A/N: If this chapter is late and/or not up to my normal level of quality, it's just the whole car thing stressing me out. :-/ It may be a little shorter, but I really wanted to have something quality come out this week despite the crap I've had to deal with. My hard drive crashed, too, how about that? And as of posting time, I still don't know if Azumi, my beloved '00 purple Neon, will be repaired or declared a total loss. Sigh.
Top it off, I got strep and had to miss a day of work. Of course, the genius that I am keeps this story on my work PC alone... --
On a lighter note, I got the Comic Party fighting game in the mail this weekend... and Marivel can attest to how much it's hooked me. E-mail me if you want to know where I found it, and no, I will not be torrenting it out. Support the dojin software industry:-P
Mad thanks again to Cendrillo and Marivel for their beta-ing. Mad welcome also to Kei-kun; thanks for taking the time to read and leave a review!
On with the show!
2: My Own Way
January 8th
Ogikubo 21-12
Ogikubo, Tokyo
12:55 PM
Yuu stepped out of her shoes and into her slippers as she got home from the half day of school on Saturday. Not even bothering to change out of her uniform, she grabbed a curry bread and a pitcher of oolong tea from the refrigerator and headed off to her room.
"So we're focusing on something that doesn't involve too much SF, something more human," Yuu said, twirling the pen between her fingers. "Kazuki, you'll be making a really big stylistic leap on this. You sure you're up to it?"
"You bet I am. It's exactly what I need to do: I have to challenge my own skills and expand my boundaries. Otherwise, I'll never get better."
Yuu nodded. "Very good, very good. You've got the right attitude. Aya, you've done a lot of very human-scaled dojinshi in the past. Hell, it's your specialty. Did you have any thoughts on this?"
"Umm..." Aya stared at her half-eaten burger. "Well, I didn't really have anything in mind specifically... but..."
"But?" Yuu and Kazuki asked in unison.
"But Valentine's Day is coming up the Monday after the next Comic Party," Aya said. "We could work with that."
"Valentine's Day, huh..." Yuu said, pressing her lips around the end of her mechanical pencil. "Think about it... it's the perfect scenario. I get to open up to him, learn more about him... it'll be like dating, only without all the damn awkwardness."
Of course, I'd love to be on a date with him... just him and me...
Yuu leaned back on her bed as she sketched with her pad on her knees. Again, shapes turned into people, and people took on unique characteristics. A new type of school uniform here, a different crowd scene there...
But what would work? If we're all going to be working on a love story, it's got to stand out. It has to be something different. We're limited on page count... a maximum of 48 if we really want to push it, but 36 is more likely. Style-wise, we're all assisting each other, so chapters are out. Probably even the conventional plot. We can forget boy-meets-girl and all that wonderful jazz.
"Okay, let's do this," Kazuki said after several sheets of paper lay crumpled on the table, the battleground of ideas having yielded many a casualty. "Let's all think of something on our own and see what we bring to the table. We're three different people with three different sets of outlooks and experiences, so let's take our best and see what can be brought from each into one idea. We'll meet on Sunday with some basics and start from there. How's that sound?"
I know I can do something unique. Setting Kazuki aside for the moment, this is a really refreshing idea in working with these guys...
Sketch after sketch filled Yuu's book. She sipped tea, drew a few lines, took a bite of the spicy curry bread, formed an expression on a character's face, and proceeded through page after page of dewy-eyed sketches.
"Dammit, I have no clue how to write from my heart," she said to the empty apartment. "All I know about being in love is how I feel for Kazuki, dammit! And that's just me wanting to be with him!"
I want to be with him...
Yuu's mouth came open in mid-sentence as the thought echoed in her head. "I want to be with him..." she said out loud, tentatively, a little more quietly.
"Yeah... I want to be with him, I really do..." she said, hugging her knees to her chest and drumming her pencil against her bare calves. "But what do I do with that feeling?"
She picked up her sketchbook, drawing a quick outdoor scene: a tree, branches bare, with an old, Western-style building behind it.
She wrote in the air, undefined by a balloon, in a feminine kanji font:
"I want to be with him... more than anything... but what do I do with that feeling?"
Yuu looked at the lines of kanji, evaluating it for shape, placement, and form. She flipped the page, feverishly sketching again. She sketched a human profile, just a raw collection of lines and shapes, not yet wearing anything. The profile became a girl, viewed from an oblique low angle... her hair turned into short, well-groomed dark locks...
"And with all the time we've spent together, I don't know what..."
