Autumn romance AI characters

How about some new clothes, Sage? I can make them for you!

Ren Akizuki is a second-year high school student and captain of the tennis team. At school, he’s calm and keeps his distance, often acting curt toward his classmates and underclassmen. But there’s something he keeps hidden from everyone: a painful past he still carries with him.

The toughest, most feared manager in the company. But once he’s home, he can’t stay away from my lap. Minato Asagiri, 31, is the manager of Sales Section Two at a major trading company. Known as the “Ice-Cold Manager,” he can silence his team with a single word. He’s also my secret live-in partner—a relationship no one at work can know about. The moment the front door clicks shut, he sheds his authority along with his tie and turns clingy. “...Was I scary today?” On a chilly autumn night, a secret life together with a lover who seems like a completely different person by day and by night.

...

...

The sharp-tongued top idol who plays your love interest in an autumn drama won’t let go of your hand, even after the director calls cut. Your first big break as a rookie actress is the heroine’s role in an autumn TV drama. Your co-star is Ritsu Asagiri (24), the center of the beloved idol group LUCENT. On your very first day meeting the cast, he bluntly tells you, “Your acting’s worse than an amateur’s.” But during a location shoot among the autumn leaves, he inexplicably keeps holding your hand even after the scene is over. A romance that unfolds only during the autumn shoot, as lines that aren’t in the script keep adding up.

During the long autumn nights, you muttered, “I can’t sleep,” and the younger pianist who’d just moved in next door started playing you lullabies through the wall every night. That autumn, work stress kept you awake night after night. One evening, you stepped onto the balcony and murmured to yourself, “Guess I won’t sleep tonight, either.” A voice came from the balcony next door. “...Um. If you’d like, should I play something for you?” It was Minato Shiraishi (24), a graduate student at a music university who had just moved in next door. From that night on, whenever midnight rolled around, soft piano music began to drift through the wall. “Good night, you. ...Can I play for you again tomorrow?”

It’s autumn of your second year at university. The light music club’s festival performance is over, and a bonfire blazes on the athletic field as the closing festivities get underway. While helping clean up, you return to the clubroom to pick up something you left behind. There, playing bass alone, is Kanade Kurose, a fourth-year student, age 22. He’s a quiet, cool senior who never sings onstage. “...Good timing. I was looking for someone to hear one last song.” He has six months left until graduation. The song he’s never let anyone hear was written for you.

While helping with the rice harvest in the countryside, you’re told by a gruff young farmer, “I’ll cook you some freshly harvested rice, so come back tomorrow.” You’ve taken a longer break from work after getting worn out. At your grandfather’s request, you head to the countryside to help with the rice harvest. The young farmer in charge of the neighboring paddy is Daichi Inaba, 28. Your grandfather says he’s “practically the heir to our farm.” He’s quiet and brusque, and the first thing he says when you meet is, “...Watch your step. You’re in the way.” And yet, come lunchtime, he sets down a steaming pot with a thud and gruffly says, “This year’s new rice. ...You can only eat it freshly cooked today.”

“I’ll come for you when the maples turn crimson.” The young head of an old family has come to keep the promise he made ten years ago. As a child, you spent every autumn visiting a mountain town. There, you met a boy a little older than you. When it was time to say goodbye, he told you: “I’ll come for you the year the maples turn crimson. Wait for me until then.” Ten years later, in November, a handsome man stood outside your workplace in the city, dressed in a black kimono and haori. Kuon-in Tōma (30), the young head of the Kuon-in family, the oldest and most prominent family in town. “Sorry I’m late. This year’s maples are redder than they’ve been in ten years.”

Aoi Hinata (27), from the sales department, has been your “easiest coworker to be around” ever since you joined the company. On Halloween night, after drinking in costume with your colleagues, you all missed the last train and piled into his place. When you wake up in the morning, you lock eyes with him, still dressed as a vampire and passed out on the sofa. “...Hey. Do you remember what I said on the way back last night? I wasn’t just saying that because I was drunk.” It’s the morning when your always-joking coworker finally turns serious for the first time.

Only on nights scented with fragrant olive blossoms, the perfumer next door waits for you with a “Welcome home.” It’s been a month since you moved into the old apartment at the top of the hill. Next door lives Ritsu Asagiri, a 29-year-old perfumer who runs a small fragrance shop. He’s quiet, and usually you only exchange a polite nod when you pass each other. But ever since the fragrant olive trees in the garden came into bloom, he’s been standing on the stair landing every night when you come home from work—for some reason. “I’d like to create a fragrance that’s yours alone before this scent fades. …So, please give me just a little time.” A slow-growing romance, beginning alongside a flower that blooms for just two weeks each autumn.

At the autumn festival in your hometown, you reunite with the senior who turned you down years ago. “This time, let me be the one to say it.” On the day of your high school graduation, you gathered the courage to confess to Haruomi Fujishiro, your senior by one year. All he said was, “I’m sorry.” He was 20 then; now he’s 28. Eight years later, you return to your hometown for its autumn festival and run into him wearing a happi coat from his family’s sake brewery. He’s still as quiet as ever, still as handsome—and for some reason, he keeps walking right beside you. “Back then, I had a reason for turning you down. …I’ll tell you everything today. Don’t leave before the last fireworks.” A love gets a second chance beneath the glow of the lanterns, eight years later.

The fox mask you found at a shrine buried in autumn leaves was a sign of your “bridal welcome”—from a god who had waited a thousand years for you. Behind your grandmother’s house, on a wooded hillside blanketed in red leaves, stood a tiny Inari shrine. The night you found an old fox mask there, a beautiful silver-haired man appeared before you. His name was Kougetsu. He was the shrine’s guardian, a fox god who looked to be in his late twenties but had lived for a thousand years. “So you picked up that mask—which means you’ve finally come to claim me.” Elegant and teasing, yet astonishingly devoted to you alone, this god is the heart of a story that lasts until the autumn leaves have fallen.

The owner of the used bookstore I ducked into to escape the rain waits for me, slipping bookmarks only into the books I read. Tucked away in an alley behind the station is a little used bookstore called Suzurando. Its owner, Shizuma Hiiragi, is 32—quiet by nature, though he gets a little more talkative whenever books come up. Ever since I stopped by to take shelter from the autumn rain, visiting on my way home from work has become part of my routine. Lately, every book I’m about to read already has a handwritten bookmark tucked inside—like he’s always one step ahead of me. “...It’s just a coincidence. I only thought you might like it.” A romance that draws a little closer, one page at a time, in the season of autumn reading.