The Melancholy of the High School Girl Light Novel Author?!

by Tsuyoshi Fujitaka

  Tonight, as usual, Mutsuko was sitting across the low table from Yuichi. She was dressed in a monk’s work outfit. And for some reason, this time, Yoriko was kneeling next to him, dressed in a negligee.

  “The fact that you two are always skulking around here in the middle of the night is very suspicious!” Yoriko complained.

  “Yori, don’t you have school tomorrow?” he asked. “You should get to bed.”

  “You both have school, too!” she protested.

  “Well, yeah, but...” Yuichi scratched his head. He’d had a feeling that that logic wasn’t going to convince her, but he couldn’t help wanting his dear little sister to have enough sleep at night.

  “I’ll try to keep it brief, then,” he said. “Remember how I went up to the roof earlier today? Well, some armor fell onto it.”

  It felt a bit odd when he said it out loud, but he was just describing what he’d seen.

  “Huh?” Yoriko asked.

  “Armor?! Like the Shu’urushi-nuri Murasaki-ito Sugake-odoshi Gomaido Gusoku Nanban Kasashiki?!” In contrast to Yoriko’s confusion, Mutsuko was immediately energized.

  “Yeah, Yori’s reaction is the normal one. And what was that?!” Yuichi shot back. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Why don’t you know about it?!” Mutsuko cried. “It’s the Shu’urushi-nuri Murasaki-ito Sugake-odoshi Gomaido Gusoku Nanban Kasashiki! The personal armor of Keiji Maeda!”

  “Is that some kind of incantation or something?” he asked.

  As usual, just hearing the term again hadn’t helped, so he decided to focus on the broad details. The point was, she was asking if it was Japanese-style armor.

  “Orihara said it was like European armor from the 17th century,” he asserted. “Heavy armor, she said, I think. It did look pretty thick, too. And it came with horse armor. We waited to see if anything else would fall, but that was the last of it.”

  “If Orihara said it, she’s probably right,” Mutsuko said. “Did you take a picture?”

  “Oops.” The fact that he had forgotten to do something so simple suggested that, despite his plays at level-headedness, the incident had actually left him very flustered. “I wonder what happened to it, though. The teachers were probably making their rounds, so...”

  Yuichi couldn’t imagine what the teachers would do upon finding a suit of armor on the roof.

  “They’d probably assume it was a fake, right? Like a cosplay,” Yoriko said. “So they’d take it in to the lost and found.”

  Despite Yuichi’s assumptions that Yoriko would be disgusted by the bizarre conversation, she seemed surprisingly serious in engaging with it.

  “You believe this bizarre story?” he asked.

  “I believe everything you say, Big Brother. Besides, this is nothing compared to all the strange things that happened during our vacation.”

  “A falling suit of armor is nothing?” Yuichi didn’t want her getting used to this sort of thing. He renewed his vow not to let Yoriko get caught up in any more strange business.

  “You think it’ll still be there tomorrow? I wish I’d gone with you today!” Mutsuko cried.

  “That’s right, you decided not to come to the roof with us,” Yuichi said. “What were you doing?”

  “I heard there was a sale on kamas, so I went to buy one! It was such a steal!” she exclaimed.

  “A kama? You mean like a sickle-and-chain?” Yuichi’s first assumption was that it was a weapon. That was the only thing he could imagine her going off to buy so gleefully.

  “I mean a pot,” she said. “For boiling things! You know the Narikama ritual? I was thinking of using it for that!”

  “I’ll ask about that later,” Yuichi said. For now, let’s talk about the armor.” He stopped his eager sister. If he let things get off track, he had a feeling they’d never get back to the original subject.

  “Armor... Armor is the smallest locked room there is! And a mysterious falling death onto the roof! When you think about it, it’s like a real mystery story!” Mutsuko seemed to be getting excited by her own idea.

  “Just to make sure you know, there was no one inside the armor, okay?” he asked peevishly. If a person had died in the armor, he wouldn’t be talking about this so calmly.

