The air conditioner in Satoshi Morita's studio wheezed like an asthmatic old man, its rattling hum barely cutting through the oppressive Tokyo summer heat. Eraser dust floated lazily through shafts of afternoon sunlight that sliced between half-drawn blinds, each particle a tiny transient star in the dim glow of the drafting table lamps. The studio smelt of stale coffee and the faint metallic tang of ink - the familiar musk of creative desperation.
Satoshi's workspace was a study in organized chaos. Pages of Blade Ceremony drafts papered every available wall space, some marked with furious red annotations from his editor, others littered with sticky notes bearing Kosuke Okada's impatient scrawl. Empty energy drink cans formed a small aluminum fortress around his Wacom tablet, while a half-eaten konbini sandwich sat forgotten at the edge of his desk, its plastic wrap collecting condensation.
His three assistants moved through their tasks with the quiet efficiency of a well-oiled machine. Jin Yumoto, his longest-serving right hand, applied screentones with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, his steady hands belying the dark circles under his eyes. Mei Sato, the newest hire barely six months out of art school, handled clean-up lines with nervous intensity, her eraser brush worn down to a frayed nub from constant use. The third, a freelance background artist whose name Satoshi kept forgetting, dabbed white-out along panel borders with quick, flicking motions - each stroke like suturing a wound shut.
At the center of this controlled storm sat Satoshi himself, hunched over his latest BladeCeremony page like a priest over sacred texts. His G-pen hovered above the climax - a duel between his protagonist and fallen mentor rendered in jagged, kinetic strokes that seemed to vibrate with barely-contained energy. His round glasses reflected the stark blacks of fresh ink, hiding the exhaustion in his bloodshot eyes. He hadn't slept properly in days. Not since Blade Ceremony slipped to #7 in Shōnen Black's weekly rankings.
One spot. The previous week, he was just one goddamn spot away from the safety of the Top 5. But, now he needed to buckle down even more.
The numbers haunted him. Top 5 meant color pages. It meant editor meetings that didn't begin with "Maybe we should pivot the tone—" It meant surviving another month in a magazine where half the series bled out before their first tankōbon volume. He could still remember his debut not up to a year ago - the heady rush of seeing his first chapter in print, the naive certainty that he'd made it. Now he knew better. In the world of weekly serialization, you were only as good as your last chapter.
The door clicked open with the sound of a hammer cocking.
"Yo."
Kosuke Okada stood in the doorway like a storm cloud made flesh, his tie loosened and sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms covered in faded manga tattoos. In one hand he clutched a rolled-up copy of NEXT STAR Weekly like a baton, its spine creased from being gripped too tightly. He didn't unroll it.
Satoshi didn't look up. "If it's about the deadline, I'm on schedule. Three more pages."
Kosuke stepped inside, his gaze sweeping over the assistants like a prison warden making rounds. Jin and Mei stiffened under his scrutiny, their pens freezing mid-stroke. Kai didn't even look up - he'd been in the industry long enough to know when to keep his head down.
"Not about you this time," Kosuke said after a beat that stretched just a second too long. He exhaled through his nose, the sound like steam escaping a pressure cooker. "It's about Aoki."
Satoshi's pen stopped dead on the page.
A drop of ink pooled at the nib, bleeding into the paper like a tiny black sun. Mei flinched as if the sound of the droplet hitting the page had been a gunshot in the silent studio.
Slowly, with the deliberate motion of a man trying very hard not to show he cared, Satoshi lifted his head. "...What?"
Kosuke moved closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial growl. "She's getting serialized again.You know The Flower of Margaria topped NEXT STAR's reader polls last week. So, the board greenlit it this morning."
The silence that followed was so complete Satoshi could hear the AC's struggling whine, the scratch of Mei's eraser, the distant wail of a siren seven floors below. Then, with a suddenness that made his assistants jump, Satoshi leaned back in his chair and laughed - a single, sharp syllable that held no humor whatsoever.
"She actually pulled it off, huh?"
Kosuke raised an eyebrow, the one with the scar running through it from some long-ago editorial department drinking game. "You sound surprised."
"I'm not." Satoshi dragged a hand through his perpetually messy bangs, smudging ink across his forehead in the process. He'd been doing that since art school - a nervous tatter that left him looking perpetually grubby. "Told you she wasn't finished after Saint ♰ Rewind got axed.
Kosuke nodded, his expression unreadable. "But it's still a tightrope walk. If she doesn't hit top five by Chapter 3, Chief's pulling the plug permanently."
Satoshi clicked his tongue against his teeth, the sound like a metronome keeping time with his racing thoughts. "Generous of them. That's more runway than she gave herself with Saint ♰ Rewind."
Kosuke finally unrolled the magazine with a snap of his wrists, flipping immediately to the back where the rankings were printed in tiny, brutal numbers. "Look. One of my new guys, that kid I told you submitted a killer one-shot last month. Didn't get picked. If he had, I'd have two serializations running simultaneously." His voice took on a bitter edge, the particular flavor of resentment unique to editors who'd bet on the wrong horse. "I was counting on him to balance my portfolio. But no. Aoki swoops in at the last second with this Margaria thing. And they said the kid's storyboard wasn't good enough."
Satoshi's fingers began an absent tattoo against the desk, the rhythm syncopated and restless. He hated how much the news stung. Hated that after all this time, her name could still get under his skin like this.
Aoki Itsumi.
Two years ago, her debut Whispers Beyond the Fog had taken Shōnen Black by quiet storm - a lyrical, haunting fantasy that clung to readers' ribs long after they closed the magazine. The art had been rough in places, the pacing uneven, but there'd been something in those pages - something raw and real that cut through the usual battle manga noise.
Now she was back. Charging straight into the rankings where he was barely clinging to relevance by his fingernails.
