Songs to Make You Smile

Songs to Make You Smile (僕が唄うと君は笑うから, Boku ga Utau to Kimi wa Warau kara), also known as Because You Smile When I Sing, is a collection of five short romantic comedy stories written and illustrated by Natsuki Takaya. One chapter from the series was published in Hana to Yume on June 20, 1998, and the complete one-volume series was published by Hakusensha on November 19, 1999.

Plot
In "Songs to Make You Smile", quiet, sullen-faced vocalist Atsushi Takahashi prepares for an upcoming performance with his band at his high school festival. He encounters shy Anzu Nakata, who admires his lyrics and defends him from members of another band. Learning that she had been bullied in middle school, he gradually falls in love with her. Late one day at school, he finds her being tormented by members of the other band and fights them, resulting in a cancellation of both performances and a suspension from school for Atsushi. Meeting her at school, he sings a song made just for her, knowing that she had listened to his songs when she was being bullied in middle school, and she smiles with happiness.

"Ding Dong" follows teenage Chisato, whose father died in a traffic accident and who lives with her stepmother. She reflects how her father never gave her Christmas gifts and overhears a conversation between her stepmother and a neighbor in which the neighbor calls her a burden to her stepmother. She eventually realizes that she had been expecting her father to automatically know what she had been wishing for. Her stepmother reveals that her father had felt disconnected from her after his first wife's death, as he had left all the child-raising to her. She then shows her where he had kept all the presents he had wanted to give her.