Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ Fleeting Inspiration ❯ The Daily Box ( Chapter 2 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Anna Sartin 
Anime/Manga: Gravitation Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 10.07.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 1.6K | Visits: 1.0K | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gravitation Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Drama / Comedy | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 10.07.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 1.6K | Visits: 1.0K | Status: Work In Progress
Fleeting Inspiration
by Anna Sartin
. . .
Chapter Two: The Daily Box
.
A sudden idea hit Eiri the next day. Maybe that accursed book had been written by a different Mamoru Eto. Mamoru wasn't an uncommon Japanese name, and there were hundreds of Etos listed in the public directory. Maybe some idiot with Mamoru Eto's name was trying to use the original's fame to sell his own putrid drivel. He needed to get on his computer and do a search...
"Yuki!!!" Shuichi burst through the front door, grinning like an idiot. In his hands he held a cardboard box, on which he had used a marker to write "The Daily Box" on the sides.
"What the hell is that?" Eiri asked his pink-haired fool of a lover.
"It's a box."
"I can see that, moron. What's it for?"
"It's for Yuki!" he smiled proudly. "To help with your writer's block!"
"And just how is a box going to solve my problem?" the writer inquired.
"Well, creative people are supposed to "think outside the box", right? So I borrowed one from the Mesopotamian lady for you to use."
"The Meso-what?"
"You know, the religion. Where they worship that guy who got nailed to a cross."
"You mean Christian."
"That's right. She let me have one of the boxes from her restaurant, The Daily Bread."
Shuichi turned the box to a different side, where "The Daily Bread" had originally been handwritten in English. Shuichi had crossed out the word "Bread" and written "Box" underneath it.
Eiri twitched. "Did you get this from the homeless woman on 4th street?"
Shuichi blinked. "Homeless woman?"
"Long light-colored hair, foreign, wearing several layers of clothes?"
"Hey, that's her! But she's not homeless, Yuki. She owns her own restaurant!"
"Sitting boxes in an alley and pretending they're tables does not constitute "owning a restaurant". She's a nutcase. She tried to give me a cookbook with half the pages missing last week claiming it was a bible."
Shuichi was crestfallen.
"And," Eiri continued, "if I'm supposed to be thinking outside the box then what the hell do I need a damn box for?"
"Um... To put your inspiration in after you find it?"
Eiri took the box out of Shuichi's hands and put it over the singer's head, before heading off to his study muttering "Idiots to the left of me, morons to the right..."
. . .
Mamoru Eto was born in 1944 in Hokkaido, Japan. He moved to Tokyo after graduating high school, where he attended Tokyo University and married his long-time fiance Keiko Otohime. Eto-sensei published his first two novels "The Age of Lost Innocence" and "Chiba's Throne" shortly thereafter. The couple had two sons before Keiko Eto died from complications in childbirth. Eto-sensei is described as a devoted father and grandfather. To this day his novels continue to intrigue us with...
Eiri didn't need to know this shit. He needed to find a complete list of the author's published works. If "Four Gay Elves" wasn't listed on Mamoru Eto's official website, then it would prove that it was the work of some other demented psycho who shared his name. There was nothing about it on the main page and the "About the Author" section had just proven useless as well, so he tried clicking on "What's New".
And wished he hasn't.
There, in all its glory, was the cover of the book he loathed, staring him in the face. Eiri growled and banged his fist on the desk.
"Yuki, what's the matter?" Shuichi asked from the doorway. "Trying to write again?"
"No. Go away."
Shuichi ignored the order and walked in, going over to see what was causing his lover to abuse the furniture. He looked at the screen. "Why are you..."
"Don't ask." Eiri scrolled down, passing a series of glowing reviews about Eto's new novel. Had the whole world gone insane?! At the very end of the page was a link that said "Email the Author!" Eiri curled his lips up in a demented-looking smile. Somebody needed to tell this man the truth, and it might as well be him. He clicked on the link.
. . .
"Yuki, please don't do this!" Shuichi begged the next day, pulling on Eiri's arm as the author tried to get out the front door. "You'll get yourself arrested!"
It had taken Eiri a lot of work to locate Mamoru Eto's address, and now that he had it he was determined to put it to good use. He would confront the author and demand an explanation for why the world had been infected with the disease otherwise known as "Four Gay Elves". As a fellow author and avid reader of the man's work Eiri felt he had every right to tell the man off. Shuichi didn't agree, and had been pleading with him for the last half hour not to do anything rash.
Yesterday he'd sent a long email criticizing the author's work, and the webmaster of the Eto's site had sent a short but equally rude email back. He should have figured that Mamoru Eto didn't manage his own website. The Eiri Yuki Official Homepage had been created by his publisher and he'd only visited it once or twice.
