The attendant, and also owner, of the Story Store was reading a book. It was a calm day today. As she turned the page, the bell chimed, indicating a customer had arrived. She put her book down and looked at him. She was used to quite a lot, so she didn't think this one was particularly weird.

He was dressed in a red shirt with rolled up sleeves and jeans. On his wrist was a simple watch. In this regard, he didn't look much different than their usual customers, however, this guy had a long beard and mustache that had once been black, but had since faded to grey. His hair, strangely, hadn't faded and was still dark black. A nervous half-smile played around his lips permanently.

He looked at the lady behind the desk. For a moment, he was intimidated by her stunning beauty. She was tall, with long curly blonde hair and glasses. The glasses had an anti-reflective coating so they didn't obscure her clear blue eyes. She was dressed in tight fitting business-like clothing. She had taken off her black blazer to combat the heat. The white button-up shirt she wore underneath was opened just enough to keep him staring, but also closed up enough to stay professional.

The man swallowed his fear and walked to the counter "Good morning," he said, politely. He was still quite nervous.

"Good morning, sir," she said. "I'm afraid I don't recognize you."

"Obviously," he said, now relaxing a bit. "I'm from TNK."

TNK? She had never heard that name before. With a few clicks, she brought up the list of companies. It was ordered according to popularity. She typed 'TNK' and the program automatically started scrolling down, and down, and down, until finally: TNK. She clicked on it.

"So," she said, hesitantly. "Your greatest achievement, so far, is...'Papa to Kiss in the Dark'?"

"Indeed," he confirmed, quite proud of himself.

Every story, no matter in what form, was created right here. But she had never approved of this monstrosity. Well, approved was not the right term. They sold stories, they didn't judge them. Yet she wondered which of her assistants had actually written this without notifying her.

"So, this OVA-series is about a guy who…" she cleared her throat. "Has a relationship with his own father."

"Oh, don't worry. He's adopted."

"How reassuring." She did her best to hide the sarcasm. "Wait, you made two episodes? What were you thinking?"

"Sorry if we are a bit too ambitious for you," he said, dryly. "Technically you made them by the way."

"Uhum, I apologize, sir. What brings you here?" She quickly changed the subject.

"I would like to adapt this into an anime," the man said, producing a visual novel.

The case showed a bunch of girls who stood in the radiating sunlight on a staircase. White letters on a blue background formed two words.

Oh no. She felt memories flooding back. That thing had been a nightmare to create.

"You think they will let me?" He pondered, rubbing his beard.

"Oh, don't worry about that," she assured him. "They won't turn down a lucrative opportunity like that." She took a deep breath. "An OVA-series then? About two episodes."

"What, no, I want twelve episodes, on TV."

"No one is gonna broadcast this," she insisted.

"We'll subtly cut out all the sex scenes, don't worry." He seemed determined to actually go through with this.

"Well, I'm not the one who has to approve it," she said, implying it wasn't her problem if he blew his entire budget on this. "What storyline would you like to go with?"

"All of them."

"Excuse me?" She almost choked on his words.

"You heard me. We'll include a bit of everything."

"You mean, Makoto fucks, everyone? Simultaneously?" Even in the visual novel that was never an option. Although there was one particular ending...

"Yeah, obviously."

She almost didn't want to ask the next question, but she had no choice. "And the ending? One of the bad ones I guess?"

"Even worse. I want multiple people to die. And more horrible of course, maybe a decapitation."

"Of course." What had she expected? "And the animation style?"

"Static, like the visual novel. We don't have much budget after all. Oh, and quite silly."

"Wait, what? Why would you do that?"

"Because this is a super serious psychological story about breaking up, bonding fear, insecurities, you know."

"Yeah, so…"

"So we should deliver it as silly as possible, just to mess with our viewers. And then, once they are in, we'll drop these super obvious hints that things will go wrong, but they won't notice because they are completely caught up in the standard tropes of the genre and the way love stories usually go, so they will just assume this is a normal story. And then, *bam*," he clapped his hands together. "We'll completely shatter that expectation. In fact, maybe we could actually physically shatter the logo. That would be so cool."

Oh dear. She could already see hell breaking loose if anyone ever broadcasted this. "I hope you are aware that 99% of your audience will hate you after this?"

"I only care about the other 1%."

That was certainly a funny business model.

But then again, this guy did want to adapt that visual novel.

Of all the crazy customers that had walked in here…

"Oh, and I have another idea," he said.

"Go ahead."

"We'll put a love manual in there. A completely useless one."

"I assume this is a metaphor?"

"Obviously. The cultural norms of dating put pressure on young people. Even if you don't like going to the movies, society will push you to go anyway because it's a date. It's crazy, right?"

"No one's gonna notice that obscure metaphor. You're adapting a visual novel, what kind of audience do you expect? This isn't Shakespeare."

He shrugged. "We'll see."

She seriously doubted anyone would watch this.

"Oh," he added. "and change the tagline in the first episode. I want a solid hint to what will happen later on."

"No one's gonna read that," she insisted. "It's not even proper English. Have you seen this grammar? 'In the school, the three guys met. Their relation had been changed in the season, and turned into three love stories'." It made her cringe to even read it.

"You get the point," he said, shrugging. "Oh, I want something else as well. A reference to the ghost story of Yotsuya."

"No one knows about that."

"Japanese people will know it."

She sighed deeply as she typed away on the keyboard. "Could you stop putting obscure references in your anime?"

"You people are no fun."

"I think we're almost done," she said as she looked at her screen, pondering. "There's isn't much room left."

"Could you squeeze in a scene where Sekai plays with Kotonoha's boobs?"

"I assume this is a metaphor as well?"

"Just a little yuri reference. We should give the fanfic authors something to work with, right?"

"Right," she repeated slowly. "Shall I put in a scene with inflatable boobs as well?"

"That's an amazing idea actually."

She really had to keep those things to herself.

"Well, we're done I think," she said.

"But, I have some fun ideas for an OVA as well."

"Yeah well, come back to me with that after your series sells."

"Just you wait," he said. "I'll have enough to buy my own boat after this."

"I hope it's a nice boat then," she said.

"Oh it will be," he guaranteed her before leaving.

Well, she thought. At least he didn't ask me for a pointless tsundere.

He turned around in the doorway. "Just one more thing."

I walked right into that one, didn't I?