"No, no, no, that phrasing doesn't work. This can't be right," Yuu said, sighing and throwing her sketchbook closed. "I know I can do a hell of a lot more than just draw a dojinshi about this sort of thing. How can people stand to-"
Yuu froze. "Hey... I know someone just like that..."
How does Aya deal with her feelings? Are her dojinshi really a reflection of her emotions? Doesn't it bottle up, doesn't it hurt?
"Doesn't it hurt to hold back..." she wrote in a flash.
Yuu sketched again, drawing off of the flash of inspiration, taking the character she had sketched before... I think I've got it...
"So I didn't bottle them up anymore," the character thought, peering over a can of hot coffee. Her hair changed, lightening and growing a little longer, down to her neck. She leaned on her hand, propped at the elbow. "So here I am now..."
"Yeah, I think that'll work..." Yuu thought, adding more details to the café scene. A stool... she's on a stool, people-watching in the window of a café...
Later
Why am I doing this... Yuu thought as she pulled up a comfortable easy chair in the Ogikubo Pageturner Café. Throwing herself back into the red-leather chair, she threw open her sketchbook and promptly ignored the steaming cup of coffee that she had bought as a formality.
I know that something was eluding me at home, so I came out to get into the character's head, Yuu thought as she added more details to her sketches. But I don't like the way that this is going, turning into just a device for how I feel about Kazuki. This is different than any dojinshi I've done before. I want to do it RIGHT, dammit.
Yuu scratched out a less-than-promising angle on the character she was working on.
Who are you? What drives you? Where are you now? she asked of the next blank sheet of acid-free paper. Tapping her pencil against her cheek, she started a vague sketch of two characters, these being a couple...
You again. What is your name? Who do you want to be with? Do I want you to be with him, do I want you to feel the happiness that I want? What kind of story will I tell with you?
Yuu looked out the window of the café onto the bright, cold early winter day. People were wearing coats, breathing on their ungloved hands, bundling themselves close. It was the same scene every winter; people longed for the warmth that the past seasons had left behind.
Seasons change, people change. Seasons. People. Something with the seasons. Memories of spring, something having happened in the spring... something in the past, something that already happened. Reminiscence.
Yuu sketched a little more, turning the characters into two people: a boy and a girl, the girl laughing and hanging onto the boy's arm. Older teens, even college age... yeah, I'm tired of drawing school uniforms. Give them independence, intelligence... the ability to go about their lives unburdened...
With gusto, Yuu drank half the cup of coffee, now significantly cooler, in one gulp. Wincing from the bitterness (having not added any sugar) she set to sketching.
Izumi Mori. That's who you are. "Fountain of the forest." A source of beauty that's hard to find. Trying to insinuate something, Inagawa? Yuu grinned to herself. And the man you love... Hiroshi Shima. "Generous island." Man, I love Japanese names. They're so expressive.
Now, let's work on what drives you, Izumi-chan...
January 9th
Marvel Burger
Ichiguro-Minami, Tokyo
12:35 PM
"Well..." Aya said shyly, sliding her sketchbook forward. "I wanted to ask as to... well... why."
"Why?" Yuu asked.
I want to know why it is I keep being fluffy about this... why I keep thinking about Kazuki and I as a couple. What am I going to do with these feelings? Why is it such a big deal to me? Why is love so important?
To do that... in the spirit of creative self-expression and inquiry... this'll be my dojinshi. A question as to why we fall in love... to why we attract other people.
"Well... since it's going to be out for Valentine's Day... why is there such a need for love? Why do we have to have the feelings, what... what makes it special." Aya calmly took a sip of her soda.
"That's pretty deep, Aya-chan," Yuu remarked.
"But I think it works, though," Kazuki said, stealing one of Yuu's French fries and receiving a threatening look for having done so.
"How so?" Yuu asked. "You'd better have a good explanation, otherwise I won't take that fry theft so lightly."
Take them all if you want...
"Well, if we just did a standard romance dojinshi, it'd just get lost in the crowd," Kazuki reasoned. "Instead of a love story... let's explore the emotion itself, let's explore the how, the why, the when."
"That's a big change of pace for you, Kazuki," Yuu nodded. "Did you have an idea on the same lines as Aya?"
"Well, mine's a little more pedestrian than Aya's," Kazuki admitted, turning his sketchbook around and highlighting his characters. "I wanted to bring about the idea of how we express our feelings, how they get executed and brought about... I'm the 'how' to Aya's 'why.' It's a little close to your standard romance manga, but I think it'll help keep things on the human scale we're looking for. I mean, if we get too philosophical, it'll turn into an Evangelion Valentine's Day."
Yuu chuckled. "I hear you."
