Star of the Common Man

“Well, I’m honestly at a loss to explain why it turned out the way it did, but either way, the judging process for the New Writers Contest is firmly behind us. Kaizu, Fuwa, thanks for all your hard work today. All the other editors, thank you for wading through all those entries and writing up all those evaluation sheets. Good work, guys. Cheers!”

“Cheers!!”

After Godo finished his deep-voiced toast, everyone raised their glasses, proud of the hard work they had just completed.

It was a mere hour after the judging ended, and Haruto, Kaizu, Miyako, and the rest of GF Bunko editorial were seated in a fancy yakiniku barbecue chain to celebrate the end of judging. Beer, sake, and shochu were readily passed around as the editors congratulated one another and eagerly placed the meat brought over in large plates on the grill in the center of the table. Looking at the mounds of marbled red meat and thick beef tongue—clearly pricey—Miyako felt obliged to warily ask the nearby Toki a question.

“Um… Is this really okay? Ordering all this expensive meat?”

“Ha-ha-ha, it’s fine! It’s all on the company tab!”

Toki, medium-sized beer mug in hand, was already well on his way down Pass-Out Lane.

To be sure, publishers usually put dinner outings with writers or other associates on their expense accounts. These were limited, though—up to 5,000 yen per person, by Gift Publishing’s standards. And even if you stayed under that limit, if you expensed things too often, you’d get a call from Accounting and get raked over the coals about whether it was really for business or not.

“But one plate of this stuff goes for over four thousand yen…”

“Ahh, I’ll pay whatever we can’t expense,” said Godo, working hard on his glass of straight whiskey. “So don’t hold back!” He already looked like a mafia boss as is; pairing him with whiskey fit him so well, it was scary. Add a cigar, and it would’ve been perfect, but he wasn’t a smoker.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about, boss,” a nearby editor said as he caught a waiter’s attention and ordered some sake and a Korean yukhoe platter.

“Well, in that case… Um, I’ll have cold Chinese noodles and a salad, please.” Miyako still couldn’t let herself get anything too expensive.

Soon, meat was cooking from one end of the table to the other, crafting a mouth-watering aroma that wafted across their private room.

“You want something, Miyako?” Haruto asked from his adjacent seat, wielding a pair of tongs.

“Oh, thanks. Pick whatever for me.”

“Okay!”

Picking up Miyako’s plate, Haruto tried to choose a few well-cooked cuts for her, when:

Twing!

A pair of tongs cut him off from the side.

“Huh…?!”

“Hold it, Fuwa,” said Makina Kaizu, face dead serious as he grabbed the meat Haruto was after. “That’s mine.”

“Oh, uh, sorry…”

“It’s fine. Now you know.”

With the befuddled Haruto watching, Kaizu placed piece after piece onto his plate, then ate them all at astounding speed.

“…You sure eat a lot, Kaizu.” Haruto chuckled as he divided the remaining meat between himself and Miyako.

“Offph…”

Kaizu turned his unhealthy-looking face to Haruto, swallowed the piping-hot meat in his mouth, and took a swig of oolong tea. “…There’s nothing I love more than eating with other people’s money. The more expensive, the better.”

“Oh… Really?”

His point-blank honesty impressed Haruto.

“…It’s pretty much nothing but bean sprouts for me at home,” Kaizu continued as he snapped up more meat for round two. “So when editorial springs for me, I eat as much as I can. To be honest, I don’t really like the feeling of heavily marbled meat melting on my tongue. I think the cheap steaks they sell at the supermarket are tastier than that. But I still order the most expensive cut anyway. Because it’s their treat.”

He almost looked brave, dashing if you will, as he said it, following it up with an order of high-grade galbi (the most expensive cut).

“I see…”

You should just eat what you want, Haruto thought as he ordered some rice.

“Rice at this point? Rice at a yakiniku restaurant…? You hotshot bestselling authors really are a different breed.”

“Huh?” Haruto asked, not understanding the sarcasm.

“Oh, I kind of get that,” Miyako said. “If you’re at an all-you-can-eat thing, you kinda don’t want to order rice because you’ll get full sooner that way.”

