My stepmother's burden is my ex-girlfriend.

Page 398

Please help me.

After finishing speaking, Daocang turned around and went back to the table in the center. I took out the notebook I had been using since joining the student council and wrote down what had just happened.

The workload is only increasing. This situation will likely continue until the cultural festival concludes successfully. For now, we can only focus on handling the immediate tasks at hand.

◆ Irito Mizuto ◆

As soon as class ended, I quickly grabbed Isana's shoulder, who was about to slip out of the classroom in a hurry.

"Where are you rushing off to?"

Izana slowly turned around, a fawning, thuggish smile plastered on her face.

"The work is almost finished, and I want to go home and concentrate on getting it done..."

"The deadline was yesterday. Just show me what you've completed."

"Eek..."

I led Isana back to her seat and had her put her tablet, which she usually used for drawing, on the table. I took the tablet and began examining the files in her drawing software. There were far more files than I had imagined—files that were practically remnants of character designs—clearly indicating how hard she had struggled.

Which is the preferred choice right now?

I showed the working documents to Isana and asked her a question. She reluctantly pointed to one of the documents.

"This is the first one I drew..."

uh-huh.

I opened the file and looked at its contents. Inside was a drawing of a girl with a bob haircut, wearing a uniform. Her skirt was rather long, giving her a serious impression, while the cardigan draped over her shoulders made her look somewhat pitiful. If I had to compare, she resembled the female protagonist in a story about a terminal illness…

"Not bad."

"...Is it not bad?"

"She's the kind of girl you'd find in light novels with blue covers. I think she fits the script pretty well."

"Mmm..."

Isana frowned, looking troubled. She seemed dissatisfied.

"Are there any things you're not satisfied with?"

"You asked me what I'm not satisfied with... well, it's a bit different. It's like taking something vague and blurry, and bringing it to life in a vague way..."

I couldn't understand a word... But at times like this, we shouldn't ignore the creator's own feelings... Just as I was pondering how to articulate her sense of incongruity, Yoshino suddenly peeked out from behind.

"Is this... the character design?! ​​It's actually quite cute!"

She seemed to have caught a glimpse of the tablet screen. Yoshino pulled the tablet, along with my hand, toward her.

"It makes me want to protect you! You said you struggled a lot while drawing it, but it's actually quite beautiful!"

"That's what I think too..."

Hearing our words, Isana's expression grew even more unpleasant. She pressed her lips tightly together, her brows furrowed, and her expression hardened like a rock.

"No! This won't do!"

"Why? She's so cute..."

"Absolutely not cute! Absolutely not cute at all!"

"Completely! Absolutely! Not! Cute!" Izana shouted, slamming her hand on the table.

The noise startled the other students who had already started preparing, and they all turned around. Izana, however, seemed oblivious to their stares and started acting like a spoiled child.

Yoshino and I each grabbed one of her arms to try and calm her down.

"Calm down! Okay, okay, let's wait a little longer... Yoshino, is that alright!?"

"Mmm, it's okay, it's okay! There's still time!"

"Gurgle..."

Izana whimpered like a subdued wild beast, and I led her away from the classroom.

"well……"

"Is this a sigh?"

As I sat on the living room sofa, worrying about the script, Jie sat down next to me with a wry smile.

"You were complaining just a while ago... But lately you've been showing a very different expression."

"While this isn't the first time Izana has missed a deadline, this is the first time I've seen something like this..."

In the past, Isana had violated deadlines, revised illustrations, and even redrawn them due to dissatisfaction with the quality. But as long as we convinced her that "instead of repeatedly revising the same drawing for perfection, it's better to finish it first," she would have accepted it. It seems that her discomfort with that tentative design far exceeded what Yoshino and I had imagined.

"I heard they had a tough time with the character design?"

"Yes. In Yoshino's and my opinion, the current design is sufficient..."

Let me see.

I also transferred photos of the tentative design to my phone. I opened them and showed them to the girl sitting next to me.

"It's so cute! If you painted this on a sign, it would definitely attract attention."

"That's what I'm saying..."

"What's wrong?"

"That's what's troubling me. Not just me, even Isana herself doesn't know."

"If you don't know, are you wrong to say it?"

"Yes. In the worst-case scenario, I think we'll have no choice but to force it, but if possible, I still don't want Isana to get used to compromising..."

If you want to become a professional, sticking to deadlines is absolutely essential. But on the other hand, if you get used to compromising, it will be difficult to make progress—this is a piece of advice I heard from creators I met while working part-time.

"It's really not easy... managing creators. Is it the same for novel editors?"

"Who knows... The idea that writers skip deadlines to go drinking or play mahjong is an outdated notion from the Showa era."

