Time passed… before long it was December 24th.
"Why do I have to come with my sister to Shibuya on Christmas Eve…?"
"Did you say something?"
"Tch, nothing." I responded curtly to my sister's menacing question.
Leaving the station, we walked towards the scramble crossing that faced the 109 building. Annoying preaching about God and this and that blared from speakerphones attached to a van.
The sky was tinged with the color of sunset. Night would probably fall soon. When that happened, the various lights set up around the city would turn on, and the place would probably look prettier.
Today, Naruko was also decked completely out in model fashion, and because she was in her natural element here, she completely fell in step with her surroundings. This was a place filled with people like Naruko.
The crowd in front of the station reminded me of Akihabara and Comiket, but the people walking around felt completely different in terms of how they looked and dressed. Everyone seemed excessively stylish, and the probability of passing by a good-looking guy or girl was remarkably high. It was to the point where my sister didn't really stand out from the crowd.
"There are going to be a lot of Christmas Eve scenes in the webnovel I'm planning to write, and I'm also on a deadline, so we had to come today to get inspiration. I even had to turn down Akeno when she asked me to hang out with her. If it weren't for this, I would be going with Akeno to a Christmas party her office is holding."
Naruko went on and on and on and on… I feel like I'm being patronized here. I also would have gone to the Christmas party at Yang's house if I didn't have this plan. I had to decline Yang's dad's invitation and come with you, so you should be thankful too.
"Hey, are you listening to me? Did you really hear what I just said?"
"Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah… I heard eeeeverything."
"… Hah, don't act so conceited. It's gross."
"I said I heard you! Are you listening to me?!"
Naruko and Akeno, Blake and Rias, Weiss and Yang and Ruby, why do all these girls never listen? I appreciate a certain blonde cousin now more than ever, dammit.
"… Well? What inspirations exactly are you trying to get?" If all we're going to do is stroll around like this, then there's no reason I should be here. Thinking these thoughts, I looked at my sister, and saw that she was staring at a notebook and mumbling. "Naruko?"
"I heard you. I'm figuring it out now, so be quiet… so, first off is…"
The notebook Naruko was staring at appeared to have an outline of the webnovel written on it (It seemed like the plot outline).
Naruko looked back and forth between the notebook and Shibuya, and pointed to the intersection in front of us. It was a famous intersection I had often seen in TV dramas. When the light turned green, a huge number of people crossed through the intersection.
"We'll start there."
"The Shibuya Scramble Intersection, huh…?" I have no idea what kind of story she's planning on writing, but this place definitely fit her character pretty well. "And, what are we going to do at the Scramble?"
"We're going to follow the events of the prologue in order. The protagonist, a high school girl, meets her boyfriend for a date on Christmas Eve."
"Huh?"
"As I said, we're going to follow the scene and simulate what the protagonist does in the story. If I personally experience it, I'll be able to write it more realistically."
"I see. So You'll be fulfilling the role of the protagonist, and I'll be her boyfriend."
"Yes, that's the case."
Finally, I understood the reason she brought me here. But seriously… when she set her mind on something, she gave it a hundred percent, didn't she…? To the point where she sacrificed her own Christmas… you're really giving it your all, geez. Take her track club for instance, or her studies, or her modeling work, or her eroge hobby… and now, her webnovels.
"Okay okay. Soo, what should we do first? Should we hold hands and cross or something…?"
"Well, first you can go get run over by that dump truck."
"You make mincemeat out of the boyfriend from the very beginning!? What kind of gore-fest was this novel supposed to be?!"
"Yuck. Stop with the grotesque expressions. It's a pretty established strategy in a love story to shock the readers by starting off with a tragic event."
"Speaking as if you're a know-it-all… there's no way I'm going to do that!"
"Huh? Don't be selfish! I said we're going to do everything as it happens in the plot. If you don't try to do everything exactly, I won't be able to get any real experience from it."
"As I said, why the hell are you trying to get me to simulate the death of her boyfriend!? What kind of experience exactly do you think you can glean from your brother's corpse!?"
Hearing my shouting, Naruko raised one hand as if she were a psychometer helping the police.
"A clue to track down the killer?"
"You're the killer! Also, do you seriously plan on killing off the boyfriend in the prologue? That seems like such a heavy story…"
"For your information, webnovel readers want these kinds of plots."
Seriously? Exactly where is her confidence flowing out from? To me, it seems more like the prologue to a horror novel…
"Well, whatever. It would be bothersome to quit after we've just begun. So I'll just snap a few photos here and that'll be it." While she said that, she took a few photos of the intersection. Ohh, she seems to be doing things relatively professionally. "Everything's okay here. Let's move on."
