made. But, maybe it’s actually the other way around.”

  “I read visual novels because I write like them? But I didn’t write before this...”

  She shook her head.

  “Not write, but think. Maybe you like to read visual novels because they’re closer to how you think, closer to how you naturally and most effectively process information—or something like that. What I mean is there might be some fundamental aspect of your cognition that influences what you feel the most comfortable reading, and is also reflected in how you like to write. Instead of one being caused by the other, they are both a result of some third thing—a confounding variable.”

  “...That’s possible...”

  She shrugged.

  “Or it’s a little bit of both, creating a feedback loop. It’s complicated.”

  “Yeah...”

  “Either way, do you dislike how you write?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not necessarily. I just found it interesting. Sometimes it does feel like I’m doing something wrong, though. It feels like voice acting and changing character sprites would really elevate it—it’s hard to convey the nuance I want in text alone, and I’m bad at describing the characters visually. I have to rely on the reader to give each line the consideration it deserves and use their imagination to supplement the material.”

  “Some writers use their mastery of the written word to lavishly paint a picture from their own imagination that the reader then gets to appreciate. On the other hand, some simply try to convey the essence and let that be a spark to ignite the audience’s own imagination. Neither one is better than the other—you can have both styles within the same work, even.”

  “That’s true. There are some parts where I feel a sudden burst of inspiration for a more visceral description.”

  “Don’t feel like you have to write a certain way—there’s no way a story is supposed to be written. As long as you’re writing what you want to write and writing it in the way that you want to write it, that’s good. And it does sound like you’re writing now.”

  “I am, although...”

  “?”

  “I don’t know if the label of ‘writer’ feels quite right to me. I don’t care that much about the craft of writing itself. I want to convey my ideas, to tell a story, but writing is just the way that I do it because it’s the only way I feel I can.”

  “Like I said before, every writer has their own style. You don’t need to do things the way other people do them to be valid—however, there’s no need to stick with a label that you feel doesn’t accurately describe you.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking something like ‘author’ or ‘creator’ might feel like a better fit. I really like ‘creator,’ but it’s too similar to ‘content creator,’ it brings to mind the image of a BooTuber or streamer. It kind of kills the vibes.”

  “It does give that impression. That said, ‘creator’ sounds nice to me too. It feels cosmic. Metaphysical.”

  I nodded.

  “You get it. The characters feel like pieces on a game board and I’m the gamemaster overseeing them from a higher plane.”

  That might be the influence of a certain visual novel series talking, though.

  “I can relate. I don’t think it’s quite like that for me, but it’s similar.”

  “If you don’t mind sharing, what is it like for you? A different perspective might be helpful to me.”

  She contemplated the question for a while before speaking up.

  “When I’m writing, it feels like I’m discovering the story for myself. The characters come alive in my head and I just record their interactions. Sometimes, they reveal a piece of information that I planned on keeping hidden for longer. The author may be the god of their story’s world, but even gods aren’t perfect. Think about your body—you don’t consciously control every part of your body, but you would still consider yourself to be in control of it. In much the same way, an author is in control of their world but some parts are still managed by their unconscious, causing the story to progress in unexpected ways. That’s part of the fun, for me. Even if I have some kind of fate planned for the characters, things don’t always play out that way. It’s kind of exciting when the characters develop in such a way that they end up fighting against their own fate. It’s a kind of meta-narrative that plays out during the story’s creation that I find fascinating. It feels like the characters are writing the story for themselves.”

  Fighting against fate sounds like a pain in the ass. I don’t think I could do it.

  “That’s really interesting.”

  “That’s why I spend so much time writing. You would think that writing a story would feel different from reading a story—and there are many differences for sure—but they are also surprisingly similar. For me, at least. I can’t speak to any other author’s experience.”

  “I see...”

  8 - Before You Met Me

  “If you don’t mind, can I ask another personal question?”

  Haruhi was hanging off of my arm on the train like usual.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Well, I was just thinking that you got along well with Shuusuke and Shinoyama during our get-together. So why don’t you have any other friends, and what did you do about this—”

  I shook the arm she was holding.

  “—before you met me?”

  She stayed silent.

  “...”

  “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’m sorry if it was too much.”