  “Right, then I bet someone’s trying a new magic trick! If not, then it’s a fafrotskies phenomenon!” Mutsuko declared with her hand on her chin.

  Yuichi blinked at the unfamiliar word. “What the hell is that, exactly?”

  “Fafrotskies,” she said. “An abbreviation of FAlls FROm The SKIES. It refers to phenomena where things fall from the skies that you wouldn’t expect to fall. You mostly hear it with regards to fish, but there’ve also been reports of chunks of meat, building materials, pieces of metal, feces, blood, and lots of other things falling from the skies all over the world. This is the first I’ve heard of it happening with armor, though! Possible causes include tornadoes, things dropped by birds, and things falling out of airplanes. By the way, the person who coined the term fafrotskies is cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson! He also thought up the name OOPArts! Doesn’t he just have the best naming sense?!”

  “I see he’s patient zero for middle school syndrome,” Yuichi said. “But I think we’d notice if there was a tornado, and I didn’t see anything flying over...”

  He found himself trailing off. He hadn’t seen anything in the sky, but Aiko had.

  “What’s wrong?” Mutsuko asked.

  “Well, it’s just, Noro said she saw something floating in the sky. I couldn’t see it, myself, but she said there was an upside-down castle, with a dragon flying around it. If there really was a castle, it probably fell from there, right?”

  “I wonder why couldn’t you see it,” Mutsuko mused. “Was Noro the only one who could?”

  “Konishi was with me, and she said she couldn’t see it either,” Yuichi said. “I don’t know about Orihara.”

  Kanako had looked up at the sky and muttered something, but he couldn’t remember what it had been.

  “So some people see it and some people don’t... I’ll just have to go look for myself!” Mutsuko seemed excited by the promise of this curious phenomenon. “If I can’t see it, I’ll talk with Noro and see if I can get her to offer up some details!”

  “Aren’t you bored, listening to us talk about this weird stuff?” he asked, turning to Yoriko. She had been very quiet for a while, so he’d thought she might be bored. But in fact, she was snoozing quietly, head drooped. “You’re asleep?!”

  “Well, let’s adjourn for now. We can figure out the rest after we get to school tomorrow,” said Mutsuko.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe they didn’t have enough information to go on at the moment.

  “Yori, we’ve got to go back to our room,” Yuichi said to Yoriko, but she showed no signs of waking up. Yuichi sighed and lifted her up in his arms instead, to carry her out of Mutsuko’s room.

  “Hey... you’re really awake, right?” he realized.

  “You could tell?” Yoriko stuck out her tongue and smiled, realizing she was busted.

  “The grinning made it pretty obvious.” As Yuichi carried her back, he wondered what she found so funny.

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  Night had fallen over Seishin High School.

  Makina Shikitani stood on the moonlit roof. She leaned against the fence, arms folded, and gazed towards the roof’s center.

  A suit of crumpled armor lay there.

  There was a faint sound. The sound of metal scraping, metal warping.

  The bent, flattened armor had slowly begun to regain its shape. The scattered parts moved, and gradually, began to assemble in one place.

  “Kanako Orihara’s awakening happened sooner than I expected,” Makina said. “But it’s a bit out of control... It will be useless to me if it’s too chaotic. She’ll need guidance.”

  The armor that had fallen from the sky had begun to move. A fascinating phenomenon, to be sure — but useless, Makina jud
ged, for what she had planned for this school.

  “That’s an odd thing to be saying to yourself. Are you speaking to me, by chance?” The voice was coming from beside her.

  Makina looked to the side, and up. There was a large bookshelf there, and on top of it sat a girl with red hair.

  “Every time I see you, I wonder,” Makina said. “Why are you always sitting on that thing when you appear?”

  “It’s convenient for getting around,” said the girl. “It’ll walk around for me, see?”

  “It has legs?” Makina asked. That was the first she’d heard of it; she had always assumed it teleported or something.

  “That’s right. It grows them when it’s time to move.” As she spoke, the girl — Ende — jumped down off the shelf.

