Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Happy Endings, And Other Lies ❯ Happy Endings: 15 ( Chapter 15 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Chapter Fifteen

 

The day my anime was broadcast I was tense. Yukino applied wife skills to calm me down and physical exercise and a hot bath helped a lot. We ate dinner and waited for the broadcast, as a house, watching on the large flatscreen TV in the largest room of the dorm. It was a national broadcast in prime time slot so up to 70 million people could be watching this.

It was good. It was really good. The essay which begins the story and the day I met Yukino gave me shivers. The bits of artistic detail from Shinoaki’s influence, and coordination with the art director to give an extra second to those moments as my hero curses youth, staring into all the beauty, and then to his poisonous gaze, it was poetry. The episode was epic, reaching for what I was after, on the level of Makoto Shinkai, only not so many deaths.

Reactions when it finished began flooding the web. I also checked into SecondRule.jp which was the site dedicated to the Fight Club fans in Japan, something I’d started with Tobe and Totsuka a couple years ago as a joke but it sort of just grew. It had mods running it, banners linking to Namaton.co.jp selling the movie on BluRay and DVD, links to the book and author profile and Not A Perfect Snowflake teeshirts and stickers, which had been turning up all over Chiba. I had talked to my contact with public works there into leaving them up. Removing them would just get them replaced by another one. I’d also sent him a copy of the movie and all complaints stopped then. What? I’m not the Yakuza. Stop looking at me that way. What public works employee wouldn’t idolize that movie: We empty your garbage. We serve your meals. Don’t f__k with us.

I got bulk rates on the movies and sales were brisk. We even hired the guy doing posters packaging for Shinoaki to handle the movie sales. He was working full time. I dropped a banner ad for Shinoaki’s site after the anime aired, and a promotion blurb the week before. The forum began to fill with comments. Some were negative, others aggressively positive about the brutality of the Fincher-style direction. I liked the comparison because I was going for that. They really liked the Youth Is A Lie essay.

I got a message from Shizuka later that evening. I can’t believe you kept that damned essay.

Love you too, Sensei, I replied. I laughed.

Yukino snuggled me in the post coital night.

 

+++++++

 

The next few days were filled with study of the many fan messages, blog posts by reviewers, forums following my series, responses from the book fans to the anime, new fans commenting on the anime without knowledge of the books, book sales figures, anime pre-orders even though this was only the pilot so far.

Reaction to both Yukinoshita and Yuigahama varied between fanservice to idol worship. They managed to get a good capture of Yui’s longing gaze and the contempt and dismay in Yukino’s gaze. It was already being memed as the disgust meme with infinite captions along those lines.

“You are famous, Yukino,” I said noting the memes popping up.

“There’s a smash game meme using your car crash images… I feel kind of nauseous over that one.”

“Seriously?” I asked. She showed me. “That’s… weird. The internet is very weird. Oh, it’s Ebina. That’s why. I didn’t know she could program.”

“She probably has help online.”

“What about Yui?”

“There’s AMVs with her. More all the time.”

“I just got an email from Tobe. He wants to sponsor the show,” I announced. “I hope he doesn’t try to replace Max Coffee with Vita-T. We’re friends now, but there are limits.”

“Hey this AMV is pretty good. Should I forward it to Yui?” asked Yukino.

“Sure, go ahead.”

Shinoaki finished eating her breakfast, looking back and forth between us.

“Is it that big a deal?” she asked.

“Anime and books become more popular the more popular they are. There’s a lot of free advertising if its managed well at the opening stages.” I helped with a lot of guerilla marketing with the Fight Club followers, and more stuff.

Shinoaki was pretty amazed by the business side of things. She’d mostly focused on her art, and working with the art director to get it to this point.

I noticed that Yui still hadn’t responded. I emailed Totsuka, and it was some hours before he responded: She’s crying again.

I sighed.

We spent the next two days developing leads and sales across the Japanese internet, and funneling some of that to sponsors, including Vita-T now, and ShinoAki who found her sales had rapidly jumped. Kyouya was actually helping with shipping while the production guy helped train an assistant to make posters with him. They kept selling out.

Originally I’d written the section with Zaimokuza as pure comedy, but in light of him making his book about me being a black hearted playboy, I opted to treat him more seriously and added some details and meanings regarding him joining the Literature club, and their affect on him in a more mature way, how having peers and someone to belong with changes you. The focus moments did well there and the following week that episode aired. This is also the one which revealed my character’s chuuni past. More memes arose since the pose got ShinoAki treatment and a Fincher-freeze as we were calling it in the studio communications. The Visual K fans ate it up. And popularity increased, along with sales. I also spotted a lot of “Not A Perfect Snowflake” teeshirts appearing on social media. As those were made in sweatshops in Tokyo, we weren’t impacted much here, other than increasing income. Totsuka was spotted escorting Yui, wearing one of them himself, and he’d gotten muscled over the last year and a half. ShinoAki had been forced to compare him to his yearbook photos from the tennis club to redo his body to resemble the pretty boy he had been before.

The Totsuka episode also included both Hayama and Miura, whom were busy at their law school driving each other crazy. Miura was, not ironically, dating a friend Hayama had made at the college and he said it was a huge relief. Ebina’s appearance had to be from various photos, which Miura had available. Ebina was even more angry with me for subverting her clique into infamy on the national stage. Or at least, that’s what she said on her blog. After the Totsuka episode aired, she was totally spastic with fujoshi declarations and memes began flooding their site, which lead to more book sales, and more Vita-T also.

“Tobe has been interviewed.” We pressed play on WeTube and listened.

“Is it true you actually are appearing in the anime?” an interviewer asked him after a promotion for VitaT wrapped up with a dance number and singing, something he’d gotten into. People loved him.

“Eh, well, sort of yeah. I mean Hachiman is just this guy, ya know?” he began. Then he grinned and said nothing more. I noticed his teeshirt was “Not A Perfect Snowflake”.

“Zaphod Beeblebrox?” I asked out loud. “No, it was the Zaphod’s shrink who said that. Still, I’m impressed. He must know where his towel is.” And Tobe waved his towel and wiped his face, ending the interview.

“Maybe that Vita-T is good for more than people think?” I said out loud, pondering. Tobe knows the Guide. Wow.

There was more messaging and supportive comments from friends, colleagues, and even detractors admitting they liked the adaptation and its artistic moments. The repulsive brutality of the narrator went against all Japanese public values being put on prime time. This was code for: “it is a massive hit everybody agrees with”. The studio agreed to continue with the style and to phase in better and sharper imagery from the character redesigns by Aki. She was busy, but also very happy at the work.

“So what did you think about Honey and Clover?” I asked Kyouya one day. He looked at me sideways.

“Its poignant. It made me cry. Are you telling me I should drop ShinoAki and let her live with her cousin?”

“No. But did you get the point about how hard it is to be around people with amazing ability and not being able to match it, and how it can drive you mad with despair?” I asked him. He grunted, nodding.

“That’s you. You can be life support for her, just make sure she has reason to keep drawing at the level she finds joy in her work. If the joy ever goes away, she may stop drawing entirely, and just fade away. She’ll be a good mother to your kids, and a good wife to you, but she’ll be broken inside if she can’t draw. I don’t think you want that.”

“Its good that its so easy for her to find inspiration. Keep turning her best drawing into posters, and get them printed, promoted, and sold. It will keep a roof over your heads. And you should probably propose.” He looked up sharply at that, his morose look now confused.

“I thought. Well, I mean. She’s the big wage earner isn’t she?”

“Yes, and your business is mainly turning her art into mass produced sales items. Try expanding into girls teeshirts. The hats are selling well.”

“Platinum Generation,” he mumbled.

“You keep saying that. What does it mean?” I asked him. He looked up sharply, caught.

“Its just, I noticed there’s a lot of talent here together at this school. Nana’s music career is just starting and you’ve contracted her to sing the intro song next season, and the special. Shinoaki is getting super popular for her character redesigns and you’re promoting her work through the show’s website. Your books are beyond popular and the anime is super popular, moreso than it would have been if you were just ignoring its production. You got involved and made it better. And you’re the secret leader of the Japanese Fight Club association.”

“Oi, what’s the First Rule of Fight Club?” I demanded.

“You don’t talk about Fight Club,” he responded automatically.

“And what’s the Second Rule about Fight Club?” I asked him. 

“You don’t talk about Fight Club,” he responded. I grinned.

“Now you just need the shirt.”