After a bit of a struggle he made it out the door, and from there the Great Author Eiri Yuki could not be stopped. He had something to say and he was damn well going to say it. It had turned out that his fellow author didn't live far at all; his apartment was on 4th street. As Eiri stepped out of his car he noticed a familiar figure standing in front of an alley trying to invite the passing crowd into "The Daily Bread". Eiri groaned. He was so not in the mood for this shit today. He tried to blend in with a small group of pedestrians, not looking in her direction as he passed by. However...
"You!"
...she knew him on sight.
"You're the one who threw my bible in the trash! Satanist!"
Eiri took off running, hoping to outrun the lunatic. But as all people know religious fanatics are nothing if not persistent, and the blonde author found himself running faster than he had in years as the "owner of The Daily Bread" chased him up and down the street, waving a "restaurant table" over her head.
"You sully the word of God Himself! Antichrist! The wrath of God is upon you!!!"
. . .
"I told you you would get arrested!" Shuichi scolded him a few hours later, as they left the police station together.
"Shut up, brat."
"You should be grateful to me for bailing you out!"
"I said shut up."
Shuichi sighed. "What happened, Yuki?" he asked, as they got into Eiri's car.
It was Eiri's turn to sigh. After summoning the police to help him with the religious nutcase, he'd finally found Mamoru Eto's apartment. From there he'd proceeded to hound the elderly author for his stupidity until HE called the police, and Eiri found himself in a holding cell with the same woman who was being charged with disorderly conduct for trying to assault him with a box. It just wasn't his day.
"I went to see Eto."
"I know that. What happened?"
"I told him his book was a piece of shit." Among other things.
"And?"
"He told me I was a piece of shit for tracking him down just to start trouble, and that if he wanted to write a book for his granddaughter it was none of my damn business."
"And?"
"And... we got into a fight."
"A fight? You got into a fight with a guy over sixty?!" Shuichi asked, appalled.
"...Yes."
"That was really stupid."
"No shit."
Bad luck continued to haunt Eiri after he reached the sanctuary of his apartment. He tripped over "The Daily Box" and found himself face-to-face with the book he'd been avoiding for days. He opened the book to the dedication, which read:
"To my granddaughter Lola."
Eiri wondered how old Eto's granddaughter was. The humor in "Four Gay Elves" was certainly stupid enough to be considered on a child's level, but grandparents didn't write stories about gay elves for their young grandchildren. They just didn't. Perhaps Lola Eto had written the book herself and published it under her grandfather's name. Now I'm really grasping at straws.
He grabbed "The Daily Box" and set it upside down over the open book, blocking the abomination from his sight. There. At least Shuichi's stupidity was good for something.
.
~End chapter two~
by Anna Sartin
. . .
Chapter Two: The Daily Box
.
A sudden idea hit Eiri the next day. Maybe that accursed book had been written by a different Mamoru Eto. Mamoru wasn't an uncommon Japanese name, and there were hundreds of Etos listed in the public directory. Maybe some idiot with Mamoru Eto's name was trying to use the original's fame to sell his own putrid drivel. He needed to get on his computer and do a search...
"Yuki!!!" Shuichi burst through the front door, grinning like an idiot. In his hands he held a cardboard box, on which he had used a marker to write "The Daily Box" on the sides.
"What the hell is that?" Eiri asked his pink-haired fool of a lover.
"It's a box."
"I can see that, moron. What's it for?"
"It's for Yuki!" he smiled proudly. "To help with your writer's block!"
"And just how is a box going to solve my problem?" the writer inquired.
"Well, creative people are supposed to "think outside the box", right? So I borrowed one from the Mesopotamian lady for you to use."
"The Meso-what?"
"You know, the religion. Where they worship that guy who got nailed to a cross."
"You mean Christian."
"That's right. She let me have one of the boxes from her restaurant, The Daily Bread."
Shuichi turned the box to a different side, where "The Daily Bread" had originally been handwritten in English. Shuichi had crossed out the word "Bread" and written "Box" underneath it.
Eiri twitched. "Did you get this from the homeless woman on 4th street?"
Shuichi blinked. "Homeless woman?"
"Long light-colored hair, foreign, wearing several layers of clothes?"
"Hey, that's her! But she's not homeless, Yuki. She owns her own restaurant!"
"Sitting boxes in an alley and pretending they're tables does not constitute "owning a restaurant". She's a nutcase. She tried to give me a cookbook with half the pages missing last week claiming it was a bible."
Shuichi was crestfallen.
"And," Eiri continued, "if I'm supposed to be thinking outside the box then what the hell do I need a damn box for?"
"Um... To put your inspiration in after you find it?"
Eiri took the box out of Shuichi's hands and put it over the singer's head, before heading off to his study muttering "Idiots to the left of me, morons to the right..."
. . .