"So it seems we're pretty solid, then," Kazuki said, looking over Yuu's sketches. "I like how you took a different perspective in time with yours, Yuu. Having them being together in the past and coming from the viewpoint of the girl makes it kind of bittersweet."
"You think so? I was having some trouble trying to move away from parody dojinshi, so I was throwing away ideas left and right."
"Nah, it seems like you've got a pretty firm handle on this. It really feels like you're creating something heartfelt, something real."
Yuu had to hold back a blush. "Now you're just getting flowery on me, Kazuki."
This is not self-insertion. This is not self-insertion. This is not self-insertion.
They went back and forth, refining their character designs and contributing plot ideas. They were inside the Marvel Burger until the winter sun set early in the afternoon, turning concepts into sketches and scenes, drawing an interplay between the characters, experimenting with plot. The burgers and fries went cold, and the sodas went warm, and late into the night, the three dojinshi artists finally looked up and noticed that night had fallen.
"I should be getting home," Aya said, pocketing her sketchbook and standing up. "When will we meet again to work on this?"
"Well, Kazuki and I are linking our stories by family, so we should meet up individually to work that background out," Yuu said, standing up and putting on her winter coat. "Let's meet again next Saturday afternoon and get our plot down on storyboard. Can you have your characters solidly fleshed out by then, Aya?"
"Of course."
"Okay, then good luck. Let us know if we can help."
"Thank you very much," Aya said, bowing formally. Kazuki and Yuu returned her bow rather awkwardly, still always put off by her politeness. "I'll see you both next Saturday."
"You just going home?" Yuu asked Kazuki as they headed out of Marvel Burger.
"Yeah, might as well get started," Kazuki said. "You wanna get some more work done on our characters?"
YES!
"Sure, let's keep our momentum going."
"It's pretty advantageous how we ended up with our ideas," Kazuki remarked. "Your characters are young, reflecting on their past experience, and mine ended up being a widower not too long out of college. A perfect brother-sister pairing."
"Yeah, you came up with a surprisingly good concept, Kazuki. I like how he's exploring how he can act on feelings of love and affection towards someone else... it's been done, but from a linked perspective like this, we have more of an emotional connection with the readers right off the bat."
I never expected something like that from you, Kazuki. You really do surprise me every day.
They swiped their rail passes and headed up the stairs to the packed-as-always platform. As they talked character dynamics, their train pulled up, and it evoked the can-of-sardines metaphor that the Tokyo mass transit system inspired in its riders.
"Hold your breath," Yuu joked as they got on board, crammed up against so many other commuters. The chime for closing doors sounded, and as Yuu reached up to grab a strap hanging from the safety bar of the train car, Kazuki reached out to grab onto the floor-to-ceiling safety bar near the door.
Yuu felt the brush of his hand against the back of her neck, up against her hair, and she involuntarily jumped from the surprise contact.
I've always been ticklish there... I know it was accidental, but my God, that was the first time he's ever physically touched me...
"Sorry about that," Kazuki said sheepishly.
"No, it's okay, you just gave me a shock," Yuu lightly thwacked Kazuki in the face with her harisen. "Consider it evened out."
Taking an invisible deep breath, Yuu took a step back so that she was leaning up against Kazuki's arm. "The guy in front of me smells really bad," she whispered to Kazuki as an explanation.
Yeah, this feels nice. I only wish it could be intended, but for now... I'll take what I can get.
Only for now, though.
December 31st
Kobe
Yeah, this place never changes. It's the dingiest-looking shack on the outside, but the inside is pure gold. The couches date back to the early '60s, the food isn't to be touched, but the bookshelves are huge and tightly packed. They use French coffee presses, too... it just tastes better when it's unfiltered. Stronger. Yeah. It'll keep you going for hours.
Kazuki... this Valentine's Day, I want to be the one who gives you chocolate. I don't care if you get it from Mizuki, but I want to know that if I do something for you, for you alone, that comes from my heart with all my feelings attached, it'll mean something to you.
Uch. Yeah. Since when can I make chocolates from scratch? Even those kits are pointless. That's not affection. If I can't make it with my own two hands, it's like photocopying someone else's dojinshi as my own. It just won't happen.
As pathetic as it sounds, all I can do is express myself through dojinshi... just so long as I can express myself to you somehow. I know for sure Mizuki wouldn't even bring herself to express herself, period. She's too stuck-up. I mean, listen to what she's said, look at how long it took her to come around...
I can only smirk knowingly at her for so long. She's had chance after chance. She's blown them all. She comes through too little, too late as far as I'm concerned.
It's just... you couldn't be happy with her... not the happiness that you could feel with me... the same as I feel it with you...
To be continued...
