Vol 1 Chapter 8 – Advertising and Promotion

A few minutes after Kajiwara Ichirou, who lives a bit far away and has a curfew, had made his early exit from the club room.

The conflict broke out suddenly.

No, it was expected, so I guess you couldn’t call it sudden.

“Woooooah, President Takahashi. Why did you drag me into this?!”

“Because you were looking at me so enviously, Emma. I thought I’d splash a little water your way. Shaaaaaa!”

We are, after all, just weak nerds, possessing no great power to hurt anyone.

And yet, there they were, trading blows as always.

thwack, thwack

“Thank you very much!”

“You’re very welcome!”

In reality, Emma was delighted, so there was no particular reason for them to be fighting.

But for some reason, the two of them were trading blows anyway.

They were like two monkeys getting excited—the one who was just given food and the one who shared it.

As for me, Segawa Ryoune, it’s a little dissatisfying. Like a couple of monkeys in heat.

She could have turned her attention to me, too.

But, well, I suppose bringing up Emma’s example was the most appropriate choice in that situation.

“But I don’t have the confidence to talk to a boy!”

“That’ll come in time. Little by little, Emma, you’ll be able to talk with him.”

This was typical.

President Takahashi had a peculiar habit.

Whenever she saw someone with a complex about not knowing what to do with themselves, she felt this compulsion to look after them.

Oh, I have to do something to help them.

Yes, maybe they’d be happy if I did it with them.

She thought things like that completely naturally.

Like a guide.

She was an otaku of the light.

If not a “habit,” what else could you call it?

And we, the club members, had been led here by it.

Among us, Emma was likely the most timid and lacking in self-confidence.

She was a nerd, alone.

“A nerd, alone”—not like the rest of us, who had a circle of fellow nerds.

She was a nerd who was truly on her own.

On top of that, she was a non-creative nerd who didn’t produce her own work, and though no one blamed her for it, she was deeply insecure about it.

When she first joined the club, she could barely even speak with us.

She’d stammer.

When she talked to people, she would sometimes trip and stumble over her words.

When President Takahashi gently asked her about it, she heard that Emma had barely spoken to anyone during junior high.

That she wasn’t used to talking to people.

During break times in junior high, she would just slump over her desk and pretend to be asleep.

So, for her, the act of joining this otaku club, the ‘Modern Culture Research Society,’ must have taken a tremendous amount of courage.

But still, she took that step.

That’s why President Takahashi was so kind to Emma.

Incredibly kind.

She gave Emma her old drawing tablet, taught her illustration and manga techniques, and never, ever forgot to praise her for any technical progress she made.

“Even if those are your words, President, I can’t believe them!”

How many times had I heard that line?

Even though you do believe her.

Even though you already believe in her completely.

Emma was a devotee of President Takahashi.

It wasn’t a matter of “probably”—she was hopelessly and utterly fond of President Takahashi.

“Let’s all try to talk with Kajiwara, little by little… I mean, Kajiwara joined this club because he wants friends, too. Hey, how about we all play a card game together? I’ll lend you my deck. Or, you know, we could just play with regular playing cards.”

“…Is that, you know, okay?”

The one who asked was Toudou.

She asked anxiously, her tall, slender frame—small-chested, with long black hair styled in a princess cut—swaying back and forth.

“I thought you didn’t want to let anyone have him, Chihiro?”

Anxious.

Her tone seemed to ask if this was a subject we were even allowed to broach.

President Takahashi and Toudou Hatsune were on a first-name basis, calling each other Chihiro and Hatsune.

They went to the same junior high.

“Nah, I’ve said it before, haven’t I? Kajiwara doesn’t belong to me or anything. He just came here looking for otaku friends. It’s fine for all of us to get along with him. All of us.”

This isn’t a battle over ownership rights.

Well, in an age of polygamy, fighting over a lover is ridiculous anyway.

Even so, probably—President Takahashi has fallen for Kajiwara.

That much became painfully obvious from this whole affair.

I think it’d be fine if she had at least a little ulterior motive, a little desire to not share him with others.

“I, uh, want everyone to get along with Kajiwara.”

