"I'M YOUR FAN!"
Stella instantly clapped her hands over her mouth in utter mortification at that rather loud (and somewhat inaccurate) sentence.
Shitfuckcrapwhy did I say that, I wanted to say that I wanted to go on a date with you...
She hadn't noticed that while she was having an internal meltdown about this mistake, Jesse Oswalt-Taber, who was 18 but looked like they still belonged in the eighth grade, had made a soft sound and was writing something down.
"Here you are!"
Stella blinked down at the paper with a very messy autograph on it and a name written in the top right corner. It looked as if ink had gotten splattered everywhere all over the paper in the process.
Stella Alberts, 17. Upon confessing to her crush, she received an autograph.
Eh?! That's not... well, I guess I did say that I was their fan...
She looked back up from the paper. "That's not- I mean- I, I, I always want to be with you, is... what... I meant..."
Jesse's brow furrowed, their dark hair flopping slightly over their shoulder as they tilted their head to consider this statement. "Always be with me...?"
ABORT ABORT ABORT I DIDN'T MEAN TO SAY THAT EITHER I SHOULD'VE JUST SAID I LIKE THEM LIKE A NORMAL PERSON! I don't really know what to do with someone this small and- and- and naive-
"Then do you want to come to my house?" Jesse asked, interrupting Stella's second internal meltdown over her flubbing up what she was trying to say in the past ten minutes.
"Your house!"
"Ah, it's lucky you came, I really couldn't find anyone," Jesse hummed happily as they walked through the door of the apartment. Stella almost stopped and let the door smack her in the face (it was a heavy door), but happened to nip through in the nick of time.
You bring girls to your house all the time?! ... jeez, you're less naive than I thought...
Stella frowned, drumming her fingers on her arm as she thought about this for a minute. She hadn't actually thought that much before agreeing to follow Jesse to their apartment. (It was a nice apartment, actually, surprisingly tidy and a little cutesy.)
She supposed it would be better to go home, if they were going to move this fast...
But then again, if she left, they'd just bring another girl home.
She didn't want that.
Well then!
"Je-Jesse, I'll- I'll do my best!"
"Okay, then fill in between the lines." Jesse had sat down at a table and started drawing something, but they now handed her a paper with what looked like a horror manga's panels, except with no color. There were Xs drawn in certain sections.
"Color in the areas with an X... oh, and use black ink."
"...?"
"Stella, you missed a spot here..." Jesse paused, looking at the page Stella had just filled in. After a moment, they gave a pleased sort of smile and hum.
"Oh! You're really good at this."
Stella didn't reply, dipping the brush into some more ink and continuing to fill in the spots with the Xs dutifully.
Jesse came back into the living room with two cups of coffee. One cup had a little horrifyingly cutesy character on it that looked a lot like one of the characters on the page Jesse had passed to her (and that somehow was familiar to Stella even beyond that, but she wasn't really thinking about that right now).
"Stella, we should probably take a break now..."
Stella paused to take the cup so that Jesse didn't spill it, took a sip, set it off to the side, and continued filling in the spots with the Xs.
"WAIT, JESSE, YOU'RE A MANGA ARTIST?!"
Jesse paused at the gate, blinking at a rather startled Stella in perplexed bemusement. "Eh...? You didn't know before you did beta for four hours straight?"
"Beta... like, like manga beta? Like coloring in spots with black?" Stella stammered out, looking more confused with every passing moment.
"Well, yes... you just did it for four hours straight," was Jesse's rather baffled reply. They were looking increasingly adorable and bemused with every passing second. "You really didn't know?"
"No!"
"Oh." Jesse considered this for a moment, tilting their head slightly again and crowding out Stella's confusion with thoughts of they're so cute as they did so. "Well, it's being serialized in a monthly magazine right now. You can feel free to check it out, if you want!"
Stella blinked several times at Jesse, trying to get this new fact about Jesse squared away without completely losing her crap. "Oh... uh, thank- thanks. That's- that's very- very nice of you."
