Chapter 2: There's No Way My Chuuni Friend Can Be an Upcoming Novelist.

Part 1

"Ku ku ku, to think we would meet again at a place like this, how surprising. I've been waiting for you, Hikigaya Hachiman."

"W-What did you say?!"

He was waiting for me, and he was still surprised...? Wait, why does this seem so familiar?

As I was assaulted by a strange sense of deja vu, I moved forward to get a good look at the only other person in the room.

"Geh! Zaimokuza?!"

"Eh? 'Geh?' you said?! Our first reunion in over a decade and that is the first thing you say to me? How cruel, Hachiman!"

The memories of Zaimokuza forcing the service club to review his manuscripts resurfaced, causing me to clutch my head in agony. Those were truly hellish days, Zaimokuza had gotten carried away with the attention he was receiving from the service club, and came by with a new request every other day. Yuigahama and I had wanted to just brush him off, but Yukinoshita noticed and forced us to properly read and review ALL of his nonsense, stating that it was the duty of the service club. On hindsight, that experience was probably how I got my current job, not that I'll tell him.

"So why are you here? I have work to do. Shoo shoo. There's going to be a upcoming novelist coming here soon, don't get in the way."

"No... but... Hachiman... that novelist is me?"

It took me a few seconds to process that. Zaimokuza = WW.

"EHHH!? Wait, you're WW?! Why WW? Your name is ZY!"

"Glad you asked Hachiman! It's because repeated initials are cool! It's like in those anime, where you have CC and VV! Except each W is already two Vs repeated, so WW is twice as cool!"

I continued to stare at Zaimokuza Yoshiteru. It seems he was still an idiot. It seems he caught the meaning of my stare, as he continued.

"Eiii! As someone whose name is a natural repeated initial HH, you can never understand! Hikigaya Hachiman!"

Ugh, my head is hurting more now. There's no way my chuuni friend can be an upcoming light novel author. Yeah, now that I think about it, it was definitely a lie.

"Stop with the jokes Zaimokuza. I saw the manuscripts of WW, there are no supernatural elements anywhere. There's no way a giant chuuni like you wrote them."

Zaimokuza suddenly cringed when I said the word "chuuni".

"Ha-Hachiman... do you not remember what you did to me in our third year?"

Hm? I did something to Zaimokuza? That's impossible... I actively avoided contact with him as much as possible, so how could it be possible that I did something to him? I started racking my brain to recall the memories of high school...

Ah! I remembered. It was towards the end of the year, and even Yukinoshita was getting fed up with the endless requests from Zaimokuza. After all, rather than improving, his manuscripts kept becoming more and more incomprehensible. It seemed he was just masochistically enjoying the interactions with Yukinoshita and Yuigahama and had stopped putting any real thought into his writing.

"Isn't this enough? If you keep relying on the service club instead of learning to rely on yourself, how will you survive after we graduate? This club is here to teach you how to fish, not to give you a fish every time you ask."

"Hmph, so you say, but is this club not relying on me as well?! If not for my divine ZAIMOKUZA BARRIER OF THE EIGHT SIGNS, the evil beings of the UNDERWORLD KING OF DARKNESS would have destroyed your club before it even existed!"

Ah... Zaimokuza had gotten too carried away. I could hear the terrifying sounds of the real gates of the underworld opening. Telling Yukinoshita that she was relying on him was probably the last straw. That day Zaimokuza had his chuunibyou stamped out of him as I closed my eyes and covered my ears to avoid tainting my image of Yukinoshita.

"Wait... the one who did that to you was Yukinoshita, not me!"

Now that I looked at Zaimokuza closely, I suddenly noticed that he was not wearing his normal trench coat and finger-less gloves. He was wearing completely normal clothes. Heck his clothes were better than mine...

A non-chuunibyou Zaimokuza who is an upcoming light novel author. I suddenly felt faint. Is the sky falling? Did hell freeze over?

"Well, after that, I found that I could no longer write supernatural stories."

I see. So that's why there were no supernatural elements in this manuscript. Now that I look back, every manuscript Zaimokuza gave to the service club only had one fatal flaw: excessive use of the supernatural.

He had incredibly lengthy descriptions of the settings at the start of each story to explain each character's back story and powers, ridiculous names for abilities that made Yukinoshita cringe, and boring one-sided fights where his self-insert protagonist simply uses his superpower to wipe the floor with his enemies.

So taking out those elements led to this work huh? I still didn't like it, but it seemed surprisingly popular. In short, it was a tale about an ordinary loner who somehow managed to lead a fulfilling high school life. Too unrealistic for my tastes.

Part 2

"So, why me?"

"Come on, Hachiman! The other reviewers and editors have never given my works as much thought as you did in the service club! You are my only 'true comrade' who can give life to my children!"

Like I care. I only did that because Yukinoshita's glare was scary when I gave half-assed reviews. Moreover, 'true comrade'? I see the chuunibyou hasn't left you completely Zaimokuza. And don't call your manuscripts your children, that was creepy. I was starting to feel a bit like Frankenstein in Van Helsing, except this version of Count Dracula was really pathetic.

Then again, giving life to Zaimokuza's "children" probably would hurt as much as being repeatedly struck by lightning while tied up by metal chains, so it was best to refuse here.

"Then just go find Yukinoshita."

"No... I can't deal with Yukinoshita..."

"Why n-" Never mind. Zaimokuza was curling his body into a ball and trembling. It was that traumatic huh? In that case it was better to aim for our one non-scary club member.

"What about Yuigahama?"

"Hachiman, you and I both know she has never actually read any of my manuscripts."

Hm. That's true. Wait, you knew? Well, I guess it wasn't hard to figure out since Yuigahama always gave the same review: "You know many difficult words!"

Though to be fair, Zaimokuza's stories were so lengthy that even speed readers like me and Yukinoshita could barely read his manuscripts overnight, so there was no way Yuigahama could have done it even if she had tried.

Well, there was one more individual who was regularly in our club room... but she never treated Zaimokuza as anything other than air so that was out of the question. Plus it would be doubly annoying if Zaimokuza went looking for her, and she wasn't an official club member anyway.

"Haaa... can't be helped then. I don't even like your stories though."

"Eh? Why not!? I thought that you of all people should understand!"

"No... well... a loner having a fulfilling high school life? Isn't that too unrealistic? And more like, your protagonist doesn't even act like a true loner. Even though he complains that he has no friends all the time, he's always happily hanging out with the heroines and doing riajuu stuff."

"Muu... even if he hangs out with the heroines, they are not his friends! That's the appeal! They are heroines that cannot friend-zone you, because you are not friends!"

Was he an idiot? Girls CAN friend-zone you even if you aren't friends. Well, to be more accurate, they stranger-zoned you while claiming it is friendship. Ugh! This was opening up some of my old middle school wounds. I thought I had moved on from them, but as I continued to argue with Zaimokuza, I started having unpleasant auditory hallucinations of an icy voice going "Can't we just be friends?"