Chapter 3: Nobita's Real Rocket

One week left. Nobita sat at his desk staring at the space where his second rocket had been before it fused into a crooked mess and had to be thrown away. Doraemon sat on the windowsill reading a comic, close enough to help, but his pocket stayed closed.

Nobita looked at the materials spread across his desk. Cardboard. Scissors. Glue. Paint. The same things as before, but now they were just things.

He picked up the scissors and cut a fin. It came out crooked. He threw it in the trash and cut another one. Better.

By bedtime he had four fins that were mostly the same size.

The next day after school, he tried to make the body tube. The cardboard wouldn't hold its shape. It kept unrolling. He taped it, but the tape wrinkled the paper. He held it for five minutes until his hands cramped, but when he let go it sprang open again.

He wanted to quit. He stared at the cardboard tube lying flat on his desk like something dead.

"You can stop if you want," Doraemon said from the windowsill, not looking up from his comic. "Nobody's making you."

Nobita looked at the half-made rocket. He thought about Shizuka, who had been working on her music box every day, patiently filing the rough edges smooth. He picked up the tube again.

On the third day, Shizuka came to his house after school.

"I heard you're building a new rocket," she said.

"It's not going well," Nobita said.

She sat down at his desk. She didn't offer to build it for him. She just held the body tube steady while he glued the seam, her fingers pressing exactly where his fingers couldn't reach.

"There," she said when the glue dried. The tube held its shape.

On the fourth day, Giant showed up at the door. Nobita's mother let him in. He stood in the doorway of Nobita's room looking uncomfortable.

"I'm not helping you," Giant said.

"Okay," Nobita said.

Giant sat down anyway. He picked up the nose cone—a cardboard circle Nobita had been trying to fold into a cone for twenty minutes. Giant held it in place without moving while Nobita taped the edges. He held it for twenty minutes. His arm didn't shake once.

When the cone held its shape, Giant stood up and left without saying anything.

On the fifth day, Suneo arrived carrying a small paper bag.

"I had extra paint," he said. "You can use it if you want."

It was obviously a lie. The paint was brand new, still in the package, the kind his father ordered from the art supply store in the next town. Nobita took it.

"Thanks," he said.

Suneo shrugged and left quickly, as if staying would require him to admit something.

On the sixth day, Nobita painted the rocket. His hand shook and the paint went on uneven in one spot. One fin was slightly tilted—he'd glued it crooked and couldn't fix it without breaking the whole thing. But every piece had been cut by his own hands. Every edge he had sanded himself. Every seam he had held until the glue dried.

On launch day, everyone gathered on the school field. Giant's catapult fired a ball of paper fifteen meters. Suneo's remote-controlled car spun in perfect circles. Shizuka's music box played a gentle melody that made Sensei smile.

Nobita's rocket stood on the launch pad he'd made from a wooden block. It was smaller than the others. The paint was uneven. One fin tilted at a funny angle.

He lit the fuse he'd attached to a firecracker inside the base.

The rocket flew. Not the highest. Not the straightest. It wobbled in the air and landed in the grass after five seconds.

But it flew.

Nobita stood watching it with glue still on his fingers. His hands smelled like paint. His back hurt from hunching over his desk for six days.

Doraemon smiled from the edge of the crowd.

That evening, Nobita placed the rocket on his shelf next to the perfect one from the Instant Assembly Beam. The new rocket was smaller. Crooked. One fin stuck out at the wrong angle and the paint job had a visible drip on one side.

It looked better.

Doraemon climbed up onto the desk. He pulled something from his pocket—not a gadget this time, just a small white sticker the size of a postage stamp.

"Built by Nobita Nobi," the sticker read, in tiny printed letters. "With his own two hands."

Nobita peeled off the backing and stuck it carefully on the side of the crooked rocket.

He looked at both rockets for a long moment. Then he went downstairs for dinner, because even building things makes you hungry, and both rockets stayed on the shelf, one perfect and one real, and he knew which one mattered.