Saturday night. Eight o'clock—
Oikawa sat in front of the TV right on time, as always. The animation quality at A-1 Pictures blew him away no matter how many times he watched it.
On screen, episode five of Lie in April was playing.
Picking up from episode four, Kaori had collapsed and been taken to the hospital, and Kousei and the others came to visit her.
The sky was overcast and gray, like a mirror of Kousei's mood.
"Have you fainted before?"
"This was the first time," Kaori said it with a smile, her legs swinging happily like she was thrilled to have friends visiting. But for some reason, she looked unbearably sad.
"I'm a little anemic anyway, so I figured I'd use this chance to get a proper checkup. I think I just pushed myself a bit too hard practicing violin."
She laughed and changed the subject. But the screen zoomed in and froze on the downturned corner of her mouth. Someone could be smiling and still look completely heartbroken. It was a real expression, and the anime had captured it perfectly.
The viewers following the show along with him exploded on Twitter.
[Copycat, you old crook, you're not human! When I read the novel, I didn't think much of it. I figured Kaori just fainted, and I was kind of surprised they spent so many words on that scene! Then I read the second volume and realized you planned this from the very beginning, you sneaky bastard!]
[Copycat, you actually had the nerve to say your homeroom teacher influenced you. You planned the whole thing way before that! Ahwoo... How can a hand that's 37°C be this cold?]
(Reply)— [WHAT? So we blamed an innocent person. I cursed out Copycat's homeroom teacher a few times back then.]
——[Same.]
———[+1]
...
Meanwhile, Shizuka was lying on her couch, eating fried chicken and drinking, watching the episode while scrolling through the internet.
When she saw the apologies piling up in the comments, she froze. Then she scrolled up to find out what on earth had happened.
A moment later, her fists clenched.
Shizuka had been truly racked with guilt lately. She'd believed Kaori's sad ending had something to do with her, in some tangled way.
She knew, deep down, that what Oikawa had told her couldn't be true. But what if there was just a tiny bit of truth in it?
Even that tiny bit had made her miserable for a long time. Seeing the nasty comments online made it worse. She'd been so worried that she'd wanted to chain-smoke and drink around the clock.
And clearly, a good woman like her had no business with cigarettes and booze in the first place...
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She sat bolt upright on the couch and fired off a message to Oikawa.
[Shizuka Hiratsuka]: Didn't you tell me Lie in April got a bad ending because of me? Funny, it looks to me like you had the ending planned from the very beginning. Oikawa, you have five minutes to give me a reasonable explanation and convince me not to lose my temper.
His reply came fast.
[Oikawa]: When did I ever say Lie in April got a bad ending because of you, sensei? I never said that!
Oikawa nodded to himself after sending it, then switched his phone to silent.
With Shizuka dealt with for the time being, he turned his full attention back to the anime.
On screen, Kaori called out, "We're only fourteen, so jump in boldly!"
Kaori Miyazono leapt into the air and plunged into the lake.
In that moment, Kousei Arima's eyes lit up with a brightness they'd never had before.
The setting sun sank slowly, and its golden-red glow turned the surface of the river into a different color. A courage he couldn't explain, from somewhere he couldn't name, filled Kousei's chest.
Then, all at once, it took off.
The carefree laughter of a boy and a girl rang out over the water.
—[Episode 05: Gray Skies!]—
Comments:
[AAAAAHHH!!! That wasn't nearly enough! Why do we only get one episode a week?]
Reply—[Go read the novel instead. It's super sweet, you deserve it.]
[Copycat, you old crook, you deserve to die! Ugh, what do I do? My heart already hurts, and if the anime gets to the episode where Kaori dies, I'm going to completely lose it.]
Reply— [Easy. Don't watch the last episode. I'm only going to take the happy moments and watch my Kaori laugh and smile. I'm planning to do the same with Clannad. That's how you outsmart the system.]
[Seriously, next time Copycat does a book signing, let's all go and stab him.]
Reply— [This time, let's do it for real. This cold-hearted bastard deserves the worst bad ending.]
...
Reading the comments, Oikawa shook his head helplessly.
It was the same few lines every day, and he was sick of them. Couldn't they come up with some fresh material? He'd read them so many times they couldn't even make him laugh anymore.
After a moment's thought, he grabbed a picture of Kaori off Twitter and posted a tweet.
What a tragedy. Copycat has no conscience at all. Why did he have to kill off my Kaori?! Oh wait, I'm Copycat. Never mind!
The fans lost it instantly.
There was no warmup at all. The replies went straight to full-blown madness.
Oikawa shook his head and pinned the tweet.
He had a feeling he'd sleep especially well tonight. Who wouldn't be able to sleep, though? That, he couldn't say.
---
Next Day—
At Full-Drive Bunko, inside the editorial office, Chris Yamada was going back and forth with various bloggers about promotion details.
Something felt off, though. His coworkers kept giving him strange looks, kind of gloomy and creepy.
The tension finally boiled over because of coffee.
After lunch, Chris decided to grab a coffee to wake himself up, and he casually asked the editors' group chat, "I'm going out for coffee. Does anyone want me to bring something back?"
After a long silence, a message slowly appeared in the chat. "We wouldn't dare trouble the great Chief Editor Yamada. We can handle that ourselves."
Chris was baffled. "What's going on? Did I do something wrong recently? I've been busy, so maybe I missed something."
"It's nothing to do with you. It's to do with Copycat-sensei." Someone replied.
"Oikawa-sensei? What did he do?" Chris blinked.