“Ah, looks like someone here is a true woman of the people.” Kaizu theatrically motioned to Haruto. “I hope someday I become filthy rich enough to be able to order rice at an all-you-can-eat place, while I’m lighting my smokes with ten-thousand-yen bills…”

“Wh-what’s the big deal about ordering some rice?!” Haruto shouted. “Who cares? I like eating rice with yakiniku!”

“…Oh, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to pick on you. You should eat whatever you want, Fuwa… Just enjoy your rice as you behold the comical sight of us lowborn common folk clawing at this meat since we know it’ll be our only chance at it…”

“Nngh…”

Haruto gritted his teeth as Kaizu grabbed some more top-grade meat, applied sauce, and ate it.

“Heh-heh-heh… Ugh, it’s just melting… I can feel the juices seeping all over my mouth… This would go so much better with rice…”

“Then order some goddamn rice!”

Haruto complained, not even realizing how friendly he’d become with the senior author.

The party began late today, so last call came all too early at this restaurant. The gang just barely satisfied their appetites before they had to go.

“It sounds like the younger editors are going to another place,” Godo reported to Haruto and Kaizu. “What d’you guys want to do?”

“…Is the second place all fancy, too?”

“Nah, probably the same all-night izakaya we always hit.”

“Dahhh, I better go home, then,” Kaizu groaned. “All the juices in that meat upset my stomach…”

“And you were going to deal with that if they were going to a fancier place?” Haruto asked, exasperated.

“Well, yeah.” The green-looking Kaizu nodded.

Godo sighed at him a little. “…I don’t want you throwing up on the train. Lemme call a taxi. You live pretty close…”

“If I have someone taking me home, can I make it Kirara or Miyako?”

“Shut up, stupid.”

“Um,” Miyako interjected, “I’m probably gonna have to say no to round two as well.”

Her statement visibly disappointed some of the male editors, enough so that Miyako felt obliged to say “I can’t, guys!” a little more strongly. These all-night sessions always ended with at least one of them stripping, so she did her best to avoid them whenever possible.

With Haruto also opting out of the festivities, the judging after-party came to a close. The editors began walking toward the local entertainment district as Godo hailed a taxi.

“Thanks for everything,” Haruto said to Kaizu as he climbed in. Kaizu replied with a pale, painful-looking smile.

“Heh-heh-heh… You do well for Miyako, all right?”

“Wh-wha—?!”

He had spoken softly enough that only Haruto could hear it. Haruto instantly began to blush.

“…Oh, I was right…? Ah, youth… Just die in a fire…”

Haruto just stared at him, mouth agape, as Kaizu and Godo left him with those completely serious parting words.

“Well,” he said, “guess we better go, too.”

“Sure.”

He and Miyako began walking to the station. Then he opened his mouth again, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Oh, actually… You know, there’s a Belgian beer bar right by here.”

“Oh, really? I’ve never actually gone into a bar before.”

“You haven’t?”

“My college friends and I always go drinking at cheap izakaya, and when I’m with you guys, we’re always drinking at Itsuki’s place.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Well, um, drinking out isn’t so bad either, sometimes.”

He could already feel himself flailing for a lifeline as he scrambled to keep the conversation going.

“A bar’s different from an izakaya, right?”

“Um… I don’t know the exact definition, but there’s gotta be a bar inside, obviously, and they make cocktails for you.”

“Yeah. Some izakaya have bars, too, though. And serve cocktails.”

“True. But also… I guess it’s a bar if there’s a dedicated bartender.”

Miyako gave a little laugh at this. “Oh? That’s a pretty arbitrary definition.”

Wait… I think this is going pretty well! Haruto drummed up all the confidence he could find.

“So, um… Wanna check it out? That bar?”

“Oh, sure. Sounds great.”

Miyako nodded. It was an easy decision for her.

So Haruto had successfully invited Miyako to a private outing, but he had no real plans to push anything with her immediately. This was, after all, the first time they had done anything alone. She usually stopped by Nayuta’s place (Haruto not invited, of course) after a day at Itsuki’s with Nayuta and Chihiro, and even if they went home together, they split up at the station turnstile since they took different rail lines home.

