Chapter 5: My Friend and I Are Legitimately OzuAki!
I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, so let me be clear: my work with the 05th Floor Alliance is the most important part of my life.
I was entering the Queen Nevermore contest because those kinds of typical teenage experiences helped to develop your artistic skill and were necessary to properly direct your creators. Canary, whom I really admired, taught me that, and I was just following her advice. This event was even more important than that, though; it was indispensable in leading Iroha to her future.
After putting in my entry for the Queen Nevermore contest and going home, it was business as usual: I worked on Koyagi and kept an eye on the game’s schedule.
I checked the clock. It was midnight; the second hand had only just passed the hour. I wasted no time in clicking my way to my emails to see what was in my inbox.
There was nothing new.
“Shikibu...” I groaned. With an angry sigh, I stood up slowly, like a demon on its way to harvest some souls.
At last night’s party, I’d traded her a bottle of Dom Pérignon for an illustration to celebrate two million downloads, due today. There was no illustration in my inbox, so as her producer, there was only one thing left for me to do: knock on her door.
I took a single key out of my desk’s top drawer. Since we were neighbors, we’d exchanged these keys so that we could respond quickly in an emergency. While the Kohinata siblings lived with their family, Sumire and I both lived alone. We each had a spare key for each other in case we collapsed at home from sudden illness or faced some other problem where a locked door would prevent us from receiving help.
I’d given Ozu a spare key to my place for the very same reason. That particular emergency key had degenerated into a gadget that let Iroha come in and out of my room whenever she pleased. As for Mashiro, she was nervous about giving her key to other people, so I hadn’t exchanged keys with her. I wasn’t going to force her to do anything she didn’t want to. It was a rule that applied to the entire fifth floor.
Flipped on its head, that also meant we could do anything, as long as we had the other party’s consent. Showing up at someone’s door in an emergency (the emergency, in this case, being one undelivered illustration), letting myself in using the key, and searching the entire place top to bottom was perfectly fine. And that was exactly what I was about to do.
I stepped out into the hallway and headed for the apartment two doors down. I pulled the knob, but it clicked, resisting my attempt to open the door. That damned Shikibu had locked it. Not that it made a difference. I simply took out the spare key, shoved it in the keyhole, and unlocked the door. I began to open it...before it stopped halfway with a loud clink.
“The chain?” I clicked my tongue. “Very clever.”
I began to hammer on the door, calling out to the heinous criminal hiding away inside. “Hey, Shikibu! I know you’re in there! Give it up and get over here!”
There is no response. It seems no one is home.
The sentences scrolled through my mind like text in a game, while I carried on knocking. Suddenly there was a click, and the door opened. Not Shikibu’s door, though; the one next to it: the Kohinatas’.
“Keep up the good fight.”
“Ozu? Sorry, was I too loud?”
“Not at all. I’m impressed, though. You know this place and its soundproofing so well, you’re keeping your voice just quiet enough not to annoy anyone.”
“I’m bearing it in mind, but if I got just the right volume, that was a coincidence. If you didn’t hear me, why’d you come out here then?”
“I saw your messages to Shikibu-sensei in the LIME group and how she’d left them all on read. Figured you’d be coming to visit her right about now, so I came to see.”
“That’s just like you, Ozu. Perfect deduction.”
“Nah, it was just a coincidence that I was right. So, Murasaki Shikibu-sensei. She’s holed up in there, like Amaterasu in the cave, huh?”
“It’s rare for you to make references to Japanese mythology. I thought you were bad at Japanese class?”
“There were a lot of mythology references in this light novel I read recently. It stuck in my head easier because it wasn’t connected to my actual life.”
“I’m glad your study of humanity via nerd culture is still going well. Anyway...” It was time to get the conversation back on track. “You can see what Murasaki Shikibu-sensei is up to. Honestly, there’s not much I can do about it at this point.”
“Gotcha. Y’know, this whole Amaterasu in the cave stuff might actually come in handy.” “How?”
