Jealous Hearts

One night in early November, Nayuta Kani paid a visit to Itsuki’s apartment for the first time in a month.

“Nya-ha! Sorry it’s been so long, Itsuki!”

She hugged him the moment she stepped inside, making Itsuki’s face redden.

“L-let me go, Kanikou!”

“Weh-heh-heh! Aw, Itsuki, this past month must’ve been so lonely for you!”

“Pfft. Don’t be stupid. It let me focus on work for a change.” He was pretty lonely, but he wasn’t about to say that.

“Really? You didn’t miss me even a little?”

“Well…maybe a little,” he whispered as Nayuta looked right up at him. She would stop by at least twice a week before now, so time spent with Nayuta had become part of his everyday life. “Even if you are the biggest pest in the world,” he quickly added, “of course I’m gonna wonder a little if you stop showing up! It just feels wrong! It’s like that with any stray cat!”

“Me-yowww. By the way, I was so lonely that I pleasured myself multiple times every single night while thinking about you. Let me replenish my Itsuki supply!”

“I’m not some special ingredient!” yelled Itsuki as he pried Nayuta off himself before she could sniff him and rub her face against his T-shirt any further.

“Anyway, you hungry?”

Itsuki and Nayuta heated up the vegetable-and-shrimp curry Chihiro had made for them earlier and began eating. Nayuta tended to pick at her food, taking her time, but tonight she was wolfing it down.

“You’re really putting it away today, huh?”

She flushed a bit. “I haven’t eaten anything since morning.”

Itsuki winced. “You gotta make sure you’re eating three meals a day.”

“Are you worried about me, Itsuki?”

“…Yeah,” he blurted out, looking distressed.

“…All right. I’ll make sure to eat properly.” She continued packing away the curry, cheeks still a little flushed. “By the way, have you been busy?”

“Kind of.” Itsuki nodded. “I’m writing the script for a drama CD.”

“Oh, you’re doing one of those?”

“Yep. Volume 6 of All About is coming out in January, and the special edition is gonna include one.”

Drama CDs are just that—CDs with an audio drama recorded on them. Some were fully original, but for the most part, they were produced as part of a media-mix franchise. They were cheap to make, could be turned around fast, and even if the property wasn’t too well-known, fans of the voice cast could be counted on to purchase them, resulting in a fairly easy profit. Megahits were hard, but the risks were low, and they didn’t require much from the original author—some of whom dreaded the idea of anime or games based on their work but enthusiastically participated in drama CD productions. Low risk, beloved by all—truly, the best part of a successful media-mix production! ( Editor’s note: All opinions are strictly those of the author.)

“Is writing the scripts for those hard?”

Itsuki solemnly nodded. “…I figured it’d be way easier than a novel since you only have to write dialogue, but it’s actually kind of hard to depict a situation with nothing but talking and sound effects.”

“That does sound hard.” Nayuta smiled. “But if it’s your original script, I’m looking forward to it.”

“Of course.” He flashed a bold grin. “I’m writing the kind of awesome tale only the original author could come up with.”

“Have you picked the voice cast yet?”

“Yeah. We auditioned for the four main characters last month, and the sub-characters and regular cast are pretty much set in stone, too.”

“The same actors from the anime?”

You often see drama CDs using different voice casts from the anime version, because reasons. Drama CDs generally paid a little better and required a less hectic recording schedule, so it was common to see some pretty impressive names.

“Of course.” Itsuki nodded. “We’re announcing the anime in the ad materials for Volume 6, so this drama CD’s kind of a preliminary for the full series.”

“Wow, that’s a big responsibility. And how is Volume 6 coming along?”

Itsuki’s eyes darted away. “…I’ll just have to try to get it in on time.”

When releasing a special edition like this, with a drama CD and maybe a bonus novella in pamphlet form, you naturally needed a custom-made package to sell it all in. This meant the deadline—the “real” one that not even the most famous authors could get away with breaking—came a lot earlier than usual. You also had far more people involved, which made extensions even more impossible. For an author like Itsuki who strung out his deadlines as much as humanly possible, a bonus edition like this was an extremely dangerous risk to take.

“Wow… You’re really working hard, Itsuki. I guess I better, too.”

