pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

The drake equation was an estimation at the number of other civilizations in our galaxy. It's a probabilistic argument and each one of the factors was only guessed at by modern astronomers and many had attempted to fine tune Doctor Frank Drake's equation.

N = R_{*} * f_{p} * n_{e} * f_{1} * f_{i} * f_{c} * L

N was the number of civilizations in the galaxy with which communication might be possible. Then it factored in the average rate of star formation in the Milky Way. This number could only be postulated based on current theories of star formation. The next factor was the number of stars with planets. Again, planets are hard to detect. The number around each star could only be hazarded at. The next figure was the number of planets which could potentially support life. This one was controversial to say the least. Take a look at the Rare Earth Hypothesis for more details. Then those planets had to develop life. Then they had to develop intelligent life. Then they had to develop technology. Then they had to last a long time.

And instead of reading about Drake's equation I was looking at Zaimokuza's manuscript.

I should be studying those factors which might cause intelligent life forms to shy away from technology. We often think of technology as inevitable and intelligence too. But jellyfish and sharks were good arguments that intelligence was unnecessary for evolution. Only around the last ten billion humans out of the hundred billion that had ever lived (depending on your definition of human, of course) were of the technology addiction mindset.

If humanity didn't develop fire or there was less continental activity society would never have come along. There were so many factors that went into the development of a civilization that Drake had had to boil it down.

Anyways if I were to slap a label onto Zaimokuza's light novel, I would call it a superhuman action novel set in a school. You've probably read a million like it. It wasn't noteworthy or good.

It took place in a certain small city in Japan, a place where, under the cover of darkness, there were constant battles between secret organizations and superpowered reincarnators. In the midst of that, a completely ordinary young man awakened to his hidden powers and began to spectacularly mow down his enemies one after another.

It was clearly a self insert. Yukinoshita was going to shred him.

I rolled over and went back to Drake.

You might think of fire as inevitable but imagine a water planet with octopus like creatures. Octopi had been on this planet for around five hundred million years and they never went on to develop dick despite their massive head start and enormous brains. So even if you got to a point where you were intelligent you might be caged in. Imagine life evolving on Jupiter's moon Europa. Caged in by ice. No chance of starting fires. No chance of storing energy from the sun as fossil fuel. Trapped. And that could be happening all over the universe. Earth had been an ice ball at several points in deep time. We just happened to develop just so. Everything had to be just so! The dinosaurs had been around forever and they made no attempts towards large brains. And even if they had would they have gone down the social route? Like we had?

There was so much to consider when thinking about Drake's equation. And all of that. All that development. So I could read Zaimokuza's light novel. Billions of years of brain evolution all for that. Lovecraft was right. People were hell on earth.

By the time I'd finished reading the novel, the sun was rising.

As a result, I ended up sleeping through basically all of my classes. Even so, once a lazy sixth period and a short homeroom were past, I decided to head for the clubroom.

"Hey! Wait, wait!"

As I entered the special building, I heard a voice call to me and turned around. Yuigahama was chasing after me; a flimsy-looking school bag banged against one shoulder with every step.

"Hikki, you don't look so well. What's wrong?"

"Ah, well, I mean, spending so much time reading that thing would make anyone tired… I'm seriously sleepy. Actually, how can you look completely fine after reading that?"

"Eh?"

Yuigahama blinked a few times.

I scoffed. "You didn't read it. It's okay. Level with me."

Yuigahama gazed out the window and hummed, ignoring my question. She was feigning innocence, but I could see cold sweat start to drip down her cheeks and neck. Would it show through her blouse…?

I opened the clubroom door and was greeted by the rare sight of Yukinoshita nodding off.

"Good work last night."

Even after I called out to her, Yukinoshita's gentle, even breathing continued; she was still asleep. Her almost-smiling face was a far cry from her usual stern, sharp demeanor, and that change made my pulse quicken.

I almost felt as if I could just stay and watch her sleep forever. Her black hair, gently waving back and forth; her smooth, almost transparently white skin; her huge teary eyes; her well-formed pink lips…

Her lips lightly moved.

"…I'm surprised. One look at your face woke me right up."

Uwah… I think I just woke up too. She deceived me with her pretty appearance, so I almost lost control. I really would love to just make that girl sleep… forever. Soon I'd sleep forever.

Yukinoshita let out a kitty-like yawn and stretched grandly, extending both her hands above her head.

"Yeah, yeah. My face is awful. From the looks of it, you also had a pretty hard fight last night, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes, it's been quite a while since I've worked all night… After all, I've never read anything quite like this. I don't think I can bring myself to like this sort of thing very much."