Someone else chimed in. "Haven't you been on Twitter? Take a look and you'll see."
Chris blinked again, then opened Twitter.
He spotted it right away: "The Cold-Hearted Author," sitting proudly on the trending list.
A second later, he noticed he suddenly had several hundred new DMs. He opened them, and nearly every single one was cursing out his entire family tree.
His expression twisted.
He hurriedly started searching to figure out what exactly Oikawa had done to get even him added to the hit list.
Five minutes later, with the whole story finally clear, Chris could only give a helpless, bitter smile and shake his head. "Oikawa-sensei, you really do love dancing on the edge of a knife."
Now he understood why the mood in the office was so strange today. If anyone showed up to work in a good mood and suddenly found out they'd been cursed out by a crowd for no reason, he'd be furious and miserable too.
"Still, Oikawa-sensei really is the guy who always stands in the eye of the traffic storm."
Chris thought back. Almost every time a book was about to be released, "Copycat, you bastard" showed up on the social media trending lists.
A lot of the time it was unintentional, or just luck. But it was exactly the kind of knack that made plenty of bloggers green with envy.
"Maybe we can move the Clannad trial reading up from five days from now to today. This is a golden opportunity!"
His eyes lit up, and he hurried back toward the editorial department.
A chance like this only comes once. He couldn't let it slip by.
Best of all, doing it this way would save a ton of promotion money, and with that money he might actually be able to bring in some top-tier manga artists.
Two birds with one stone!
...
..
Meanwhile at Chiyoda Ward—
Inside a mansion, a girl in black-framed glasses sat in her chair, eyes glued to the text on her computer screen.
Before long, her expression turned heartbreakingly sad. Tears slid down her cheeks without a sound, and soon the mousepad on her desk was soaked through.
Her voice came out hoarse. "That damn Copycat, why did you have to write it so sad? This is just cruel!"
"Tomoya and Ushio have already had it so rough, so why do you have to torture them like this?! Hic... waaah..."
She kept cursing, but she couldn't stop reading. Her hand kept scrolling, bit by bit, until the scroll bar hit the bottom and wouldn't go any further.
"Huh? That's it?"
"What about the rest? Seriously, where's the rest? Why does it stop right there?!"
Her face twisted with rage. Just a moment ago she'd looked so pitiful, and now she was positively fuming.
She grabbed her phone and dialed her contact at Full-Drive Bunko. "Where's the rest? How can you just cut it off there?"
The staff member answered quickly. "I'm sorry, Eri Kashiwagi-sensei. The trial reading only contains half of the content. We did it this way to keep anyone with bad intentions from leaking it early."
She clawed at her hair, on the verge of losing her mind. If this was how things were going to turn out, she would've been better off never reading half of the second volume of Clannad in the first place!
Come on. Do you know how maddening that is?
She started pounding the panda plush on her bed and dumped all her rage onto it. She'd snatched it from that sexy girl a few days ago, and apparently that bastard "Copycat" was the one who gave it to her!
"Jerk! Aaaargh, you huge jerk!"
She vented like crazy, but as the anger drained away, her curiosity only got stronger.
After thinking it over for a long time, she dialed the staff member again. "Hello, could I discuss something with you? I'll waive the 100,000 yen promotion fee entirely, not a single yen. Would you send me the second half? I swear, I promise, I will never leak it! If you're worried, I'll sign an electronic contract. I'm a blogger with hundreds of thousands of followers. I'd never betray your trust."
She talked until she was blue in the face, trying every angle, appealing to emotion and reason alike.
But the staff member's answer didn't budge. "Eri-sensei, I'm truly sorry, but this isn't something I have the authority to decide."
She hammered at her phone screen. "Then go find someone who does! Uh... Sorry, that came out harsh. Could I ask you to find someone with authority, like an editor or a manager? Please, this really matters to me."
Things always seem to go from bad to worse, don't they?
And so the reply was merciless. "I'm very sorry. Our manager already addressed this and said we're not allowed to leak the second half of Clannad early. Besides, I don't even have the full digital version here, only editors have it. And between you and me, all of us on staff are dying to know what happens next. I completely understand how you feel, but there's really nothing I can do."
Hearing that, she knew that no matter how silver-tongued she was, she'd never get the full second half. She said a limp "Thanks for your trouble" and flopped onto her bed.
Her eyes were glassy, and she looked completely broken.
"I want to read it so bad. Aaaaah, I want to read Clannad! I want to know what happens to Ushio!"
"Is it a bad ending or not? The rumors online say no, but every line in there screams bad ending. I really want to know what comes next!"
She muttered on and on.
Then suddenly her eyes lit up. She shot upright with a kip-up and said to herself, grinning, "Full-Drive Bunko staff can't give me the rest, but Utaha might have it!"
"Her relationship with that bastard is pretty ambiguous, and even if she doesn't have it, if she asks, he'll definitely say yes."
She thought for a moment, working out how to phrase it.
Then she opened LINE and messaged the pinned contact with the cat profile picture. "Utaha-senpai, what are you up to? Have you been thinking about me?"
Utaha's reply popped up almost instantly. "Eriri, I'll say this one last time. Give me back my panda plush! Or next time I see you, I'll make you suffer."
Eriri pouted jealously at the screen. "Is your best friend really worth less to you than a panda plush? Utaha, you've let me down. You're snapping at me over a guy. I'm... I'm so hurt."
With that, Eriri Spencer Sawamura snapped a selfie and sent it to Utaha Kasumigaoka. The tear tracks on her face were plain as day.
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