Chapter 181: The Male Members Can't Get a Word In
My True Form Is Cola: W-W-W-WAIT A MINUTE!! Why are there so many female leads?! And if the Admin is the main character with that many girls around him, doesn't that make this a… a harem adult manga?!
My True Form Is Cola: Also why am I in this?!
Street-Corner Illustrator: Because Umaru-chan is adorable! And you can shift between little-kid mode and normal mode at will — that's basically the perfect character setup, there's nothing more ideal than that!
Street-Corner Illustrator: And Yukari-senpai is the tsundere-plus-schemer type of female lead — looks like a girl but has the presence of a mature woman.
Street-Corner Illustrator: And Kaguya-senpai has that cold-and-haughty young lady thing going on. Put all of that together with the Admin and this is absolutely going to blow up. I can feel it — this new series is going to be huge.
Eternally Seventeen: You're not seriously planning to draw an adult harem manga, are you?
Eternally Seventeen: So in this manga, the Admin would be doing that to me? How could anyone put something like that on the page!
Street-Corner Illustrator: Eh… is that a problem?
Street-Corner Illustrator: The Admin already said yes though.
RawrSoFierce: …Is it too late to take that back.
"…"
Ryū had, in the moment, completely forgotten that Eriri was a street-corner illustrator.
A street-corner illustrator's manga was not going to be wholesome. It was going to be exactly the kind of content that required age verification — explicit, or at minimum teasingly suggestive, the sort of thing engineered to make readers' minds wander somewhere they probably shouldn't.
He suddenly had the extremely uncomfortable feeling of having become the protagonist of a certain category of publication.
Eriri wanted to draw a harem adult manga. Starring him.
That was… admittedly kind of stimulating—
Spit. Spit. Spit.
This kind of manga was absolutely corrupting to impressionable minds. Completely inappropriate for general audiences. At least, that was how Ryū saw it. The fact that it was apparently legal in Eriri's Japan was a separate matter.
So was it too late to back out? Would backing out now be weird?
Eternally Seventeen: Actually, now that I think about it — if the Admin is the main character and the rest of us are the female leads, Little Eriri, I just had a bold idea. Want to hear it?
Eternally Seventeen: Adult harem content is passé. What's popular right now is dominant female leads and a soft, yielding male lead.
Eternally Seventeen: If you draw a chapter where the female lead whips the male lead, I might be willing to grace your manga with my presence as the heroine~
RawrSoFierce: …Hey. I can hear all of this, you know.
RawrSoFierce: How does a gap youkai's brain produce nothing but this. There's also Sakura in this group, who is a small child. I'm starting to think Sakura shouldn't be left in your care — you'll corrupt her eventually.
RawrSoFierce: On that note, Eriri, don't worry about it. I've got you. Draw whatever you want — adult content is fine — and the female lead is obviously this gap youkai right here. When you're done, send her the first copy.
Eternally Seventeen: I — the Admin has feelings for me?!
RawrSoFierce: No. I just want to see what expression you make when you read a manga starring yourself.
Eternally Seventeen: …Are you a demon?
RawrSoFierce: Yes. Correct.
Eternally Seventeen: …Curse it all, he turned it around on me again!
"…"
In Gensokyo, a soft rip sound broke the quiet. The large decorative pillow Yukari had been clutching somehow developed a tear, and its white stuffing erupted across the room in a quiet explosion of feathers.
She didn't acknowledge the feathers drifting around her. Her expression was one of pure indignation.
She could not believe she'd been outmanoeuvred again. He'd found the gap, exploited it cleanly, and she'd walked right into it.
Unforgivable.
How dare he.
Having Eriri draw an 18+ manga starring the Sage of Gensokyo, Yakumo Yukari herself — and then sending her the finished product to read — was that something a person could ask for?
Yukari ran the mental image. Once.
She felt immediately unwell.
That wasn't just embarrassing. It was catastrophic.
Even by her own famously non-existent standards, this was currently unacceptable.
And if the Admin had any interest in stirring trouble, he might just distribute it to Gensokyo at large.
The image was too horrible to contemplate.
Eternally Seventeen: I was wrong, Admin! I won't do it again, please… From now on, if anyone dares tease the Admin, they answer to me, Yakumo Yukari. That's right. Absolutely.
Kaguya-sama: …You're literally the only one who's ever done that.
Eternally Seventeen: Hm? Ahaha, I'm sure that's a misunderstanding.