  She squeezed my arm tighter and laid her head on my shoulder.

  “No, I do want to tell you. It’s just a lot to think about, and I don’t know where to start. Or how much to share.”

  “You only need to share as much as you’re comfortable with.”

  “...”

  “If you’re having trouble organizing your thoughts, it could help to write it down. You don’t have to tell me right now. You can take some time later to sort things out and decide how much you want to say and how to say it.”

  “That’s smart. I think I’ll do that.”

  “It’s a useful trick. I learned it from Chiaki.”

  “So you call her Chiaki now... Has your relationship with her leveled up?”

  “She’s still just my friend, if that’s what you mean. We’ve been talking more about writing lately because I’ve been working on my story.”

  “Do you like talking to her more than me?”

  To be honest, if I had to choose between the two of them, I would pick Chiaki—if we were talking about a conversation partner, that is. I found our conversations to be—and this is going to make me sound like a pretentious asshole—intellectually and creatively stimulating.

  “I think I do.”

  “Hmm...”

  “But...I think I like being with you more.”

  That’s an honest thought, as well.

  Maybe it’s for a shitty reason, though. I am a piece of shit after all.

  “Is that so...”

  “...”

  “Umm, can I come over after school tomorrow? I can sort out my thoughts and tell you then.”

  “Of course, I said you were welcome anytime. I usually stay in the library for an hour or two after school, though, so I won’t be back home right away. Unless you want to leave school together.”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t need to do that for me. Have a nice chat with Kondou-san. I can watch PriCare with Fuyu-chi until you get back.”

  9 - Kill Your Darlings

  “I tried to start with a single concept, but I’m starting to feel like things are rapidly ballooning outwards.”

  Chiaki nodded.

  “That happens. As you write, you’ll discover that you have much more to say than you initially thought. As you flesh things out more and more and the side characters grow in number, things can start to get much longer than you initially thought. That’s why I recommended starting with a small idea. Once you understand the amount of space it takes to develop a single concept, it becomes easier to pace a work with multiple intertwining concepts. It’s still a problem sometimes, though. You’ll always get better at it with more experience.”

  “Yeah...”

  “Some ideas are going to be left on the cutting room floor. It’s inevitable. It’s an easier pill to swallow if you’re happy with the scenes you keep in, though. Instead of thinking about the parts of the story you didn’t get to tell, think about the ones you did. You should take pride in the parts you were able to realize at all—they didn’t exist before, and they do now. That’s a worthy accomplishment itself.”

  “That’s a nice way of thinking about it.”

  “It’s fine to trim down a plot thread. You can even keep it in the background so that people paying attention will still notice it. Not every detail of the story you’ve planned out needs to be brought to the forefront. Keeping in these details can give the story a richness without bogging things down too much. And as the author, you still know all of what goes on behind the scenes and can enjoy it for yourself.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Of course, at the end of the day, it comes down to your own personal decision as the author. If you’re published and have an editor working with you, you might have to compromise more to achieve a more marketable product. If you don’t have those obligations and can write entirely for yourself, you can make the story as prickly as you want. It’s your art. If you want it to be a bloated mess, then go ahead, make it a bloated mess—I genuinely mean that. Even if it makes the story less approachable in general, someone out there is going to appreciate all of its minute details. Someone is going to become fully immersed in its world.”

  “I do love some stories that feel like they could use an editor, but they just wouldn’t be the same if they didn’t feel like the pure unbridled passion of the author.”

  “It depends on what audience you’re trying to reach. Are you going to write a story that 999 out of 1,000 people enjoy? Or a story that will change the life of that one remaining person? You can think of those as the extremes of a spectrum—spectrums are great for describing things. From there, you have to choose where you want to fall on the spectrum—are you going to kill your darlings, or have a big, messy harem of darlings?”

  “It’s making that choice that’s hard.”

  “You’re always going to have regrets. It’s something you have to come to terms with.”

  I nodded.

  “True. True.”

  “Think of it like a bittersweet ending, a final siege on the demon king’s castle. Many allies are lost, but the demon king is defeated, and those left behind have to live on. You wouldn’t be dissatisfied with an ending like that, would you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s probably better than a happy ending where everything goes the main character’s way. It makes for a more interesting narrative.”