Author: Anita
Fandom: Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun
Characters: Nozaki Umetarou / Sakura Chiyo
Genre: romance
Rating: PG
Summary: Nozaki asks Chiyo to help him with the plot of his newest short story.
Notes: This series does not belong to me, nor do the characters portrayed here. Written for B.
Blocked
7 a.m. of a Sunday…
Sat by the koutatsu, Sakura leafed through the previous year’s edition of the shoujo magazine Nozaki had just mentioned. He had even woken up her at four o’clock, prompting her to come to his house as soon as possible. Thus, she had come the moment the day became bright enough, albeit wondering why a deadline emergency when they had just finished the month’s edition for Koi Shiyo?
“This is terrible…” Nozaki repeated, his eyes unmoving from her.
Finally, Sakura had found the section for which Nozaki had been invited to write.
Nozaki grunted so she would hurry. “While you were on your way, I could come up with some plot but I can’t move. I’m blocked!” He put his hands to his temples, his eyes about to pop out at any moment.
Sakura grouched. The story used the year before had been no different than your everyday romance. “Are you sure, Nozaki-kun? Did they tell you to do anything in special?” Perhaps, she hadn’t noticed some requirements for that corner from just skimming through the story.
“A romance,” he replied in a tone that made the word seem poles apart from the name of the very magazine in which he always published. “They need to get together, although a happy ending isn’t compulsory.”
Her eyes tried not to leave the monotonic pages and judge. Nozaki wasn’t deliberately acting unhelpful, she repeated to herself. Besides, he did look cute while sighing and seeming on the verge of tearing the paper of scribbles he held.
“Sakura-chan,” Nozaki called in a grave voice.
She raised her glance not a millisecond after.
Nozaki beamed, his eyes sparkling. “How would you like to spend the end of the world with me?”
Her cheeks flushed, and she had to change her position under the koutatsu, so to shake her head a little and push away the thoughts. The movement helped oxygenize her brain, for she noticed how familiar the invitation—or rather, pick-up line—sounded.
Returning to the thick magazine, she leafed back a few pages and found it. With a few differences in phrasing, the boy asked the main girl the very same.
“Nozaki-kun!” she shouted aggravated, and pointed to the balloon. “You can’t steal people’s idea!”
Nozaki, on the other hand, didn’t bother to the sermon and proceeded to write arrows and notes on his paper. “I wonder what Mikoshiba’s reaction would be.”
“D-don’t go saying it to everyone…” Jealousy—perhaps, a sense of broken monopoly would describe it more precisely—resonated within Sakura’s words but Nozaki would never notice in any case.
“You’d have to, actually. In my story, it would be announced that a terrorist group would end the world that night.”
Sakura now paid attention, as he displayed the few sketches.
“Our heroine is in the middle of class,” he continued, visibly glad to entice her attention, “when the principal calls the students to go home and enjoy their last day on Earth.”
“And then?” Despite not being a shining new theme, she looked forward to see how he would use it in a shoujo romance.
“The girl has always admired the boy, so it’s her last chance to call him for a date!” Nozaki displayed a similar beam to the previous one, as though he had stated his point.
Sakura heaved. “You didn’t have to destroy the world so she’d declare her feelings.”
“Would the boy also be happy he is the one she wants to spend the end of the world with?” he asked distraught.
“Not when he’ll only be with her if it’s the end of the world.”
Nozaki stared gravely at his notes and drabbled a few more words with arrows, whilst crossing others. “She’s liked him for the longest time, she wouldn’t move if something didn’t make her. Like the end of the world. Or if she’s dying? Or him dy—
“Stop!” Sakura shouted but regretted the attached desperation. Nozaki wasn’t to blame if she had sympathized with the heroine’s state of affairs. “Please don’t kill him. Or anyone,” she added nonetheless.
“Hm,” was all Nozaki answered, again puzzled at his plot.
Wishing she could aid her two-dimensional fictional friend, Sakura also exasperated to conceive a fitting scenario. However, she hadn’t been able to help herself after years longing for Nozaki. Giving it more thought, the fact they had become friends in the last months made her feelings seem even less tangible. Now she knew Nozaki enough…
“What if!” Nozaki raised a finger gloriously, startling Sakura away from her feelings, back into his apartment. “What if they had just met? She notices how nice he is, and decides to call him for a date. Being such a nice and cute girl, he thinks he should give her a chance. Then, it all works out. All she had had to do was to declare her feelings.”
“You changed everything!” she noted in desperation.
Nozaki seemed to take her comment as a compliment. “Yes, no one died,” he underlined. “There’s not much conflict but it’s a great message for the young girls to just buff up and dare.”
“Because if they let time pass, the only solution is to destroy the world?” Sakura asked. Cold sweat lingered under her arms and some went down the back of her neck. “Don’t, Nozaki-kun!”
He sighed. “Maybe the boy could be moving away. No one would die, either.”
“No, that doesn’t do it!” She knew her anxiety would sound weird but she also wondered whether Nozaki wasn’t using that day to finally answer her own confession from months before.
Still, she had to build her case. Or the heroine’s case.
Sakura pointed at the messy sketch Nozaki had done for the main girl. “Don’t give up on her. She has dedicated all her days, hours and minutes to the one she loves. Please, you can protect her love.”
