Shigure was writing another of his many romance novels. It was so satisfying to write something so bad, only for it to be loved and praised by all. It was fun to laugh and cringe and lazily write away without ever having to worry about the quality, and to subtly reuse the same plots and characters without anybody really noticing. And then he never had to keep to his deadlines, because that was his editor's problem, not his own... Oh, the bliss of never working hard!
But there was one thing he didn't like about carelessly penning away in his office chair while his wife was pacing in a corner, and that was the part about his wife pacing in the corner. Akito didn't like his stories. He knew she secretly read them anyway and sometimes even enjoyed certain scenes, but he also knew her disgust at his mushy sexualized romance, cheap plot clichés, and one-dimensional characters. And he could feel her disgust as she bent over behind him, peering over his shoulder at what he was writing.
"What pleasure," muttered Akito, "do you take out of writing the same ugly story with the same stupid characters over and over again? I would be sick..."
Normally, he would've replied with one of the teasing comments that he kept in the front pocket of his brain, but realizing he was actually writing the same story he wrote a couple weeks ago, he turned around to dear Akito and asked:
"What kind of story would you like me to write?"
She blinked. She hadn't expected him to ask that question. Shigure laughed gently and held her skinny fingers in his palm, waiting for whatever she was going to reply.
She marched to the window as if she felt defeated, but then she turned around and said:
"Something unexpected. Let's surprise Mitsuru. And put a dead rat or a dead cat or a dead little girl in it somewhere: I just can't resist."
They brainstormed for a while. It was getting dark outside and there were lanterns in some of the windows outside, giving the neighborhood a sort of eerie glow, and the magic of that glow put a wicked smile onto his face. He knew exactly what kind of story he wanted to write, and he sat in the light of the rising moon and let the inspiration flow.
Mitsuru was nervous. That devil Shigure was supposed to deliver a new manuscript to her today, and she knew from experience that he would never ever ever possibly hand it in today, and then she would have to come bother him, and then he would bother her, and he was so cruel to her, and she couldn't bear it! What words could she use to persuade him to write faster? How could she express her authority and defend herself against such a man?
But then she noticed a strange thing. There, in her mailbox, sat a package of papers! It was a manuscript: a novella, right there before her! She had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. She cradled it in her arms, almost afraid to touch it, as if it could shatter her dreams and wake her up.
When finally, she gently tore open the paper, she saw a sketch of a girl quite like herself, only with much longer hair, surrounded by two male figures, with many rose vines and a starlit sky all around them. The one looked like the typical dominant male in many cliché love stories: muscular, proud, somewhat threatening, and looking at her as if she were his possession. The other was slim and looked more effeminate, but also darker in some way. A werewolf and a vampire, perhaps? Though the "werewolf" characters didn't usually wear such princely clothing and the "vampires" weren't usually laughing like that... Curious, she looked up to the title which read "The Roses of Dreams", and flipped the page.