Chapter 3 : Bias.
"This is crap." Kagami said.
It had taken her almost six hours of labor to complete her tale in one sitting. She had stopped only when she hit a wall after Ritsu had finished taking the pictures of her drums and waited patiently to find a way through it since there was no way around, above, or under the block. Kagami sighed disdainfully and looked over what she had written. The word count revealed she was within the limit for the contest. This story was simply too realistic. Konata probably wouldn't like it for that reason. Kagami just couldn't fathom putting the girls in space playing for an audience on Titan, at the bottom of the ocean fighting killer mermaids, or on a search for the legendary Golden Drum Kit deep within the Amazon jungle. It didn't feel right to her and she wasn't willing to make such an extreme departure from the normal content of the show.
Kagami checked the clock at the bottom of her monitor. It was eight in the evening. Her family had been kind enough to leave her alone while she worked. Now that she was finished, she decided to print it off and show it to Tsukasa, who had been looking over a copy of Konata's story while she worked on her own entry for the contest. As Kagami was about to click the tiny icon with the printer on it, her screen went blank and the lights flickered. That woke up her up. Kagami jerked upright and slammed her knees into the desk, knocking over the computer speakers. She heard the hard drive click a little louder than it usually did and the computer went silent.
With a small squeak, she grabbed the monitor with both hands, somehow expecting in the deepest corner of her mind she would somehow be able to pull the story out through the screen. That obviously didn't work. This situation could have been avoided if she hadn't neglected to save the document. Her cry of anguish could be heard throughout the house.
"No, no, no, nooooo!" Kagami howled.
Her opinion of her story had been debatable, but now it was as precious to her as her unborn twin daughters. All that work for nothing. She definitely didn't want to have to write the same story twice from scratch. That would require a tremendous amount of exertion. What was she going to do now? Autosave. Libre Office might have discretely saved a copy for her seconds before the computer powered down. Breathing heavily, Kagami turned on the computer again and was greeted with the blue screen of death.
"Give me back my story, Windows XP!" Kagami demanded.
With a groan of frustration, Kagami booted the computer in safe mode and successfully made it to the desktop. A warning box popped up immediately. Kagami squinted and read the message it was displaying. Hard drive failure was imminent. She needed to back up all her data now and replace the hard drive at her earliest convenience, which was preferably within the next thirty minutes.
"Is the computer giving you a hard time?" her father asked.
Her nerves were sufficiently frayed and her father's unexpected concern made her jump in surprise. She spun around in the chair to face him fast enough and with a look so intense that he took a step back. Kagami nodded and went back to work while her father watched curiously. She took Inori's eight gigabyte jump drive from the top drawer of the desk and plugged it in. Libre Office took twice as long to load under the circumstances and was proud to say it had managed to save her work. Kagami almost passed out, but she knew she had to work quickly and made herself remain conscious.
The last few paragraphs were missing, but she corrected them easily.
"Is that what you were working on?" her father asked.
"Yes. I didn't lose too much. The computer said our hard drive is going to die soon. We will need to replace it. I know how to install them."
"I think it might be time to replace the whole computer. I'm tired of how slow that one is. It would be nice to have one that is faster. I've heard that it's cheaper to build your own. Do you know how to do that?" her father asked.
"We can recycle a lot of parts, but we will need a motherboard that is compatible with whatever processor you want. I don't know how to do that part, but I'm certain Konata does. She has built her last two computers and also recently made one for her cousin. Most of what I know I've actually learned from her."
"How much do you think it would cost?"
"I'm not sure. Probably somewhere between five thousand and ten thousand yen."
"Please find out for me."
"Sure. By the way, I'd like you to read something, if you have the time."
"What paper is this class for?"
Kagami finished making her edits and saved the story to Inori's jump drive.
"It's actually not for a class. Konata intends to win a contest being held by Manga Time Kirara so she can get a set of rare figurines. Her writing leaves much to be desired, so I wrote a story for us."
"I see. In other words, she made you do all the work again, didn't she?"
Her father had a point. She hadn't thought of it that way before. Was this part of a grand scheme? Even if it was, Kagami would still get paid for it if they won, so it didn't upset her very much.
"I don't know. She did seem passionate about her work." Kagami said.
"The fox is a cunning animal."
Her father didn't like Konata very much, but he respected the friendship her daughter had formed with the girl and was always polite to her when she came over to visit. However, that didn't stop him from having very strong opinions about her.
"I will take a look at your story. Put it on that fancy iPad she lent you. I'd like to try it out." he said.
"I'll have it ready in a couple of minutes." Kagami said, not bothering to correct him.
Her father nodded and left the room while she opened her E-Mail and began composing a quick letter to Konata.
