The Little Sister's Novel (8)

꒰ঌ The Little Sister's Novel 8

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Naruko finished writing her webnovel a bit after winter vacation ended. It was around twenty days after our data collection session had concluded. I'm not sure if that counted as fast or not for writing a webnovel. But, I didn't have to read her novel to know that she had really devoted herself to finishing it. Even if I don't read it… all I have to do is look at what's in front of me.

"… Urgh… " Naruko was collapsed on the living room desk, grasping her cell phone tightly in one hand and fast asleep. On the desk and around that area were scattered a number of empty energy drink bottles.

Seeing my sister without her makeup on lying there with her face in that sorry state made me wonder how she could still do modeling work in this condition. I mean, there were huge bags under her eyes. That can't be good…

Well, from what Juvia told me, there was no modeling work to be done for a while, so she could probably forgive herself for looking like this. But even then, it was extremely rare for her to work herself to the limit like this, to the point where she would allow herself to be seen in this condition by me. Or rather, this was the first time something like that had happened.

"You really did your best, Naruko." I softly mumbled to myself while draping a blanket across her back.

It had been around a week after Naruko finished the manuscript of her webnovel, and it was the annoying morning of the opening ceremonies for the new semester. Having pushed herself so hard, just as I thought, Naruko's cold had taken a turn for the worse, and it seemed that she had been confined to bed. I say "it seemed" because Naruko's fever was at the point where she even took her meals in her room, so we didn't have any opportunities to meet each other.

I was in the middle of eating breakfast, and Mom spoke up to me while looking depressed.

"Haruto. That girl, she still has a fever but she insists on going to school."

"… At any rate, she probably has club activities or is grumbling about missing work."

"Yes yes, that's what she's doing… hah, she doesn't listen at all… I'll try to convince her again to stay home for today."

I'm not surprised. That idiot, she's the only one to blame for how she is right now. Well, it's not like she can cure her cold with willpower alone, so she'll probably end up obediently staying home today after Mom talks with her. I'm pretty sure that whether tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, until her fever cools down she's going to just keep grumbling about wanting to go to school.

"I'm worried, so I want to take her to see a doctor today. The flu's been going around lately."

"Yeah."

***

Having come back from school, I heard from Mom that Naruko indeed had the flu. Washing my hands more carefully than usual, I went up the stairs to the second floor. I knocked on my sister's door. She might have been sleeping, so I knocked quietly.

No response. As I thought, she was sleeping… I scratched my cheek and began to turn around, but right then, the door opened. Even though I was so used to seeing the door open forcefully in an attempt to bang me in the face, just today the door opened meekly. From the crack in the door, I saw the form of Naruko in pajamas staring back at me.

"… What?"

"Do you want some yogurt?" I held up the plastic bag I had in one of my hands. On the way home, I had stopped by the convenience store and bought it.

"… Mmm, I'll have one." Naruko's feverish looking head nodded, and she took the plastic bag from me. Her surprising sincerity was probably a result of her not being able to muster up enough energy to hurl insults at me.

"Have you taken your medicine?"

"… No."

"Hurry up and take it."

Right then, I noticed that Naruko was grasping her cell phone in her left hand.

"What are you playing with your cell phone for?"

It couldn't be that she was still thinking about her novel and writing, right…?

"Don't be an idiot. Go get some sleep."

At my light scolding, Naruko seemed depressed and cast her eyes downwards. Even though I understand she has a fever… this is… no matter how I look at it, she just seems a bit too depressed here. And also, I could see faint signs of what looked like crying on her cheeks.

"What's wrong?"

"… Nothing."

That's obviously a lie. Making light of your brother that much hurts, you know? It's pretty easy to understand just by looking at you. First and foremost, thinking about this rationally, there's no way that someone with such a high sense of responsibility and professionalism like her wouldn't be trying with all her strength to recover when she's taking a break from school like this.

"Naruko, if there's something you're worried about, you can tell me."

Naruko gave a short sigh. "… Well, okay, come in."

Having invited me into the room, Naruko sat on the bed and passed me her cell phone.

"This."

"What…?"

Having a phone suddenly handed to me, I had no idea what to do. Looking at the screen, I saw the homepage of the "MyNovel i-Club" site on the LCD display. There was a huge advertisement shown with the following provocative statement:

Webnovel new rising star's exciting hardcover debut! Picked up by Media Ascii Works! Full text open to the public now on the MyNovel i-Club homepage!

It seems that this time, as a part of the sales promotion for this hardcover book that the MyNovel i-Club was publishing, you could read the entire book from cover to cover on the net. And by how they referred to the author as a "new rising star," they seemed to have quite a lot of confidence in this work. And so, this means…

"Could it be that this rising star person is you!? That's amazing, really!?"

Naruko didn't respond. She stole back the cell phone from me, and coughing violently, pushed a few buttons and gave the phone back to me. I was now looking at the webpage for the webnovel this "rising star" had written. The title was My Wing.

"Well, there's no mistaking it anymore!"

I didn't have to read any of it to know that this was precisely the webnovel Naruko had written. The novel that Naruko had poured herself into was now sparkling in the spotlight. Under the title of My Wing, there was a button labeled "Look at this title's reviews," and when I pushed that, I was taken to a page where large numbers of reviews of the work were lined up in a row.