He looked down again. A minute later, however, Nozaki shrugged.
“Nozaki-kun!” Sakura felt as though in front of the appeal’s court.
“Aliens could come to enslave everyone and—“
“No good!”
“They would find love in each other and save humanity.” He smiled with pride. “They would even gain special powers from a kiss!”
Sakura shook her head repeatedly. Even though such scenario was possible in a manga, now she wanted Nozaki to find a solution she could also use. “That’s too much! Think of something more ordinary. You’ve written so many love stories, Nozaki-kun. You can help her!”
She was the one speaking nonsense this time, Sakura noticed with a bitter gulp.
Nozaki didn’t see ready to call her on it, and turned to a blank page where he quietly drew the main characters faces again, along with a few words of their storylines and personalities.
“Heroine: Cute. Always observes hero. Never confessed.
Hero: a quiet, intelligent and tall guy. Secretly the most popular in school. Number one in class and sports. Unofficial leader of the students. Doesn’t like to attract attention to himself. Enjoys observing people and cooking.”
Sakura felt a little of her tension subdue after reading the hero’s profile. “So the hero is also a mangaka?” she asked lightly.
“You also noticed, huh? I was just thinking of how he sounded familiar.” Nozaki added another line on the character’s description.
“Not good in writing. Blond.”
“Oh.” Sakura decided not to comment further.
“But, you see.” Nozaki showed her the new notes once more, the point of his mechanical pencil over the heroine’s face. “If I can’t add anything from outside, and I can’t change her, either…” The lead moved to the non-writer blond hero.
There it went, Nozaki had probably decided to make his manga self into an alien or simply nuts for a day… someone who wasn’t him.
“I don’t want it!” Sakura stood from the koutatsu before she heard yet another unadaptable idea.
Nozaki was right on the mark. She couldn’t declare her feelings the way their situation was. Rather, she had already tried it and failed to make him understand. When people already called him her boyfriend, he remained oblivious to all she had nurtured since their first meeting. In reality, after that morning, she even suspected he could just be acting kind and pretending not to know so not to hurt her.
“I’ll buy something for us to drink,” she explained as she took out her wallet.
“Well, they could become friends,” Nozaki said. Did he just pretend he hadn’t heard her stand up?
Sakura felt her heart stop and then contract painfully. The warmth taking over her hands almost felt like an electrical shock against the coldness in her skin. She closed her eyes, knowing Nozaki was turning her to face him back with his other hand. When had he moved so close from just sitting there with his crazy notes?
Opening her eyes again, she saw his blurry face, Nozaki had never appeared so serious. Was this really happening? She bit her lip.
“After they became friends,” Nozaki spoke solemnly, as if narrating, “the boy would end up understanding how much the girl likes him. Not sure at first, not desiring to lose that friend, he would play safe. Even though he likes observing people, he has some weaknesses in the area of understanding some things. One day, however…”
Nozaki cupped her face in his hands and planted a kiss to join her trembling lips with his.
***
Days later…
Hori opened the envelope Nozaki had given him at school. He was in a meeting with his editor, and Sakura could hardly see her now boyfriend since the previous day. On the other hand, he had phoned her a myriad of times to make sure of which clothes to wear. Even though she hadn’t even had a proper first date yet…
“I can’t believe he’s finished. The deadline was quite crazy this time,” Hori commented, studying the pages. “We’ll have to work hard do our part, too. Especially with this kind of theme, I don’t even want to imagine all the mistakes I’ll have to fix. He said the meeting would be quick, right?” he asked without conviction.
Sakura nodded but frowned. “What do you mean, senpai? Nozaki-kun is always writing this kind of story, it’s just slower than usual.” She blushed, even though they still hadn’t had a chance to announce their getting together.
“Slow? They meet one day, and the other they’re about to get married. Not counting in those hours they were kept quite busy saving the world.”
The door opened, and Nozaki entered the room as if on cue. “Quite a thrill, right?” he commented, and added conceitedly, “I was listening from outside.
“Nozaki-kun!” Sakura raised a paper from the draft, it depicted an alien mothership floating over Earth. “You changed everything we had discussed?”
“Huh?” Nozaki massaged his nape for a while. “Well, hasn’t that plot been used in something more special?”
Her cheeks got hotter. “Nozaki-kun…” she mumbled weakly.
“What story are you talking about?” Hori asked.
Nozaki didn’t answer but walked to the fridge to get some refreshment. “And I was already in the end of this one, too.”
“But you called me at four in the morning that day!” Sakura stood up in fury. “It could have waited a couple hours more.”
“You need to ascertain elements of veracity.” Nozaki smirked.
“Which obviously lacks here,” Hori commented, pointing to the male character. “When did he learn to fly and talk to animals?”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Sakura sighed happily, as Hori called Nozaki’s attention to more parts of the story. In the end, she couldn’t complain when the heroine had indeed been saved by her hero so she just went back to her task, they had a very close deadline to fill before their happy ending.
THE END!
Anita
Notes:
For some reason, I didn’t write the date I ended this story. I hope I
wasn’t planning to add more and forgot, lol. But wow, writing
Nozaki-kun was much more fun than I was expecting but as hard as you can
imagine. All my respect to the author for keeping everyone in line! Notes:
And yes, Hori’s cameo wasn’t in anyway unintentional. XDDD
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