“Right. You have to think about the narrative. Not just the narrative you’re writing, but the narrative of its own creation. That’s just as important.”

  “Yeah...”

  I don’t feel like I have enough experience to contribute anything to this so I’ve just been passively agreeing the whole time. Sometimes our conversations are like that. Although I feel like I’ve been able to contribute a little more recently. Sometimes. Not today.

  As for Chiaki’s advice, I am starting to amass a collection of secondary characters. Maybe I was focusing on them too much over what was supposed to be the main relationship—the central love triangle. But I love them. I want to see their arcs as well. Who are the main characters really, anyway? What is my story actually about? Maybe my perspective needed to shift.

  10 - Plans

  “I’m home.”

  Patter patter patter patter patter.

  Fuyuko came down the stairs rather normally today.

  “Welcome back, Onii-chan.”

  She looked a little low-energy.

  “What’s up, Fuyuko?”

  “Umm... Yuuko and I made plans for Saturday. You’ll have to handle lunch on your own.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll work something out. You two have fun.”

  Maybe I could get Haruhi to come over and make lunch again. If not, a meal from the convenience store never hurt anybody.

  “Yeah...”

  What’s up with her?

  “Do you want to talk about anything?”

  She was being unusually timid. It seemed like something was on her mind.

  She looked away from me.

  “So...Yuuko told me she wanted to be my girlfriend. We’re actually going on a date.”

  That was fast. I thought it might take more time for Yuriko to work up the courage.

  “Good for her.”

  Fuyuko looked back at me.

  “You’re not surprised?”

  “I knew about her feelings already. She came to me for advice.”

  “She did that, huh... I’m glad you two are getting along now. That’s what I’ve wanted for a while.”

  “It’s only thanks to your help. Although, you could have been a little less forceful...”

  “If I wasn’t forceful, nothing would have happened!”

  “That’s...probably true.”

  “It’s definitely true.”

  How could she be so certain of that? I guess that’s the power of confidence.

  “Yeah...”

  She sighed.

  “Anyway, I’m not sure what to do about Yuriko...”

  She wasn’t confident about everything, though.

  “You love her, right?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And her coming out to you hasn’t changed that?”

  Fuyuko shot me an accusatory glance.

  “I can’t believe you’d even ask.”

  I held my hands up in defense.

  “Just making sure. I didn’t think it would be a problem, but Yuriko was worried about it.”

  Fuyuko looked down.

  “She was...? Yeah, she’s like you in that way...”

  “So, do you think you can see her, um, in the same way she sees you?”

  She blushed.

  “I’ve always known I was attracted to boys, so I never really considered whether I liked girls that way or not.”

  “...”

  I’m not thinking about anything. My mind is blank. Pure white.

  “I’m not against the thought, so I am willing to go on a date. I don’t know how it’s going to go. I don’t know how I want it to go. I don’t know what will happen if it doesn’t go well. Can our friendship stay the same?”

  “Yuriko still wants to be your friend even if you turn her down, so as long as you still want to be her friend, things should work out no matter what.”

  She nervously played with the hem of her shirt.

  “I was wondering, though. Is it okay for the perfect little sister to be attracted to girls?”

  “What does that have to do with being the perfect little sister?”

  “I don’t know...”

  Fuyuko didn’t make sense sometimes. I don’t understand what was going through her head with the ‘perfect little sister’ stuff.

  I patted her on the head.

  “You don’t need to be the perfect little sister, anyways. You’re my little sister. That’s what matters.”

  I ruffled her hair.

  She looked up at me.

  “Are you trying to sound cool?”

  They’re a perfect match for each other.

  I scratched the back of my head sheepishly.

  “Maybe...”

  11 - Make the Cut

  Chiaki bowed her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you apologizing for?”

  “I was thinking more about what we talked about yesterday, and I realized that I rambled on so much. I’m still not used to speaking like this. I’m more used to being able to write all my thoughts down and organize them first. I end up rambling, and maybe don’t make myself clear.”

  “That’s fine.”

  I don’t think that’s something you need to apologize for.

  “I talked a lot about cutting things down, but I feel like I shouldn’t have neglected the fact that you can flesh out scenes as well.”

  “Okay.”

  “How you handle a situation where you have a lot of ideas depends on the scope of the story. If you don’t have a deadline or are still early on, you can expand the scope of the story to include all of the worthwhile ideas. You can turn a short story into a novel. A novel into a series. Et cetera.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You don’t just need to look for parts of the story you can take away—it’s also important to look for parts of the story you can improve. If there’s a character that is narratively important, but you feel they aren’t contributing as much thematically, you can flesh them out. If they’re too important to just cut out without having to completely restructure the story, think of what purpose they have to the narrative and how can you relate that to the themes. You might be able to think up a backstory and personality for a character that didn’t have enough of one, and find that they can actually serve as a fitting supplement to the story. This is just as relevant to making your narrative stronger as cutting out unnecessary bits is.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Although, if you do this too much, you end up back at the initial problem—you’ve got too many ideas. There really is no right answer.”

