This is Productive!

Put me in this situation a month or two ago, I’m not having it one bit. I’m aware I’m usually a bit outwardly passive but if something like this happened? I’d surely snap. That’s me a month ago though, the present is a different story entirely.

Through weeks of shenanigans, pestering, verbal and physical baratement, I’m nothing but a husk to made a jester of to this girl.

What exactly am I talking about?

“Okay-okay, Ohashi-san,” Kaoru waved a piece of paper around as she spoke. “You can use the bathroom after two more takes. Just keep the camera still and we’ll be done quicker!”

Taking up half of my bedroom was the incredible up-and-coming actress Akimoto Kaoru and her entire film-set crew (Ohashi-san). Poor girl was forced to hold a camera, ring-light, and boom-mic.

I rubbed my temples with a deep sigh—I found myself doing this an unhealthy amount. At a certain point I might dent the sides of my head from doing it so often. “K-Kaoru, I’ve been avoiding asking this for almost an hour now… But fine, I’ll bite. W-what’re you doing?”

The tone she responded in sounded as if I had asked the stupidest in human history. “Filming my audition for the upcoming Star Wars show?”

She was right though, I should’ve known. Kaoru was dressed in brown and tan robes with a Light-Saber. “Fantastic. So why my room?”

“I don’t… I don’t understand the question… Am I not allowed to be here…?

“No, no, it’s all fine. In fact, stay the night! Please, make yourself at home.” Like she hasn’t already. Besides, someone as extroverted and popular as Kaoru has to understand sarcasm.

“Really!? Thank you!” She pressed her hands to her cheeks with the biggest and most ignorant smile. “I brought an overnight bag so you don’t have to worry.”

I threw my hands up and shook my head. I asked a popular girl to stay over at my house for the first time and so casually. It takes most light novel protagonists VOLUMES to do that—and I felt nothing.

“Don’t worry Ohashi-san, you can stay too~” Kaoru extended my sarcastic invitation to her worker-bee.

“Oh, are you sure that’s okay with Kiyotaka-kun?” The two girls turned their attention to me.

“Of course! Go ahead, invite whoever else you want too.”

“Hey, be serious Makoto.” Kaoru pointed her Light-Saber at me. “This isn’t some sleepover-party, it’s serious crunch-time for us creatives. You know, you with your writing thing and my shot at acting fame.”

“You’re right, how silly of me to make a joke like that.”

The next few hours were a cycle of me falling in and out of concentration on the novel—all the while in the background Kaoru was monologing about the dark-side and other nerd crap like that. Hah! I mean seriously, what kind of nerd watches that Sci-Fi garbage? Space lasers and space wizards? Planes can’t fly like that in space even. Some people need to go outside, seriously.

I leaned back on my limited edition Destiny/Massive Order embroidered mega-pillow and sipped from my favorite White Clover mug.

***

Eventually, Ohashi-san left. I’m assuming because she wasn’t insane and didn’t want to spend the night at a random guy’s apartment. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for my “co-writer”.

I feel like I often exaggerate the severity of Kaoru’s “craziness”, in truth, she isn’t that bad. Just a tad quirky I’d say. However, sometimes… sometimes she’ll do or say something so disconnected from reason, I stop and think—she has a few screws loose up there, doesn’t she?

Naturally as ever, Kaoru plopped down next to me. I’d prefer it if she sat facing the table and her laptop, you know, so she could potentially do some editing. Instead I was greeted by her back.

“Did you buy the new Galaxy Blade game?” She asked.

“Of course, I stayed up and waited outside the game store at eight in the morning for the first release.”

“Digital key or physical copy?” Kaoru, still in the heap-of-fabrics that was her “Jedi-robes” crawled towards my game console and shelf of discs’.

“Physical of course— Hey! Don’t play games right now! At least edit a few pages first!”

“Noooo~ You don’t get it—” She let out a sigh. “It’s like… it’s like… I do wanna write—thinking about it and planning out what I’m gonna write is a lot of fun. But once I sit in front of a computer and have to type, there’s something in my brain that almost physically prevents me… Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Ohhhh, of course. I get it now.”

“Really!?”

“Yeah! The deep-state of writers planted a chip in your head to physically prevent you from writing because they knew if you did, you’d become far too famous.”

I could visibly see the moment Kaoru’s excitement flushed from her expression—it was incredible. “So you don’t understand at all, do you?” Come on, don’t mope like that… You said something really stupid so I gave you a stupid answer back.

“Nope, not at all,” I said

With that, I think she finally realized I wasn’t going to be giving into her shenanigans. A pouty-expression and an arm-cross later Kaoru finally began putting words on the document. “Words” might be an over-exaggeration though—I scrolled up on the page to see the progress on the section I tasked her with rewriting.