Where exactly is Isana stuck? I've been rereading the script since I got back from school, looking for clues, but I just don't understand... Is this the limit of my talentlessness...?

"A meeting discussing the cultural festival?"

Hearing the voice behind us, we turned around and saw Aunt Youren, who had just finished showering and was all warm and cozy, looking down at us sitting on the sofa.

"He looks like a real adult. It's like looking at a colleague from work."

"Working at the cultural festival is indeed work."

Hearing what Yui said, Aunt Yui smiled and said, "That's true."

"What exhibits should we put on?"

"I'm the executive committee member, so the exhibits in the class have nothing to do with me..."

"A scripted escape game"

I answered for the woman.

"The story is revealed through the characters' dialogue, allowing players to solve puzzles based on the narrative."

"Eh...that sounds interesting! And is this the main character?"

Aunt Ren leaned over and looked at my phone in Jie Nu's hand.

"Are you going to read this child's lines?"

"Well, I guess so... But I heard it's not just me, several girls will take turns doing it."

"Eh... Can Yui really play this kind of pitiful character well?"

What does that mean?

The girl pouted and questioned him, at which point Aunt Yu-ren giggled.

"Because it doesn't fit the image! Yui, you've really become so assertive lately, getting angry at the drop of a hat..."

"That's because you said something offensive! I maintain a model student image at school."

I silently raised my hand in front of the girl's face.

"Um... please be quiet for a moment."

"...Mizuto-kun?"

I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to sort out my thoughts.

sound.

Performance.

turn.

Could it be... this?

"I'll make a phone call."

I took my phone back from Jie Nu, tucked the script under my arm, and ran up the stairs toward my room.

◆ Higashito Isana ◆

I was in my room, facing my graphics tablet, constantly moving the paintbrush.

When you hit a roadblock, put down your pen temporarily and set aside some time to do nothing.

Then I tried again, drawing something non-stop.

This is a method I learned from Shuidou-kun's guidance and have been practicing ever since to break through a plateau.

This method is indeed incredibly effective, saving me from being driven to the brink of despair by deadlines countless times. However, this time it felt like waving my arms wildly in complete darkness... I couldn't feel anything at all... the feeling of something being hooked... the feeling of something emerging... absolutely nothing.

The cultural festival alone is already this bad... Can I really draw light novel illustrations well?

Anxiety is spreading. Am I really the kind of genius that Mizuto-kun described? Or am I just an ordinary person with communication difficulties? Is it precisely because I have nothing that what I have seems so dazzling?

It must be somewhere. It must be somewhere. What I want, what I pursue. It's somewhere, somewhere...

My phone rang. I looked up from my tablet at the screen of my phone, which was resting on the corner of the table. It was a call from Mizuto-kun. Was he calling again to urge me…? The thought sent a chill down my spine. To disappoint someone and be unable to do anything about it was more frightening than anything else. Trembling, I picked up the phone and pressed the answer button.

"Hello……?"

As soon as he finished speaking, Mizuto ignored all the small talk and got straight to the point.

Let's design it based on sound!

"……What?"

Faced with these inexplicable words, I was genuinely confused and tilted my head.

"You said you felt it was vague, right?"

"Yes, yes... I always feel like I can't quite grasp the specific image..."

"Could the reason be related to the sound?"

"sound?"

I looked down at the character design I had painstakingly drawn and blinked.

"The voices haven't been finalized yet? And the script reading practice hasn't even started, right? Come to think of it, I remember the voice actors are rotated—"

--ah.

That might be the reason why your image of the character is being disrupted?

Just when I felt trapped somewhere deep inside, Mizuto-kun put it into words.

"The voices for the characters are shared by everyone in turn. It would be too much of a burden for one person to handle, and in a cultural festival like this, it's more interesting to have a diverse range of people playing the roles. Scenes performed by people you know are inherently interesting. This was a clever approach that targeted the unique atmosphere of familiar people at cultural festivals. However, this time, the system caused a deviation in the character portrayals."

"Yes...yes! There's a complete script, but for some reason I just can't understand what kind of child this is..."

Perhaps subconsciously, I was imagining how the guests would perceive this character on the day of the cultural festival. With everyone taking turns as voice actors, the guests would be happy to hear familiar faces perform—in that case…

"The guests aren't looking at the child, but rather at the acquaintances who are playing the role... This child isn't even a character...! Just an empty shell!"

Like those game ads that exaggerate the presence of beautiful female characters to attract clicks, even though no girls actually appear, this project seems to have characters, but in reality, there aren't. That's why their image has remained so vague all this time.

"But... even if I understand that, how exactly do I do it?"

That's why I said, let's design it based on the voice.

"That's what Mizuto-kun said firmly on the other end of the phone."