Tokyo: Who would still fall in love after being spoiled?

Chapter 130 If No One Wants Senior Inoue...

Takeda took him to a game booth that had opened early to play darts, beat drums to the music, and scoop up goldfish, and finally went to Sensoji Temple to draw fortunes.

She seemed to be accustomed to moving through crowded crowds, and her journey was almost unimpeded.

It is said that there is no serious bad luck in the fortune drawing at Sensoji Temple. Takeda drew Sueyoshi, which is a bad luck for him, and the degree of bad luck is about the same.

Takeda snatched his fortune stick and stood on tiptoe to tie it together with his own to the branch full of divine fortune sticks.

"Come back with me." Takeda clapped his hands and said after coming out of Sensoji Temple.

"Have you had enough of shopping?"

"tired."

"There's a dessert shop next door, and the promotional blackboard says you can get unlimited coffee refills."

"We can't keep Mom and Dad waiting too long."

In places with fewer people, Takeda would take the initiative to let go of his hand.

"Then go back."

He withdrew his gaze and walked back to the banks of the Sumida River with Takeda. He expected to stay there for a while longer, and so, naturally, they spent the entire afternoon watching the fireworks and then returned to the rental house together.

However, Takeda, contrary to his usual behavior, waved goodbye to him and said that his mission was over.

So he was alone again, even leaving his backpack at Takeda's place. He followed the crowds, wandering alone, and soon he felt disoriented. He finally recovered after entering a random shop on the street to get some fresh air and rest.

There were only three or four customers in the sneaker store, which seemed particularly deserted compared to the busy street outside.

He sat on the soft shoe-changing stool in the corner, which was temporarily unattended, checked the time, and sent a message to Asakura.

It was just past three in the afternoon, and there was still some time before it would get completely dark and the festival would officially begin, so he had to do something to kill time.

Besides, it doesn't matter to him whether to watch the fireworks or not. It's just an option to pass the time.

[Asakura: Do you have time?]
[Inoue: I'm just sitting there with nothing to do.]
[Asakura: Do you have enough time? Let's find another place closer to you to meet.]
[Inoue: This is your home, right? Don't bother me.]
[Asakura: It's just me. I sent you the address, so why would I be worried about being disturbed?]
[Inoue: OK, I'll be there in an hour.]
He put away his phone, left the shoe store, searched the points store for a dessert shop on the bank of the Sumida River, used his points to buy some souvenirs, and boarded the train to Meguro Ward.

The apartment building is located near a residential area. It is not very tall, with about ten floors and is equipped with an elevator.

Asakura's residence is at the end of the corridor on the seventh floor. It has windows on two sides and is a 1LDK apartment. It is not large, but it is spacious enough for one person.

He rang the doorbell, and Asakura, dressed in casual clothes, opened the door to welcome him in and handed him a pair of slippers with cat ears.

"Long time no see, Inoue-senpai!" The rebellious Asakura still called him that.

"...Long time no see, Asakura-senpai." He put on his slippers, handed over the dessert, and retaliated appropriately.

"Oh, there's cake too?" Asakura's attention was completely focused on the dessert and he wasn't affected at all.

"dislike?"

"How can you say you don't like it? Let's share it later. I just made some green tea."

He followed Asakura into the room. To the right of the entrance was the utility room and kitchen, the ceiling of which was lower than that of the main room.

The dining and living room is covered with tatami, with a square low table in the middle, a TV on one side, and a clothes rack and a sofa in the corner.

The moment he came in, he subconsciously looked around and memorized the entire layout of the room.

"Occupational disease?" Asakura, who came out of the kitchen carrying a teapot, noticed something and teased with a smile.

"...So be it."

He sat down at the low table, Asakura poured the tea, opened the cake boxes, placed them one by one on the table, and went to the bedroom to get two stacks of printed documents.

One was a script that wanted Inoue to try dubbing, and the other was the first draft of the new volume of the novel "Wrong Love".

"Aren't they busy with the animation?" He got the first draft, flipped through it from the back, and was surprised to find that it had been completed.

"After all, I'm just a light novel author. There's only so much I can do, and most of the time I can't help much."

Asakura sat down to his right and took a sip of tea.

"You always have to keep yourself busy." She put down the teacup and said with a smile.

Only when people are busy can they avoid falling into endless meaningless thinking and increasing anxiety.

It was for the same reason that he appeared here at this moment.

Even if he hadn't received Asakura's invitation, he would have found a way to find something to do, such as reading, playing the trumpet, or even finding a shop that needed temporary workers during the holidays to work...

"I wish Kuroki was half as hardworking as you."

He first opened the new volume of the novel and sighed sincerely.

“Has the editor seen it?”

"Not yet, so Inoue-senpai is the first reader to see the contents of this volume."

"I'd rather be second." He almost put the document down.