“Like this: Aki, could you keep your voice down for a little bit?” Ozu chuckled mischievously and held up a finger in front of his face.
His expression was replaced with something innocent the next second, something that reminded me
that he really was Iroha’s brother. The hallway was lit even at night, so I could see his face clearly, but if we were outside in the dark I might not be able to tell them apart.
Ozu opened the chained door halfway and turned towards the gap. “What’s wrong, Aki? You look really mad. Is it because you haven’t got the illustration? Are you gonna take your anger out on me?” He laced his voice with a thick seductiveness, as though he were a character in a BL game. “Wait, Ozu. What are you doing?”
“Shush. Stick with it; it’s part of my plan.”
“Your plan?”
“The plan to get Amaterasu out of Amano-iwato, the cave she hid in. We just gotta say the right lines to get her perverted imagination going, and then she’ll get curious and come see what’s going on.” “You owe the whole of Japanese mythology an apology. Apologize to the gods right now.” “Chill. They don’t exist.”
“As logical as ever, I see.”
While he was happy to make use of his knowledge of Japanese mythology, underneath he was still the same mechanical Ozu he always was.
He ignored my comment and turned back to Sumire’s room, using the same tone of voice as before. “S-Stop it, Aki. We’re in the hallway—what if someone sees us? What? You want someone to see us? I... I don’t think I could take that...”
“I know this is just some plan, but I’m not sure how to feel about it. Besides, Shikibu’s no idiot. She’s not gonna fall for such an obvious ploy.”
“She already has.”
“Ow, ow, ow, ow! Let goooo!”
So she was an idiot. More of an idiot than I thought, I mean.
She must have snuck up to the door, because Ozu had plunged his arm in through the gap and grabbed her. The accuracy and speed of his movements were enough to compete with any machine. And he was able to pinpoint the moment he needed to catch his prey, all while putting on an act. He really was terrifying.
“If this was all it’d take to lure you out, you should’ve just saved us the effort and answered the door in the first place,” I said.
“I just wanted to hold on to a few more precious seconds. That’s just how delicate girls like me are!” “Shut up and get to work.”
“Waaaah!”
A short while later, we were in Sumire’s workspace. There were framed posters and prints of handsome young boys all across the walls. Her bookshelf was filled with hundreds of doujinshi, her own works, novels, and art-related documents, all divided into their own sections. Her living room didn’t have much nerdy stuff in it, probably because that was where she saw company. The worst thing there was a box of Blu-rays by the TV.
But she showed no restraint when it came to her bedroom-slash-workspace. There was no excuse for this. It was a nerd’s room through and through.
It was obvious from a single look that the bulky PC on her desk was powerful, and her dual monitors and tablet made for a perfect workspace. Sumire sobbed as she sat there, drawing. Every character that had appeared in Koyagi so far had been a hit. The illustration that was coming together line by line before our eyes was full of life, a perfect way to celebrate two million downloads. Because she missed her deadlines so often, it was easy to forget that Murasaki Shikibu-sensei could actually work pretty quickly. When she was desperate, she was way faster than the other artists whose videos I’d watched online, and faster than the average speeds I’d looked up.
Murasaki Shikibu-sensei spent the most time on getting around to starting and working up her motivation.
“Watching her work like this makes it seem like some sort of magic,” Ozu murmured. “Yeah. I could never do this kinda stuff.”
Though from Murasaki Shikibu-sensei’s and my perspective, Ozu’s engineering skills were magical. While our illustrator was working in front of us, Ozu and I were sitting cross-legged on either side of the low table in the middle of Murasaki Shikibu-sensei’s room. I only came in to watch over her, so there wasn’t anything we could do except talk. Apart from collecting the illustration, I’d already finished my quota of work for the day too.
“Hey, Aki. Y’know about Iroha?”
“You don’t waste any time, huh?”