Terrible Tornado: Did I miss something significant? Reading back through this chat history gives me the exact feeling of one of those dramatic prime-time romance melodramas. The legendary catastrophic love polygon variety.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Oh — Tatsumaki-senpai knows what a love polygon is?
Terrible Tornado: …I've watched a few anime. That's all.
Terrible Tornado: The Admin lent me some and I got a little curious. It's a fine way to pass the time.
My True Form Is Cola: Eriri-chan is terrifying. She just casually proposed drawing adult manga about the Admin and all of us.
My True Form Is Cola: So this is what a truly veteran otaku looks like. I concede defeat.
Kaguya-sama: New members these days are genuinely frightening.
Kaguya-sama: Also, Eriri — do you have feelings for the Admin? Why else would you think of making him the main character?
Street-Corner Illustrator: Because the Admin is the most handsome person in the group!
Eriri answered with complete honesty. Also with complete tactlessness.
The female members didn't see the problem. Eriri was making a fair point, as far as they were concerned.
The male members were left staring at their screens.
They'd barely managed to get a word in the entire conversation — no opportunity had presented itself. Three women in a room made a scene; whatever number this was made an entire production.
And in the rare moments they could have chimed in, they'd somehow still ended up catching a stray comment that lodged in the chest like a small blade. Did she have to be quite so accurate about it? The observation might be factually correct, but there was such a thing as keeping certain truths between friends.
Saying it openly in the group chat, to everyone's face — that stung.
Crazy Diamond: …I have a whole pile of grievances and no idea where to start.
Ying Zheng The Sovereign: We may not rival the Admin in appearance, but surely We place second?
Edward Newgate: Gurararara — the Admin does have exactly the kind of face that tends to appeal to women. And unlike certain types, there's nothing soft about him. That combination of looks and presence is genuinely very attractive to the opposite sex!
Admiral Kizaru: Whitebeard, why do you sound so knowledgeable about this~?
Edward Newgate: This old man had his share of adventures in his youth, I'll have you know!
Edward Newgate: Did you think I was some kind of hermit?!
RawrSoFierce: …Why has the conversation drifted in this direction.
Little Sakura of the Tohsaka: Adults are so complicated…
RawrSoFierce: Street-Corner Illustrator — using my image as the main character is fine, but keep the content tasteful. No exposed anything. Young lady, you need to cultivate some wholesomeness, or a certain someone is going to take a very unhealthy interest in you.
Eternally Seventeen: I feel like the Admin is insinuating something.
Kaguya-sama: Yukari-nee, you just inserted yourself into that.
Eternally Seventeen: Did I? Really?
My True Form Is Cola: …
Street-Corner Illustrator: Got it, Admin! Understood!
"…"
In the Saekano world, Eriri's face held a trace of disappointment — but new energy was already kindling behind her eyes.
The Admin had agreed. She could use his image as the main character.
He'd specified in advance: no weird content.
Eriri found she didn't particularly mind.
She wasn't required to draw that kind of thing.
She could try her hand at a wholesome romance series instead. And if it happened to take off, she could always branch out from there.
Nobody wanted to carry the title of "street-corner illustrator" forever. Eriri had been thinking about pivoting for a while. She'd just never had the right opportunity.
The Admin said yes, but Yukari-senpai and the others didn't agree to be female leads. So I'll have to design original characters instead — maybe pull some features from cute girls at school and combine them into something new.
Now, what to call it… How about "The Making of a Nobody Male Lead"? No, that's too close to the title of my own world's series, and the Admin is definitely not a nobody. "The Making of a Romance-Indifferent Male Lead"? "The Making of a [Redacted]-Indifferent Male Lead"? "The Making of a Dried-Fish Male Lead"? Aaaa, naming things is so hard. Fine — "The Making of a Nobody Male Lead" it is. That fits the vibe I'm going for best.
Eriri quietly awarded herself a point for that decision. The reason she even knew her world was called Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend was because the Admin had mentioned it in the group chat.
The title might be a bit too similar, but who besides her would ever know? Nobody outside the Dimensional Chat Group had any way of finding out.
Speaking of which — what's the Admin's actual name?
Eriri found herself back in a familiar knowledge gap.
Would it be annoying to ask him again right now?
Maybe she'd just make something up.
Aaaa — naming things was exhausting.
Using the Dimensional Chat Group's Admin — "RawrSoFierce" — as the visual inspiration for her manga's male lead.
Only a certain blonde twin-tails could pull off a move that chaotic.
☆☆☆
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