There was something really earnest about Nayuta’s admiration. It caught Itsuki a little off guard.

“It’s rare to see you act interested in your own work, Kanikou.”

“Mm? That’s mean. I’m always working, like, super hard.”

“Liar,” Itsuki shot back, squinting at her. Nayuta may have been a red-hot bestselling author, but she wrote at a pretty slow pace. She tended to work fast once she found some inspiration, but starting up the engine took forever, and it’d run out of gas almost immediately. She had been living in that hotel room for about half a year now, allegedly so she could crunch on her novel, but considering all the time she spent in Itsuki’s room and playing games, her work hours had to be on the short side.

She puffed her cheeks out a bit. “Aw, I really am right now, though.”

…Well, she hadn’t been around in a month, right? Maybe she was telling the truth.

“Is all the media-mix work keeping you busy?”

“Oh, I guess you could call it that. There are lots of meetings for the anime and live-action films, and I need to check up on the manga sketches.”

“…That sounds harder than what I got.”

“Oh, but the meetings themselves aren’t that painful. Everyone on the staff is really talented.”

“Are they? Who are you working with?”

“Well…”

She then named the manga artist handling the comic adaptation, the directors of the anime and live-action films, the duo writing the anime, and the lone screenwriter for the live-action release. Itsuki was floored.

“……That’s, like, the best possible set of people I could think of…”

The manga artist was incredibly famous, more overwhelmingly so than Nayuta herself at the moment. The anime director was a genius-level talent with a string of proven hits. His live-action counterpart was a name big enough that even a non–movie buff like Itsuki knew it. Both the anime screenwriters were responsible for several hit series; Itsuki had even fantasized about having them write scripts for the adaptations of his novels. The guy writing the live-action version was fresh off penning a drama series that earned a 40 share in the TV ratings. It was the perfect lineup, eminently befitting a genius author’s first foray into multimedia adaptations.

“Yeah, they’re pretty good. And they all know a lot more about my novels than I do. I guess they read them really carefully. The two anime screenwriters argue a lot over parts of it, they told me, but the things they’re debating are so high level that I can’t keep up. I mean, do they think I’m considering subtle differences in emotion because people are eating in a different order from usual when I’m writing? Noooo.”

She seemed to be enjoying herself.

Itsuki recalled his dealings with the All About anime staff. He had raged at them after being presented with an outline that treated his story like garbage, only to have the screenwriter Hirugano call his writing “fucking boring” to his face. Nayuta was working in such a different world, it made him want to cry.

“I also got to meet the lead actor for the live-action film, and he knows the series better than I do, too. It’s amazing. As busy as he is, he still found the time to read my novels, not just the movie script.”

“…Um, who is it?” Itsuki asked, attempting to banish the sinking feeling in his stomach.

“It’s a guy named Yuma Takashina.”

“Are you serious…?”

Yuma Takashina was a superstar, one of the biggest names in the younger generation, who was at ease leading comedies, action films, and serious dramas. He was nineteen, the same age as Nayuta, but he had worked as a child actor before then, including in a few series Itsuki watched. He was known for being a consummate professional—handsome but willing to gain forty pounds to take on a role, then spend three months getting back in shape for the next project. That anecdote really impressed Itsuki. Some people really are just that amazing.

“Plus, he said that he spends pretty much his whole private life polishing his roles and training. I figured someone as pretty as him would be out having sex day and night, but I guess not everybody, huh? He just had this aura; it was amazing.”

“…Really?”

Itsuki could feel his chest ache a bit as Nayuta sang the praises of a dashing man who wasn’t him.

“It really made me want to work on my writing, you know? I can’t lose out to Takashina or the rest of the staff. Work is fun for me right now. It hasn’t been like this since I made my debut.”

She reddened a bit, acting adorably bashful. But it was true. Nayuta Kani, a novelist who used her outstanding genius to live life strictly at her own pace, was getting serious about work. And the fact that it wasn’t Itsuki, but all these other actors and creative types inspiring her, made him unbearably frustrated. He felt a sudden urge to fight back.

“Well, things are pretty intense with me, too. We argue all the time in our weekly script meetings, but the director and screenwriter read my novels down to the last word, so it’s worth fighting all that stuff out. I’m noticing a lot of things I didn’t when I wrote it, so every week is like a shot in the arm. It’s kind of like this chemical reaction, people bashing against one another to create something new.”