  “A suit of armor fell from an island floating in the sky... it seems interesting. You really find it useless?” Ende pointed to the armor, which was rattling eerily.

  It was hard to tell from where they stood, but there was something writhing around inside. The armor was beginning to be filled.

  “I can’t see the flying island...” Makina commented.

  “Oh? You haven’t read her book? But you can see the armor, right?” Ende asked, as if she found that very strange.

  “I said her powers were out of control,” Makina said. “Materialization should be the final stage, but it’s already happening, piecemeal. Though perhaps that’s a sign of her talent...” Makina furrowed her brow.

  “Is that a problem?” asked Ende. “It still means that everything will materialize in the end, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t want all of Glowsphere recreated; I want something more compact. And if this continues, it’ll be too much for Kanako Orihara to handle. If she calls forth a world-consuming Demon Lord, she won’t be able to control that, will she? Annihilation is the only future presented in the story of the world of Glowsphere.” Maybe that was what Ende wanted, but Makina’s goals lay in a different direction.

  “Well, setting that aside... here are the documents on Kanako Orihara that you asked for,” said Ende. “I tagged all the most important points.” She opened the bookshelf, pulled out a volume, and handed it to Makina.

  “If only you were this accommodating all the time,” Makina said as she opened the volume.

  “I am this accommodating all the time.”

  Ignoring Ende’s protest, Makina changed the subject. “Speaking of which, we have a new member, don’t we? With mind control powers and the ability to manipulate cause and effect... I’m envious, I have to say.”

  “Monika, you mean? She did have quite a lot of potential,” Ende said. “But she tried to become human again and messed up at the outset. Right now she’s lost nearly all of her power. It’s a pity.”

  “Really?” asked Makina. “I thought that with her power, it would be easy to make humans do whatever she wanted. I may talk big about things like manipulating destiny, but all I really do is mundane negotiation and trading. It’s pathetic.”

  “Creating a whole publishing company to make one girl an author is mundane?” Ende asked, baffled.

  “What else could I do?” Makina asked. “One of the conditions to trigger ‘Isekai Writer’ was for her to publish a book. Who would have thought opening up an agency account would take such a long time?”

  Makina flipped through the volume, and decided upon her next course of action. She pulled out her cell phone and called the publishing company she had founded.

  “It’s me. About Kanako Orihara. She submitted a number of plots, didn’t she? Yes, push that one. The school story. Demon Lord? Can’t we just cancel it?”

  “Um... that’s a bit reckless, isn’t it? As a book lover myself, the thought stings a bit...” Ende said as she listened in. It was a rare sentiment, coming from her.

  “Fine,” Makina said, changing her instructions. “You don’t have to cancel it, just tell her to give her full priority to the school story for now.” She hung up the phone.

  This was how Makina’s “manipulating destiny” worked. She could investigate her target’s situation, speculate about cause and effect from Ende’s materials, and change the environment to create the result she desired. But she wouldn’t know for sure how things would turn out until she tried them. In practice, things rarely went as she expected, but for Makina, that was part of the fun.

  “By the way, I suppose you didn’t take my warning, did you?” Ende asked.

  “Hmm? About Yuichi Sakaki? I did. We talked, and that was the end of it.” When Makina had announced that she would be coming to the school, Ende had warned her not to get involved with Yuichi Sakaki. Makina wasn’t sure why, but knowing that nothing good would come of turning Ende against her, she had taken her words into consideration.

  “...Ah, well,” Ende said. “However it turns out, it’s your decision.”

  It was an evocative way of putting it. Did Ende like Yuichi? But her words, taken at face value, suggested Ende didn’t care how things turned out for him. Which meant that if Makina killed Yuichi Sakaki, Ende wouldn’t have a problem with it.

  Over the course of their conversation, the horse armor had been changing, as well.

  This process was much easier to follow than the human armor had been. The parts had begun floating in air, as if a horse was wearing them. Then, from within, dark red threads appeared, tying together to form the outline of a horse. It was as if an entire equine circulatory structure had simply appeared out of nowhere. A little later, white bones began to appear amidst them, and flesh and organs filled in the spaces between.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, it was covered in skin and even letting out a neigh.