"Why? I'm just saying you can check out my manga." Jesse gave Stella a rather cheerful grin, before lifting their hand in a friendly wave. "Uh, I'd better get to bed. We've got school tomorrow. Night!"
"Oh... oh, yes. Um. Good night." Stella clutched the strap of her bag and waved to Jesse with a stupid smile before they disappeared into the apartment. The moment they did, she hummed and started walking back home, still trying to equate Jesse and manga artist in her head.
After a while, she realized she was still smiling stupidly and cleared her throat, wiping it off her face and replacing it with a calm, almost stately behavior. "Well. Jesse... Jesse is much cooler than I expected. I don't read much manga... it tends to trend along the horror genre when I do, though..."
Her cheeks flushed at this admission, and she rifled through her bag and pulled out the paper with the autograph, along with the magazine with the manga she'd been reading lately emblazoned across the front cover.
(She was so proud. She'd followed this manga for a really long time. It deserved the attention it got; the horrific drawings were graphic without just being pages of gore, the suspense could really keep your attention, and yet it wasn't just straight-up horror- there were moments where you got attached to the protagonists, and it was stupidly funny at points.
Actually, it was more of a humor-horror-romance-family fusion.
She loved it with her heart and soul.)
"Well, I might check out Jesse's manga anyway..." She checked the autograph; amusingly it was under a pen name. She supposed that made sense; otherwise everyone at school would've known. "Let's see, their pen name is... Casey... Walters..."
Wait-
Her eyes snapped to the magazine with the horror manga on the title. The author's name was in the upper right hand corner, so she saw it easily.
Casey Walters.
Stella probably would've stopped right then and there, except that would've meant she'd stopped in the middle of a very deserted road, so she didn't.
"What?!"
Casey Walters.
Despite being absolutely unknown at first, they'd shot onto one of the most popular manga magazines in the area because their storylines and artwork were appreciated by both boys and girls- boys enjoyed the somewhat dark, edgy humor and gritty imagery, while girls loved the often adorable-looking characters and the sweet, more intimate moments with family and romantic interests.
Their characters were also extremely realistic; but what they were really known for was their dark, suspenseful mysteries and settings and ability to make a strange circumstance seem totally normal.
"Hey guys!"
"Jesse, don't be so excited, it's eight in the morning..."
"But it's so nice out today! Look! There's a bird there!"
Olivia groaned from where her head was on her desk. "Look, that's nice, Jess, but I wanna get two minutes of sleep before the bell rings."
Stella stared dubiously at Jesse for several moments.
Casey Walters was able to make terror jump out of the page with just a few words, and didn't rely on graphic gore or imagery to scare people. It was simplistic, but eerie and suspenseful all at once.
"Ah! Axel! Quit picking me up!"
Jesse flailed around in Axel's grip with a nervous giggle. "You're gonna drop meeee!"
"Nah, you're light. I can hold you like you were a five year old."
"Axel!"
"Axel, quit teasing Jesse, they're too little to hold their ground."
"I'm older than both of you!"
Stella stared even more dubiously at Jesse.
Because it was just so weird to think of Jesse as a manga artist who drew horror of all things, she went up. "Hey, Mx. Walters, I like your stuff."
"Eh! That's so weird being called that at school," Jesse chuckled as they walked through the hallway with Stella. "Just call me Jesse, please and thank you."
"Oh. No one else knows? Not even Axel and Olivia?" Stella asked, tilting her head at Jesse.
Jesse hummed, considering this. "No, I don't think Axel and Olivia know either... actually, I think you're one of the only ones."
Stella's head snapped around to look at Jesse, eyes the size of saucers. "R... really?"
Could it be that I'm special?!
"I mean, it's not like anyone would believe me even if I told 'em," Jesse said musingly, unknowingly breaking that hope to pieces. "I mean, I guess Axel and Liv would, but I wanna see if they can figure it out. Ooh, maybe that could be a part of the story..."