Hey, I wrote something. I tried to shadow you as best I could. The summary for this story is as follows. A rift occurs in the band when Azusa leaves due to Ritsu's negligence. Ritsu puts the band behind her, but discovers that it is hard to escape her destiny. Yes, it's quite dramatic. Let me know what you think. By the way, our computer is about to die and my father would like you to build a new one. It doesn't have to be extravagant. Thanks.
She attached the document to the letter and sent it off. Kagami fetched the Kindle from her room and put the story she had written on it. When Kagami loaded it on the screen, she grinned.
"It's almost like it's a part of a real book!" she said to herself.
Writing fan fiction may have indeed been at the very bottom of the barrel when it came to utilizing creativity, but Kagami could spot no apparent flaws in the story she had just made and rescued. To be a professional author, one had to be artistic and incredibly lucky. Yet to do fan fiction, all it took was a fierce desire to preserve a fandom by any means necessary. In a way, it was noble. At the same time, it was kind of sad. Kagami was aware of what she had become even if she wasn't a super fan of K-On, but she did not care. This was her work. It was better than a stupid Swedish mystery, another novel about a vampire, or the latest release of a critically acclaimed novelist who no longer had to work very hard to produce a bestseller.
She could get addicted to this.
Kagami's words were displayed with crystal clarity on the screen, each one of them unique in their own way as they did their best to convey the scene she had imagined. Fate could only determine if she would win the contest. It would also control whether or not her story gained any reviews in the sea of yuri and senseless romantic plots that most archives willing to host documents of this type were weighed down with. She was getting ahead of herself. The contest came first. Kagami slowly descended back down to Earth as her excitement waned and her twin tails injected her with a fresh shot of tsundere power.
There was no reason to be anywhere near this confident. If she looked at it long enough, she would begin spotting areas needing improvement. Nothing was perfect. In this manner, she was not quite as egotistical as many of the other amateurs in her creed. The shine diminished as the Kindle itself realized what it was processing and gagged. Kagami already didn't like how a particular sentence read. That had been super quick. Steeling herself against the urge to gut the whole paragraph as submitting to the temptation would invite a never ending barrage of constant edits, she found her father in the living room with her mother and gave him the Kindle, eager to get the story away from her and begin gaining feedback.
By the way her father held it, she could tell he was intimidated.
"How do I turn the page?" he asked.
"This big button right here." Kagami replied, pointing at it.
Her mother stifled a laugh.
"What do I do when I'm done with it?"
"I dunno. Be finished?"
"Young lady, one day your child will hand you something you will not know how to use. I regret that I will not be there to experience it with you."
"It's just that it's not really that difficult, you know?"
"Of course. I don't have to watch the show to know what's going on, do I?"
"No, this is slice of life. Getting a passport is a major plot development."
"Sounds thrilling. Let's see what you have here." he said as he began reading with her mother leaning on his shoulder to get a view of the story as well.
Her mother and father began holding hands. Kagami grimaced and left them to their healthy relationship. Printing off the story for Tsukasa proved to be a challenge. For some reason, the printer coughed out another copy of Konata's story and some other document which had been in its queue and would not respond when Kagami jammed the cancel button in a vain attempt to conserve ink and discipline the piece of junk. It then ate the paper it was trying to use to inscribe her magnum opus upon. Twice.
After resetting the device, it spit out a calibration page. Kagami was tugging at her hair so hard in aggravation her bow came lose and robbed her of her dere dere tail, upsetting the fragile balance of her personality. The printer could sense it was five seconds away from being clubbed to death with a baseball bat and produced her story, blatantly disregarding her request to make it double sided. Kagami unplugged it and didn't feel like she had won anything. As she left the room, the needle on the hard drive finally came into direct contact with the platter and screeched to a deafening halt. The monitor went blank. It had served the Hiiragi family to the best of its ability.
Kagami repaired her broken twin tail, restoring harmony to her soul once more. Tsukasa was in her room playing Othello with Inori.
"I'm finished." Kagami announced as she set the document on Tsukasa's desk.
"Okay. I'll look at it after this." Tsukasa said.
"What did you think of Konata's story?"
Her little sister was playing black and tied with Inori.
"Can I tell you the truth?" Tsukasa asked nervously.
"That bad?"
"Well, there was this one scene. . .yeah, that bad. Don't tell Konata."
"I almost feel sorry for the paper. Did you actually manage to fix that story?" Inori said.
"No, I wrote my own."
"Good thinking. I'm sure you did a much better job." Inori said.
"I don't think Konata was trying." Tsukasa said to Inori.
"Probably not. She would have fixed the beginning if that were true and I'm not sure if Bupropion is available in our country." Inori said.
"There was a hint of greatness in there. If she would have fleshed out the witch, it would have been more interesting. Any idea can be made readable." Kagami said for Konata's benefit, who was probably sneezing like mad right about now.
"True." Tsukasa said as she gained the upper hand in the desperate fight against her eldest sister.
