Laid-Back Life in Tokyo: I Really Didn't Want to Work Hard-Chapter 901 - 530: Hanabi Love

Nakata Kiyoshi breathed a sigh of relief and patiently began reading the novel submission in the email.

[Akizuki Katsuyama slouched on the streets of Shinjuku, his loneliness following the music in his headphones slowly invading his mind, as his ashen eyes looked at this city, longed for by the youth.

He didn’t know how many people in this city were like him, intoxicated, almost forgetting their own names in their daze.

Ordinary, cowardly, useless, even if he fell on this neon-lit street, no one would care.

Money, money, money.

Now he’s so broke that the landlord kicked him out... Where’s the money to treat his mother, suffering from a chronic illness, far away in Hokkaido?

A sense of powerlessness welled up within him.

Akisuki reached into his pocket with his dry hand and took out a crumpled cigarette. He wearily placed the bent cigarette in his mouth, fumbled with the lighter until sparks finally lit his only cigarette.

He stared blankly at the ever-flashing neon lights, lost in thought as various emotions stirred within.]

....

"The opening is okay, directly depicting the predicament, giving the male lead pressure."

Pressure creates motivation.

A classic opening technique.

It’s not exactly stunning, but at least it doesn’t make me frown as I read, unlike the previous few.

This depiction resonates with him, embodying a sense of having struggled in Tokyo but failing to succeed.

He remembers graduating from the liberal arts department at Waseda University, always wanting to recapture his childhood dreams, to the point of recklessly wanting to enter the animation industry.

But his mediocre skills led him to study art for years without any success.

Rejection letters really dealt him serious blows.

At that time, he had no money, no connections, wandering alone on the streets of Tokyo, only having a few coins in his pocket.

Thinking about it evokes a sigh.

The protagonist in the book, Akizuki Katsuyama, seems even worse off than him, with no job, having to support his mother at home, everything requiring money, but he just doesn’t have any.

Life seemed to dim accordingly.

Nakata Kiyoshi, stirred by memories, couldn’t help but reminisce about his former self.

Alas, talking about it only brings tears.

He pulled himself together and continued reading.

The scene transitions to a hotel, where a woman of the same age as the male protagonist hands him a bottle of beer, saying something seemingly profound:

["People are always caught in a cycle of confusion, self-deprecation, and hope, only to lose all confidence in what they’ve done shortly after. I say, Katsuyama, you’ve been in Tokyo for eight years, shouldn’t you have made a name for yourself by now?"]

...

After reading a few lines, Nakata Kiyoshi understood.

"Is this female lead a childhood friend?"

Now that he’s middle-aged, as an editor of light novels at Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko, he’s naturally immersed in various youthful campus novels daily.

He can confidently say, if a light novel doesn’t explicitly state that the female lead is a childhood friend, chances are, childhood friends often end up losing.

Who knows if this is an inexplicable consensus developed in the industry.

At least a glance through the light novel rankings shows many romance novels with the "childhood friend" tag.

Yet not many can win in the end.

It’s quite strange.

Coming back to the book "Hanabi’s Love," so far, he’s read with ease.

But as he continued, he increasingly furrowed his brow.

It’s not that he can’t continue reading.

But the writer’s style seems unlike a newcomer’s, nor like a typical light novel author’s.

It has a... more literary flavor, similar to what he last felt reading "Hyouka."

The plot, however, is straightforward; the male lead gets fired, falls into a crisis, and is invited by the childhood friend to drink in a bar. Although the childhood friend is a spendthrift, she sells her Tokyo apartment to lend money to the male lead.

The emotional interaction is handled delicately; the male lead doesn’t readily accept but struggles internally, until the childhood friend straightforwardly pats him on the back, explaining the benefits, eventually accepting the long-time acquaintance’s money.

Honestly, he likes the depiction of this childhood friend in the book, who seemingly doesn’t care about the male lead, sports fashionable attire, and frequents bars, utterly mismatched with the honest male lead.

Not exactly a good character, yet she unexpectedly pulls out 2 million yen.

Very peculiar.

The protagonist, benefiting from this favor, doesn’t show excessive excitement, but silently lifts his head to glance at his childhood friend, and they begin reminiscing about past events, childhood games, and experiences, in a somewhat amusing reflection.

As they talked, both looked up, sharing a smile, extending their arms to mimic a scene from a childhood TV show, fist-bumping.

[Her eyes shimmered under the sparkling neon lights of the bar, leaving me a little dazed, though she wore the flamboyant attire I usually dislike, it didn’t interfere with my perception of her as perfect and charming.]

Nakata Kiyoshi, seeing this passage, couldn’t stop twirling the marker pen on the desk with his fingertips.

This feeling of a knowing smile, with everything conveyed through the eyes of these childhood friends, is something he quite enjoys.

The female lead holding the beer glass, that subtle nonchalant warm smile as she gazed towards the bar counter, is also endearing.