/
After the group finished chatting, Seiji checked his email but didn’t see any new emails from Editor Yoshizawa.
‘Maybe it’ll arrive tomorrow.’
At this moment, he received a message from Yukari. It was a drawing.
When Seiji downloaded and opened the picture, he saw a beautiful girl wearing a pretty one-piece dress. She was trying to hold back her silky brown hair, which was blowing in the breeze. The girl’s light blue eyes were gazing into the distance, and her red lips were arced upwards in an alluring smile. The wind blew her dress upwards, revealing a mesmerizing absolute territory that accentuated her seductive charm.
“How is it? I just finished drawing it! Although it’s not very detailed yet, I think it’s quite good already. If I spend some more time polishing up the details and adding some background scenery, it’ll be a great drawing!” Yukari said in her message.
“It’s quite good indeed… is this going to be the male main character?”
“Yep! I used Hoshi Amami as the model in my mind to draw it!”
Seiji was rendered speechless.
This definitely looked exactly like a beautiful girl to him… but he supposed that was just what a trap character was supposed to be.
Seiji tried imagining Hoshi wearing the same clothes as the ‘girl’ in the drawing and making the same pose… it seemed quite natural for Hoshi!
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more natural it seemed; there was no sense of abnormality at all!
Amazing.
He looked at the drawing for a long while and kept imagining this scene. After a while, he honestly praised Yukari’s drawing skills: “As expected of a famous artist, Romance of Ice and Fire Sensei.”
“Hehe~” Yukari sent a shy emoticon.
“After you left just now, we discussed some things regarding…” Seiji explained what happened in the conference to her.
“I absolutely can’t wait to meet that cute junior of mine named Hoshi! I also support adding voice acting to our game, and our first voice actress is… it’s Wakaba-san, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” Seiji admitted.
“Then the apprentice knight is Uehara-san?” Yukari asked.
“Yes… If you feel like it’s inappropriate to have her join in, I can cancel it.”
“Then Uehara-san would blame me for it.”
“No,” Seiji said, “it’s my decision in the end. This only came about due to my willfulness.”
“It’s okay to be willful once in a while,” Yukari said in a casual tone. “I don’t object; this is fine.”
“Thank you.”
“I shall receive your gratitude.” Yukari sent him a joyous expression.
Seiji returned the same emoticon to her.
“As for Hoshi, if you want to meet him, I can contact him right now. As for your real identity and how to meet up… by the way, is it alright to tell him about you?”
“If he’s going to be the model, then of course he needs to know who I am,” Yukari said. “He’s not a loose-lipped type, is he?”
“I don’t think so. I believe that Hoshi can keep a secret.”
“That’s good, then.”
And so, Seiji sent Hoshi a message telling him to contact Yukari, while he said good night and headed to sleep.
…
The next day, during class, Seiji was thinking about how to write the game’s storyline.
After he finished writing Brother Monogatari , he seriously began to consider how he would start writing this game scenario.
But the more he thought about it, the deeper he fell into a quagmire.
Suddenly, he had a realization.
The story was rather interesting, but was it really suitable for a dating sim? After that thought rose up in his mind, it became difficult to suppress.
If he was writing this storyline for a novel, Seiji felt like he could immediately begin with no problems whatsoever! But writing many routes and many endings for a game seemed quite difficult to him.
In the beginning, he merely felt that having two traps secretly compete against each other would be quite amusing, but he didn’t contemplate the storyline any deeper than that, nor did he think about how to integrate it into the story typically required of a dating sim game.
After he thought of this, Seiji began reconsidering the storyline anew…
And so, time passed just like this.
During lunch break, Seiji ate together with Mika and Chiaki, and had fun casually chatting with them.
Seiji’s cell phone rang at this moment. When he checked, it was from an unfamiliar number.
“Hello, who might you be?”
“Hello, are you Mister Idle Dimension by the Shore?” a low, deep voice asked from the other end.
“I am.”
“Good afternoon. I’m the head editor of Thunderbolt Literature, Souzo Hattori.” The male voice paused. “Might I ask what Shore-san is doing at the moment?”
“I’m currently eating lunch together with my friends.”
When he heard the heavy and serious voice of the man who called himself the head editor, Seiji felt an ominous premonition.
“Head Editor Hattori… is this about the publication of my novel? Where’s Editor Yoshizawa?”
Head Editor Hattori fell silent for a moment.
“Head Editor Hattori?” Seiji’s furrowed his brows.
He heard a deep sigh on the other end.
“Shore-san, allow me to tell you some unfortunate news…” Souzo Hattori’s voice was filled with sadness. “Our company’s excellent editor, Saki Yoshizawa-san… has passed away…”
Seiji’s expression instantly froze over.
“Passed away?” he muttered.
“Yes,” the head editor said in a low voice, “it was quite unfortunate…”
His tone definitely wasn’t a joking tone. Nobody would use such a topic as a prank!
Why… How was this possible!?
‘Editor Yoshizawa…’
“Why did she pass away!?” Seiji recalled the female editor’s appearance and smile, and his volume went up several notches as he asked this question.
Mika and Chiaki both widened their eyes when they saw Seiji’s reaction and heard the question he asked.
“Please calm down, Shore-san,” Head Editor Hattori said in a heavy voice. “I shall explain.”
“…My apologies, I was rude just now.”
“It’s alright… when I learned about this from the police, I was shocked as well… it was just too sudden.” Head Editor Hattori sighed. “It happened like this…”
Seiji quietly listened to his explanation.
After the head editor told Seiji what he knew, he changed the topic to Brother Monogatari . After a long silence, Seiji finally spoke and indicated that he would prefer to talk about this topic later, before hanging up the call.
“Seiji, what’s the matter?” Both Mika and Chiaki were looking at him with concern.
Seiji remained silent as he looked for Peach-sensei’s number in his contacts list and dialed it.
Nobody picked up the call.
Seiji slowly put down his cell phone.
He told Mika and Chiaki in a soft voice that he was going to go to the restroom.
Then, he turned around and left.
While on his way, Seiji opened up his system and chose to load.
The world around him darkened, and everything vanished before lighting up again.
…
Early in the morning, Saki Yoshizawa woke up due to her cell phone’s alarm as usual.
After she shook off her sleepiness, she softly pushed away her good friend Mayuzumi, who was still clutching on to her while sleeping, as she got out of bed.
She was just about to go wash up when her cell phone started ringing.
When she checked it, she saw that it was a call from Seigo Harano.
‘Why is he calling so early in the morning?’ The editor was somewhat mystified.
When she picked up, she heard him greet her politely, before he went directly to the main topic.
“It’s about Brother Monogatari;  I have something important I’d like to discuss with Editor Yoshizawa face-to-face. Where might you be currently?” Seigo asked after greeting her.
“I’m currently at Mayuzumi’s home.”
“At Peach-sensei’s home?” he asked.
“Yes, I stayed over here last night.”
“Then I’ll come over there right away.” He hung up with that.
‘Something important to discuss face-to-face… what could it be?’ Saki was still somewhat confused.
Well, she didn’t think too much of it, as she figured she would find out when he got here, so she put down her cell phone and left Mayuzumi’s bedroom.
Meanwhile, Seiji told Shika that he was going out before leaving hurriedly.
He hailed a taxi and had the driver speed to Peach-sensei’s apartment at top speed.
He hoped that he would arrive in time.
Seiji’s expression was incredibly grave as he sat in the taxi.