“Ooh. That sounds kind of fun, too.” Nayuta looked honestly impressed.

“Yeah… When I got this offer, I was really anxious more than anything else, but now I’m feeling like this could actually turn out well.”

That was the honest truth. When it came to the story, at least, he was confident it wouldn’t crash and burn like Chevalier of the New World.

“I look forward to it,” Nayuta said with a smile. “What’s the voice cast like?”

“Kazuma’s played by Seiji Higashitani… He was the main guy in .”

“Ohhh…”

It was the title of a series broadcast just a bit ago. Nayuta didn’t seem to recognize it.

“…Ichika’s gonna be Mai Tomoe. Um…she was the heroine in a few different games.”

“Mai Tomoe… I think I’ve seen that name before…” She took out her phone and looked up Mai Tomoe’s Wikipedia page. “Oh! Yeah, I have! She’s from !”

Now it was Itsuki who didn’t understand the reference. He was pretty sure it was an RPG for smartphones, at least. Either way, at least Nayuta knew it.

“Hmmm… She’s playing Ichika, huh…?”

“Yep.”

Nayuta left Wikipedia and performed an image search.

“…………Hmmmmmm……”

She looked concerned. It made Itsuki doubt himself.

“Uh… Kanikou?”

“……She’s pretty,” she blurted out, clearly peeved.

“Huh?”

“Look at her. She’s incredibly beautiful. She’s got style; she’s got big boobs… Why does a voice actress like her have such good looks?”

Itsuki leaned over to look. The phone showed a photo of Tomoe speaking at some event or another. He compared it to his own memory.

“……I think she was even prettier in real life.” Tomoe in the photo was nice, yes, but he thought she left an even better impression in the recording booth. “I guess you could say she had an aura around her, too. Like, she was glowing.”

“Mmmm,” Nayuta sullenly replied. “…Is this the kind of girl you like?”

“N-no!” he hurriedly shouted. “I mean, I think she’s pretty, yeah, but there were lots of prettier actors at the audition. If I was picking them based their looks alone, I’d have gone for…”

Nayuta’s face was growing more dour by the second, and he stopped cold.

“……There were lots of even prettier girls?”

“I mean, among the people who came over for the audition, yeah! A lot of them were pretty much straight-up pop idols, at least a few were more like photo models than anything, and so… Yeah. Of course they were pretty.”

“……Well, who’s playing Yukiko?”

“A girl named Miho Akaike.” She promptly tapped the name into her phone.

“……Pretty.”

“……Yeah.” Itsuki nodded, despite the looming awkwardness. It was the unvarnished truth.

“…When you start recording,” Nayuta said as her lips visibly turned down, “you’re going to see these pretty women week after week, aren’t you? They’re going to say ‘Ooh, Itsuki, Itsukiiiii’ and fawn all over you, aren’t they?”

“Um… Well, yeah, I guess I’ll see them, but I don’t know if they’ll ‘fawn’ over me…”

“…And when you’re done recording, you’ll go out to dinner and have drinks, and then you’ll pretend to give them acting lessons so you can make them say dirty things to you, and then you’ll be all like ‘Ee-hee-hee, let’s simulate what Ichika is feeling in this scene, Mai’ while you rub her tits…?”

“S-since when do I live in the world of dating sims?!” Itsuki sighed as Nayuta flushed red and let her fantasies run wild. He looked down at her, stern-faced. “…Listen, Kanikou. How pretty or ugly the voice actors are isn’t important at all to me. I chose these people because I felt safe in letting them take care of Ichika and Yukiko, two of my most precious creations. And…yes, when you see voice actors in real life, they have this radiance around them, I’m not gonna lie. But I don’t think that’s because of their external looks. It’s because they gave everything they had to land their roles. They’re totally sincere. So to turn around and judge people like that based on their face… Well, don’t.”

With a humbled expression, Nayuta listened to Itsuki. He looked away, not meaning to rant like that.

“…All right,” she whispered, a bit sullenly.

“…Great,” Itsuki replied, giving her a vague nod before returning to his curry.

“………I need to shine, too…”

The irritated whisper was too soft for Itsuki to hear.