Mamoru Eto was born in 1944 in Hokkaido, Japan. He moved to Tokyo after graduating high school, where he attended Tokyo University and married his long-time fiance Keiko Otohime. Eto-sensei published his first two novels "The Age of Lost Innocence" and "Chiba's Throne" shortly thereafter. The couple had two sons before Keiko Eto died from complications in childbirth. Eto-sensei is described as a devoted father and grandfather. To this day his novels continue to intrigue us with...
Eiri didn't need to know this shit. He needed to find a complete list of the author's published works. If "Four Gay Elves" wasn't listed on Mamoru Eto's official website, then it would prove that it was the work of some other demented psycho who shared his name. There was nothing about it on the main page and the "About the Author" section had just proven useless as well, so he tried clicking on "What's New".
And wished he hasn't.
There, in all its glory, was the cover of the book he loathed, staring him in the face. Eiri growled and banged his fist on the desk.
"Yuki, what's the matter?" Shuichi asked from the doorway. "Trying to write again?"
"No. Go away."
Shuichi ignored the order and walked in, going over to see what was causing his lover to abuse the furniture. He looked at the screen. "Why are you..."
"Don't ask." Eiri scrolled down, passing a series of glowing reviews about Eto's new novel. Had the whole world gone insane?! At the very end of the page was a link that said "Email the Author!" Eiri curled his lips up in a demented-looking smile. Somebody needed to tell this man the truth, and it might as well be him. He clicked on the link.
. . .
"Yuki, please don't do this!" Shuichi begged the next day, pulling on Eiri's arm as the author tried to get out the front door. "You'll get yourself arrested!"
It had taken Eiri a lot of work to locate Mamoru Eto's address, and now that he had it he was determined to put it to good use. He would confront the author and demand an explanation for why the world had been infected with the disease otherwise known as "Four Gay Elves". As a fellow author and avid reader of the man's work Eiri felt he had every right to tell the man off. Shuichi didn't agree, and had been pleading with him for the last half hour not to do anything rash.
Yesterday he'd sent a long email criticizing the author's work, and the webmaster of the Eto's site had sent a short but equally rude email back. He should have figured that Mamoru Eto didn't manage his own website. The Eiri Yuki Official Homepage had been created by his publisher and he'd only visited it once or twice.
After a bit of a struggle he made it out the door, and from there the Great Author Eiri Yuki could not be stopped. He had something to say and he was damn well going to say it. It had turned out that his fellow author didn't live far at all; his apartment was on 4th street. As Eiri stepped out of his car he noticed a familiar figure standing in front of an alley trying to invite the passing crowd into "The Daily Bread". Eiri groaned. He was so not in the mood for this shit today. He tried to blend in with a small group of pedestrians, not looking in her direction as he passed by. However...
"You!"
...she knew him on sight.
"You're the one who threw my bible in the trash! Satanist!"
Eiri took off running, hoping to outrun the lunatic. But as all people know religious fanatics are nothing if not persistent, and the blonde author found himself running faster than he had in years as the "owner of The Daily Bread" chased him up and down the street, waving a "restaurant table" over her head.
"You sully the word of God Himself! Antichrist! The wrath of God is upon you!!!"
. . .
"I told you you would get arrested!" Shuichi scolded him a few hours later, as they left the police station together.
"Shut up, brat."
"You should be grateful to me for bailing you out!"
"I said shut up."
Shuichi sighed. "What happened, Yuki?" he asked, as they got into Eiri's car.
It was Eiri's turn to sigh. After summoning the police to help him with the religious nutcase, he'd finally found Mamoru Eto's apartment. From there he'd proceeded to hound the elderly author for his stupidity until HE called the police, and Eiri found himself in a holding cell with the same woman who was being charged with disorderly conduct for trying to assault him with a box. It just wasn't his day.
"I went to see Eto."
"I know that. What happened?"
"I told him his book was a piece of shit." Among other things.
"And?"
"He told me I was a piece of shit for tracking him down just to start trouble, and that if he wanted to write a book for his granddaughter it was none of my damn business."
"And?"
"And... we got into a fight."
"A fight? You got into a fight with a guy over sixty?!" Shuichi asked, appalled.
"...Yes."
"That was really stupid."
"No shit."
Bad luck continued to haunt Eiri after he reached the sanctuary of his apartment. He tripped over "The Daily Box" and found himself face-to-face with the book he'd been avoiding for days. He opened the book to the dedication, which read:
"To my granddaughter Lola."
Eiri wondered how old Eto's granddaughter was. The humor in "Four Gay Elves" was certainly stupid enough to be considered on a child's level, but grandparents didn't write stories about gay elves for their young grandchildren. They just didn't. Perhaps Lola Eto had written the book herself and published it under her grandfather's name. Now I'm really grasping at straws.
He grabbed "The Daily Box" and set it upside down over the open book, blocking the abomination from his sight. There. At least Shuichi's stupidity was good for something.
.
~End chapter two~