He had wanted to be alone with her for a while, since he wanted to be more to her than just a mutual friend of Itsuki’s, but it was just too hard for him to take the plunge. Tonight was different. Nayuta wasn’t there; they had something to talk about in the New Writers Contest; and Kaizu had just given him that final, decisive push.

If I don’t invite her now, then when?!

His emotions were running strong along those lines, which the alcohol no doubt helped along, and it finally drove him to do it. Drinking alone with a woman you like—one small step for a normie, but one giant leap for Haruto.

The Belgian beer bar in question was located in the basement of a mixed-use building; Haruto had gone there once before with some of the other writers. He generally preferred to drink at home, so he had only gone to bars a few times with work colleagues, which meant he still wasn’t very comfortable inside them. He tried his best to hide his nervousness as he opened the door.

Inside was a space designed to look like an old-style European tavern, complete with wooden walls, ceilings, tables, and chairs. The lighting was on the dim side, adding to the stylish atmosphere. Over half the seats were occupied by a motley crew of customers, including groups of businessmen, couples in their thirties, and elderly men and younger women drinking alone. It was a booming business, but there was still something relaxed and refined about the space. Next to the register station was a large cooler filled with craft beer, mostly Belgian; customers paid for these as they drank, taking them back to their seats to enjoy.

Miyako looked around, curious. “Huh. So this is a bar.”

“Not much like people’s typical idea of a bar, but yeah. It’s all beer, and I don’t think there’s a real bartender.”

“Right. But you know, when I imagine the taverns we stop in during our RPG sessions, I kinda think of something like this.”

“Oh, that’s true! We have kind of a medieval European thing going in the game, so you’re probably right. Except they don’t have coolers.”

They secured seats for themselves as they talked.

“Hey, when’ll we do our next session?”

“Hmm, next month, probably? That dumbass Itsuki went and kept an NPC alive who was supposed to be killed, so I have to revise a bunch of things. I think Nayu’s up to something weird, too, so I need to be prepared for just about anything.”

“Sounds harder than it looks,” Miyako said. Her apologetic look made Haruto quickly change the subject.

“Ah, well, if it goes really bad, I’ll just bust out the all-powerful Apologize spell.”

“Apologize?”

“Yeah. The GM’s ultimate skill. If the players try something totally beyond my imagination, and I decide I can’t fully handle it, I apologize and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Ha-ha! That is pretty powerful.”

“You don’t want to use it too much, though. I’m staking my pride as a professional writer on being able to put up with their nonsense.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

The words made Haruto’s heart flutter. It was just a passing sentence, but for him, it was a sudden bolt of energy. Love really is a crazy thing, he thought.

“Here, lemme bring a beer over. Do you have any requests?”

“Surprise me.”

“All right.”

He stood in front of the cooler, comparing the unique, whimsical labels on the bottles. Many were new to him and looked worth a try, but for starters, he went with one he knew—Framboise Boon. This was a fruit beer aged on raspberries, pouring a bright red into the glass with a bubbly, slightly pink head for a beautiful contrast. The refreshing sweet-and-sour aroma of the raspberries was a preview for the beer itself, featuring the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness. People called it the Queen of Fruit Beer.

Haruto had the checkout lady pour the beer for him, placing an order for some mussels steamed in white wine along the way, before returning to his seat.

“Thanks a lot. How much was it?”

“Oh, no, I’ll pay for it.”

Miyako shook her head. “No, let me cover this. I just got my paycheck.”

“Oh? Well…”

For now, he suggested Miyako pay about a third of the total tab. She immediately obliged.

“Well, here’s to a long day of work,” he said.

“Yours was longer than mine, Fuwa.”

They clinked their glasses, took a sip, and breathed a satisfied sigh. The yakiniku at the after-party was wonderful, but it wasn’t exactly a relaxed atmosphere over there. Now, they were really in their element.