Next, we arrived at the 109 building. I saw that they had constructed a concert stage in front of the entrance. 109 is a building in which there were many clothing shops popular with younger girls. Naruko had explained what this building was to me just now.
The total area of each floor was not that large, but the building extended from two floors underground to eight floors in the air, and was naturally packed with Shibuya-style girls. This was the first time I had ever entered this building. Just watching the slender girls who looked a step away from being professional models along with the gaudily dressed girls walking around in groups was quite a sight in its own right. Oh also, there was a strangely sweet smell in the room, and when I thought about it, it was the same scent I had smelled in my sister's room.
"For now, let's go up on those escalators over there and look at some clothes."
"Yeah yeah."
Steeling myself, I took a step forward. Then, we began to look at clothes while going up and up and up on the escalators.
"But seriously, this place is filled to the brim with quite… interesting clothes. Like, who in the world would wear this incredibly revealing, pervy miniskirt on this mannequin here?"
This place seemed to regularly sell clothing that would embarrass you if you wore them and were not incredibly good-looking. Clothing that you would expect to see on Marilyn Monroe or worn on singing programs. I guess celebrity performers might also shop here.
Going up one more set of escalators, we came upon a floor that sold cute clothes. The clothes sold on this floor seemed a bit more aimed at children, so even if normal girls wore these it probably wouldn't look strange. The price tags also seemed reasonable, and didn't really go past 5000 yen.
"Why are you looking at that mannequin so closely? Could it be you want to buy something? Like that."
"Well… I was just thinking how nothing in this building would look good on Yasaka…"
"Hmph, that's not really true. The clothes on this floor especially aren't that showy."
Having explored the building up to the eighth floor, we turned around and this time headed underground. We passed by floor B1 without stopping, and continued on to B2.
"So, are you getting inspiration just by strolling around this building like this?"
"Sort of."
Walking heavily, Naruko led me to the accessory shop SAMANTHA McBEE located on the floor B2. Earrings and ring accessories sparkled on their displays. When I picked a few up to check the price, I saw that many of them were reasonably priced at around 2000-3000 yen. Perhaps because this place was geared towards the youth, there was a surprising number of cheaper goods that they had put together.
"Well? What kind of scene are you getting inspiration from here?"
"The date scene between her and her boyfriend." Naruko absentmindedly and bluntly mumbled her response.
"Her boyfriend? Didn't you already make minced meat of him?"
"Well obviously, it's a different boyfriend. This is a scene that happens a month after the original boyfriend dies."
Hm… hmmmmm… one month later, huh?
"What's with that look? You want to say something?"
"Nah… I was just thinking how she got a new boyfriend pretty quickly even though her old one had died…" And she's a high school girl? What a bitch.
"That's normal, isn't it? You got a problem?"
"Yeah. Won't that just make the readers hate her? At the very least, I'm not a fan of this cold-hearted protagonist."
"You don't know anything, do you? That's how boys think. For me, I don't take it as cold-heartedness, but rather resilience in the face of misfortune."
"I guess that's a possibility."
I didn't pursue the issue any further. After all, I couldn't even begin to understand how this girl thought. It's Naruko's book, so she can do what she wants with it.
"So, for that reason, buy me an accessory."
"Huh? What? What did you say?" Doubting my ears, I asked Naruko to repeat herself, prompting her to click her tongue.
"This is the scene in which she gets an accessory from her boyfriend, so buy an accessory for me."
"What kind of trickery was this!? You just been using this as an excuse for getting money out of me!
"What? What is this? Could it be you can't even do that much? I can't believe it. This throws all our plans off track."
Now she's just saying whatever the hell she wants… to an outside observer, wouldn't I look just like a poor boy who couldn't even buy a present for his girlfriend on Christmas Eve? Dammit… people are glaring at me… I feel like I'm lying on a bed of needles here…
"Tch, fine! Which one do you want me to buy?" I had no choice but to concede.
"The truth is, I already picked something out the last time I came here… I want a Christmas limited-edition silver ring and accessory set. Here, look, isn't this suuuuper cute?"
Naruko seemed to have already picked something out, and wasted no time in pointing out a showcase to me. Well, if that it, I can probably manage.
"Excuse me!" I called the female shopkeeper over and asked her the Price. "T-thirty thousand yen!?"
Dammit, I thought the price was only three thousand yen. U-ugh… with an exceedingly cool expression, I wiped the cold sweat off my forehead…
"N-Naruko-chan, Onii-san doesn't have more than 18000 yen right now. Can you lend me some money?"
When I turned around, my sister had disappeared. Dammit! That girl! She probably sensed danger in the middle of my sentence and ran away!
