The Elf Who Dreams of Sex with Orcs Is Frustrated Tomorrow Too (4)
"There you go again."
"Ah, Nia, you go to sleep first. When I get the urge to work on something, I just can't help myself."
"You need to take care of your health. I used to do the same thing, and it only made me less productive."
Was that so?
Still, these days Orca and Rosaria had found out about me, so when Yuria wasn't around I could work in the club room, which made things a little better.
I could try it this way for now, and if it got too hard later, I could make a decision then, right?
If it really gets tough, I can always come clean to Yuria too.
There wasn't really a reason to reveal it yet, and I wanted to keep it from spreading as much as possible, so I was keeping quiet. But if even Yuria knew that I was Siu, I could at least work comfortably in the club room. Then I could cut down on these late-night work sessions.
Haa. Nia's asleep now, so I should start thinking more carefully about the new work's setting.
I'd been considering works across various genres. What I wanted to do right now was a sequel to The Elf Who Dreams of Sex with Orcs Is Frustrated Today Too. Changing the title slightly worked well enough, so I'd settled on calling the new work The Elf Who Dreams of Sex with Orcs Is Frustrated Tomorrow Too.
The previous work ended with Half being born, right?
A slice-of-life comedy set in the household of Half, the daughter born between an elf and an orc. That was the essence of the work I was planning this time.
Even though the previous work had plenty of erotic scenes, at its core it was closer to a pure-love romantic comedy. This time I wanted to focus more on a playful, warm atmosphere rather than the smut. And if possible, weaving in a slightly more serious story could be interesting. Doing nothing but erotic stories all the time wasn't necessarily a good thing.
...I might get accused of plagiarizing reality.
But the setting was so similar to Orca's family that I couldn't help being influenced by the stories I'd heard. Her parents claimed they'd held back until Orca became an adult, but even before that they'd been groping each other through their clothes and deep-kissing and doing everything short of the real thing. When I first heard about it, I wondered what exactly they'd been restraining themselves from.
...And when I asked about what happened after she came of age, I nearly lost my mind.
The story about how their daughter walked into the room while they were still going at it, and she had a conversation with her parents mid-sex — that had to be the most absurd thing I'd ever heard in my life. Honestly, the fact that they'd gone that far the moment the reins came off was just too much.
I'll structure the episodes roughly around Half growing up, so her coming of age will fall somewhere in the middle or later half of the story.
If I wrote an episode with that kind of feel around then, I could make it pretty funny. Of course I wouldn't use it as-is — I'd only borrow the idea of them cutting loose once the restraints were off.
The atmosphere and content would inevitably feel similar, but that continuity had been there since the previous work, so I couldn't change it. If I twisted things too much just to avoid reality, the characters' personalities from the previous work would fall apart.
"Haa..."
"Cali, hi!"
"Oh, hey, Orca."
Yesterday I'd only sketched out some rough ideas before going to bed. Thinking about it, today was a day when my time in the club room overlapped with Orca's for a long stretch. Maybe because I'd mentioned last time that the new work would probably be a sequel to The Elf Who Dreams of Sex with Orcs Is Frustrated Today Too, the way she asked me about it the moment she arrived was adorable.
"It's still just in the planning stages, you know. It's not like the story is pouring out of me or anything."
"Aww..."
"Ah, but I do have a rough idea for some episodes."
Episodes about a rookie elf mom who was always a powerhouse when it came to sex but hopelessly clumsy at raising and handling a baby, paired with a rookie orc dad who'd always been the flustered, fumbling type — a chaotic parenting diary. This was a period Orca herself had no memory of, and she hadn't told me any similar stories, so I was confident this part wouldn't get me accused of plagiarism.
"And Half is going to be a bit of a handful. When she's little, Mom and Dad will be the ones causing chaos, but once she gets a little older and they think they've got the hang of things, Half will start causing incidents and her parents will have to scramble to clean up the mess."
"Oh... yeah, Mom and Dad always said I was a total troublemaker when I was little."
You're not a former troublemaker — you're a current, ongoing one.
Anyway, I figured if I wrote stories that various families could relate to, a lot of people would enjoy reading them. Of course, most noble households used servants to raise their children, but that didn't mean they were completely detached from their babies — they just offloaded the hard parts, so the memories themselves often remained.
"Well, basically I want to depict how things change as time passes. I won't focus too hard on the individual incidents themselves."
