Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Happy Endings, And Other Lies ❯ Happy Endings: 14 ( Chapter 14 )

Sales order on Yukino’s website lead to fun with titanium purchasing and delivery. It’s a very common element, and the primary ingredient in white paint. It’s just hard to get as metal. Like aluminum, it oxidizes aggressively under the right circumstances and costs electricity to turn back into metal, and most of the metal gets used by the aerospace industry. Having contacts through her father this actually helped with the supply issue.

We got the materials delivered to Matsuri, who then worked carefully to create high quality jewelry combined with lab gems. They were not cheap. They were expensive to produce, which only seemed to encourage the buyers, most of them probably Diet members emulating Mrs Yukinoshita, who likewise went with a dark blue sapphire. My own mother was jealous seeing this until I told her what they cost. She just seethed after that. I distracted her with talk about publishing, Chiba gossip, and various things she cared about. I think Mom misses me.

Sleeping with Yukino in the boarding house was oddly fun. I mean beyond the obvious stuff. Meals with the others is nice, and she gets to cook again, something she had been missing after moving back home after all the surgical drama with me. She has lots of skill at woman’s arts. She knits, sews, does every kind of handicraft and picks up the details quickly. Almost genius level learning speed. Trading off with the others on chores has made them more able to cope with being people, even Shinoaki, who was a terrible cook when she started. I gave her the Yui lecture and Yukino tutored her, ears red, as they worked.

The kansai access Aki would drop into at times was adorable. Kyouya was making an effort to encourage her and both myself and Yukino had sat for portraits and allowed photographs to be taken to enable Shinoaki to apply her particular genius into character design. We were going to escort her to meet several of our classmates in Chiba in a week. She was very amused to learn that Vita-T Sportsu Drinku was one of the characters in our story.

“So that really dumb guy with the hair band is now the super popular male model pushing sports drinks?” asked Aki. Nana was likewise flummoxed. They’d both read my first six volumes. “That’s Tobe? The idiot?”

“That’s him. After I pushed him to confess he changed a lot and Fight Club really made him understand what it means to be a man.”

“You and that movie. I swear you corrupted a generation,” complained Yukino.

“Don’t blame me. Blame Ebina. She’s the one who broke his heart.”

“And she runs the website that hates you,” retorted Yukino.

“Notice the banner ads?” I teased. I swung my laptop around, activating the wifi and a browser window and then clicked the site.

“You… You. Did you do this?” asked Yukino, aghast. Nana looked and started laughing herself. Aki was also staring.

“I may have called in a favor or two. All banner ads on the site pull Vita T or Oregairu or both. My sales went up 8% after this.”

“I am almost proud of you,” remarked Yukino.

“It was Haruno’s suggestion,” I admitted.

“I withdraw my pride and place it in Haruno,” retracted Yukino. “You blackhearted playboy, you.”

“See? This is why I keep secrets. I’m writing you out of the ending of my novels,” I promised, shaking my fist at her as she called up Haruno to taunt her voicemail.

“So this is what being married is like?” commented Nana to Aki. “So do you think you’ll be like that with Kyouya?” Aki considered the bantering between me and Yukino.

“Probably. I mean I had to come from somewhere, and my parents probably do this when I’m not around and my siblings are at school,” Aki said.

“So when is he going to ask you?” Nana asked Shinoaki.

“Once we make some money. He’s not happy with the sales for our game. He wants something to be proud of that makes money.”

“The Christians say ‘for better or worse, richer or poorer’,” commented Nanako.

“He wants to prove himself. I think Hachiman convinced him,” she complained, glaring at me.

Well, I can’t just let that go.

“If you get the character re-designs done and approved by the series art director, you will have a name for yourself and potential income. This anime could be big. It might even be popular. Lots of contacts. And I still think you should go a fine arts book. Maybe some poster sales. That sunflower girl picture you’re always working on is great for that. Maybe on the cover. The print media production track has equipment for that. Split the profits with them and have them handle sales order from a website you create.”

“I can help with that,” admitted Yukino, having experience now with the jewelry.