"Ahaha, sorry, it turns out I didn't need anything! Hahaha!" Giving the approaching shopkeeper a shameful smile, I hurriedly left that place behind.
"Ugh, I can't believe you! Why didn't you have enough money!? Isn't that impossible!?"
"Shut up! Isn't it your fault in the first place for trying to get me to buy you something idiotically expensive!?"
Naruko and I argued as we left the 109 building. It was probably my imagination that I could hear an occasional chuckle from the people we passed by. At least, that's what I wanted to believe.
"Hah… geez… how could you do that? I'm so embarrassed! I can't ever go back to that shop now! And I couldn't get any Inspiration for the scene where the boyfriend gives the protagonist an accessory… "
Naruko 's lips thinned and she pouted. Her expression was certainly cute, but I'm not buying it. She's definitely cursing me off on the inside.
"Just calm down and think. In the first place, I'm a normal high school student, so there's no reason I would be walking around with that kind of money. Isn't the protagonist's boyfriend the same way?"
"No. He's already employed at a company, so he has plenty of money. Hmph, if I made him a poor punk like you are, at that point all my readers would stop reading."
"Huh? Wait just a second, Naruko."
"What?"
"He's employed at a company and he's going out with a high schooler!?"
"Yeah, so? He's the young president of a start-up company."
He's definitely an asshole! He's definitely a good-for-nothing! I wanted to shout that out loud, but finding fault with her directly would probably piss her off, so I tried to raise my objections in a more roundabout way.
"Isn't it… a bit risky to have the main character dating a company man?"
"What are you talking about, this kind of setup is normal. It's a setup that's relatively common, in fact."
Seriously? It was like that? Ugh… sorry, but I can't even begin to comprehend what counts as "normal" to you. Although, I've heard that lately, shoujo manga has been getting pretty extreme… perhaps she could deduce my fears from my facial expression, but Naruko began to explain her rationale.
"I'll teach you then. Girls like me are particularly weak to setups where the girl is dating a handsome looking-rich man. So all the boys at the same age seem like idiots to us. We would rather go out with a monkey at the zoo than with one of them."
I sympathized with any boys that had developed a crush on her. But certainly, for boys having her as a girlfriend would be a lot of work. If there was a person who would go out with her, he would have to have the patience of a Buddhist monk or be a complete masochist.
"But seriously, what should I do… because of you, now I can't write the scene where the protagonist gets a gift from her boyfriend at Marukyuu…" Naruko mumbled complaints while writing with her ballpoint pen in her notebook. She was probably changing the plot. "Ah, alright. Let's make the scene like what happened… the boyfriend didn't have money and couldn't buy her the present."
"Didn't have money… you mean he dropped his wallet or something?"
"No, I'm not writing anything that cliche. The scene now is a date scene with a different, poor boyfriend."
"Poor… different boyfriend…? Where did the idiot handsome company man run off to?"
Naruko explained the fate of the idiot handsome company man. "His affair with a high school student was leaked to his wife and company and he fell into ruin."
"He was having an affair!?" This man was the worst! Would anybody even care if he was killed!?
"And after everything descends into chaos, in the end he returns to the wife he loves. Having been cruelly tossed to the side, the protagonist is severely hurt… and loses her faith in men… isn't that so sad?"
Not at all? It's the protagonist's own damn fault. In fact, the one who drew the shortest stick in all of this was probably the wife. The wife was just too kind. She really shouldn't forgive him. Mino Monta would definitely say that as well. If her husband was fooling around with a high schooler, the normal thing to do would be to divorce him and take his money in the settlement. My heart was completely frozen, but Naruko didn't seem to notice and continued her explanation.
"And then? What happened to this terribly hurt protagonist? She self-destructs and joins a prostitution group. Compensated dating."
"What a damn bitch…" I couldn't keep it in anymore and voiced my real opinion. And who can blame me in this situation?
"What the hell did you just say!?"
"Nothing!"
Faced with my sister's glare and bared fangs, I put on an innocent smile. Naruko seemed satisfied with that, and made this announcement while staring at me.
"And then, from the next scene on she gets a new boyfriend."
"She just keeps getting new ones huh… by the way, does this new boyfriend die or fall into ruin as well?"
"Nooo. She stays with him to the end. After all, the theme in this novel is pure love ."
"… Pure love?" What is she saying? I cocked my head to the side, confused.
"Yes, pure love!" Naruko puffed out her chest, full of confidence. She had absolutely no doubts with regards to the words she just spurted out.
If I examined the situation closely, it seems that to her, the character who goes through so many boyfriends, is involved in an adultery scandal, goes into prostitution, and then remains faithful to the last boyfriend counts as "pure love. Wasn't she just mixing up "pure love" with "dirty love"?