The Akihabara Date II

A few days after the Taiwan convention, Haruto visited Itsuki’s place in the evening and had a few drinks, enjoying some karasumi (salted mullet roe) alongside them.

“Wow, this is what karasumi tastes like?”

“It’s surprisingly springy. Kind of like cheese.”

It was the first time either of them had tried this gourmet delicacy.

“But it’s really good. Great job on it, Chihiro.”

Chihiro gave him a bashful smile. “I’ve never had it, either, so I just looked up some recipes online.”

On the menu tonight was toasted karasumi slices, accompanied by grated karasumi over pasta and little daikon radish pockets of karasumi—all traditional ways to fully savor what this fish byproduct had to offer.

“Oh, man,” Itsuki said, “this really makes the sake go down well.”

He was having some Dassai 39 sparkling sake; this kind of drink went better with rich, salty karasumi than beer. Having this in carbonated form further expressed the natural fruitiness of the Dassai brand, making it incredibly easy to drink, but it was still 14 percent alcohol (typical for sake), making it a hearty beverage suited for Eastern or Western cuisine.

“It was really more of a stage event than an autograph session,” Itsuki recounted as they ate. “The hotel was four-star quality, too. I felt like a rock star or something. You’d never see that kinda thing in Japan.”

“Yeah, I hear about that stuff, but man, Taiwan sounds awesome. Wish I could get an invite.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Jealous, huh?”

“Yeah,” Haruto said as he cowered under Itsuki’s robust laughter. “Really jealous.” Then his voice dipped down. “…I gotta work harder. For real.”

“Fuwa?” a puzzled Chihiro asked.

Haruto just smiled, trying to laugh it off. “By the way, Itsuki, I’m gonna buy the new GF Bunko releases at Akiba tomorrow. You wanna join me?”

Haruto went to the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo once a month, whenever GF Bunko released their latest books. It was his chance to catch up on purchases and do some street-level scoping out of the scene.

“Nah,” replied Itsuki, “I was just there last month, so I’m good.”

“Oh? With who?”

“Just me.”

“You went to Akiba alone? That’s rare.”

Itsuki hated big crowds and had little interest in the bonuses included with books and games when you bought them at the shops, so he didn’t go to Akihabara much and tended not to accept Haruto’s invites.

“I heard they had an All About tower going, so I had to check that out.”

“Oh, yeah, you almost never see that.”

A tower, in this case, referred to copies of a book stacked up high. It was a surefire way to draw attention to a book at the shop, but it required labor and a lot of excess inventory, so you didn’t see towers much except for titles the store was really keen to push. Just because a series had an anime on the air didn’t guarantee it a tower; only a store whose employees loved the series and were positive it’d sell well would commit to one, making it a kind of honor for the creator. Haruto’s Chevalier of the Absolute World had never received that honor during its own anime run, as far as he knew.

“Um, if you’re going to Akihabara, I’d like to join you,” Chihiro said.

“Did you have an errand there?” Itsuki asked.

“Not really, but I like looking at the new model sets, and there’s this one shop that sells goods from all across Japan that I’d like to check out again.”

“Sure thing,” Haruto replied. “We can stop by Yodobashi and Chabara and stuff.”

“Great!”

Itsuki looked at them both—and took a drink, even as he looked like he wanted to say something.

The next afternoon, Haruto met with Chihiro at the Electric Town exit from JR Akihabara Station. Summer break was in full swing, so the area was full of what looked like middle and high school kids.

Haruto arrived first, reading a web novel on his phone while occasionally glancing at the turnstile to see if Chihiro arrived. But…

“Hi there.”

“Whoa?!”

He didn’t even notice her until she was practically beside him—to be exact, he didn’t recognize her at first glance. She was in a sleeveless knitted top and a skirt that ended above the knees—the first time Haruto had ever seen her in a skirt. He couldn’t help but take a moment to process the sight, making Chihiro blush a bit.

“Uh, um, Fuwa?”

“Huh? Ah. Ahh… I—I haven’t seen you like that before, Chihiro, so it was new to me.”

“My brother bought this for me.”

“Oh…?”

Impressed, Haruto gave Chihiro another once-over. “…You really are a girl, huh…?”

He couldn’t keep himself from saying it.

Two months had passed since her blitzkrieg approach to coming out. Itsuki, Nayuta, Miyako, and the others were surprisingly accepting of this, it seemed, but Haruto was still thrown by it. To him, Chihiro was more than just his friend’s brother—she was his friend, too. They had gone out together without Itsuki, even attending a social mixer once. And now her being a girl really confused him. He still wasn’t quite used to it—but she was 100 percent a woman, and it was his duty to accept that.

“…I’m sorry I lied about it, Fuwa,” she told him sheepishly.

“No,” he hurriedly replied, “with the situation you had, don’t worry about it. And even if you’re a girl, you’re still a valuable friend to me.”

“Thank you,” she bashfully said. “Um, if you want, you can keep on seeing me as a guy if that’s easier to picture. Ashley still does, pretty much.”

“Oh? Maybe I will, then.” Haruto smiled at her. “So, wanna go to Animate or Toranoana?”

