Chapter 19 [Pre-Draft]

After having a hard time explaining to her editor what she had in mind, Honoka decided to schedule a appointment with her long time editor: Shigure with her rough draft of her work-in-progress "oneshot".

"I just wanted to take a break on working on my current novel to work on a quick oneshot." was what Honoka had said to inform Shigure of her plans.

Of course, Shigure having known silver-haired girl for years, knew what she was thinking from mere body language alone.

"I see... Well, since you probably haven't started anything with the next volume of your work, I can let you do this onehot."

That was easy. didn't expect her to agree so easily... Honoka misunderstoo, in face, Shigure was not done talking yet, holding a document envelope- containing Honoka's draft as she stood up, she continued:

"I'll need to inform the higher-ups first though, since this means that you'll have to put your current series in a temporary hiatus as you work on this."

"W-Wait a sec, if you do that then... what about the backlash?"

"I always tell you this but, You'll get sick again if I let you work on two at once. As your editor and childhood friend, I can't just let you do it."

Shigure was already aware that if her childhood friend worked on a oneshot project and her current series simultaneously, it wouldn't end well in terms of her health. Due to this, she wouldn't listen to any of Honoka's objections due to that very same concern, it happened before and she missed her deadline due to it.

"Well, whatever. It's not like arguing about it with you would get me anywhere anyway..." Honoka shrugged, learning from her prior experience that arguing about the said topic with Shigure would amount to nothing

A smile emerged on the face of her childhood friend upon hearing that she didn't bother arguing this time around unlike a few months ago when she had attempted this very same thing. "Good, glad that you understand."

Honoka could only place two fingers on her temple as she sees Shigure smiling seemingly satisfied after managing to convince her to not be stubborn.

Their meeting had ended with Shigure with flying colors as her draft for a quick oneshot had gotten improved and was now entered for a currently running oneshot contest that was all about just being creative when it came to the plot of it's entries.

***

"What? You started a new oneshot, Honoka?"

Later that evening as Honoka was chatting with Yuuki via private message, their topic regarding the aforementioned oneshots that were entered on contests in the past- reminiscing about how bad she was with writing back then, that she couldn't help but feel a bit embarrassed at all the screw ups on those said entries.

"Yeah, I wanted to take a break from working on my current series."

Yuuki: "Well, I'll be looking forward to reading it!"

That just makes me too nervous to even imagine what she'd say after reading it...

She had confidence in her writing but the thought of a friend other than her childhood friend: "Shigure" reading her work gave cold feet- especially now that she had a friend that had told her that she was a fan of her light novels.

At a later date Honoka had been informed that the final results of the writing contest that she had joined on a whim was on the same day that the upcoming cosplay shoot that Yuuki had announced recently was going to be coming, on that month's light novel magazine issue where potential new series would be published in and depending on the survey results; those said novels would get a chance to be published as a multi-volume light novels.

Still unsure of what she'd do with her "contest submission" if it got possitive results on the survey, Honoka had begun to prepare for the storyboard of it's first volume in case it got the chance to be serialised as an actual series or as just a single-volume-long light novel.

Quickly typing a rough version of a storyboard for the said "first volume", she thought: It would still be nice to be prepared than to not be... Though, I wasn't really planning on having it serialised...

Whilst she thought of potential ideas that she could use to make the said story unique in it's own way, she received a message from a certain cat-eared mangaka...

"Hey, Are you busy right now~?"

What's she up to this time...?

Honoka had already grown accustomed to Koto bothering her by sending messages during the times she had been pre-occupied with doing drafts, the cat girl, for some inexplicable reason knew whenever Honoka was pre-occupied with drafts- it was as if she had a copy of Honoka's written-down schedule somewhere; which did not exist.

Honoka was just not the type of person who would write down her agenda for the day, she was just that kind of individual- the keep-her-agenda-on-her-head only person.

Tap Tap Tap Tap...

She continued her writing, ignoring Koto's messages as revenge for her being bothered by the girl's messages.

It's probably for no reason again, anyway...

There were times when Koto had done the same thing when Honoka was just about to finish working on a chapter of her light novel when a message of hers had arrived on the Yuuki Onna-Oni girl's smartphone and had been just a question asking about the same thing and after Honoka had bothered replying to her, Koto would just reply back with a "No reason, I was just curious~" and that was something that Honoka also found it as being a kind of thing that made her think that Koto was a child a heart for asking and replying with the aforementioned.

She thought about many potential genres that the said story could fall into, but there was one that was over-used which had been a genre called "Isekai." She decided to not go with that genre but instead went with "Dark Fantasy," which she hadn't used before because of how dark that genre could get depending on the author.

(End of Chapter)