 

Later, Nana returned from singing practice, working on her voice and her lyrics for a new song I’d contracted for the anime. I wanted a special song for the big moment where Hachiman confronts the useless idiot girl who did nothing for the school festival and went off to cry. It’s a huge moment in the series and is punctuated by the confrontation with Hayato: “I hate the way you do things.” A bitter moment the fans will love until second season. Always leave them wanting more. It was coming, but the other episodes would come before then.

The Fincher moments were still being added, along with all the ShinoAki character detail, youth captured as moments. The Totsuka episode had several on the tennis court, his determined serve, and Miura with her just as determined serve, though I never reveal WHY she was so insistent to take over the courts and bully away Totsuka. In the real world my not being there broke his heart and made him stronger once he saw Fight Club. In the anime I rescue him by cheating my serve with the changeable winds, pushing the loner skills angle as well as chuuni. There were already memes from that scene.

Miura’s tender moment under Hayato is a good selling poster, and a meme. And a teeshirt. Unfortunately Totsuka’s gratitude scene got the director all Yaoi for a moment and Ebina had to be hospitalized from blood loss, apparently. According to her roommate and Miura. I didn’t write it that way, but the director was really enthusiastic and I had to just let him go with it.

“I think we probably could have done that one better, but it’s still pretty amazing with all the detail. I’m going to message Totsuka.” I contacted him on Lines. He responded right away.

Wow, so nostalgic and yet totally not what happened at all. How much of this story is just fiction? he wrote me.

A fair bit. I was in the hospital while many of these events happened. It was pretty much the day after I helped Yui make cookies that I got hurt and was in the hospital for the next three months. So until the Confession with Tobe, which I also wrote differently. Did you read the books? I asked him on Lines.

Sorry, no. I’ve been busy with work and Yui. She’s a big fan though. Sometimes it is hard for her though. The cookie episode was wrong, she said. What changed? He asked.

Several things. I actually taught her to bake cookies in the real world. In the book that’s all Yukino and I insist that terrible cookies are fine because boys will love any gift from a girl. It fits his character better than the reality, I told him.

That figures. She’s been baking since that first ep came out. Now I know why. I am blaming you for the damage you are doing to my diet, you know, Totsuka complained.

Did you see Tobe’s interview?

With the towel and the shirt? Yes. I gave him Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, he admitted.

And so it comes full circle. Give my best to Yui. I signed off.

Every week there was another episode, another flurry of comments, and more interest and sales for the books and posters. ShinoAki was building a nest egg, more money than she could spend. And she was smart enough to not spend it stupidly and just save for a rainy day, or retirement, whichever came first.

It was enough, at least, for Kyouya to man up and ask her to marry him. She accepted, and I got to visit her home town of Itoshima up on the west coast of Fukuoka. The Akishima family was large, with lots of kids and some older siblings too. Maybe being a Middle Child made her try harder. I don’t know. I also got to meet his family, who were pleased at their son’s determination and reasonable success, not realizing his oversexed college girlfriend was actually a growing celebrity.

And then they met me. I mean, I still have the eyes. And the glare. I’m still the black hearted playboy, a meme that just won’t die. I’ll grant Ebina that much credit. She planted that weed and it flourishes with my fame. They were taken aback, and then they met Yukino and I slipped on my sunglasses and everybody seemed to breathe easier. Man. My sister is going to laugh!

The ceremony was Akatsuka Christian, so it was over in about fifteen minutes, and then we went to a reception party at her family home, all thirty of us. In a few years, many people are going to turn up when she goes places. She’s going to be big. Like Nana and her music. This Platinum Generation thing that Kyouya keeps going on about. He may be onto something. The intimidation problem went away as the elders drank and eventually some started talking to me.

“So you got Aki her first job?” asked her mother.

“Sort of. She’s got real skill, and there’s demand for her work. The anime is as popular as it is because of what she brought to it, and all the people who found a way to make that work. I think people like my writing too.”

“How come you’re so cynical? You’re only what, 20 years old?” asked Kyouya’s father.

“I had some medical problems in high school. I pretty much gloss over that and ignored it in the books, but it was a big deal. I almost died. Recovery matured me.” Yukino was chatting with Aki’s sisters. Their eventual husbands are going to be exhausted. They looked like smaller versions.

“The essay read at the beginning? That’s my real essay, word for word. That actually happened. But not the punch. Same with the one about the bear. Word for word.”

“So now you’re in college with Kyouya and Shino? What’s that like?” asked a cousin. I opted not to be completely honest. They were married now.