"Be sure to take a look at it." Kagami said as she headed for her own room.
It was getting a little late. Hopefully everyone would get a chance to read it before they went to bed. Kagami took her bath so she could pass the time. She hoped they would like it, but at the same time she expected them to point out what they didn't like. There was no reason to hold back. Then again, had she not already succeeded? The story, her story, was fine as it was. Since the only person she truly had to answer to was herself, did that not make their opinions useless? Perhaps, but appealing to a wider audience was the goal here. What a chaotic predicament.
She resisted the urge to check and see if they were done yet and retired to her room where she found herself reading I Am a Cat by Natsume SÅseki. It was definitely better than sitting across from her readers, staring at them as they navigated her vision in their own imaginations. Her father was the first to arrive.
"Pretty good. Just what I'd expect from you." he said as he placed the Kindle on her desk and sat down in the chair to her desk.
"Is that it?" Kagami asked.
"You certainly know how to build a plot. That's key." her mother said, leaning in her doorway.
"Did you both really read it at the same time?"
They nodded. That was weird. Kagami didn't think she could wait long enough for the other person to finish the page even if they were deeply in love.
"What did you like about it?"
"Personally, it makes me want to watch the show. I know it's probably nothing like what you've written, but I find it impressive that your story has kindled my interest in something I would otherwise have avoided."
That compliment really amazed her.
"I'm glad they made up at the end. It was really sweet." her mother stated.
"That's another thing. The whole story comes together. Not like Konata's, which is a jumbled mess. Furthermore, I personally was left waiting for more at the end, which is a good thing."
"Okay. What can I do to improve?"
Her mother and father looked at each other and shrugged. Kagami scoffed.
"Come on. You can tell me." Kagami urged.
"I really don't think there's anything wrong with it. I can't think of anything I would do differently. That's a good thing. You should be happy to hear this from your number one fan." her father stated.
"I know it must be hard for you since I'm your daughter, but try to find some fault in it."
"Have Matsuri take a look at it." her father suggested.
"Tadao!" her mother chided with a grin.
Matsuri would tear it apart. Kagami would prefer some praise to go along with the destruction, but Matsuri was not very modest. If by some miracle Konata accepted the story as it was, Kagami would ask Matsuri to take a look at it.
"I'll keep that in mind."
"You really worked hard on this. I think it's a very good story. I don't know if it will win the competition or not, but I'm glad you wrote it."
Kagami sighed.
"Fine, I'll take that. Thanks for reading."
Tsukasa came in shortly after her parents left and put the story beside the Kindle. Her eyes were watery.
"I think I'm going to go think about the rest of my life now. Great story, onee-chan." Tsukasa said quietly.
Kagami almost stopped her, but Tsukasa seemed greatly affected by what she had read. Besides, she did need to think about her future. Kagami wasn't always going to be there for her. She hadn't even considered the story would have caused such a reaction. Inori appeared next.
"It would be pretty interesting to see what competition this has. Well done, Kagami."
Before she could ask her for more detailed feedback, her cell phone began ringing. Konata was calling. It was time to face the music, which Kagami found rather amusing since they were talking about K-On. She closed the door to her room before answering her phone.
"What's up?" Kagami asked.
"Not much. I missed a raid tonight and it was all for you."
"I'm touched."
"I can tell. I read your story. Nice, Kagamin. Very nice. I can tell you were writing under the influence of the other authors. You want to have all of their foreign babies, don't you?"
"As if. They can probably only ask where the toilet is in our language and they're so misguided they would probably mistake a Chinese girl for a Japanese one."
"Somehow I doubt it. In any case, this story is very you. However, I feel anyone could have done it. Can you tell me what makes your story so unique?"
Kagami hadn't had time to make a proper defense for this attack, so she was stricken silent for a moment.
"Your story falls under what I like to call speculative canon. That can only happen when you're writing for a show you know is going to have a sequel. Unfortunately, once the canon has been established, your story loses its impact and its popularity. In the case of K-On, they're going to go to Budokan. That's a given. To write something where that doesn't happen is a bit counterproductive."
"Oh, and I guess you could say the same thing about those horror stories, couldn't you?" Kagami countered.
"Those are alternate universes."
"So is mine, which makes your argument weak. Continue."
She opened her closet and took a look at the Hikarizaka uniform Konata had given her since they were talking about anime. Kagami felt the material in her free hand. It looked like it would fit her perfectly, although she had never taken the time to try it on. How exactly did Konata get her measurements? Only her mother knew them. Did Konata know just by looking? That would be disturbing.
"Like I said, writing a story where they don't make it as a band is something a lot of people are going to do. There's a lot of overlap. Each story is unique, but they all sound the same, you know? It's kind of hard for me to explain."
"You would much rather I had set it in a steampunk universe."
"Now there's an idea! Hold on, let me write that one down."
Kagami could hear Konata tear open her desk and fetch a notebook.