In the blink of an eye, Ozu was already talking about Iroha again, a subject that seemed to have captivated him lately.
“A reliable source has informed me that you’re planning to enter Queen Nevermore dressed as a girl?” “You already found out about that? That was quick.”
“Hacking into students’ social network accounts is a breeze.”
“I sure hope you never decide to join the dark side.”
“I won’t, ’cause I know you wouldn’t want me to.” Ozu let out an embarrassed chuckle. “I’ve been worried about how Iroha’s acting, so I was gathering information from the first years and the Nevermore Executive Committee. I don’t usually take things this far.”
“Yeah, I figured. Shikibu, you’ve stopped drawing.”
“Gah! Of course I’ve stopped! It sounds like you guys are talking about something interesting!”
“So listen in if you want, but keep those hands moving.”
“Ugh... Fine.”
I could totally see Murasaki Shikibu-sensei fantasizing about me dressing up as a girl. Talking about it here while she was retroactively meeting a deadline was clearly bad timing. I couldn’t just ignore Ozu’s question either, though, so I reluctantly began to explain.
“I want to find Iroha a friend. Someone she can be herself with; someone she can annoy as much as she annoys me. And I want to find her one before we graduate. But she doesn’t seem interested in being herself; in fact, she’s trying to create yet another persona.”
“A new persona? Are you talking about how she was acting like Tsukinomori-san at the party?” “Yeah, this is what that was about. She was practicing to pick up this new persona of hers.” According to Sasara, the pursuit of cuteness was something girls naturally aimed for. Iroha was at an
age where it was normal for her to develop more mature interests, so she might have started thinking along those lines. I shared these thoughts with Ozu.
This was all speculation, but there was one solid contradiction that I couldn’t leave unspoken. “The cutest version of Iroha is the one that’s all-out annoying. My plan is to show her that this new superficial persona of hers can’t even stand up to me dressed as a girl.”
“And that’s why you’re going for Queen Nevermore.”
“Perfectly logical, right? Not to mention highly rational.”
“For you and your messed up thinking, yeah.”
Ozu didn’t hold any punches. To be fair, even I had a faint sense that I was going off the rails. But if you just ignored how bad it sounded, then my plan wasn’t actually all that bad. Surely. “I guess it’s fine, though. Sure, it’s weird, but as long as it’s entertaining, I don’t have any objections. I was worried you and Iroha had seriously fallen out with each other, but if you’re still at a stage that you can come up with something so dumb, I’m actually reassured.”
“We’re both a hundred percent serious.”
“I know. You two are serious, but from a third-party perspective, this all looks kinda chill.” “Yeah!” Sumire chimed in. “Whoever wins, no one dies, and it doesn’t sound like anyone’s getting any dreams crushed either. Serious feuds are best when no one loses much, and everyone’s happy at the end! You should totally go for it!”
“Work.”
“Okay.”
I mulled over Ozu’s and Sumire’s thoughts. They’d been worried about Iroha’s strange behavior too. Our relationships and communication with Iroha had an effect on the Alliance members, even when you took out the part where she was our secret voice actor. That was why my entry into the Queen Nevermore contest, frivolous as it might have sounded, was important for the entire Alliance.
“Can I point out something weird? How come you’re so confident about winning Queen Nevermore, when you said you had no chance going for King? It almost sounds like you have no clue how to get any girls, but you know how to attract the interests of men.”
“Have you forgotten, Ozu? I’m Koyagi’s producer.”
“Yeah, I know. What’s that got to do with it?”
A lot. It was a mobile game so popular it had over one—no, now it was two—million downloads. We had some female users, but around eighty percent of them were young men. My point was this: “Of course I know how to attract the interests of men. I am one.”
“Y’know, that’s actually pretty convincing.”
“I’m not just gonna dress up as a girl and call it a day. I already know what I need to do to win.” “Will you guys stop using so many buzzwords behind me?! It’s getting me super curious! I wanna join in on this conversation so bad!”