“Sure!”

Every bookstore in Akihabara they went to had every volume of All About My Little Sister stacked up and on display, some of them setting up TV screens showing All About anime clips or promos.

“Scoring an anime really does make a difference, huh?” admired Chihiro.

Haruto gave her a knowing smile. “Well, not every anime series gets this kind of major push in the bookstores nowadays.”

“Oh no?”

“Yeah. Like, you have several dozen series debuting with each season, and it’s physically impossible to push all of them at the same time. Plus, anime or not, if the original novels don’t sell, that shelf space gets taken over by something else fast. If the shops are still pushing it two months after it started airing, that proves how valuable they think it is. They ordered a new emergency printing for all the preexisting volumes, too, so… In terms of recent anime adaptations of light novels, I think this one’s on the successful side.”

“Wow… Itsuki’s really talented, huh…?”

“Yeah…” Haruto eyed all the copies of All About on the shelves, a mixed expression on his face. “He is.”

So after picking up ten or so light novels and manga volumes at the bookstore—plus a few books geared for literary professions, including Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need and The Emotion Thesaurus—Haruto took Chihiro to Yodobashi Camera.

As before, they browsed around the model department. Unlike the light novel sections of the bookstores, the lineup available hadn’t changed all that much since their last visit. But no matter how long they looked at it, the magnificent sight of so many robot model packages lined up against the wall never seemed to get old.

“Oh, right, Fuwa,” Chihiro said as they walked on. “I don’t think I mentioned it to you yet, but I decided to go on to college after all.”

“That’s great,” Haruto replied.

A little bit ago, Chihiro had spoken with him about a worry she had—wouldn’t it be better to find a job right after high school rather than move on to college without any real goal in mind? Haruto’s advice, however, convinced her that college was the choice to take.

“I still don’t have any real concrete dream for the future or anything…but I’d like to study a few different things and think it over.”

“Yeah. Hopefully you’ll find something you really want to do someday.”

Haruto would give Chihiro casual pats on the head back when he thought she was a boy. Doing so with a girl who wasn’t related to him seemed like a bad idea. With his hand finding nowhere else to go, it reached out for a shelf full of model kits.

He grabbed a model of the ARX-8 Laevatein, the protagonist’s craft from the mech-oriented light novel series Full Metal Panic! He looked carefully at it.

“Oh, is that from FMP?”

“You know that series, Chihiro?”

“Yeah, I love it.”

Volume 1 of the Full Metal Panic! light novels had come out way back in 1998, while the series had wrapped up with Volume 12 in 2011. It had multiple manga and anime adaptations over the years; the mechs even appeared in the Super Robot Wars video game series. Real-life model kits were also released, and even after the main story ended, a new side-story novel series carried on right where the original left off. No mech-themed light novel series enjoyed as lofty a reputation as this one.

“FMP sure is something, isn’t it?”

“Something” didn’t begin to describe it. Haruto sighed. If the Chevalier of the Absolute World anime had been a hit, maybe that would’ve led to some figures and model kits coming out—but that was a pipe dream now. He put the Laevatein back on the shelf.

“You know… Once I finish Chevalier, I’m thinking I’ll try another mech series right after that.”

He had told no one about that before—not even Kawabe, his editor.

“Oh really?” Chihiro asked, curious.

“Yeah…and not a fantasy story like Chevalier, but maybe one set in the near future, or outer space like Gundam. I doubt my editor will accept it, but…”

Kawabe and Haruto had chatted casually about his next series before. The ideas his editor threw out included a series close in tone to Chevalier, or an isekai fantasy or school-themed story with less of a battle element. Mechs in light novels, Kawabe said, were a hard sell. Such series came out at a decent clip, thanks to all the authors into the genre, but you could count the number of real hits on your fingers. And if you’re talking about the kind of mech novel Haruto wanted to do—something more hard sci-fi as opposed to “hot chicks in powered suits” or “dark robots of mysterious origins” (Chevalier’s beat)—it was even more of an uphill battle.

Haruto was the sort of writer who carefully analyzed the market to aim for a hit—to him, working in a highly competitive field with little chance of success couldn’t have been that appealing a notion.

“But I intend to give it a try,” he declared. “I can definitely bring something interesting to the table.”

He couldn’t lose to Itsuki. After all the elitist stuff he had said to Ui, it was important for him to have a little courage as an author himself.

“I’m gonna create something incredibly gripping, bring it to tons of readers, get it out in anime and manga, and then have them make model kits for the mechs I crafted. That’s my dream right now.”

“Your dream…?” Chihiro repeated, wide-eyed.

“Yeah.”

Haruto’s expression was clear now, as if he had just shed a heavy weight. His mind had been a jumble lately—what with Itsuki’s success, the mixed fortunes of this year’s new authors, his own series, and his future as a novelist—but putting it into words like this really cleared the air. In the end, it was simple. All he could do was work hard and press for his dreams with everything he had.

“Right. I’m gonna buy this Laevatein as a symbol of my resolve!”

Beaming like a child, Haruto picked up the Laevatein box again…and neither he nor Chihiro herself noticed that Chihiro’s cheeks were starting to look flushed.