24th September 2023, 11:46 PM

I have had a sudden burst of inspiration for Love and Coffee.

This is, needless to say, incredibly surprising- these bursts are pivotal for every writer, because writing will suddenly burst from inside you without any warning at all, and it is this specific kind of writing that I can only describe as worth its weight in 24 carat gold. Most of the time, your imagination is full of this ugly, obtrusive stone; but then, holy shit, it's golden, and then you'd better fall to your knees and fill your hands and shovel it into your pockets because if you don't then it will be stone again and you'll fucking regret it.

Nowadays, my writing will turn gold for something like an hour, and I write in the perpetual fear that if I so much as blink, or pull my fingers away from that keyboard, then its going to be ugly and obtrusive and dreary all over again and the awful, cyclical waiting will start over.

Nonetheless, I'm sure that you can allow me just one moment of reprieve from all this pessimism: I think that this breakthrough, the latest breakthrough tossed upon a pile of supposed breakthroughs, might actually be a significant one.

The biggest problem with Volume 6 thus far has been the necessity to begin a new character or plot arc. Volume 5 saw the resolution of one of the all important 'main' character objectives. The ones that the three girls began with, and by extension Etsuji, have all been concluded now. I neglected giving Kagami something new in Volume 5, and obviously the 'big' cliffhanger of that very same volume was that Mei finally got asked out by the super popular riajuu idiot whose been making eyes at her since Volume 3. To be honest, I still haven't got a fucking clue whether she should deny her nonsensical feelings for Etsuji and accept the riajuu proposition yet.

Maybe I'll do something super dramatic with that this time around as well, but the idea I just had seems like a much more promising road to follow. Akane's still not popular after her attempt to enter a friendship group in Volume 4 failed, so I can probably milk that for a bit longer (or hint at something new for end of this volume? *put this in planning Word document).

I can put my new idea down to one word: perspective. That one brilliant word was what became my elixir on Friday. Y'know what? I love you, perspective. You're my new favourite word, effectively displacing MAXX-Coffee (that can be counted as one word, right?) at the top of my official leaderboard. Gold medal for you!

My least favourite word is Yukino at the moment, if you're at all interested.

You se

Fuck it, I'm gonna be brutally honest. I absolutely fucking despise writing from Etsuji's perspective. Absolutely and completely, to my very core, or Etsuji's core, or whatever core you want, right down to the magma in the one at the very centre of the planet we like to call home.

I hate him because he's a pathetic, snivelling, arrogant idiot- the kind of person who got bullied, and yeah, you should never condone bullying because of political correctness and all that, but if anyone deserved to get bullied, then it would probably be Nagatomo Etsuji. He dances and he avoids his own insecurities and innumerable faults, and what's worse, he excuses them with all this loner superiority crap. Because of course, it's not his immature self that's at fault. No. It's the rest of the fucking world's fault. Yeah. It's not like that very same fucking world spat him out for a reason.

And sure, it's a joke in Love and Coffee. Yes, you can say that the joke is on Etsuji for maintaining the facade of these so called beliefs and ideals, when really, no one could possibly wish to be entirely alone. But in the end, it isn't. It really isn't, because you know what? Etsuji gets the girls.

That means the joke isn't on this pathetic, snivelling, arrogant idiot. That means the joke, in all seriousness, is on the rest of the world. It excuses him, in all his sarcastic, snarky, precocious twattery, because he gets a glorified harem at his beck and call. He pretends to be witty and philosophical and helpful when really all he's thinking about is how Machiko Mei looks hot in gym shorts, and Arakaki Akane would probably be good in bed.

It excuses everyone other Nagatomo Etsuji, or wannabe Nagatomo Etsuji who reads Love and Coffee. And yeah, of fucking course it excuses me.

That wasn't what I intended Love and Coffee to be. I promise you, whoever is reading this, that it wasn't.

When I returned from New York, and I sat around in cafes and forgot to get off buses and I wrote that stupid stupid first volume, I didn't want it to be a harem. Or a romance, really. I wasn't even thinking that it would be a light novel- it just kinda ended up as that, because light novels are easy and shitty and that format's just about what my skill at writing deserves. It was just a way for me to spout whatever bullshit entered my mind about that beautiful woman on the other side of Pirelli's, without having to admit that it was about that beautiful woman.

I was and still fucking am a man frozen in the glacier that we call love. Because really, that's what love is. Most people use that stupid fire analogy, and sure, at first you feel like you're on fire or you're burning, and I still hold those initial burn marks, but eventually, it only leaves you cold. It leaves you trapped in ice, suspended still, until love does you the favour of thawing and you can finally breathe once more.

But now, perspective. God damn fucking perspective. I don't necessarily have to write from Etsuji's perspective. Sure, he still needs to be the main character in the story, but I hate him so much that writing through his eyes is like writing when your hands are chained in shackles. So, for half of this volume, or maybe more, I'll write from one of the girls perspective. Then, over time, if I ever get on to Volume 8 and Volume 9 and Volume 4573, I can indulge in the pleasure of dropping my Etsuji pen, and I'll never have to look through that motherfucker's eyes ever again.