“Just shut up and face— Oh, you were facing forward. Impressive.”
“Whatever you might think, I’m a woman who knows how to follow orders!”
“Then, could you follow your deadlines too, please?”
“You gotta break a few deadlines to break your enemies!”
“No, being behind on those deadlines is gonna make your enemies break you.”
Even when spouting nonsense, Sumire was glued to her PC and scribbling on her tablet. I was glad she could keep focused even with everything that was going on around her. Maybe it was just because I was here cracking the whip, though.
But I was getting off track.
“Anyway, so leading the Koyagi project’s taught me how to win over the hearts of men. All I need to do next is fix up my appearance, and then I might actually be able to win. Sounds way easier than becoming handsome so I can appeal to women—because I have no clue how to do that.”
“You got a plan for fixing up your appearance?”
“Kinda. I know someone who’s all about creating ‘cute.’”
“Of course you do. You and your mysterious connections, huh?”
“It’s a producer’s job to make as many connections as possible, just in case we need them at some point.”
“Yup!” Ozu looked up at the ceiling. “You know, if you enter Queen Nevermore and win, and I win King Nevermore, we’ll have the dance at the closing party together.”
“Oh yeah. I didn’t think of that.”
A noisy clattering filled the room. It wasn’t me or Ozu, so there was only one possible culprit. Sure
enough, when I turned to look, I saw that Murasaki Shikibu-sensei had completely fallen off her chair and was now sitting on the floor.
She pointed at me as though I was the killer in a horror movie about to finish her off, her lips trembling as she spoke. “A-A-Aki! Wh-What did you guys just say?!”
“You need to be more careful with your chair; it was expensive. Do I have to remind you I bought it with the Alliance’s budget?”
“I don’t care about that!”
“You should.”
“If what you guys were talking about is true, then Ozuma-kun will be the prince, and you’ll be the princess, Aki, and—”
“If you wanna get technical about it, sure.”
“Wh-Which means... Which means...!” Sumire curled up and began to tremble like a ninja trying to hold out against an evil spirit that had possessed them. She was like a battery steadily being recharged. And then her magic energy burst forth, and she was throwing a fist up to the ceiling. The unleashed magic exploded brilliantly, and then she was yelling from the very depths of her belly, the depths of her soul.
“Legit OzuAkiiiiiiiiiiii!”
“What?”
“This has gotta be a gift from the gods themselves! The audience has been waiting for this for so long! It’s literally a godlike ship and yet up till now they’ve been way too stubborn and have done nothing! But finally! Romeo and Romeo are taking to the evening dance floor and bringing their bodies together of their own free will! Just man and man with no woman in sight! It’s paradise! Aaah! Oh, crap, my nose is bleeding...”
Sumire (need I remind you, a twenty-five-year-old), was rolling around on the floor without a care for her hair or clothes, and deliberately wiping away the “blood” from under her nose. Actually, when I looked, there was a patch of smeared blood where she’d wiped it. I guess her nose really was bleeding. I didn’t realize that was actually a thing. I mean, I had expected her to react like this, but maybe not quite to this extent.
There was that phrase, “to go above and beyond,” and it applied equally to creative types. In this case, I couldn’t say I approved.
“I’m pretty sure you’re gonna end up disappointed. I’m transforming myself into a beautiful girl. It won’t look like yaoi at all.”
“So?! Yaoi isn’t about how it looks! Yaoi is about the soul! Even if one side looks like a girl, the truth is that both sides of the ship are connected, and that’s beautiful!”
“I see. Sorry, I’m not exactly clued up on this stuff.”
The passion in her speech caught me off guard, and I ended up apologizing. She hadn’t even given me the chance to tell her to get back to work. Fujoshi sure were terrifying when they started talking about their ships.
“Anyway, it looks like you’re pretty confident you can make the transformation,” Ozu said. “Wait, this person you’re asking to help out. Is it your mom?”
“Oh, no. Not her.”
