"Oh, one more thing," Yukino said after seeing Haruto sign the contract. "When your novel starts serializing in the magazine, do you want to use your real name or a pen name for the author credit?"
"Does it make a difference?" Haruto asked.
"Of course it does," Yukino replied seriously. "If you use your real name, 'Haruto,' most readers will immediately assume the author is male just from the name alone, and that can create problems."
"After all, over seventy percent of Fleeting Blossoms readers are women. A lot of them, whether they admit it or not, will subconsciously assume that a shōjo romance written by a man must be low quality."
Haruto immediately understood her point.
In the merged memories from that parallel world, the situation was exactly the same. Male authors writing palace intrigue aimed at women, or female authors writing male harem stories, were often questioned right away if they lacked prior achievements.
Readers would instinctively doubt whether the author could truly handle a genre meant for the opposite gender.
He thought about it for a few seconds. This was not a big issue at all, and if Yukino was bringing it up, then the solution was obvious.
"In that case," Haruto said calmly, "let's not use my real name. Use my pen name instead. Put the author credit as Shiori Takahashi."
His reasoning was simple.
Shiori Takahashi whose soul memories had fused with his own, like leaving behind a faint trace of her existence in this world.
"Shiori Takahashi?" Yukino repeated softly, thinking it over.
"Not bad. At first glance, it leans feminine, but when you think about it, a male author using this name is not strange either. If you become famous in the future, readers will not accuse Crimson Maple Literature of tricking them together with you. Let's settle it like that."
She then leaned back in her chair, her posture relaxed, though her expression turned serious again.
"Since the signing went smoothly, there's one more thing I need to warn you about. According to the schedule, the first chapter of Blue Spring Ride will be published on a Wednesday, two weeks from now. So listen carefully."
Yukino's body language looked casual, but her eyes were sharp.
"Serialization is only the first step. After that, every issue will track reader popularity. If your ranking stays at the bottom for too long…"
She paused deliberately.
"The publisher will cut the series. Do you know why Fleeting Blossoms suddenly had empty slots? The truth is that two novels that had been serializing in this magazine for over a month stayed dead last in popularity and were both canceled. The light novel industry is ruthless."
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
"I understand," Haruto said solemnly, then stood and left the office.
That night, he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep.
Before signing, his attitude had been simple. Let the novel serialize first, and figure things out later. But now that the contract was signed, the weight of serialization crashed down on him all at once.
It was not that the manuscript fee felt heavy.
It was that, for the first time as a student, after interacting with working adults, he finally understood what responsibility meant.
He had known Yukino for barely a week, and their total conversation time probably did not exceed three hours. Yet she had gone out of her way inside Crimson Maple Literature, arguing for him, pushing his proposal forward, and securing him a serialization slot.
The readers of the magazine were faceless to him. He could not see them. Whether they loved Blue Spring Ride, hated it, felt surprised, or felt nothing at all, he could not feel it directly.
As someone who was technically an adapter rather than the original creator, he had no real emotional connection to those reactions.
But Yukino was different.
She was real. He had met her, spoken to her, and seen her effort.
After leaving the company that afternoon, anxiety about how to write the latter half of Blue Spring Ride, and how to deliver the manuscript on time, flooded his mind.
He absolutely did not want the novel to start serializing, only for him to miss deadlines, cause delays, or produce a rushed ending that would force Yukino to take the blame inside the company for supporting him.
'I need to do something about this.'
'These memory fragments cannot keep jumping randomly like this. A person's lifetime of memories is too long. If they keep jumping at random, when will I ever reach the latter half of Blue Spring Ride?'
With those thoughts weighing on him, Haruto finally drifted into sleep around two in the morning.
And almost instantly, it happened.
That familiar sensation of being pulled into Shiori's memories surged over him again.
This time, however, the jump was precise.
Accurate.
It landed squarely at a crucial point.
The exact moment where Blue Spring Ride Episode Six had once cut off.
Haruto's heart skipped a beat. He immediately focused.
In those memory fragments, Shiori had resumed watching this arc after several days. The room was dim, snacks neatly prepared, everything familiar.
"If he gets off the train, I'll keep liking him. If he doesn't… I'll give up."
Futaba's inner monologue echoed in the anime.
Because Shiori's emotional experience was partially shared with him, Haruto could feel the same flutter and tension she felt when watching this scene for the first time.
And it was not just her feelings.
He himself was drawn in completely.
A girl's way of thinking was truly mysterious.
She had agreed to ride the train home together, but after realizing that her close friend also liked Kou, she became hopelessly tangled inside.
Unable to reach a conclusion, she came up with this absurd test.
She claimed she had something to do.
She got off the train. Then she decided the fate of her feelings on whether Kou would follow her off, abandoning the last train home without knowing why.
Maybe this was exactly why men struggled to write good shōjo romance.
How could a normal guy ever guess what the heroine was thinking at that moment?
"If he doesn't get off, I'll give up."
"If he does, I'll keep liking him."
The repeated inner monologue, paired with the quietly swelling background music, pushed Futaba's anxiety and confusion to the edge.
The dusk-lit station. The boy and girl staring at each other through the train doors. And then the doors began to close.
"Get off…!"
Futaba closed her eyes and lowered her head, screaming the words silently in her heart.
That fleeting, desperate thought betrayed what she truly wanted.
The wind stirred as the train departed, lifting her hair.
At the peak of the music, Futaba lifted her head.
Bathed in orange sunset light, the boy's silhouette stood before her.
Kou was there, calm, handsome, and looking straight at her with quiet sincerity.
He had not chosen the easy path of riding home alone. Without knowing anything at all, he had stepped off the train at the very last second, choosing to stay by Futaba's side.
"Did you forget something?" the boy asked gently. "I'll go with you."
There was no impatience in his voice.
That scene left Shiori stunned. Her heart overflowed with emotion, a lump rising in her throat, tears threatening to fall.
And Haruto, immersed in her memory, was stunned as well.
Because he realized something important.
Setting aside Shiori's emotional influence entirely, even from his own perspective alone, he was deeply moved by this scene.
Someone who had never watched shōjo romance before was now touched by Blue Spring Ride.
'So this was it.'
When a romance story was truly good, even boys could awaken a fragile, fluttering heart inside themselves.
In the past, he never understood why some men could watch palace intrigue dramas with such enthusiasm, and he thought they were strange. Now, he finally understood a little.
A good story does not belong to any gender.
_______________________
[You can leave your power stones here.]
Support me at patreon.com/CulturedOne and read 50 Advanced Chapters