Or, I could just kill him off right now. In a car crash, or a bizarre, on-land, coffee related drowning incident. I'm joking, obviously. Etsuji means yen in my pocket, and you can never have enough yen in your pocket. Obviously obviously obviously.

I think the girl that I'd like to write from the perspective of, first and foremost, is Arakaki Akane. In fact, I'm sure of it. The very next time I try to write Love and Coffee, maybe tomorrow but let's be honest who can be fucked, I'll start writing through her eyes and see where that gets me.

I have a pretty good idea of her voice in the story right now, and her dialogue comes very naturally, as do all of the main cast's when I'm in the zone (the zone is just hard to find, okay). The only obstacle will be getting her thought process. Getting inside her head and how she thinks and making sure that it's sustained and consistent.

Even for that, I have ideas though. And when I say ideas, I mean one idea, and that idea is my solution to basically everything. All together now: Yukinoshita Yukino.

Sometimes, it terrifies me how similar my thought process is to Yukino's, though. That was probably one of the main reasons that I fell in love with her. I started this recount in the same way she began her diary, just to amuse myself.

Her head is like a clone of my own. She'll have written things exactly the same way that I would have written them. Sometimes, it terrifies me how perfectly everything fell into place in those two weeks in New York. The world, boys and girls, is an endless, constantly moving, constantly rotating coincidence, and its a road accident and then its a love affair and its completely by chance and its frivolous and its a colossal, unpredictable, imperceptible pile of nonsense.

It just had to be Yukino. That specific one in a trillion in New York in the very week that Hachiman decided to stop the clocks and leave Chiba. It just had to be these two people, in that specific cafe, in that very specific moment, because you know what, fuck it, why not.

Reading that first diary entry was like the burst and the relief of being submerged in a swimming pool for longer than necessary, and then emerging too late. I walked back to The Liberty with the notebook that she left in the cafe, as if begging for me and me alone to pick it up.

It was buried under the arm of my coat, and through the rain I kept glancing this way and that, wondering if Yukinoshita Yukino would pop out somewhere to ask for her notebook back. As soon as I got back to The Liberty, I give into my curiosity and started reading.

What did she even write about? I suppose the point of a diary is that you don't really have to write about anything. You can, if you want, but not really, and to this day I'd be surprised if Yukinoshita Yukino had even the slightest inkling what it was that she wanted. I can only remember snippets, tiny instances of clarity and insight in her rambling, unfocused prose (if it can even be described as that).

The previous sentence could pretty easily be applied to my writing right now, reading it back. Little moments of poignancy, of things that resonated, of feelings that I too had felt, even if the situation was not even remotely similar. But most of the time, I could relate. I fell in love with this person, so it'd be a bit weird if I couldn't. Although having said that, when was love ever normal?

She spent most of the first entry complaining that diaries were stupid, that she'd never even contemplate writing a diary, and that what she was currently writing wasn't even close to being a diary entry. A pointless endeavour, considering it very obviously was a diary entry. Yukinoshita Yukino. Living in her own form of denial, as always.

I didn't read any more after finishing the first entry. I closed her diary shut and I put it on my bedside table, abandoned with the half-hearted promise that its abandonment was to be permanent bacqeegqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqhunujgvqbeqg3qu

25th September 2023, 4:16 AM

I fell asleep. Fuck.

Actually, falling asleep is a good thing. Silly Hachiman.

nite computer

NOTEBOOK: PURCHASED FROM STAPLES

4th February 2018

My name is Yukinoshita Yukino.

I am a woman of twenty six years and am of Japanese descent, although I only spent five of those years in the country of my ancestral origin. The rest have been spent in the country which I currently inhabit, that being the United States of America. I have both a Japanese and an American passport but I would undoubtedly consider myself a Japanese citizen.

A manifestation of this is my insistence on writing in Japanese kanji whenever possible, particularly in private. This is the written form of communication that I have adopted and will continue to adopt for the foreseeable future of this manuscript. Professionally and when in the presence of my family members, specifically my mother and older sister, Yukinoshita Haruno, it is expected that I utilise proper English, and though this occasionally induces a minimal degree of irritation, I am fluent in the language and therefore it is not an issue.

It is necessary that I define the boundaries and indeed the true identity of the manuscript that I am writing, for I understand that simply labelling it a "manuscript" is vague and insufficient for anyone that might eventually stumble upon it, although this is unlikely to take place. To this person, you may be unconditionally sure that it is not and never will be a diary.

I believe that those who write diaries are weak willed individuals with excessive fluctuations of emotions that they either do not understand or struggle to control, and the action of writing a diary is a release, and a means for them to channel these emotions. An example of such an individual is a girl I used to be educated with at high school. She was continually harassed by our classmates as a direct consequence of this.