I remembered then that I’d spoken to Ozu about my parents before. I didn’t really talk about my family to anyone, not even Iroha, but there had been a point in junior high school where I ended up having to tell Ozu. My mom was seriously amazing at makeup, with women’s fashion being her specialty. Her skills were so impressive that she could claim to be Arsène Lupin’s assistant, and nobody would doubt her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in Japan right now.
“Nah, I was thinking of someone else.”
“Who?”
“You met her too, over the summer vacation.”
That life-form of unknown age. A walking vat of charisma whose character was so strong, she imprinted herself on your brain the second she appeared. She was a famous witch of the publishing world, claiming to be forever seventeen.
“Kiraboshi Canary. Makigai Namako-sensei and Mashiro’s editor.”
***
“Yes... Murasaki Shikibu-sensei’s done a nice job on this. Just a few final touches and it’ll be incredible. It might even be better than her illustration of Kokuryuuin Kugetsu, and that was already fantastic.”
I appraised the freshly sent image file like it was a fine wine. I knew doing the whole wine-critic thing was outrageously cringe, but I was by myself in my own room, so I hope you can let it slide. It was already 7 a.m. We’d ended up monitoring—I mean, encouraging—Sumire’s work until four in the morning. Once she was done, I came home and slept for three hours, then woke up and re-checked the file she’d sent.
The commemorative two million downloads image was a fun, lighthearted piece, and it almost didn’t match the horror game it featured. Characters who had died in-game were flashing peace signs to celebrate the Alliance’s success, which made me feel oddly guilty.
Sorry you had to die, guys. Any complaints can be mailed to Makigai Namako-sensei. He’s the one who makes this stuff happen.
It was around a year since the game was first released. Our short history as a development team felt much longer than that, and these successive generations of characters all grouped together in one drawing felt like a representation of our accumulated hard work.
I knew it was dumb to get so worked up over a number that represented nothing more than a checkpoint on our way to Honeyplace Works, but being reminded of how all our hard work had come together to form this game just warmed my heart.
We were going to be okay. We were going to keep moving forward.
We’ll keep on going, taking it one step at a time. Right, Iroha?
I checked my Tweeter timeline. The “Superstar Editor Kiraboshi Canary” account had just put up a tweet five seconds ago: “Just taking it easy at home today doing some typesetting, chirp!” I tapped her number into my phone.
There was a simple business card on the table in front of me. It bore the contact details for someone with a completely ordinary name: “Hoshino Kana.” It was one of the most average business cards you’d ever see, representing employees of the publishing label, UZA Bunko.
This card wasn’t for Kiraboshi Canary’s idol persona. It was for her as a regular adult, given to me in case I ever needed her help, and as a sign of her trust. Truth was, I really needed some nepotism in my life.
“Aki-kun? Didn’t take you long to snap, chirp. You coming to work for me now?” Hoshino Kana—okay, I’m just going to call her Canary so that I don’t have to keep differentiating between personas in my head —picked up the phone. It sounded like she was working from home today.
“Sorry to disturb you. That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Aw, well, my hopes and dreams just took a nosedive. But don’t worry! If my cute little kouhai’s got his feathers in a bunch, I’m on call twenty-four hours a day, chirp!”
“Thanks. That’s reassuring to hear.”
“It’s all good, chirp! Now what can I do for you?”
“Well...” Her voice was sweet and childlike, but with an adult open-mindedness. I was grateful for her kindness, and intended to make the most of it. So I held no punches and told her exactly what I wanted. “Can you turn me into a girl?”
“That’s a heck of a thing to ask right off the bat!”
Canary was so shocked, she even forgot to chirp. I thought characters like her only dropped the act when they were in super serious situations.
“What’s wrong, Aki?! I didn’t think you were like that!”
“I’m not looking for surgery or anything. I just need to be a girl for the day of the culture festival.” “You wanna be a chick for one day only?! We don’t have that kind of technology, chirp! You’ve been watching too many dirty videos.”