President Takahashi had none of that.

I let out a sigh.

There’s a limit to how nice a person can be.

“We’ll get along. We will. And on that note, we managed to get Kajiwara to agree to help sell our fanzines. He also agreed to the card game tournament, but…”

“Yeah, setting aside the card game tournament, the main event for our ‘Modern Culture Research Society’ is the local fanzine convention! I’ll have to do my usual rounds greeting the other circles, so I won’t be able to man the booth the whole time, but I think Kajiwara will fill that gap.”

No one can fill your shoes.

I was about to say it, but I stopped myself.

President Takahashi has a habit of underestimating herself.

That was another thing I liked about her, and it wasn’t like saying something would change her, so I decided to just let it be.

“…As for the card game tournament, we’ll have to pass. We don’t really know much about it, for starters.”

That was a mix of truth and lies.

We did want to try the card game Kajiwara likes, but President Takahashi was the only one among us who knew how to play.

For now, I thought, I want to create some time for President Takahashi to hang out with Kajiwara, just the two of them.

Toudou and Emma remained silent, perhaps feeling the same way.

“You sure? Well, even though I say it’s a card game tournament, it’s just a small one at a local shop. Besides, the main event for our ‘Modern Culture Research Society’ is the regional fanzine convention.”

“Umm, how many days left until the deadline, again?” President Takahashi began to count on her fingers.

“…You don’t need to count anymore. We’ll all be done in one more day.”

“Oh, really! You all worked so hard.”

You bet we worked hard.

Ever since Kajiwara arrived, our work has gone much faster.

Of course, we haven’t cut any corners.

There shouldn’t be any problem with the quality.

It’s like… how do I put it? Like food was dangled in front of our faces. Or, well, something like that.

As we all worked desperately, thinking about how we, like President Takahashi, wanted to hold hands with him, the manuscripts somehow progressed quickly.

For the record, my particular fetish is the clavicle.

I want to bite it.

“…So, about promotion for this event. As usual, we’ll prepare a poster that shows off our skills, and we’ll do SNS promotion. But there’s one thing I’d like to ask.”

“What is it, what is it?”

“I want to take a picture of Kajiwara. And post it on our social media.”

…I debated whether or not to say this.

It feels wrong, like I’m using Kajiwara personally.

“Um, is the promotional effect of having a guy really that big?”

“…You could call him a poster boy. I mean, even without cosplay or anything, a shop can prosper just by having a guy there to hand you your change.”

The handsome older guy at the bakery in front of the station is so popular that a lot of students at our school eat bread for lunch.

If that same effect came from a young guy of 15, the results would be outstanding.

“Segawa-chan, you don’t miss a thing.”

President Takahashi calls me with the -chan suffix.

She just told me, “You seem kind of prickly, Segawa-chan, so I’m going to call you Segawa-chan.”

It’s not that I’m prickly. It’s just that I still haven’t forgotten the humiliation of selling only four books at our first event.

Look, the first thing we made might not have been great due to our lack of skill, but it wasn’t bad, either.

It was simply a lack of promotion.

If we sold only 4 books when 100 people saw our work, then we should have sold 40 books by having 1,000 people see it.

If 10,000 people saw it, we could have even sold 400.

If one shuriken won’t work on the enemy, you should throw 1,000 of them.

That’s how I’ve operated.

As the one in charge of the club’s advertising and promotion.

“I don’t dislike that side of you, but I’ll be the one to explain the purpose and intent to Kajiwara. I think that’s the sincere thing to do.”

“…I’ll explain it to him.”

“Are you sure? Have you ever even talked to a boy? You haven’t, have you?”

I haven’t!

But there’s no way I can let President Takahashi handle this for me, too!

Besides, if Kajiwara ends up hating someone for this, it should be me.

The mere thought of President Takahashi earning even the slightest bit of his resentment is terrifying.

The President isn’t doing anything wrong.

If anyone’s at fault, it’s me, for thinking of using his gender for promotion.

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

I declared it to President Takahashi, who was looking at me with worried eyes.

And with that, I ended the day, honestly shouldering a great deal of anxiety.