I

I would try to

Perfectionism can be simultaneously a blessing and a curse. At its most helpful, it allows you to produce the best work or performance possible, and the determination and resilience required to truly be a perfectionist are attributes you can rely on to pull you through a huge number of challenging situations.

On the other hand, it is not surprising that perfectionists are often seen as pedantic and irritating. I would certainly prefer to be a perfectionist than not, and my exceptional grades of attainment throughout education are ample evidence of this.

Here, however, it seems to be playing to my disadvantage. Since finishing the first few paragraphs of this recount, I stared at my paper, waiting for the correct wording to express why this is not a diary, for half an hour. Unfortunately, that I cannot explain why it isn't a diary at this moment in time.

I've a policy that dictates I can never lie, so you'll have to accept my apologies on this matter.

What I can accomplish, however, is to continue with my original intentions and elaborate further on my motivations for writing. I am writing because I wish to fully expose the inherited and regrettably intrinsic cruelty of human nature. It is a comprehensive expose on the effects of this cruelty, and indeed the responses of individuals to this cruelty.

It is merely obligatory, due to my good and noble spirit, that I also act as the first test subject of this expose. I shall be recording my personal findings here.

You may have my sincerest guarantee that it is not a diary. I see no reason to waste my carefully chosen words any longer on pretext. Instead, I shall skip forward to the events of the day, which I am recording as I feel it is relevant to my purpose.

Ever since graduating I have found myself employed in a publishing house only a short taxi ride away from Manhattan itself, where my family owns a luxury penthouse which I am still demanded to pay visit to at least once a week. The publishing house provides me with a wage far exceeding the minimum, partly because I perhaps naively believe it to be a company with good policy towards its workers, and partly because I have managed to ascend to a fairly high office.

This ascension was of no surprise to me at the time and remains this way now, for my credentials are very impressive, having graduated from higher university education with flying colours. Continuing into the field of academia, particularly in areas of literary study (be it English or Japanese), was an option that I ruminated over at great length.

This notion was at last rejected when I decided that establishing myself on the, at first, lower rungs of the corporate ladder would do more for my financial position, and much improve my independence and self-sustainability later on in life.

The rest of the Yukinoshitas did not approve of this decision, although the logic that supported it was sound and informed. My father is obsessed with that trivial, redundant concept we call a legacy. The Yukinoshita family business, and the morals and pressures of this family are things of the past, but what I view as antiquated the rest of them view as their proudest boast.

We are a family of tradition, and of values, and of expectations, etc etc etc. I suppose I must be one of the first Yukinoshitas to live in a flat with rent at what most would call an affordable rate.

I hope that you will forgive my digression towards familial matters, as it is not entirely necessary- therefore, I will turn towards my study of current conditions at my place of work. The publishing house is but a subsidiary of a nationwide company called Whitecross Publishing, though this remains an important location for the company, not least because of where it is based.

It is easy to take for granted how important a city New York is when you have lived here for the majority of your life, as I have. Just by glancing down the street as I embark on my daily commute to work, I can see the eyes of those who thrive off every second they spend in this city and see those seconds as beautiful, or enthralling, or perhaps even the greatest that they've ever experienced.

They would be wrong. If one was ever to reach the sophistication and general superiority that I have attained from years of personal betterment, they would not be so optimistic. A city is just a pile of concrete ugliness, and a greater excess of concrete ugliness does not somehow grant it more beauty. New York is only seen as beautiful due to typical American arrogance and bravado.

Unfortunately, my boss at Whitecross happens to be a simpleton. How he has managed to ascend so highly in the company is beyond me, for the only noteworthy moment of insight that I've witnessed from him so far is appointing me as his assistant. Though everyone on my floor has at least a passable work ethic, it is (unsurprisingly) I who excels, not least because the boss seems to approach my desk every single hour, sometimes to delegate work and sometimes to ask me how the previously delegated work is progressing.

He is not patronising or offensive; simply distracted and absent, if I should ever have the misfortune of interacting with him.

My true complaints arise when dealing with the rest of my counterparts working under his stewardship. As I have already made clear, they are not lazy with their assignments, or else rowdy and inconsiderate. They might irritate me less if they were rowdy and inconsiderate.

I might pass a piece of paper along our desks, or forward a memo to another who requested it, and yet I am forever struck by a staggering isolation. Not from any desire to know or to talk to these people in particular. It is a far more rudimentary and I suppose more ridiculous desire than that.

It is a desire for a conversation that does not exist for conversation's sake, or for a feeling outside my own body, that I will sense and know is more than just a scientific term. Something genuine, that could never be classified or understood.

I am incredibly dissatisfied with the words that I have just written. They are indistinct and ugly. I am afraid I got carried away. Once more, I apologise.

I shall conclude this entry by mentioning that the landlord of my flat has recently revoked his sacrilegious policy on the admittance of domesticated animals in his properties. I intend to exploit this immediately. It has been a long-lasting hope of mine that I should be able to take care of a feline of my own.

This was a truly awful first entry to my expose. I personally insist it shall be more focused in future.