"Nobody would expect that. If you wrote it well enough, you could have a sleeper hit or a blockbuster. I'd much rather read that than a melodrama, but that's just me. Your story reminds me of the sequence in the first season where Azusa almost quits the band. They convince her to stay. I must admit, I've always wondered what would happen if Azusa broke away from them."
"That's a bit hypocritical, Konata."
The lace ribbon Konata had entrusted her with was in the beautiful box it had been wrapped up in at the back of her closet. Kagami stood on her toes and fetched it from the back, dusting it off briefly and wandering over to her desk. She took the lid off and examined it for a bit before fetching a mirror from her drawer, putting Konata on speakerphone, and giving the ribbon a try in her hair.
"I don't think it would be very moe if that happened. In your story, all the characters act like they should, but it's missing that key feeling. I believe that will be our biggest problem with the judges, depending on who they are."
"Your story wasn't very moe either."
She did not look like Kyou Fujibayashi. Konata was just insane. She took the ribbon out of her hair and replaced it with the bows she always wore.
"Ah, but I wasn't trying very hard. To tell you the truth, I did intend to pull something like this out of you. My plan worked perfectly."
Kagami turned off the speaker phone and held the phone against her ear.
"You're lucky I might be getting paid. You owe me if we don't. By the way, are you listening to yourself? You call this criticism? I honestly expected more out of you."
"Yeah, I can't really say anything that's going to break you down like you did to me. Believe me, I wish I could. That's why I'm trying to give you a hard time here. It's not working. You've got thick skin. You'll need it. I'm not too offended, though. Even my story would have its fans."
"What makes you say that?"
"How can people like Endless Eight? How could Holo and Lawrence walk around safely after their encounter with Chloe and the members of the church? Why didn't Solid Snake shoot Liquid Snake before he jumped into the Metal Gear? The seventh episode in the first season of Strike Witches. The seventh episode in the second season of Strike Witches."
"Revolting." Kagami said, recalling the time Konata showed her what all the boys were watching.
"You will always have your fans, but you will also always have your critics."
"I guess I see your point. Shouldn't a writer be mindful that they are performing in front of an audience?"
"Yes, but who among them knows what everyone wants to read? You should try your best. That's all you can do. Despite my misgivings, it's still a decent story and I'm convinced you did better than me. I'd like for this to be our submission."
"Wait, what?"
"You heard me."
"Does that ultimately mean I should ignore your complaints?"
"Yup. I'll give you three out of five, Kagamin. Why else would I want to make it our submission?"
"Because that expansion pack for your stupid game launches this week?"
"Can't get passed you, can I? I enjoyed the mild yuri between Mio and Ritsu. I believe that will earn you points. You kept them single, which is distressing, but that will also earn you points. You'll impress realists who don't like extreme settings. The ending was touching. Everything comes together and just fits. That's important. Let's hope the judges feel the same way. I think it moves a little fast, but you are working with a word count so I can ignore that. I'm sure there are those who would vehemently despise it, but even real authors have their critics. That reminds me. Since when did you have a sense of humor?"
"I do read Sergeant Frog. I enjoy funny shows."
"Where did you learn so much about alcohol?"
"Where do you think?" Kagami asked, not wanting to mention Kuroi, Matsuri, and Konata's older cousin.
"Hmm. Interesting. I'm going to send the story over tomorrow. Let's hope for the best. We should write together again sometime."
"I'll think about it."
"Oh, I took a look at how much it will be to build a new computer for you. I have some stuff lying around that I wouldn't mind giving you for free. I'd need money for a case, a processor, and a motherboard. I'm looking at something in the neighborhood of fifty thousand yen, which will include labor."
"Sounds perfect. That's what my father was hoping for."
"Excellent. I'll get the parts when he pays me."
"Anything else?"
"Nope. Well, you could bless our project since you are a pure shrine maiden."
"Come on!"
"Please?"
Kagami sighed and lowered her head.
"May our project be blessed." Kagami muttered.
"Hooray! Now we're sure to win!"
NEXT TIME WITH RENA RYUGU (HIGURASHI) : Hiiragi, do you not see what a poor friend Konata is? She is quite manipulative. Why is it that all of your friends constantly take advantage of you? How come you must constantly prove your worth to your parents and look after your little sister, who is nothing more than a leech? It's a curse, Hiiragi. Do you think being a shrine maiden makes you immune to such things? I'm sure a girl from Saitama has never heard of Oyashiro, but that does matter. You have been marked. The only way to free yourself is to bleed until nothing no longer matters. Don't be afraid. After a while, it will stop hurting.
Whoops, sorry about that! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! It just kind of happens. How embarrassing! Anyway, in the next chapter we will see the results of the contest. Will that be enough to satisfy Konata's thirst for free anime goods? Will it? Well, we'll just have to wait and see.