The kind of story where you'd be chuckling along, and before you knew it Half would have grown up into an adult. My goal was to unfold the story of a family raising Half as naturally and gently as possible.
And the reason I'd wanted to draw this kind of work this time had a lot to do with Orca. She was such an unusual girl that I naturally found myself wondering how someone like her had come to be. And that meant elf-and-orc related material kept coming to mind lately. Of course, always with a tomboy daughter like Orca — Half — mixed in.
"So will there be parts where Half finds love and has sex with the person she loves?"
"No, I don't think so. The family story is the main focus."
Of course, Half falling in love and her orc dad suffering over it would be funny too. But I didn't want to hand Half off to someone by introducing a whole new character just for that. Hmm, since I didn't like that idea, maybe I should handle any conflict through dreams or something like that.
Trying to suddenly insert a serious story and I'm hitting a wall. I have no material for it.
If it really didn't work out, I could just go pure healing comedy without any of that, so it was fine either way. But just like how the previous book had ended warmly with Half's birth, I wanted to leave some kind of lingering impression this time too.
"Ah, and one more thing. I'm not sure if it's okay to use you as a reference, but I think I'll include a story about the elf and orc going wild with sexy stuff after Half becomes an adult."
"Is our family's story really going in?"
"Would that even be something to be happy about...? I'm not using it as-is. Just borrowing the idea."
"You can't use it as-is?"
"My conscience won't allow it."
Orca had gone beyond saying it was fine — she'd actually said she'd like me to use it. But still, writing a story about my lover's parents going at it, straight from the source, felt a bit much. This wasn't even about plagiarizing reality — it was specifically about her parents... I couldn't help being careful.
"Ah, right. Talking about that reminded me. You showed me that painting Professor Londo did last time. I don't remember the name, but it was the one where the orc is shoving his dick into the elf."
I really had to hand it to her for remembering a masterpiece like White Radiance that way. And the fact that she wasn't even wrong about it was incredibly frustrating. It was a painting of an orc pressing his massive cock into an elf's belly during wartime to violate her, so her description was technically accurate.
"Mom was so moved when she saw it that she bought it right away and hung it in a frame. But Dad hated it, so it got stuck in storage. He got all embarrassed and said, 'Don't look at that — look only at me,' and I was so shocked."
"He had that side to him?"
"Yeah. After that they went into their room together and had sex all day, and Dad came out looking half-dead."
Why did every story about that family always end with sex?
Granted, if the woman you loved was moaning over a painting of some fictional orc's massive cock, you might get jealous. And yet Orca, who'd grown up under a father like that, had responded with "even better" when she found out I was dating multiple women — because those women were friends with her... Meanwhile, the punchline of that story was that the ending involved him getting milked dry. That was the comedy of it, I figured.
Orca's mother had probably been happy enough that day to wipe that fictional orc clean from her memory. Conversely, Orca's father had probably suffered quite a bit from having his energy thoroughly drained.
"Listening to stories about your family always leaves me in awe."
"Really? I think we're pretty normal."
You think it's normal because you grew up seeing it every day. From where I stood, a family that unusual would be hard to find even if you went looking for one.
"Don't you miss your parents? I mean, it hasn't been that long, but you lived with them every day and then suddenly got separated."
"A little? But when I miss Mom and Dad, looking at this makes me feel better."
Don't use my manga like a family photo album... I wanted to call her out on that, but she looked genuinely a little down from my question just now, so I held back.
Granted, listening to stories about Orca's household, there were episodes that made you wonder what they were showing a kid — but there were also plenty of heartwarming ones where their love for Orca came through thick and clear. Having received that love so directly, of course Orca would miss home. Honestly, if you set aside the fact that a perverted atmosphere was weirdly baked into the family, it was basically the picture of an ideal household.
"Hm?"
Just then, instead of the usual door-bursting-open, I heard a careful knock. None of our club members would ever do something that polite, so I figured it was a visitor — and the moment I thought that, a calm voice came through, and I knew who it was.
"Is anyone there?"
"Nia?"
I had no idea what business had brought Nia all the way to the manga club room. I went out thinking she might be looking for me, only to be thrown off when she asked if Orca was there. Was this student council business?
"...Me?"
"Orca, stay calm and listen."
"......?"
"Your father has collapsed. He's recuperating right now, and I thought you should go visit him, so I came to deliver the news."
And the news Nia had brought was far heavier than anything I'd started to anticipate.