  “Mhm.”

  She looked at me.

  “You get me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her expression darkened slightly.

  “Do you really understand? Sometimes, I feel like you aren’t even listening to me.”

  I can see why she would think that when I basically just nod along the whole time. I try to listen, though. I think it’s interesting.

  “I think I understand. I just don’t have much to add.”

  She kept looking at me.

  “Do you really understand what I’m trying to tell you? About your story?”

  Why’s she being so persistent?

  Am I missing something?

  You are the king of misunderstandings.

  “In short, I need to trim out parts of my story that are unnecessary and don’t add much value to it, and flesh out any of the necessary parts to make them worthwhile. I might like some of the parts that don’t make the cut, but discarding them might lead to a better narrative overall.”

  It seemed relatively straightforward to me.

  You might just be dumb, though.

  I’m starting to doubt myself.

  As you should.

  Chiaki sighed and looked away.

  “I thought we were on the same page. I guess not. It’s probably my fault for being so indirect all the time.”

  “Is that not what you were saying?”

  She turned back to look at me earnestly.

  “It was a part of it, but what I really want to tell you is this: Make the cut. Are you contributing to your own story? Are you contributing to other people’s stories? Or are you fat to be trimmed? If you don’t think you have enough value to be worth keeping around, then you need to find it.”

  I thought we had just been talking about writing, but I guess it was possible to interpret things that way as well. Maybe all of our conversations were like that and I was just too dumb to notice.

  Yeah, I’m dumb.

  That’s who I am.

  12 - The Past

  Like Haruhi had planned, she watched PriCare with Fuyuko until I got home. According to her, they watched Smile PriCare and talked about the past. I didn’t want to know the specifics. We weren’t here to talk about my past anyway—Haruhi was supposed to tell me about hers.

  We were lying next to each other on my bed. She had her arms around my right arm like usual and her head buried in my shoulder as I looked up at the ceiling.

  When she came over to my house before, she was in casual clothes. But because she came straight to my house this time, she was still in her school uniform. It gave off a different vibe—you would think that being in bed with a girl in her casual clothes would feel more intimate, but the school uniform had a certain eroticism to it.

  What the hell am I thinking about?

  I sighed.

  “So, were you able to organize your thoughts?”

  “I was.”

  “That’s good.”

  I felt one of her arms leave mine. I glanced over to see that she had pulled out her phone, which was still in the scratched-up case from when we first met. It wasn’t that long ago, but it felt nostalgic. I guess a lot had changed. If you told me at the start of the year that I would be in bed with that girl from the train station, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would have had the wrong impression of our relationship, though. We were just friends. Nothing more.

  “You asked why I didn’t have IRL friends, but I don’t just want to tell you about that. I want to tell you my life story. Are you sure you really want to know? It might only make your life worse.”

  She sounded hesitant.

  If it’s something really depressing, it probably will make my life worse.

  But if it’s something really depressing, then I want to hear it.

  If my listening to her could contribute to her life’s story, it could give my life value.

  So if my listening to her could contribute to her life’s story, then I want to hear it.

  I turned to look at her and our eyes met, our faces only inches apart. Her eyes wavered as I peered right into them.

  “I want to know. I want to know you better.”

  She closed her eyes and smiled.

  “Thank you.”

  I turned my attention back to the ceiling.

  “...”

  She was too adorable. I couldn’t keep looking at her up close like that, or I was worried I would develop a one-sided crush on her.

  As if you haven’t already.

  A quiet voice came from beside me.

  “Can I hold your hand?”

  “Of course.”

  She interlaced her fingers with mine.

  We’re touching.

  We’re connected.

  I can feel the warmth of her body.

  I can feel the softness of her skin.

  But that also means—

  She can feel the warmth of my body.

  She can—

  Don’t think about it.

  “I should start from the beginning.”

  13 - Haruhi’s Story

  I am Okino Haruhi.

  I love people.

  When I was a kid, I loved my father. He worked an important job and made a lot of money. But he always came home late, so we didn’t get to spend all that much time together except on the weekends. On the weekends, he would usually watch TV and I would sit on his lap to watch with him. That was always the highlight of my week. The characters and their lives fascinated me. Maybe that’s how I developed my love of people, or maybe I was enthralled by TV because I already loved people. But the people on the screen weren’t real—they were actors. Their stories weren’t real—they were made up. I wanted to know real people. I wanted to see real stories.

  When I was a kid, I loved my mother. I admired how kind and hardworking she was. She didn’t need to work a job because her husband made more than enough money to support the entire family. Instead, she took care of the house. The house was always spotless, her cooking was always amazing, and she always found time to play with me and come to school events. She wasn’t getting paid, but she was working just as hard as someone who had a job. Maybe I was spoiled back then. It was a fairly traditional setup, but it worked for us.

  When I was a kid, I liked going to school. I went to a nice all-girls school for elementary and middle school. It wasn’t the super fancy kind, but it was still a private school. It was strict in some ways, but the restrictions never bothered me. I was just glad to be around other people. I wanted to be friends with everyone. I wanted to learn their stories. I was overly affectionate in a way that made some people feel uncomfortable—but we were all girls, so it didn’t cause that much of an issue.

  At some point, I started going through puberty. I progressed from a kid to a girl. Not quite a woman yet.

  When I was a girl, I liked seeing romance and sex in fiction. But I didn’t understand it in real life. I liked what it represented—the intimate intertwining of two people’s stories—but something about it never clicked with me. All my classmates talked about it in ways that didn’t make sense. I didn’t relate to those feelings. I couldn’t understand them.

  When I was a girl, I hated my father. My father was cheating on my mother with someone from work. I didn’t fully understand the situation, but I knew it was bad. He didn’t love my mother. Not the way he was supposed to. So I hated him.

  When I was a girl, I loved my mother. Even though she knew about her husband’s affair, she didn’t try to get a divorce. She still loved him. She still believed he loved her. It was tragic. But it was also kind of beautiful.

  This wasn’t how love was supposed to be.

  However, perhaps more importantly, she relied on him financially. She couldn’t get divorced even if she wanted to, not without making her life harder. Not without making my life harder. And she couldn’t do that. She loved me too much. So I loved her.

  When I was a girl, I liked going to school. I had many friends. And I loved them all. Although there was one girl I thought of as my best friend. Maybe it was because she had no other friends. Maybe it was because she hated going to school. Maybe I wanted to be there for her. She never fit in with the other girls. When we met outside of class, she would always dress like a boy. I think she felt restricted by the school’s rules and wanted to rebel—I don’t know for sure. She never told me much about herself. She didn’t say much at all. But we would hang out often at my own insistence. One of my most treasured possessions was the phone case she bought me for my birthday. I had a photo of us together as my wallpaper. I loved her.

  Eventually, my father did something my mother wasn’t able to forgive and she filed for divorce. I thought it was my fault. I thought it was because of something I had done. I thought it was because of the way that I am. But my mother assured me that was not the case. I loved her. I trusted her. So I felt better.

  Once we were living on our own, life became really hard. I had to leave behind all of my friends. Me and my best friend drifted apart, and eventually she stopped returning my messages altogether. I didn’t know why. My mother had to work as hard as she could to support me. And I helped out around the house as much as I could to support her. My mother loved me. And I loved my mother. So even if it was hard, it was okay.

  However, I didn’t like going to high school. My mother couldn’t send me to the kind of school I was used to. I had to go to a public coed school instead. There were guys there. That’s when the problems started.

  I was always overly physically affectionate. It’s just the way I am. I can’t change it. But guys would always get the wrong idea. They would always try and push the relationship in a direction I wasn’t comfortable with. So I didn’t want to hang out with guys.

  The girls were a problem too. Because of how I was around guys, the popular girls didn’t like me. They harassed me. They spread lies about me. And they would do it to anyone who got close to me too. So I couldn’t hang out with girls either.

  I was all alone at school. Even if someone wanted to be my friend, they would stay away from me to avoid getting bullied. I didn’t blame them. It wasn’t their fault. They were just trying to preserve themselves. But I didn’t have anyone at school. So I needed to find a way to connect with people somewhere else.

  That’s when I got deep into multiplayer video games. Mobile games and MMOs in particular. I could play a fun game. I could meet new people and learn their stories. I could join communities. And it didn’t have any of the baggage of the physical world. Sometimes I would even skip school to game all day at net cafés. Not too often though—I still needed to graduate. I had to for my mother. But on days where I just couldn’t bring myself to go to school, when even that gentle slope felt like an insurmountable mountain, I had somewhere else I could go.

  However, I still craved physical connection. That was something I couldn’t get from the online world. But I was too afraid. I thought about going to offline meetups with online friends. But I was too afraid. I didn’t want it to happen again. I didn’t want to be betrayed by someone I thought I knew. I was too afraid.

  The only physical connection I had was with my mother. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but we still slept together like I was a child. She was at work all day, so that was the only time we could be together.

  She worked so hard, all so that I could go to a good university. She wanted me to get a good career. To be able to support myself. So I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone like she had to. But even with all the money in the world, I didn’t think I could live by myself. I loved her. She loved me.