Love Sickness (BoyxBoy) Sekaiichi Hatsukoi Fanfiction

Chapter 1 "The beginning"

"I couldn't forget about you..."


Chapter 1


It was the middle of hell week.

And it was the week from hell. Truly. The tension and anxiety in the room was palpable, casting a black haze of gloom and doom in Marukawa's Emerald editorial department. Papers ranging from post-it notes to A3 paper, splashed with rejected ideas and drawings, covered every possible inch of leg room, with a smattering of boxes and stationary littering wherever the snowy gray mess didn't touch. There was barely any room to stretch one's legs, save for the 8 by 8 inch space allocated to each editor to write, read and work at.

The room was a mess. Well...messier than usual, and that was saying a lot considering it was the second to last day of said week from Hades.

It was flu season, and 2 authors had fallen sick. As much as Takano was shouting how mangakas should never fall sick, and even if they did, they should keep working anyway;

"I mean, if they're going to get sick, why can't they get sick after they've met their deadline, damn it!" ; the long and short of it was they would be violating several labour laws and possible the criminal code if the editors succumbed to Takano's suggestion of breaking and entering the unfortunate mangaka's houses and forcing them to meet the "bloody deadline!".

Ritsu winced slightly as another small mountain of paper dropped itself in front of him. Looking up, he saw Takano, his first crush, his first love, his first...that.., towering over him with a disapproving frown on his face.

'You know when they say love is blind? Yeah. Living example right here. Ugh, the mistakes of youth...'

"Onodera! You're still not done with the typesetting yet? What the hell have you been doing the past 2 hours?"

"I'm almost done." snapped Ritsu, sending a glare at his boss while gritting his teeth. Yeah, he was slow at typesetting. He just wasn't that experienced at it. He knew that! But he had been working for 26 hours straight, hadn't had a shower in two days and was running on nothing but coffee and energy drinks for the past 24 hours. He had a right to be snarky!

"Then hurry up! Once you're done, start looking through the stuff from Maki-sensei!"

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." mumbled Ritsu as he turned back to his work. Takano shot him one last glare before scowling. Turning round he spotted Kisa dozing with a marker pen in his hand, and started shouting for him to "wake the hell up and do some work!".

Ritsu tuned out Kisa's whinings and Takano's reprimands, trying to focus on the work in front of him. He could feel his hands tremble slightly as he held the X-acto knife, gingerly tracing the edges of the paper.

'Damn it, caffeine overdose.'

It didn't matter too much, he supposed. The tremblings were mild, and nothing he couldn't handle. Nothing he hadn't handled before.

He hurriedly continued with his work at a slightly higher pace than previously. The last thing he needed was Takano-san to be breathing down his neck for his "abominable#y slow pace".

Stifling a yawn, Ritsu placed the completed manga on his boss's desk, making sure that he'd see it, before glancing at the next pile of work.

At the sight of it, Ritsu couldn't suppress the small sigh that escaped him.

'Welcome to hell week alright.' he thought bitterly. Ritsu stretched slightly, his muscles stiff from holding them in one position for so long, before he sat down at his desk and started to shift through the never-ending pile of manga.