“There’s a lot of determined students with real skill in the arts, and they’re getting better. We’re getting better. You’re already seeing it in my anime. Things are happening, and they’re amazing things,” I assured them. More fans.

The rest of the party was food, alcohol, dancing and songs, speeches.

“From the moment they first met, there was something there. We had to back out of the room and shut the door. They maintained the level of interest in each other, every night, and passionately announced to the world, or at least those within hearing range, how they felt about each other,” I spoke into the microphone. Mr. Akishima nodded in understanding. “So now they’ve gotten a growing business and national success and it was time to secure these bonds officially, so here we are today.” There was mild applause and I handed the mic over to one of the elder brothers, who stepped up to give a speech about his cute little sister.

The following day, at the wedding brunch, ShinoAki and Kyouya eventually appeared after their regular exercise, clean and happy as usual, though the other guests looked hung over and exhausted. Yukino was talking in the kitchen with Mrs. Akishima about something and Kyouya settled down while Aki finished eating and went to chat with her younger sisters and nieces.

“I have an idea for a novel,” Kyouya said.

“Oh yeah? Tell me about it. I won’t steal it.”

“So the basic premise is that I’m this sad office worker who gets into gal games company and its not going great. The company lays off the whole division, even Kawasegawa Eiko, who is our division boss.”

“That’s the tsundere red head who thinks she’s your rival? Kano-sensei’s sister?” I clarify.

“Yeah her. She’s got management skill, detail oriented and bossy. It’s a natural fit,” he explained.

“Okay, yeah I can see it. She’ll be pleased your thinking about her, less pleased where you think she’ll be. When does this take place?” I asked him.

“2022. There’s been a plague, like bad flu, and people have to wear cloth masks that do nothing to stop the plague cause viruses are tiny, but its this whole social stigma kool-aid thing. Games are popular so gaming isn’t entirely a stupid idea as a business, but there’s been problems. So the place shuts down and the guy loses his job and he goes home to Nara broke and depressed. His sister reminds him of when he got accepted to arts school and he didn’t go because he thought it was too risky.”

“So your character chose the path of mediocrity, tried to work in that industry anyway, and failed. Got it. So there’s a gimmick.”

“Yeah, the gimmick is time travel, to the day he made the decision.”

“So now he’s 30 and it’s the past?”

“Only on the inside. He’s in his young body with a decade of worldly knowledge about the business of game production and media studios. He knows it all, but he failed anyway. So this time, 10 years in the past but with memories of being 28 and a failure, he goes to art school and decides to meet the Platinum Generation he so admired and get involved in their lives as artists. As the ultimate arts tourist.”

I sipped my coffee, which was very good. Yukino had made it for me, dark sweet, filled with intentions for the day. The secret of happiness was being in the now and recognizing its unique beauty. We are not snowflakes, but there are moments like that, if you pay attention.

“So he participates and guides them and he uses his skills to fix problems which would have been blows and humiliations and he gains their respect as a guy who fixes things and gets a romance with ShinoAki, and convinces Nana to sing because she’ll be really famous in the future, and then he screws up. He makes them compromise. Not do the best work they can, for the sake of deadlines, for arbitrary reasons and practicality. He forces them into mediocrity and the summer comiket otome game they’d made sells, but its nothing special and they aren’t proud of it. Its not great art, and the group tears itself apart. The writer swears off writing, marrying his princess back up north and vanishing from the arts world. The guy wakes up in Tokyo, married to ShinoAki ten years in the future again, and the world is different, but not better. ShinoAki doesn’t draw anymore. They have a little girl together, married and comfortable in a small apartment. His job is team lead at a mediocre games company, only the boss is an obvious coke fiend filled with rage and threats and the place is coming apart and its all wrong. Its wrong. And he tries to fix it, but the fix is just to create more mediocrity and failure. The platinum generation has been erased from history by his meddling.”

“That’s tragic. Sounds like a Third Wish story. So what was the Third Wish? This isn’t the end of the story, obviously.”

“He prays to Kamisama to fix it and returns to the past, on a spring day and a dog breaks off its leash in front of him and leaps into a road in front of a bicyclist. The cyclist leaps off his bike to grab the dog and is hit be a black car. He dodges the guy and sees him crunch into a park bench down the street. There’s ambulances and sirens and he just watches it, stunned. The dog is dead, the guy is badly injured, and that was you. If I hadn’t moved, you would have bounced into me and not hit that bench. Maybe the dog wouldn’t have died. You might not have broken all those bones.”