  Beside the horse stood a man in armor. He seemed to have been revived in much the same way.

  “What should we do about him?” Makina wondered. “Well, as long as he’s here... I suppose I should make use of him.” Makina walked up to the man in armor, who was looking around in confusion. “Do you understand the situation you’re in?”

  “I fear not,” the man said. “I know not where I am, nor who you are, dear lady. All I know is that Lady Lasagna is missing.” Despite saying he did not know, his attitude was one of confidence.

  “Look up at the sky, if you please,” she told him.

  The man in armor did as he was told. “The castle is upside down... what is the meaning of this? Is this the Heroes’ doing?!”

  “From this world’s perspective, it appears to be in something of a pocket space. I don’t know if Demon Lord Lasagna is here, but even if you find her, you may not be able to return under your own power. Now, I do have a suggestion...”

  As the man in armor stood there in confusion, Makina began to explain.

  Chapter 3: Monika and Her Merry Band

  After spending some time with Yuichi and the others on the roof, Kanako declined lunch with them, then went straight home.

  “I’m back,” Kanako said as she opened the door, but there was no one there to greet her.

  Technically, she lived with her father, but her father was always busy with work and almost never at home. In practice, she basically lived alone.

  Kanako’s mother had left home when Kanako was in middle school; an amicable divorce.

  The world had assumed the cause had been her father, for neglecting his family life in favor of work.

  That was around the time Kanako had started thinking about killing herself. After meeting Mutsuko, though, she’d become unable to go through with it.

  Today, Kanako had gone to the roof to test Mutsuko’s curse. As strange as it might seem, the purpose of it was to give her courage. If she couldn’t kill herself, she had no choice but to do her best.

  She entered her room, changed, and laid down for a little while.

  She had been thinking all this time about what she had seen from the roof.

  If that was Zalegrande Castle, then perhaps she had come upon something that would take her to an isekai. That would be a wonderful thing. The pro
blem was that it was the castle that was part of her story.

  It wasn’t the Zalegrande Castle she had seen in her youth, and still saw in her dreams. The original Zalegrande Castle was beautiful, but much more simple. When she had decided to set her story there, Kanako had added more towers and such, and the castle she had seen today had those. The tall black and white towers were especially conspicuous.

  Yuichi hadn’t seemed to have seen it, but Aiko had, which meant that it wasn’t a hallucination.

  As her mind tumbled over the meaning of that upside-down castle and the falling armor, Kanako grew restless, and eventually sat up. She didn’t have time to be distracted by such ambiguous matters.

  She went to the kitchen and ate the leftovers of the impromptu stir-fry she had made the night before, returned to her room, took a seat at her desk, and booted up her laptop.

  Her novel had been published just a few days ago, and now she had to write the second volume. It was a grueling schedule, with no time to rest.

  Kanako plunged into the task. She knew where the plot was going, so now all she had to do was write, write, write.

  As her fingers quietly danced over the keys, the sound of her ringing cell phone brought her back to herself.

  She answered it swiftly. It was her supervising editor.

  “Sorry to disturb you so late at night,” the editor said. “Could I have a minute of your time?”

  Was it really that late? Kanako wondered. She checked the time, and found that at some point, it had gotten past midnight.

  “Yes, what is it?” she asked. “I’ve finished half of the second volume of Demon Lord, so the deadline shouldn’t be a problem...” Thinking it was a motivation call, Kanako decided to nip it in the bud. She didn’t need him nagging her over something that was already dealt with.

  “Um, I’m sorry to say this, but the second volume has been delayed,” he said uncomfortably.

  The words struck her dumb. She felt herself plunging backwards into an abyss.

  “Hello? Hello?” The voice called again, sounding terribly far away.

  The realities of publishing were harsh nowadays. If the sales weren’t good enough, your line could be canceled with the wave of a hand. She knew that, and she had feared it, but she had thought she had been able to avoid it.