"Yeah. It was also pretty bad for me." Yuigahama mumbled.

"You didn't read it at all. Go and read it now, dammit."

At my words, Yuigahama let out a grumpy groan and took out the manuscript in question from her bag. There wasn't a single crease in her copy; it was in perfect condition. Then Yuigahama began to flip through the manuscript at an insane pace.

She really looked bored out of her mind when she was reading it… I watched Yuigahama as she read and began to speak.

"Pretty much all light novels are like that. I mean there's Worm but that's about the only one I've read I'd ever recommend to another busy soul."

"Maybe if I have time," Yukinoshita lied. Hey, Worm was pretty good.

I heard a gruff knock on the clubroom door.

"This one begs your pardon…" Zaimokuza once again spoke in an archaic fashion and entered into the room. "Well then, let's hear your impressions."

Zaimokuza docked himself into a chair and crossed his arms arrogantly. There was a sense of superiority coming from God-knows-where on his face. It was an expression overflowing with confidence.

However, Yukinoshita, sitting across from him, looked unusually apologetic.

"I'm sorry. I don't really understand these kinds of things too well, but…" Yukinoshita started off with that, but Zaimokuza responded completely calmly.

"I don't mind. Even ones such as I occasionally wish to hear the opinions of the common folk. Speak your mind."

"I see." Yukinoshita responded shortly and took a deep breath, steeling her resolve. "It was boring. In fact, it was almost painful to read. It was boring beyond imagination."

"It's bad, bro." I inflected my voice so I sounded in pain. "I'm never going to get those brain cells back. I'm… I needed those."

Oofgh!" Zaimokuza was cut down in a single stroke… His chair rattled as he rocked backwards in it, but Zaimokuza managed to find his balance and sit upright again.

"H-hmm… Well then, for future reference, would you kindly inform me: which parts of the work were boring?"

"First off, the grammar was a mess. Why did you reverse the word order of sentences so much? Don't you know how to use particles? Didn't they teach you that in elementary school?"

"Nghhh… I believed that style would be better at engaging the readers with the work…"

"Shouldn't you only think about things like that once you've managed to write past the bare minimum standard of proper Japanese? Additionally, you abuse furigana far too often. Here you write 'nouryoku' but have the furigana 'chikara' above it… No one pronounces it that way. Furthermore, you wrote 'Genkou Hasen' here, which is more-or-less 'Phantom Crimson Slash,' but you wrote above it 'Bloody Nightmare Slasher.' Where exactly did the 'nightmare' come from?"

"Ufghh! O-Ooo… You're wrong! All the supernatural battle novels lately have used lots of furigana…"

"That's strictly for your own self-satisfaction. It isn't going to reach anyone else. Do you really want others to read this? If you really do, then you also have to make it less predictable. I could tell what was coming in the story from miles away and there was no sign that things would get more interesting. And why is the heroine stripping here? There's absolutely no lead-up to it."

"Hnghhh! B-but novels that don't have that kind of thing in them don't sell… so you have to… That is…"

"Also, the narration is too long and has so many convoluted kanji, so it's just really hard to read. Also, please refrain from trying to make people read an unfinished story. Before we even talk about literary style, maybe you should go and get some common sense."

"Pnnghyahhh!" Zaimokuza stretched out his limbs and let out a shriek. His shoulders convulsed, and he looked up at the ceiling with blank eyes. His little overreaction was getting a bit annoying, so he really should stop that soon…

"Let's stop there for now. It'd probably be bad if you went through everything in a single sitting."

"I still have a lot more to say, though… Well then, fine. I suppose Yuigahama-san is next."

"Eh?! M-me?!"

Yuigahama seemed shocked, and Zaimokuza faced her with a pleading expression. His eyes were tearing up. Yuigahama probably saw that and pitied the poor fellow, so she seemed to try and think of some compliment she could pay him. She fell into thought while staring off into the air and summoned up a few words of encouragement.

"U-umm… Y-you sure do know a lot of tough words…"

"Uwaaagghhhh!"

"You killed him," I watched him flail.

To aspiring novelists, that phrase was an absolute taboo. After all, think about it… It meant that it was the only good thing Yuigahama could say about Zaimokuza's novel. It was a common phrase to hear when someone writing a light novel asked people not used to light novels for their opinions. And it was absolutely equivalent to being told that your work was not interesting at all.

"W-well then… Hikki, go ahead."