“You can’t do it?”
“Of course not, chirp! I may be more majestic than any phoenix, but even I can’t cast magic!” “Magic? Is it really that difficult just to make me look like a girl?”
“‘Look like’? Ah... Oh, oh. Right.”
It sounded like we were finally on the same wavelength.
“The truth is...”
I felt bad for wasting an adult’s precious time because I was unclear, so I launched into a proper explanation to make sure there were no further misunderstandings. I needed to keep Iroha’s identity a secret, but I managed to pull it off and tell Canary that I wanted to take part in the Queen Nevermore contest.
When I was done, Canary sighed. “I thought I told you it was fine to enjoy your youth with Iroha-chan, but you’re still looking at things from the perspective of a producer. I guess the definition of youth is different from person to person. This is yours, huh?”
“Yeah. I guess it is.”
“Your life really is just one can of worms after another, huh? But I guess that’s what makes you so interesting!” I could imagine the cheeky smile on her face just from her tone of voice. Her teasing made me feel a little awkward, so I brushed it off with a quick cough before continuing. “Your skills embody the very essence of beauty, Canary-san. You can turn me into a beautiful girl, right?” “Hmm. Well...I do know a few people in my flock. But I wonder...”
“You want to add some conditions for me meeting them?”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that. I just know so many people, I’m wondering who the best choice would be.” She wagged a finger at me by clicking her tongue over the phone. Okay, that sounds weird, but you know what I mean, right?
I don’t want to get into linguistics here, so anyway, her confidence in this matter was highly reassuring. After a little more silence, I heard her fingers typing away at a keyboard. “Oh, that’s right, Aki-kun. You said you went to the same school as Maki—Mashiro-chan, right? Kouzai High School?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Gotchu. Turns out I’ve got the perfect feathered friend there already.”
“What, at my school?”
“She’s a member of my online paid community. My students there really know their stuff about beauty, chirp.”
“Students? Is this a different community from your fan club?”
“We study the publishing trade there, and I run it under my real name. My nom de plume is only for my idol stuff, chirp.”
“I had no idea. I really need to learn more about you. And you say there’s a student at my school involved? I didn’t know the people at my school cared about the internet so much.” “There are about ten thousand members, so it’s not all that surprising, chirp.”
“Ten thousand?! Without even using your idol name... You just keep on impressing me.” “It’s not that big a deal. It’s mainly for rearing the next generation and scouting for new talent. The idol business is what I’m really about, chirp! And don’t I look adorable doing it!” Canary-san played it down, but ten thousand members was impressive no matter which way you sliced it. “I’ll introduce you two then. Are you free after school today, chirp?”
“I am! I didn’t expect you to be able to organize something so quickly.”
“The early bird gets the worm, especially when it comes to getting your ducks in a row and talking turkey!”
“Wow. You really know what you’re doing.”
She rattled off idioms with such confidence and rhythm that I had no choice but to get swept away. At the same time, she was so persuasive that I barely minded.
“I’ll send you the time and place over LIME and book us a table at the cutest café ever, chirp!” Between Tsukinomori-san and Canary-san, first-rate businessmen sure were quick at arranging stuff. I didn’t think Canary-san would put so much thought and effort into something that must’ve sounded dumb to her, but I was glad she had. It just went to show that she really was looking out for me. I needed to make sure I wouldn’t fall short of her expectations.
I was even more determined now.
I will become the most beautiful girl in the school! Beautiful enough to claim victory over Kohinata Iroha!
***
“I feel like your motivation is taking you to some really strange places.”
“Maybe, but what can I do about it? When you work your brain as fast as I am right now, sometimes it’s bound to launch you off track.”
“You mean the end comes...beyond chaos?”
“Wait, I’ve seen those words in a game somewhere.”
“I’ve been playing through the older Grand Fantasy games since the 7 remake came out.” “You’re easily influenced, huh?”