"Great story!"

"Made me want to cry."

"Pure love at its best."

"Coming from a real life high school girl, this was great."

Etc. etc. Even though the novel had been released to the public just recently, there were already over a hundred reviews. And what's more, they were all positive. From what I saw, the book had gotten especially strong support from the young girl demographic.

"… Well, this was pretty amazing, wasn't it?"

Although, I still felt like it was a bit difficult to fully accept that Ruto and Ruko's relationship was being received as "pure love" like the author had intended…

"So, why do you look so depressed about this then…?"

Wasn't that strange? She had worked hard and her webnovel had been well received and was being hugely advertised and published, right? There was no reason to not be happy here… usually.

"… On the book"

"Hm? What did you say?"

"I'm not the author listed in the book!" Naruko yelled so loudly that she immediately fell into a coughing fit.

"Hey… are you alright?" She looked to be in pain so I rubbed her back, "What do you mean, you're not the author?"

"Cough, cough… l-like I said, I was the one who wrote this book, but someone with a penname I had never seen before is listed as the author."

When I looked at it, certainly, right under the title the words "Author: Ruko" appeared. The penname was the same as the name of the protagonist in My Wing. This was a pretty common tactic in webnovels, where they made it seem like the work was autobiographical.

"So, because the book would sell better if the author's name is the same as the protagonist's name, they changed the author's name from your name to this?"

"No! That's not it…!"

Still painfully coughing, my sister made it clear that if that were all, she wouldn't be making such a fuss about it.

"When I sent the password for the manuscript storage site to the editor, he stopped contacting me… even when I called the phone number on the business card I just got the voicemail… and when I emailed him I didn't get a response… and then at some point this webpage appeared… "

Manuscript storage site? Ah, I see. webnovels were things where the text was maintained on your personal homepage for the novel site you registered for, like you would do on a blog.

"There was probably just a misunderstanding… things like that happen occasionally, right? Should I call their editing department to ask?"

"I already asked! I asked them why they hadn't contacted me even though I was the one that wrote the novel… but they wouldn't listen to me at all! They listened to my complaints, but they get this type of claim often, so they didn't take me seriously… and they wouldn't transfer me to the head editor. What's more, the MyNovel i-Club site where I was keeping all my data got its password changed, so I can't even login anymore!"

"So that means… "

It was a terrible chain of events. But if what I thought happened actually did happen, then it would be extremely cruel to make my sister confirm it out loud.

"So, your work was stolen? The editor you met with in Shinjuku before… he took your novel and put another author's name on it and published it like that… ?"

"… That's what I think… rather, that's the only thing that could have happened." Naruko mumbled painfully while sitting on the bed.

Her face was red with fever, and her eyes were moist with bitter tears. Of all things that could have happened, to think she would meet with these kinds of troubles while being stricken with the flu… when it rained, it poured.

"So… what are you going to do about this? You're not just going to take this lying down, right?"

"I'm not going to do anything." My sister's response was unexpected. "… I don't feel like doing… anything about these problems. And I mean, I'm not really bothered by them."

"Why?"

That's a lie, isn't it? You worked so hard, and all that hard work went to waste, didn't it? Someone like you who can't stand to lose at all must be frustrated by all this.

"Why, you ask?" Naruko sneered at me.

"That's obvious, isn't it? The thing I have to do right now is to put my all into getting rid of this disease and get back to work and club as soon as possible. Even if I were tricked, in the end the only person that's going to get hurt by that is me, right? So, I don't have time to care about this good-for-nothing situation. This isn't the time for that. There are much more important things I have to worry about."

She spoke with a haughty tone, as if she were looking down on everything in the world. To me, her words rang extremely hollow.

"Cough, cough… " Coughing a bit, Naruko continued. "… I mean, it ticks me off that he was able to use me like that, so I really do want to kill that asshole. But at the same time, isn't this just proof of my brilliant genius? The only reason he stole my work is because he saw so much value in it, right? Hmph, if he steals it, fine, I'll just write another one. Something more amazing this time."

Naruko crossed her arms as always, and lightly laughed.

"And what's more… what's more… webnovels were just me playing around in the first place… I thought I could handle it along with everything else, but in the end, I collapsed and ended up causing trouble for everyone… so you could say my eyes have been opened. I definitely can't let something like this happen again. So actually, you could say I'm thankful that this happened."

If only it weren't for the tear marks on her cheeks, she would have sounded pretty cool just there.

You're seriously terrible at lying, aren't you? My sister was certainly pretty amazing. She had the talent, the motivation, and displayed an almost disgusting level of passion for anything she started to do. It was to the point where I could even think that there was nothing she couldn't accomplish. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a weakness.

She was extremely weak when things went very contrary to her plans. She was thoroughly prepared for anything that could happen that came within the bounds of her imagination. But when she was attacked from a blind spot, when she was facing a problem she had not prepared to deal with, she became completely lost. I knew all too well about that weak point of hers from the problems I had faced with our mother and Juvia. And no matter what anyone says, she's still just a fifteen-year-old high school student. No matter how much talent she had or how amazing she was, that's one point that I had to remember. I'm her brother after all.

… Alright, what should I do…? Biting my bottom lip. Well, in any case, all that I could do was ask more reliable people for advice.

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