“Ahhh… This is really good,” Miyako said, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. It made Haruto breathe an internal sigh of relief. They continued to enjoy it for a bit longer until a metal bucket filled to overflowing with mussels came to their table.

“A bucket?!” Miyako exclaimed, eyes alight.

“I guess this is how they normally serve mussels in Europe. It’s about a kilogram in all, but this is one serving—half of it’s shell, though, so it’s not that hard to finish.”

Haruto picked up and downed a mussel as he explained. The salt, onions, and herbs in the homemade soup paired with the white wine to add a light touch to the mussels, bringing out their full savory force. It went great with the beer, of course. Belgian beer comes in such a variety—tart, sour, bitter—that the potential food pairings are as limitless as the number of beer brands, but mussels in white wine work well with most beer styles, so if you intend to cross multiple genres in one evening, this was a good meal to go with. Whether it was for that reason or not, Haruto didn’t know, but he knew that Belgium consumed the most mussels in the whole world.

Miyako copied Haruto’s moves, taking a shell and eating the contents. It made her break into a smile. “Oh, I like this. I think I’ve had canned mussels in white wine before, but this is a lot better.”

“Yeah, those canned ones aren’t bad, either. Maybe we can find some and have Chihiro cook them the next time we hang out at Itsuki’s.”

“That’s a good idea! I bet he could find an even better way to prepare them.”

Reasonably priced and low on calories, mussels went well not only with beer, but with wine, sake, and shochu, and they could be so freely seasoned that they worked perfectly well as a main dish instead of an appetizer over beer. The ultimate all-purpose dish. They really ought to be more popular in Japan.

As the pair munched their way through the heaping pile of mussels, Miyako suddenly spoke up.

“By the way, Fuwa…”

“Mm?”

“What’s Kaizu like?”

“Mmm…?!”

Unable to gauge the motivation for this question—and what if there was some kind of romantic nuance to that?!—Haruto hesitated.

“Because I don’t know,” she continued unawares. “He’s kind of a tough one to grasp. He seemed really eager to get the judging session over as soon as possible at the start, but you and he engaged in some really serious debating.”

“Ha-ha! Oh, you can assume that eighty percent of what he says is just him hiding his true feelings.”

Haruto laughed it off. No, nothing romantic about that after all. Then his face turned more serious.

“…Kaizu’s probably the one writer I respect the most.”

Miyako tilted her head. “Really?”

“But don’t tell him that, okay? If you do, he’ll make me take him out for sushi or something.” Haruto smiled.

“What kind of things has he written? I haven’t really heard of him.”

“Lots of stuff. His first series was this battle chronicle type of thing. That ended in three volumes, and then his next one was a romantic comedy that went for four books. He’s written fantasy, robot stuff, slice-of-life… I suppose his most famous titles are The Lord of Time and the Mechanical Strega and Futagun! Those both got manga adaptations. Right now he’s writing Me and My Girl’s Medieval Village Revitalization.”

Miyako had never heard any of those titles before. “Um… So he’s pretty good at writing, then?”

“Good? Yeah, I guess. He looks at the trends, and he puts out decent enough quality in that genre at a decent enough pace.”

“Just decent?”

“Yeah. Decent. They’re decently engaging; they sell a decent amount, but there’s nothing that’s world changing originality-wise or way better than what’s come before it. That kind of thing. You never see him in the top of the This Light Novel Is Amazing! rankings, and his style isn’t unique enough to build a core fandom. He’s, like, the eternal mid-level writer.”

“Well, Fuwa, so why do you…um…?” Miyako chose her words carefully.

“Why do I respect such a completely nondescript writer?”

“Yeah…” Miyako nodded, despite knowing it was rude.

Haruto took a mouthful of Boon. “…That’s exactly why. For fourteen years, he’s been fighting on the front lines of this business as a mid-level writer. If you think about it, that’s just incredible.”

“It is?”

“…Like, I couldn’t even imagine writing for ten years straight. There’s a lot about this industry that can break your heart. Just because your first book hits it big, there’s no guarantee your second one will. You’re surrounded by genius-level talents, and there’s this constant stream of new writers more talented than you coming in.”