It's true that seeing the manuscript earlier would give him more time to prepare illustrations, but Asakura showed him a manuscript that the editor hadn't seen yet. If it was sent back for rewrites, wouldn't his work be in vain?

"Don't worry! My first drafts have only ever been corrected for typos."

"Great." But he still put the document down.

It takes a long time to finish reading a volume of a novel, and compared to the novel story of a youth love comedy, dubbing is more likely to arouse his interest.

"A lot of lines?" He picked up the script, which had quite a few pages.

"I appear in the screenplay quite a few times, but I don't have many lines." He opened the script, which contained not only his lines but entire scenes, with narration written between the lines.

The characters that Asakura wanted him to voice often only had one or two lines.

Only in dialogue scenes where only two people appear will they speak more than once.

"Dubbing is different from normal chatting after all." He looked at the lines, simulated the scenes in his mind, and figured out the tone.

The character's speaking style was somewhat similar to his, but making up dialogue without any basis in fact was another matter. If he hadn't learned dubbing skills, he had no idea if he could have achieved the right effect.

"Try it out if you're interested," Asakura said. "There will also be some voice actors who have audition scripts auditioning together...but I personally prefer Inoue-san."

"In other words, the voice actors who appeared on the audition list might not be as good as me?"

"Time is tight, so the only people willing to audition are newcomers and voice actors who haven't voiced a main character before. I've heard of their past works, but..."

"Not satisfied?"

"Yeah." Asakura nodded and smiled, pushing the divided strawberry cake to his hand. "If it weren't for Inoue-senpai, we could only hope to win a gold prize by drawing a card among the new voice actors... Oh, sorry, it's probably just a matter of luck."

"I do know how to draw cards..." He couldn't help but declare, "Don't treat me like an old man who's been abandoned by time. That's too disrespectful of the laws of time. In fact, I'm the younger one."

Asakura apologized profusely and chuckled.

The girl was wearing a loose-fitting hooded sweater and was slightly bent over as she sat at a low table, her figure well hidden under the fabric.

Her jeans were still very short, revealing her fair and tender thighs without any hesitation, just like the first time she came to see him.

"Aren't you going to watch the fireworks tonight?" He flipped through the script while chatting with her.

"Oh, does this count as an invitation for me to join you?"

"Just asking. It's almost dusk now, and you haven't decided to leave yet."

"Going to see the fireworks alone... wouldn't that be a little strange? At least not for me."

"You want me to come with you?"

"If you really want to go see it together, I'd be happy to—"

Asakura said this, but his tone was different from usual.

He had long given up trying to fathom Asakura's intentions, wondering if she would welcome it or politely decline.

He had already made plans to wait a little longer. He would go to a somewhat deserted commercial street far away from the various festivals to eat a bowl of ramen, ask Ah-yi about the location of the secret planning team of the wind band, and go to watch the scene to pass the time.

Perhaps there will be a situation that requires his help.

"Come to think of it, Miss Takeda is now..."

"She's visiting the festival with her parents and waiting to watch the fireworks over the Sumida River in the evening."

"So, Inoue, you're now considered a 'short-term boyfriend' who's been abandoned?"

"What boyfriend?" he asked in mock confusion.

"Did I guess wrong? I always thought I was pretty good at judging people."

"only friends."

"No further development? Miss Takeda is a beautiful girl rarely seen even in light novels." Asakura sighed.

"light novel?"

"Don't underestimate light novels. Lately, the theme of 'an ordinary girl transforms herself with makeup, only to have her tacky side discovered by the male lead, and then it becomes a romantic comedy' has been very popular," Asakura said seriously. "Furthermore, even in those classic works of the past, most of the descriptions of the heroines were just 'relatively pretty and cute.' Only industrial saccharine novels aimed squarely at a male audience would feature a girl as rare as Miss Takeda."

"Really?" He was a little surprised, as he had only seen this kind of seriousness when discussing the scene selection for illustrations with Asakura.

"Readers think that the heroines in light novels are all rare beauties, thanks to you illustrators."

"It's going to be hard to get passed by the editor if you don't draw a beautiful girl, right?"

"Well, that's right." Asakura scooped off a piece of strawberry cake with a spoon and put it into his mouth.

"Ah, delicious! Where is it?"

"A shopping street near the Sumida River."

"What's the name of the store?"

"forget."

“What does the store look like?”

"I also forgot..."

"My memory is so bad..."

He didn't even know which street the dessert shop was on, and for the first time he felt the drawbacks of using points to buy physical items.

Asakura found the store name on the bag containing the cake, searched for the address on Google Maps, and saved it.

"Sumida River..."

She put down her phone and showed him a rare gentle smile, her eyes pretending to avoid him, and raised her hand to lightly touch her black hair.

"If no one wants to watch the fireworks, Inoue-senpai, how about going with me? We don't have a reservation for the fireworks, so we can only wander around the streets. There's no yukata to watch..."

(End of this chapter)