“I never told you about all the bones. How did you know that?” I swore. Only family and close friends knew about that. He waved it off as unimportant. 

“In the original Oregairu, the story is a true memoir. All the events actually happened, but the outcomes for the people involved were different too. In the original story it was just your lower leg and a cast fixed it up and you were able to bicycle again a month later. No friends at Soubu, but no lasting pain either. The dog lived, and Yui met her hero. With injuries being minor the guilt over nearly killing you wasn’t there, just a certain amount of personal interest by Yukinoshita, who stayed in her apartment, alone. You captured the real events in your books, all the way to the end of the second season of the anime. Though the anime wasn’t as good because ShinoAki wasn’t involved. You never came to this school. You ended up working at convenience stores and sweeping warehouses, in that timeline. You only wrote part time. Oregairu was a success, but your contracts paid you little so you had to work day jobs. And in that world, you never married Yukino, or Yui, or Saki. You ended up alone, and a misanthrope. The essays were true.”

“So what changed?” I asked him.

“Me. I’m a time traveler. I am the butterfly that turned the course of the typhoon. Or at least that’s what the book will be about. Because of me being there at your accident it was worse, and it changed you in important ways so you didn’t end up a lonely misanthrope in life, married Yukino despite the book. In the original book ending you got forced by the publisher to write a happy ending, and the third season of the anime was panned as out of character where you confess to Yukino and she accepts. No mention of how that hurts Yui or Saki and no mention of Haruno. That’s how it was changed by the publisher, after three years of increasing pressures for a happy ending. But that wasn’t what you planned, was it? You planned to write it as a tragedy, where Hachiman rejects Yui, hurting her, confesses to Yukino and gets rejected for hurting Yui and thus showing you’re the kind of man who can do that to a friend and making you untrustworthy and unsuitable to the princess of ice. So you end up with no one. That’s the ending you’re going to write, isn’t it?” he said. And he was right. That’s what I have planned. It was an apology to Yui, of sorts.

“You know a lot about my stories. Even the ones I haven’t written yet,” I said, then sipped my coffee. It was lukewarm. I set it down.

“This world has changed. You’re here, you’re married, you insist on not compromising. I think the pain of your injuries made you a stronger man, matured you. You won’t tolerate mediocrity or “good enough” and you’ve pushed them harder than I could. You found answers to the money question, rather than let me make the same mistakes and push them into stupid games that aren’t good enough. You pushed me into being a better man for Aki, even at the beginning. In the last life we didn’t sleep together until much later, after a longer romance. In this one I was so used to her I didn’t hesitate and it was like she knew too. We’d been married 10 years, in a future only I remembered. And that changed things in ways I didn’t expect.”

“Butterfly wings,” I said. The family were cleaning up the night’s mess with some garbage cans and bins to sort the recyclables and the burnable trash.

“You should write that story. It might even make a good anime. The recursive aspect will be interesting, and the references to our current success makes for a nice theme of redemption through hard work.”

“I’m on a first draft right now. I think I want to interleave bits of the alternates into the story, while still telling a semi-linear one so the mistakes become obvious to the reader.”

“You’ve learned your lesson about mediocrity. Ask me if you want help,” I offered. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I knew a lot by this point. Aki showed up and settled into Kyouya’s lap comfortably so I bid them good morning and went to find some hot coffee to refresh my cup.

It had been a nice wedding, and gave me a lot to think about. Time travel. Done this way it would work as a story. I can’t steal it though. This is Kyouya’s idea. He could use some personal success, not riding on someone’s coattails, however shapely they may be. It was probably hurting his pride a bit. His own project could regain that. I wished them well.

I wrote a bit of story on the train to Tokyo and eventually Chiba. We had more business meetings with the studio. Yukino wanted to visit her family, and taunt Haruno a bit for some sisterly revenge. I wanted to meet with Saki and try and mend some fences with a chaperone present so was planning to join my cute imouto and her intended at their family picnic. Saki deserved to be part of this decision.

Everyone I’d touched who had found their way into my books and then the anime were local celebrities. They were getting promotional work. Even Totsuka got an offer from a male model company. His efforts to distinguish himself as a Man rather than a pretty boy, meant he now had the looks to pull off clothes modelling and photoshoots. He might even get some movie rolls. I would need to meet with him and Yui too. It was going to be bittersweet.