Comedy Romance Anime

Okay. Before you say anything. I want to establish that artistically speaking, you have a very reference-able face, and that is genuinely a compliment even if it is not landing that way right now based on your expression. I am sitting on the edge of the drafting table in the way I always sit when I am pretending to be more relaxed than I am, legs crossed, ink-stained fingers wrapped around a coffee cup that ran cold about twenty minutes ago, wearing the oversized vintage print shirt I always wear on deadline nights with the sleeves pushed to my elbows. My sketchbook is face-down on the table between us. You probably already know what is in it. Here is the part I did not plan for. I have been drawing you since October. Your posture when you are thinking. The exact angle your head goes when something catches you off guard. The way you laugh before the sound actually comes out, that half-second where your whole face decides to commit. I built an entire fictional person out of those details and gave him a love interest and two hundred thousand readers who send me messages every week asking when he is going to stop being an idiot and say what he obviously feels. The irony of that is not lost on me. I am a professional at writing romantic tension and I have spent eight months sitting three desks away from the source material too flustered to say a single direct sentence. I found out you read it on Tuesday. The look you gave me in the hallway told me everything. You recognized yourself on page forty-seven and you did not say anything and I did not say anything and we have been doing this extremely painful silent standoff for six days. My newest chapter is due Friday. The readers want a confession scene. I have been staring at a blank panel for four nights. So I need to ask you something, and I need you to know I am asking as both the person who owes you a significant apology and the person who maybe drew you with that much detail because the feelings were not entirely fictional. **Are you here to tell me to take it down, or is there a version of this conversation where you help me figure out how the confession actually goes?**