“Platinum Generation,” muttered Kyouya again. He’s said that a few times now. Some kind of idea he has.

“Maybe help Kyouya learn that. If you’re going to marry Aki, manage her site and order system. You’re good at that. Let me have some time with my wife,” I countered. He blinked at that, considering.

“I… I could do that. I know how to do that,” he said with more certainty. I have no idea what his background was other than being local to Nara prefecture, but his high school must have been half-technical school because he knows so many things like he’s done them before. At times he feels like he is almost 30. If I didn’t know that the Red-headed little sister of Kano-sensei was tsundering at him when he wasn’t looking, and Nana was pining in his direction from misplaced gratitude and sexual frustration I’d point him at Shizuka. He’s old enough inside to meet her standards.

Hundreds of kilometers away, at an izakaya near Soubu, Shizuka sneezed over her ramen. “Damn Hachiman.”

“So do you want to do my character designs or what?” I asked my housemate. She’s still adorable, and not in a little sister way.

“Yes, I do. How do we handle this?” she asked.

“First, you get an artist’s agent. Next I give them the contact info for the design director, who insures the looks over the course of the story. And I need to have you coordinate with the character designer for the redesign. It is early enough they might be able to start adding details to characters in the story that’s already been animated.”

And thus it was I stirred up a hornet’s nest. The trip to Chiba had been fun, and she’d meet a bunch of the people the characters were based upon. The Shizuka poster, in lab coat while smoking at her desk, was a big seller. She’d met Kawasaki, who looked blank and broken hearted at me and Yukino together. I never wanted that. Choice have consequences. Aki saw the looks between us and observed with her artist’s eye. At least she’d be captured properly. Zaimokuza was a fun one. His personality has mellowed and he finally admitted to using me in his novel. It was only fair. I’d put him in my story too. He agreed to wearing the silly trenchcoat and twirling and the laugh he used to do. Shinoaki ate it up. He’s make a good comedy moment. After he took it off and sat at a desk over a paper tablet, writing she captured him again, weary and determined. It was closer to the man he had become since high school.

By introducing an unknown breakout artist to revamp the character designs, five different studios had to redo some of the work with the designs, or add closeup details in certain scenes, which the director cleverly used a false-zoom filter effect to achieve. It looked… good, honestly. A lot more visually interesting than the original footage had been. Before it was a good anime with somewhat standard visuals and a school background. Now it was interesting, with moments of sharp clarity, like youth getting moments of focus on the beauty of the world. Well, that was what I was writing in my reviews of it anyway.

It was months of work, interspersed with classwork projects, Nana posting finished tracks to WeTube, including her first original song, and the growing business of selling posters of the sunflower girl and strawhats from her home town, things were moving. We were also getting a percentage. Jewelry sales had tapered, though that would probably increase around Christmas and Valentines. The school threw a Halloween party, which was nice even if it was a foreign thing. It was sort of like Obon, with candy and without the lanterns in the water. Apparently, Obon is remarkably similar to the Mexican version called Day of the Dead, which happens the day AFTER Halloween. And it’s native American rather than imported European. The world is really weird.

I kept writing the next books, including the second season novels, with the imaginary confrontation between Hayama and my heart-breaker Orimoto Kaori. I eventually got the Christmas festival sequence, with more drama about standing up for yourself and I did that because I changed the bit with Iroha, making her win the student council president election, thus breaking Yukino’s heart and setting up drama for later. The Christmas event eventually goes like it does in real life, though I made little Rumi a lot less terrifying and sassy.

I actually sent her a text about it, apologizing for not treating her character seriously enough and making her sympathetic rather than admit what a terror she actually is. She sent me a terminator meme and coupon for coffee. I think this is her way of saying “don’t fall asleep”. She’s 15 now, and starting college. She skipped most of middle school, and tested out of high school. Absolutely terrifying.

I messaged Haruno that her protégé was hunting her and forwarded the Terminator image.

Thanks for the coffee, she responded. Damn it. I forwarded the coupon too, didn’t I? I let it go.