Yuigahama almost seemed to be running away when she stood up and offered me her seat. I sat right in front of Zaimokuza and Yuigahama took another seat diagonally behind me.

It seemed that she no longer could handle looking Zaimokuza straight in the eyes when he was in this completely burned-out, pale state.

"G-gnnghh… H-Hachiman. You understand me, right? The world I created, this vast landscape of light novel magnificence… You understand it, right? You understand this profound story I spun and all these other fools cannot hope to appreciate… Right?"

Yeah… I understood him all too well.

I nodded reassuringly. Zaimokuza looked at me with eyes of absolute trust.

I guess that as a man, I had to answer truthfully here. I took one deep breath and spoke kindly:

"So, just who did you rip-off to write that? You went for Worm and you landed way below Boko no Hero Academia. It was a mess. I wouldn't even try and pass that off as fanfiction of whoever you were going after. Bro, what were you thinking?"

"Hnghh?! B-bbnggh… Gurgle…"

Zaimokuza writhed back and forth on the floor, but stopped once he crashed right into the wall. Then he just lay there, not moving a muscle. His empty eyes stared up at the ceiling, and a single tear streaked down his cheek. It was the look of a man who was ready to die.

"…You're the one with no mercy. That was definitely much more cruel than mine." Yukinoshita was completely taken aback.

"You know…" I trailed.

"...Hey, you…"

Yuigahama was poking me with her elbow… It seemed that she wanted me to follow up with something. But what exactly should I say here…? When I thought about it, though, I realized that I had forgotten to mention one of the most fundamental things when it came to light novels:

"Well, the important thing is the illustrations. So don't worry so much about the writing."

Zaimokuza did a few breathing exercises to calm himself down, as if he was in a Lamaze class, and then stood up on a newborn deer's shaky limbs.

Then he dusted himself off with his hands and looked directly at me.

"…Would you… read my work again?"

I couldn't believe my ears. I fell into silence, unable to understand what he was saying, but he repeated himself… This time with a clearer, stronger voice.

"Would you read my work again?"

He faced me and Yukinoshita with fire in his eyes.

"You…" I trailed.

"Are you a complete masochist?" Yukinoshita demanded.

Yuigahama, who was hiding in my shadow, gave Zaimokuza a look of disgust. Her eyes seemed to say, 'You pervert, go die.' No, Yuigahama… That wasn't it.

"Do you really want to do that again after everything you went through today?"

"Of course. That certainly was quite harsh criticism. That certainly did make me think that I wanted to die, that I'm unpopular and have no friends anyway… Or, rather, that made me want everyone else to die."

"Yeah, I can see that… If someone said all that to me, I'd want to die too."

But Zaimokuza had taken those words head-on, and was still here talking to us.

"However… However, those words still made me happy. To have something I wrote for fun read by someone else, critiqued by someone else… That is definitely not a bad thing. It's not clear to me what I should call these feelings right now, though… But having my work read definitely makes me happy."

Having said that, Zaimokuza smiled.

It wasn't the smile of the master fencer general… It was the smile of Zaimokuza Yoshiteru.

Ahh… I see.

This guy wasn't just a chuunibyou. No, he also suffered from a bad case of Writer Fever.

He wanted to write because he had something he wanted to tell others. And if he could touch someone's heart that way, then he was happy. So he would write and write and write, over and over again. Even if nobody acknowledged what he wrote, he would continue writing. That was what I called Writer Fever.

And so there was only one way I could respond:

"Sure, I'll read it."

I couldn't possibly refuse. After all, this was Zaimokuza's final state of mind after he had truly come to terms with his chuunibyou. Even if others said he was sick, even if others frowned on him, even if others ignored him or ridiculed him, he would never bend to their wills, he would never give up, and he would continue to work desperately to bring his delusions into reality.

"When I finish a new novel, I'll bring it here."

Zaimokuza said those words, turned his back to us, and strode grandly from the room.

The sight of the door closing behind him was unpleasantly dazzling.

Even if he was warped, childish, or wrong, if he could force his ideas through, then that was exactly what he should do.

If he was willing to change just because someone rejected his ideas, than his dreams were not worthwhile and he was lying to himself. So Zaimokuza was fine like this.

"He's probably better off that way…" Yukinoshita trailed.

"He's better off than I am. That's for sure," I confessed.

I watched Yukinoshita and Yuigahama exchange a look out of the corner of my eye.

But it was true. As lonely as Zaimokuza was he probably wasn't going to kill himself. As time went on the probability that I was going to cover myself in gasoline, strike a match, and start waiting approached one hundred percent.

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG