Chapter 16 - Flowers Bloom in One’s Footsteps

However, finding out the root cause of his discomfort didn’t magically solve the issue.

The next day was a Saturday, and Kai left his house with a certain destination in mind. There was a park next to a large river, and it seemed a good number of families were spending their weekends there. He walked straight past the park and toward a multipurpose convention center that the city had built to promote industrial development. Many different events took place there, and according to the social media account Kai found during his research, there was a large doujin market being hosted today.

Unlike the park, the large hall that Kai entered was filled with a quiet enthusiasm. A number of long tables were laid out with doujinshi lined up at each booth. He figured that he’d be a nuisance if he came too early, so he arrived about two hours before the end of the event, and as a result he didn’t need to wade through a crowd of people to move around.

He had marked out a particular booth before coming, and when he walked over to it, a girl was in the middle of talking to a group of entrants. Kai waited at a short distance until they finished up their purchase, and then made his approach.

The girl wore a long, black skirt and had a jacket draped over her shoulders; the sleeves would have made it just past the elbow of her blouse, had she worn it properly. Perhaps owing to the fact that the fabric was thinner than her usual uniform’s blazer, her large breasts were especially accentuated, and the familiar white headphones seemed to rest atop them.

Noticing Kai’s presence, she made the sourest face she possibly could to show her extremely bad mood. “And why are you here?”

“Kuroba-san,” he greeted her politely. “I checked the account on your art blog, and it said you were participating in today’s event... I have something I would like to talk about.”

“Well, I simply don’t,” she retorted.

“But I do.” The situation had devolved into a staring match, but Kai couldn’t afford to back down now.

“You do know you’re a bother when you stand here?” she asked him pointedly.

“Then I’ll wait outside until you’re finished.”

“...Oh dear, do as you like.”

Indeed, Eru’s booth was quite popular, and during the midst of their conversation, someone had come up to look through her samples. Kai reasoned that it was only natural considering the quality of her drawings. It seemed like she still hadn’t begun taking on professional work, but Eru’s skill was already of that level. At any rate, it was a fact that he would be in the way here.

“Ah,” he said.

“What?” said Eru. “You still have business with me?”

“One copy of everything, please.” Kai bought one of all the books Eru had on sale as she leered at him, and then left the building. To kill the last two hours until the event ended, he went back to the park he’d come across on his way there. He spent his time flipping through her books on a bench and walking around the park for one hour, and then headed for the convention center again.

However, instead of approaching the front entrance, he made his way over to the backdoor. After about fifteen minutes, sure enough, Eru came through the door; she had obviously planned on sneaking home.

Her eyes narrowed in aggravation as she said, “Oh dear, are you a stalker?”

“I have something I would like to talk about,” Kai reminded her.

“I’m certain I told you that there is nothing for us to discuss!” Eru ignored him and began to walk away, but Kai stuck to her side and matched her pace. From a third party’s perspective, he might have truly looked like a stalker (just as Eru said), but Kai had no leeway to care about how others viewed him.

A bus stopped right in front of them and Kai followed her as she got on. Eru sat in a two-person seat and placed down her things beside her so that Kai wouldn’t be able to sit down. He didn’t have time to be taken aback by her actions. He picked up her belongings and placed them on her lap as he shamelessly took his seat beside her.

“It’s about Nanaka-san,” Kai told her.

As soon as he mentioned her name, Eru’s gaze turned quiet. Make no mistake, it was not a calm sight; her eyes were like a blue-white flame, lit ablaze with silent rage.

“It’s all your fault,” she said accusingly.

“That... may be true,” Kai admitted.

“I believe I told you that you’d make my dear Nanaka cry again with the way you went about things.” In order to show how unwilling she was to hear him out, Eru flicked her gaze outside the window and put on the headphones that rested on her neck.

If sound didn’t work, Kai thought, then he had to try sight. He thrusted a memo pad with the message, ‘I want to talk,’ written on it into her field of view and kept it there as she vehemently ignored him.

The bus passed through a handful of traffic lights. A short while before they arrived at the final stop, Eru finally caved and took off her headphones with a heavy sigh.

She pulled out a single business card from her wallet. On it was the name of a publishing company so large that there wouldn’t be anyone who couldn’t recognize it.

“I’ve been receiving requests to draw for light novels for quite a long time,” she said. “Up until now, I had rejected their offers, saying that I had club activities to prioritize... but now, I’ve decided to accept. So, I am done with the club. This no longer has anything to do with me.”

“And... are you really okay with being ‘done with it’?” Kai asked.

Eru glared at him, and Kai expected to be punched at any moment. But instead, the bus arrived at Niigata Station and Eru erupted out of her seat with enough force to knock Kai over. She quickly paced away through the station, ignoring Kai the whole time.

“Kuroba-san, I have something I want to ask of you!” They were practically running by the time Kai lined up beside her once more. “Please, teach Nanaka-san how to draw!”

“......Huh?” Eru stopped in her tracks.

Kai walked slightly past her and turned on his heel in order to speak face-to-face. “I want to ask you to tutor her as she draws so she can become a better illustrator,” he explained.

Since talking it out with Misako yesterday, this was the only solution that Kai could come up with. No planner would ever be thrown into a position of responsibility on their own; usually a senior planner would shadow and teach them until they were skilled enough to work by themselves. Akane’s teachings had been what shaped Kai into a proper planner.

Programmers worked under the same principle. A junior programmer would conduct a series of code reviews with their senior until they were a full-fledged part of the team, he knew. There shouldn’t have been any problem with an illustrator following the same path.

“Nanaka... is a planner now,” Eru said bitterly.

“We have another planner now,” Kai said. “I’m right here.”

“Did she tell you that she wanted to become an illustrator? She didn’t, did she?”

“Well, maybe not right now, but...”

“...Why must I cooperate for someone who doesn’t even want to do it?” Eru wanted to know.

“That’s... that’s wrong.” There’s no way that’s true. “She just can’t say it! What reason other than ‘I want to draw’ could possibly explain why she cried?!” Kai demanded.

“...” Eru looked like she wanted to snap back at him, but in the next moment, she turned heel and ran.

Kai hurried after her. They ran past a stoplight and a pedestrian bridge, and turned at the corner of a large post office; yet Eru continued to run, and Kai chased her with all he had.

“My word, how long do you plan on following me?!” she screamed back at him.

“Until I get a response!” Kai bellowed back.

“I’m almost home!”

“Then I’ll wait outside!”

“Listen here!”

After running through a neighborhood for a few minutes, Eru suddenly stopped. Kai thought she’d reached her own residence, but it was immediately apparent that that was not the case. The setting sun was directly in front of them and nothing was in view to block it from burning Kai’s eyes. In this fiery, backlit world, a single human shadow stretched out toward them.

In the middle of the street, in front of a home with a plaque reading, ‘Aoi,’ Nanaka stood befuddled with a plastic bag in her hand.

“...What are you two talking about?” she asked, clearly confused.

◇

“Excuse... me,” Kai said uncertainly.

“I had to clean everything up in a hurry, so sorry if it’s a bit messy,” Nanaka told them.

Despite that, Kai thought the room was nice and tidy. There was a single twin-size bed, two bookshelves, and a desk with a laptop on it.

“......Nanaka, where’s your tablet?” Eru asked.

“Oh... Um, I put it away when I cleaned up just now,” Nanaka admitted sheepishly.

Eru gave an irritated grunt as she glared toward the closet Nanaka pointed to. Eru sat on the bed like she owned the place, and Kai awkwardly froze when he took his seat on the blue carpet.

Kai didn’t need to double-check to know this was the first time he’d ever been in a girl’s room before. He noticed a small aromatic candle when he glanced at Nanaka’s desk, and confirmed that the pleasant smell wasn’t just him imagining things; this was completely different from his sister’s room.

Nanaka pulled the chair out from her desk and sat down. The atmosphere was tense as Kai wondered who would break the silence first, until, “This goon had the audacity to tell me that I ought to teach you how to draw,” Eru started.

“What... what does she mean?” Nanaka asked.

Kai explained his thought process, step-by-step. The conversation he’d had with Misako yesterday, and the things he realized—or rather, remembered—during it. How being bad, failing, and being criticized were only natural. That, if what Nanaka truly wanted to do was to draw, he’d like for her to work as an illustrator alongside Eru. And finally, how that led him to ask Eru for her cooperation.

After silently listening to his explanation, Nanaka put her hand to her chest and shook her head. “Thank you...” she said sadly. “But, I’m done with that now.”

“Done?”

“I think... I’m going to give up on being an illustrator,” Nanaka admitted.

The hush of a pebble being thrown into still water filled the room in the wake of her announcement. But of course, such stillness only persists as long as the pebble remains in the air. Upon breaking through the surface, a harsh sound is sure to ring out, and the silent water is sure to collapse into a series of waves.

“Is that your final conclusion?” Eru asked, immediately rising to her feet. In contrast to her calm tone of voice, she was trembling with her hands balled up into fists.

Nanaka averted her eyes and gave a small nod.

“You don’t mind if I quit the club?” Eru asked.

“...Eru, you have work requests from big publishers, don’t you? A little while ago, I saw a message in the MiSt user support email,” said Nanaka. “There was a reply saying you couldn’t because of your club activities, but maybe you could ask them again.”

“I-I’m not asking for myself, dear!” Eru told her.

“Plus I... I’m, well, in my second year already. I need to start taking my studies seriously soon for my entrance exams,” Nanaka admitted. “Eru, unlike you and Ah-chan... and Kai-kun, I don’t have any chance of making it as a pro. I thought, maybe this is the perfect timing for me... Maybe it’s time to stop dreaming.”

Nanaka looked down the entire time, connecting the words one after another as if to reassure herself. “So... I’m done. I’m sorry, everyone. Ah-chan, too... I need to apologize to her properly. Once Eru’s gone, the club won’t be here anymore.”

“Dear, are you serious?”

“.........Yeah.”

“Seriously serious?” Eru asked insistently. “Is that truly how you feel?”

“I’m sorry... I couldn’t keep our promise,” Nanaka said abashedly.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry! Do you truly think that?!” Eru yelled.

“Gh! Kuroba-san!” Kai grunted. Eru’s face was a deep red as she lunged for Nanaka’s collar, and he only just managed to hold her back.

He understood why she was angry; it was obvious from her facial expression that Nanaka wasn’t being true to herself. But pointing it out as a lie at this point wouldn’t get her to admit to it. Even if it was a lie, even if it wasn’t the truth, Nanaka wanted to push past it all and end things here.

“I’m sick of looking down on you like this,” Eru said, coldly insulting her friend.

“...That’s... fine,” Nanaka said haltingly.

“Oh, my dear word! Fine, I won’t let you hold onto even the slightest fragment of attachment for any of this!” The momentum behind Eru’s outburst carried her to the closet. “You don’t need your tablet anymore! I’ll destroy it, here and now, so that you won’t ever think about drawing again!”

“Ah, no! Don’t open—”

The instant Eru opened the closet... an avalanche occurred.

A mountain of drawing paper that had been stuffed away in the closet suddenly flooded out from its sealed chambers and into the room. Hundreds, thousands—no, tens of thousands of slips of drawing paper were the root of the avalanche. The only difference they had from snow was the fact that the papers were not pure white.

“...What is...”

Each and every single one had a date written on it.

Kai picked up a piece that had slid out and landed at his feet. It was dated back to the days he’d spent writing the specification document with Nanaka. The drawing had been made on the day that Nanaka pulled an all-nighter, reading textbooks in order to write up her own document.

He picked up another piece of paper. It was a drawing of a character from MiSt, along with today’s date. Nanaka was still drawing, even today.

“You were still drawing today...” he said. “Why... Why would you say you want to quit?” he asked.

There was no response. Nanaka seemed out of her own mind as she wobbled over and sat atop the pile of spilled papers. She picked up one sheet at a time, only to toss it away on the ground again. “Ahaha,” she chuckled in a dry, emotionless tone and buried her face in her hands.

“Because... no good,” she mumbled.

“...Nanaka-san?”

“I’m... no good. No matter how much I draw, no matter how much I practice, I don’t get better. I used to be better than Eru, but I can’t draw well at all now... I can’t draw,” Nanaka told them miserably. “I draw and draw and draw and draw and draw... but I don’t get any better! What else am I supposed to do?! Will I get better if someone teaches me, even though I already practice this much?! I don’t need to hear from someone else how bad I am! I know that better than anyone! You can tell me to practice more, but there’s no more time in my day I can use! What do you want me to do to get better?! The answer is nothing! I won’t get better...! I’m... I’m no good anymore!”

Nanaka raised her head to face them, and her eyes pierced straight through Kai. The tears flowing out from them fell upon the layers of paper and turned into a series of round stains.

“All of these, I deliberately draw all of these on paper. I have a drawing tablet, but... if I don’t leave some kind of proof to myself that I tried... I get so insecure that I can’t take a single step forward,” she said. “But that... is all in the past now... I’m sorry... I’m sorry... Forgive me. I can’t be like Eru, I can’t be like Ah-chan, I can’t be like Kai-kun—I can’t be anything... Forgive me.”

There were no longer tears in Nanaka’s eyes, but seeing the hollow look on her face was more painful than seeing her cry. Eru was at a loss for words and froze where she stood.

That being said, Kai caught the words that Nanaka threw out and shook his head. “...You’re wrong,” he said.

You’re wrong, Kai thought to himself. You’re absolutely wrong. I didn’t come here to make you say, ‘Forgive me.’

“I might not be able to say that it’s wrong to give up,” he admitted. “I’m not in a position to say something like that.” It was precisely because he’d given up and ran away that he was here in the first place. “When I was at Tsukigase, it was so much harsher than it is here, and there were so many people... There were so many people with incredible talent. But with all the internal conflict and outside criticism... there were just as many who cracked under the pressure and left. Some went on to different kinds of clubs, others decided to continue game development by themselves... There were also some who stopped doing things like that entirely.”

“...I see. That makes sense,” Nanaka muttered to herself. “I guess... I’m like that too.”

“But!” Kai exclaimed. Right now, he was here again, back at the social game club. If he’d been on his own, he wouldn’t be here: he knew that for a fact. He’d be the same as he was when he transferred, living out his melancholic days alone. He wouldn’t trouble anyone, wouldn’t be hurt, wouldn’t be betrayed, wouldn’t be exhausted—he wouldn’t have anything.

But even then, Nanaka brought him here that day. So, if she trapped herself in her own room and felt like she couldn’t walk anymore... this time, it was his turn to pull her up and take her away.

“I want to make games with you, Nanaka-san!” Kai didn’t wait for an answer before he began rifling through the papers spread across the ground. He confirmed the dates on the sheets and picked up a handful of drawings. “Kuroba-san! Look at this drawing!”

“Huh?” Eru said defensively. “W-What do you want?”

“Hurry! Look!” Kai insisted. “What’s wrong with this drawing?! Tell me!”

“What part of this could be important right now?!” Eru wondered.

“I’m asking you because it’s important! Hurry!”

Eru was a bit overwhelmed as she took the paper into her hands. “...To put it simply, she doesn’t understand human anatomy,” she said. “There are parts that absolutely would not bend this way if you were to keep the structure of joints and muscles in mind, so the entire piece looks unnatural.”

“Okay, and this one next!” said Kai, thrusting another drawing at Eru.

“This one is... The figure is fine, but the perspective is strange. This composition relies heavily on depth, so a sloppy perspective leads to the entire illustration feeling flat and unappealing.”

“Next!”

“...This one isn’t terrible when it comes to anatomy and perspective, but the fundamental composition of the drawing doesn’t suit the piece. This shouldn’t be drawn in an O shape, but rather an S shape to highlight a sense of flow.”

“Then, next—”

“Stop!” Nanaka cried out, gripping Kai’s hand tightly as he reached for another paper.

“I won’t stop! I won’t let you stop...!” Kai fanned out the three drawings so Nanaka could see them properly. She looked away in pain, as if she no longer cared to look at her own artwork. “Nanaka-san,” he told her, “these drawings are in order of oldest to newest.”

“...So, what about it?”

“Kuroba-san, when you saw these—wouldn’t you say the newer ones have improved?”

Nanaka raised her head at his words. At the end of her timid gaze, Eru silently—but certainly—gave a nod. “...They’ve gotten better,” she told Nanaka. “After drawing this much... My dear, there’s no way you wouldn’t get better.”

Kai peered at the long, layered trail at Nanaka’s feet. Even if she was still bad at drawing, it didn’t mean she wasn’t moving forward; even with his untrained eye, he could see it. He knew for sure that Eru would see it, too.

It was a fact that Nanaka’s drawings weren’t amazingly spectacular. It was clear to anyone who looked that her work paled in comparison to Eru’s; there wasn’t anything they could do about that. Like in a race between a turtle and a hare, there were those who could only take small steps, and those who could soar the great skies above them like birds. Surely that was what people called ‘talent.’ Still, Kai wouldn’t let the small steps of hard work be reduced to meaninglessness.

“I... I...” Nanaka couldn’t bring the words out any more than that. She turned right, and then left, as she surveyed the room: every corner was overflowing with her illustrations. Some sheets had a single drawing completed with colors, and others were a collage of many characters. Each and every one was proof of the many steps she’d taken to reach this point.

As if to blot out Nanaka’s resurgent stream of tears, Eru pulled her close, and her friend’s muffled sobs were the only noise that filled the silent room.