Stella gave a slightly defeated laugh and rubbed her arm. She supposed it was silly to assume that in the first place.
"Oh! By the way, Stella, thanks a lot for yesterday. I hope I didn't cause any troubles for you with the Art Club."
Stella almost came to a stop in her tracks at that. "Wait, you- you know my club activities?" she asked, her bewilderment very evident in her voice.
"Oh, yeah. I've been keeping an eye on you for a while, actually," Jesse said mildly.
"Wait- really?!"
Jesse bobbed their head in a nod. "Yeah. When you draw posters, you really almost never color outside the lines, but it's filled as completely as you can, so I figured you'd do good beta work!"
"Ahhh, you were eyeing my artwork..." Stella gave another defeated laugh, trying to quell her rapidly rising and falling hopes. At this rate, she'd break out. "Er, I'm glad you liked it, I guess."
"It's really nice! You always just color really well," Jesse replied happily.
Stella nodded, considering this, before tilting her head at Jesse. "Hey, Jess, why did you want to draw a horror manga? I would've pinned you for a kid's manga or something."
"Oh, well... I thought it was interesting. Also, the artwork can be really fun to do," Jesse said cheerfully.
Stella hummed, pressing her lips together. Sure, that was a pretty good reply, but the horror manga was a nice break from the horrific nature of a lot of other ones- there was humor, and romance, and lots of cute fluff. Still, at that rate, Jesse could probably write a good shoujo manga, not horror...
"Ah, well, I guess I don't have much experience with creepy experiences..." Stella murmured musingly, continuing down the hallway.
"Why's that an obstacle? I haven't even gone into a haunted house before!"
Then why on earth did you want to draw a horror manga?!
"Well, I guess I do have a lot more experience drawing shoujo... I kinda wanted to try something new. I haven't ever dated before, though, I just usually give a lot of random advice to people, so it's kinda the same with the horror manga," Jesse hummed as they worked on a panel that looked as though it featured some kind of smokey demon.
After a few minutes, they looked up, as if something had occurred to them. "Do you have anyone you like?"
"Me... oh." Stella looked down at the panel she was doing the beta for with a small frown. She'd gone back to Jesse's apartment that very day to draw.
Or, more accurately, do more beta.
"Well... uh, yes. At first, I just really liked them because they were really cute, and they were very kind to everyone they met...
"I confessed, but they didn't really know... still, now I talk to them more, and I think that's a rather nice change of pace," she chuckled, adding some more black ink to the panel. "I think they don't really think of me as a friend, though- just someone who can do work for them."
Jesse blinked, looking rather perplexed at this dreamy confession from Stella.
"What's so good about a person like that?"
Stella, had she been an anime character, would have instantly sweatdropped.
Sometimes I wonder the same thing...
Stella frowned as she walked through the hallway, scuffing her feet along the floor. "Is it really okay to keep going like this... I haven't confessed. At this point, I think I just turned into an assistant... right, then!"
She sped up, walking down the hallway briskly and throwing the door open to where Jesse was in the classroom by themselves.
Time to confess!
Again.
"Jesse!"
Jesse jumped slightly, almost knocking a few papers off the desk and onto the floor. "Oh! Hey, Stella, what's-"
"I- I- I- um- that is to say- ah- I'M YOUR FAN!"
Jesse gave a slightly amused sigh, taking a blank piece of paper and beginning to sign another autograph. "Okay, okay. I know by now, you know."
A/N: Welcome to Gekkan Hora Jesse-san, where Stella is a Pan Disaster, Jesse is oblivious, and shenanigans happen. Oh, and Jesse's pen name is actually a very famous horror manga writer.
Yes, I know I haven't updated October Children in a while, but I needed to write something happy, so here you go we have absolute nonsense scrawled on a screen.
*pst if you read Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun or watch the anime we can be bffs it's really good*
Well, that's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye!
x.X. A.L. X.x