YNoMH? (BL)

Off Air 9

Off Air – Story 9

Story 9: Daydream Believer

Author's Note: Ushio settling his differences with his father with the help of his sweetheart like the main character in Oishinbo... would probably never happen! If they were to settle their differences, Papa would have to say as a condition, "Break up with that rude, black-bellied announcer!"

Translator Note: This story takes place after Early Summer Constellation.

It was soon after they had finished moving. They had settled into a somewhat decent routine at their new home when Ushio suddenly made an announcement. But it wasn't such a huge surprise that it threw a wrench into the gears of their newly established life.

"I'm thinking of making a short film."

"Aren't you always making something?"

"It's not for work. It's for myself," Ushio said. "I mentioned it before, right? That I wanted to make a continuation for the aliens from the opening for The News. I want to get started on it."

The matters with the move were pretty much settled, and Ushio had generally wrapped up the work that he needed to finish. Apparently, he had developed the storyboards for the continuation already, and he wanted to devote his time to working on the rest of it. Anyway, he could do whatever he liked, but...

"I don't get what you mean by it's not for work. Are you saying that you won't get paid for it anywhere?"

"Well, it's not like anyone's commissioning me for it."

"When you say it's for yourself, so you'll spend weeks on end fiddling with your sets, filming, editing, and then you'll watch it by yourself, tell yourself, 'Oh, that was great,' and call it done?"

Ushio was free to do that if that was what he wanted, but Kei couldn't help but make some envious and slightly disbelieving comments. Then Kei remembered that Ushio had flown over to the U.S. before to help a friend out with a personal project.

"No, I want to make it public. But I don't want to put it somewhere that pays for the number of views. Since the characters are already in use on TV, I'll need to discuss it with Shitara-san."

"Why are you going through so much hassle for this?"

Ushio was a professional who earned his living in this line of work, and just because he wanted to work on something that he had a personal attachment to, it didn't mean that he cut corners on his other work, but in Kei's opinion, the thought of not wanting to profit on the project was rude to those who commissioned him. Kei hated when people insisted on things in order to take a moral high ground.

"It doesn't matter who you're doing this for, but if you start giving away your work for free, you might not have a leg to stand on later."

"I'll make sure to draw a clear line," Ushio answered. "But for this, I want to do something different... I'm not disavowing the work where I have to count how much I make and how much I spend. I find it worthwhile to work on projects with other people's interests in mind. But first I want to do something without any of that. I want to make something that I enjoy, something I really want to see. And I want to do it without worrying about how it will be received or if it has the desired effect on people. I just want a blank slate for this."

Ushio was serious about it, and so Kei had nothing else to say. Just like how Ushio never interfered when Kei was serious about something.

"So how long is it gonna take?"