Miyako stopped eating for a moment, sitting intently as Haruto bared his soul.

“…Kaizu won the grand prize at the first annual GF Bunko New Writers Contest, right? One of the other winners that year was a guy named Kasuka Sekigahara. Total genius-level writer. It’s half thanks to him that GF went from a tiny label to the force that it is now. But that genius is long gone, and Kaizu is still with us. Seeing him work as hard as he does, it kind of drives me to keep striving, too… I don’t want to lose to a total genius. I’m a regular guy, and I wanna show everyone what we can do, you know?”

By genius, he no doubt meant either Itsuki Hashima or Nayuta Kani. But in his life, Haruto had a mentor of sorts, a guy who trudged his way along, surrounded by geniuses and superhuman talents, never receiving heaps of praise or attention. Looking on from behind, he saw Kaizu as far cooler than any genius-level hero from any light novel.

“That’s…really cool, I think.”

Miyako smiled softly, and Haruto was bewitched.

“Oh, you see what I mean? Yeah, I mean, if you’re a massively overpowered genius, I don’t think that’s as cool.” He smiled as well, framing it as a joke.

“…Not just Kaizu. You too.”

“Me too?” Haruto exclaimed.

“…You—and Kaizu,” Miyako replied, her tone a little sad. “And Itsuki, and Kaiko, and the editor in chief, and Ms. Yamagata. And Mr. Toki. And the screenwriter for Itsuki’s anime. And the director. It’s, like, we have all these people fighting for their beliefs and dreams, and it’s really cool… Like, they’re shining so bright, I almost feel like I shouldn’t be there.”

With a self-effacing smile, she finished her glass and let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t have any beliefs or dreams; I can’t find anything I want to do… I took this job because I thought I’d find something if I was working near all these amazing people. But every time I run into yet another really cool person, it just reminds me of how empty I really am… Ah, what am I even doing?”

“Miyako,” Haruto quietly replied, “back in April, when we watched episode one of Chevalier at Itsuki’s place…you cried for me, didn’t you?”

“…? Why are you bringing that up now…?” She looked back at him, puzzled.

He passionately continued. “You really saved me. Back then, I think that helped me stay strong when I was on the brink.”

He didn’t want the person who saved him to berate herself in front of him. He didn’t want her talking about how empty she was. He wanted to tell her: You are wonderful.

“It’d be so awful to live in this world, I think, if everyone was supercool or whatever. The only reason all those cool people can keep trying is thanks to really kind, gentle people like you, Miyako. Willing to cry for the sake of someone else.”

Maybe I’m just a little guy, but the novels I make—the manga, the anime, the art, the photos, the music, the poetry, the theater I make—will touch someone’s heart. Not many creators can keep putting one foot in front of the other after losing hope about that. And hope was exactly what Miyako gave Haruto back there.

“Kind and gentle…?”

Softly, slowly, her tears began to flow.

“Huh?” They confused her. She smiled out of embarrassment. “Ha, ha-ha… Wow, that really resonated with me, Fuwa… I guess it was just what I needed to hear… I’m getting kinda emotional.”

Haruto tried to sound as light as possible through his own emotions. “Oh, really? Did you fall for me? Ha-ha.”

“Mmm, I got pretty close to, maybe,” she jokingly replied.

“Ooh, that close, huh? Too bad.”

Then, without further preparation, he dropped the laughs, summoned his courage and his feelings, gave her the kind of smile that usually comes with tears of joy, and confessed.

“Because…you know, I fell for you a long time ago.”

“Oh?”

Haruto did his best to keep from shaking as he saw Miyako’s confusion.

“…Ever since you cried for me there, I’ve really liked you. If you’re interested, I’d kinda like to be a couple.”

She could tell he was serious.

“Um, I, ah, oooh… What should I do, ha, ha-ha-ha…?”

Her face was red, her eyes darting to and fro…and then, she took a deep breath to gather herself. Her eyes met Haruto’s. She didn’t want to engage in stall tactics. She wanted her full, serious sincerity to come across to him. And she said:

“…Let me think about it for a while.”