“Besides desserts and coffee, our shop also accepts all kinds of consultations from customers. Work, romance, worries about life… We also provide delivery service… yo?”
Standing in front of the café, Hayashi Makoto read the words on the signboard once.
Then he commented, “The handwriting is pretty cute. This must have been written by a super beautiful girl, right? Am I right?”
“You’re so right! So right, onii-san!”
Nishikigi Chisato, the former top Lycoris and current café worker, was praised into a bright smile by just one sentence from Makoto.
Her heart seemed to bloom with joy, and stars practically sparkled in her eyes.
Chisato sized up the new customer.
Makoto was also sizing her up.
A beautiful girl with short blond hair.
Her features were undeniably cute, and her whole body radiated sunny extrovert energy.
“Nice to meet you! I’m the poster girl of this café. You can call me Chisato-chan. If you need anything, just tell me!”
Chisato’s smile was dazzling and full of youthful energy.
“Oh, right, right! Today’s matcha parfait is half off~ Want one?”
No matter who looked at her smile, their mood would probably improve.
“Chisato-san is very cute.”
“Hehe, thank you for the compliment!”
Makoto found a seat in the corner and casually ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of cake.
After noticing that Inoue Takina was not in the shop, he guessed that the plot of Lycoris Recoil had probably not started yet.
He took out a book he had just bought from a bookstore, drank a sip of coffee, and began flipping through it casually.
Fortunately, there happened to be a bookstore nearby.
Even more fortunately, that store happened to have this light novel with terrible sales.
That was right.
It was Kasumigaoka Utaha’s Love Metronome.
He glanced at Kasumigaoka Utaha, who was sitting not far away with a gloomy expression.
Then he withdrew his gaze without leaving a trace and continued lowering his head to read.
After reading for only a short while, he revealed an impatient expression that said, “This is so boring. When is the protagonist finally going to have sex?”
Although in his previous life, when he watched the anime, he knew that Love Metronome’s main features were “delicate prose” and “school romance,” he had still held on to a bit of hope.
After all, this was a light novel.
In Makoto’s impression, Japanese light novels were basically the equivalent of webnovels.
Big ideas, fast pacing, wild fantasies, and full of chuunibyou.
Even if the writing was delicate, it should still have been the type of school romance filled with erotic scenes, right?
But there was none!
Not a single bit of racy fanservice!
This Love Metronome was not light novel-like at all!
“Sigh.”
After forcing himself to read a bit longer, Makoto finally sighed and put the book down.
His strategy had been very simple and crude.
He wanted to pretend to be a casual book fan who happened to meet her by chance, then use that to approach Kasumigaoka Utaha and find a way to pursue her.
Unfortunately, he could not get into her masterpiece at all.
If he could not read it, there was no need to pretend to be a fan.
At his age, Makoto had long passed the stage of believing in love.
It was also impossible for him to force himself into becoming the kind of person a woman liked just to pursue her.
That was impossible.
This was also the reason why, even though he knew Yukinoshita Yukino was at Sobu High and Togawa Sakiko was slaving away at a customer-service company, he had not taken any action.
Makoto was neither gentle nor devoted.
He had no interest in walking into the depths of a girl’s heart, but was full of interest in entering her body.
He would not treat romance as the main theme of his life either.
He was simply not the type that Yukinoshita or Sakiko liked.
In fact, he was not the type most anime heroines liked.
Makoto was very self-aware about this.
Compared to using the high-difficulty weapon known as “love” to conquer someone, he preferred using “money” and “power.”
Especially the latter.
He liked seeing them, under the coercion of power, reluctantly climb onto his bed!
He was waiting for the day he became emperor.
“In the end, my strength still isn’t great enough. I can’t make this world operate according to my will yet.”
He could not openly build a huge harem.
He could not make women actively or passively throw themselves at him.
All of it came down to not having enough authority.
Or rather, all of it came down to not having enough strength!
“Is this book good?”
Just as he was thinking, a cute little head leaned in beside him.
It was the overly familiar Nishikigi Chisato.
“This book…”
“Let me see. The title is Love Metronome? Whoa, whoa. Just from the title, it sounds like a sweet school romance novel. Nice~ Customer-san, do you like this type?”
Noticing that Kasumigaoka had already looked over from the other side, Makoto suddenly gave a disdainful smile.
“It’s not good. Waste of money.”
…
Kasumigaoka Utaha stared at her laptop screen with a very ugly expression.
It was not that she was stuck.
Rather, she had just received a message from her editor, Machida Sonoko.
The first volume of Love Metronome had poor sales and was about to be axed by the publishing label.
The girl could not help laughing at herself.
So this was society outside of school.
So this was the world of adults.
People would not care how good the story you wrote was, or how beautiful your prose was.
People only recognized sales.
If there were no sales, you were just a stray dog on the roadside to be kicked aside.
The winner became king.
The loser was a bandit.
It had been like this since ancient times.
Just as she was feeling depressed, she suddenly heard a young man not far away reading her book.
Before she could feel happy about coincidentally meeting a fan, one sentence from him poured cold water over her.
“It’s not good. Waste of money.”
“Is the story bad?”
“It’s just a story about high school students falling in love. Extremely ordinary.”
Makoto’s tone was indifferent.
“If it were an anime, I might give it another glance to see whether the female characters were cute. But as words on a page? I can’t get into it at all.”
“Ehh—”
Nishikigi Chisato dragged out her voice.
“You don’t like stories about high school students falling in love? Chisato thinks school romance is wonderful, though. Pure, sweet, and cute, right?”
“What good ending can romance without any financial foundation have?”
Under Chisato’s subtle expression, the transmigrator sneered.
“Love needs money as its foundation. Understand? No matter how sweet a romance without material support is, it’s still a castle in the air.”
“Ah, your view of love is way too realistic.”
“Then, poster girl, what kind of boys do girls your age usually like?”
“Hm…”
Chisato thought for a moment, then said, “Probably someone good-looking, gentle, and pure.”
“Not someone rich?”
“Of course we wouldn’t think in that direction!”
“My evaluation is that you’ve never been hungry.”
Makoto changed the subject.
“Putting that aside, let’s talk about this book alone. Its selling point is delicate writing, but light novels don’t need that kind of prose in the first place. How many otaku actually care about prose?”
“This author called Kasumi Utako should have submitted to traditional literature instead of a light novel label.”
That was true.
The original Saekano light novel was almost entirely dialogue from beginning to end, as if a group of people were performing rapid-fire comedy together.
What need was there for literary prose?
“And I’m guessing this author, Kasumi Utako, is probably a pretentious woman with a difficult personality.”
Makoto smiled.
“She most likely has never been in love either.”
“How can you tell she’s never been in love?”
He smiled politely.
“Only someone who has never dated before could write something this cringy sweet.”
…
…
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