Without further ado, Aria fetched some parchment paper and brought it to Wataru’s room, and together they began thinking about the plot for her novel!
Aria glared and groaned at the blank parchment in front of her at the table! “Hmmmm, this really is quite difficult, isn’t it...!”
“You wrote an outline for that romance story before...! It was called ‘Melty Love’ or something, right!? Why don’t you just turn that into a novel!?” Wataru was quick to offer advice from where he sat across the table from her, but his words failed to dispel the troubled look on Aria’s face!
“Well, of course I’d like to do that, but the whole ‘Amour Mélange’ outline was something I thought up on the spot... If I tried turning that story into a full-length novel, I think it’d actually be quite hard to write. Maybe I should just take my time and think up an entirely different setting for my story...”
“You’ve got a point...!”
Wataru and Aria found themselves quite perplexed by the complex vagaries of the literary activity known as Writing a Novel!
—and that’s when it happened!!
Wataru was struck by an idea that was devilishly tempting!!
Hey, that’s right! If we just copy popular stuff I read when I was back in Japan, maybe it’ll be popular here as well!?
Yes! This is a parallel world, so even if Wataru were to completely plagiarize something he read back in his former home, Japan, not a single person would find out!!
Sure, there may be others like the Demon Lord, the dragon, and Wataru, who all came from that world into this one... But surely it’ll all turn out okay!!
I kind of feel like it’s kinda ethically dangerous to do something like that, though... But... What if I didn’t completely copy something else, and just used part of it? That should be fine!!
“Wh-What’s the matter, Wataru? You look even more grim than you usually do!”
Aria sounded concerned! Wataru slowly folded his arms and opened his mouth to say:
“I’ve thought of the perfect setting for our book, Aria...!”
“Oh, um, really!?”
Aria’s eyes were practically dazzling with admiration when she heard this!
“Yeah...! That publishing company will definitely buy this story! It’s the best setting ever!!”
Wataru, just now... sold his soul to the Devil!
“So what kind of setup were you thinking of?” Aria was really excited to hear his answer! And so Wataru began to explain his thoughts in detail!
“Well, first of all... our protagonist is a pirate!”
“Oooh, a pirate, you say! That’s rather common for an adventure story!” Adventure tales that had pirates as the main characters seemed to be fairly popular, even here in this fantasy world!
“Right, but this guy’s different! He’s a pirate, but his body is elastic!!”
“His body’s elastic!?”
Aria was astonished! She’d never heard of such a shockingly outlandish idea for a main character!
“This protagonist of ours is searching for a hidden treasure, hidden somewhere in his world... so he goes off on an adventure with his friends! He has, uh... two friends, at the beginning!!”
“That makes sense. I think if you want to write a long-running series, you need to start off with only a few characters!”
Aria bobbed her head up and down as she agreed with everything Wataru suggested! She began making some notes using the pen and parchment on the table in front of her!
“Cool, now we can talk about what his friends are like! The first one is the protagonist’s best friend, and he’s a detective with amazing powers of observation!”
“Oho! A detective, you say? It’s rather novel to have a pirate and a detective working together, if I do say so myself!”
“The detective, by the way, looks like a child but is actually an adult! They got involved in some past incident with a shady organization where they were made to drink some crazy medicine that shrunk their body!!”
“What!? S-Shrunk their body!?”
Aria was yet again beside herself with surprise! Surely there’s a limit as to how many “interesting” new ideas can be crammed into one novel!
“So he looks like a kid, but has the brain of an adult... That difference in real age, versus apparent age is really important!”
Wataru’s expression was contorted with anger as he explained this! Then he took a deep, gasping breath before continuing on!
“The other friend is a yellow mouse that can shoot lightning bolts out of its body!!”
“A mouse!?!?”
Aria had her socks knocked off thricely! It was absurd! Preposterous! Who’d ever heard of an electrifying mouse appearing as a character in a novel!
“I guess I should mention that the mouse obviously can’t talk—but he’s a really good fighter! When it comes time to sell merchandise, he’ll be a great mascot character for the series!!”
“R-Right......! Yeah, every popular novel or franchise has a mascot character nowadays, don’t they!!”
Aria was honestly impressed by how deeply Wataru was thinking about this! He’d included considerations of future merchandising when thinking of her story!!
“Since the main character’s a pirate, there’s obviously gonna be some battle scenes, adventures, episodes when he makes new friends, and a whole lot of other interesting plot twists! It’ll be the ideal multi-volume series!!”
“I’ve no doubt that it’ll be explosively popular, Wataru!! By the way, what are we going to name this series?”
“The title? Hmmm, that’s a good question...!”
Wataru grew silent as he stroked his chin for a few moments, then his eyes flashed open wide as if he’d just been struck by lightning:
“Live from the Sky Kingdom on the Wind Continent: The Pirates!!”
He’d just copied the whole title from other, more popular series!!
But Aria had no way of knowing that!
“Hmmmm, that’s a bit long, isn’t it? Sure, it’s better than Jacob Yamada’s ‘It’s Me, a Shy Orc Loner with a Heart of Gold (Notice Me, Senpai!) Who Got Reborn In Another World, a.k.a. “Isekai,” Where I Am Getting Into All Sorts of Troubles, Hijinks, and Shenanigans, Oh My!,’ but still......”
“It’ll be just fine, Aria! This title has, you know... That feeling of being a well-loved title for many years! Don’t you think so!?!?!
“U-Uh, I’m not sure, but if you say so...?”
“I do say so!”
And so this was how Wataru half-forced Aria to adopt “Live from the Sky Kingdom on the Wind Continent: The Pirates!!” as the title for her novel!!