Satoshi stood abruptly, the sudden motion sending his chair rolling back into a stack of reference books. He crossed to the window in three long strides and wrenched it open, letting in a blast of humid air that smelled of asphalt and impending rain. Down on the street, salarymen shuffled like zombies toward the station, their suit jackets slung over shoulders in the summer heat.
"She's fighting for a spot I'm aiming for," he muttered, more to himself than Kosuke. "But she's not there yet. Three chapters is a death sentence dressed up as a second chance."
Kosuke watched him with the patient stare of a man who'd seen this dance a hundred times before. "You afraid she'll take your spot?"
Satoshi turned, his grin all teeth and no warmth. "No."
The moment Kosuke left, the studio's atmosphere shifted like pressure dropping before a storm. Jin and Mei exchanged glances—the kind that carried entire conversations in the arch of an eyebrow. Kai on the other hand, just kept working. His shoulders hunched in that particular way of someone determined to stay out of drama.
Mei broke the silence first. "Morita-sensei...your deadline—"
"Will be met," Satoshi cut in, his voice sharper than intended. He softened when he saw her flinch. "Sorry. Just...keep working. I need air."
The stairwell outside was dim and smelled of stale cigarettes. Satoshi leaned against the concrete wall, letting its coolness seep through his shirt. His phone buzzed—another reminder from the editorial department. He ignored it and pulled up the Shōnen Black app and opened the NEXT STAR session.
There it was: The Flower of Margaria—Trending #1.
The comments section scrolled endlessly:
~"This is the Aoki we've been waiting for!"
~"That panel transition on page 12—holy shit!"
~"Better than anything running in the main magazine right now."
That last one lodged between his ribs like a splinter. He thumbed open the preview pages, and despite himself, felt his artist's eye analyzing every choice. The way she'd used negative space in the forest scenes. The unusual panel shapes during the transformation sequence. The—
"Skulking out here won't make her art worse, you know."
Satoshi nearly dropped his phone. Jin stood in the stairwell doorway, holding two vending machine coffees. He handed one to Satoshi without comment.
"I'm not—"
"You've been muttering about her layouts for five minutes." Jin took a long sip, his gaze knowing. "It's good, isn't it?"
Satoshi exhaled through his nose. "...It's better than good. It's the work of someone with nothing left to lose."
And that was the terrifying part. BladeCeremony was successful—popular enough to guarantee at least two more volumes even if rankings slipped abit. But, if it doesn't rise up—it could mean trouble for him.
Jin studied him over his coffee cup. "You remember what you told me when I first started assisting? About why WhispersBeyondtheFog got canceled?"
Satoshi grimaced. "I said it was too honest for its own good."
"And now she's back with something even more honest." Jin crushed his empty can. "Maybe you should take notes."
____
Renji Moboshi moved like a machine, his eyes burning with intent as he dragged his pen across the page. His assistant, Ayumi Sugimoto sat nearby scrolling her phone, brushing graphite crumbs from the screenboard. She glanced at her messages.
"Uhm… Moboshi-san?" she said tentatively, but he didn't hear.
His noise-cancelling headset was on.
But she knew better than to tap him.
She tried again, louder. "Moboshi-san! Your editor just texted me. Aoki Itsumi is getting serialized!"
Renji's hand paused. Then he yanked the headset down.
"What did you say about Itsumi-senpai?"
Ayumi straightened. "She's getting serialized again. That one-shot—Margaria something. It's in."
The pen slipped from his fingers and rolled onto the desk. "The Flower of Margaria? "
"Yeah, that one."
For a second, Renji didn't speak. He stared at the half-drawn panel in front of him, lost in thought.
Renji Moboshi has been the No. 3 start of Shōnen Black for six weeks now. He debuted the same week as Satoshi but climbed up higher than him.
He was the youngest artist in the top rankings with a loyal cult following for his visually chaotic series, Twin Gear Protocol. Most of the linework came from his own hand—he didn't trust anyone with his art. Ayumi did minor tasks, like speed lines and copy-paste screentones, but she knew she was lucky to have even that.
And he? He was obsessed.
Not with Satoshi. Not with Kuruma-sensei.
But with Aoki Itsumi.
He remembered the day Whispers Beyond the Fog was announced. He was still in high school, doodling aimlessly in the margins of his notes. But her manga pierced through him.
He remembered how the characters whispered long after the final panel. He'd copied Whispers Beyond theFog panel-for-panel, the manga made him pick up a pen.
To him, she had vanished after it got axed. Her succeeding works were a letdown in his eyes.
"Those series didn't move him like her first one. It was oo artificial," he always thought.
But then 'The Flower of Margaria ' came.
He had read it the night it was published. The pen strokes felt original—in a way it hadn't felt in a long while.
For a second, he thought someone else had drawn it.
But then—no. It was definitely her.
His fingers twitched as if reaching for the pen again.
"She's back," he said quietly.
"Yeah," the assistant replied. "Though the conditions suck. If she doesn't hit Top 5 by Chapter 3, they're cutting her again."
Renji leaned back, a rare smile touching his lips.
"Then I hope she's ready to climb."
The assistant tilted her head. "You think she can?"
"She will. She's better now than she's ever been." He looked at the wall where the framed first volume of Whispers Beyond the Fog still hung. "If I don't step it up, she might beat me. And I'll never get to prove myself."
He rolled his neck, reached for the headset again,
___
Aoki's balcony overlooked a back alley where stray cats fought over convenience store leftovers. She leaned against the railing, holding the pen and watching the tabby currently winning tonight's battle.
The alley cats' yowls sounded like critics arguing over her work's merits.
Inside, her apartment smelled of fresh ink and takeout containers. The living room floor had disappeared under pages. She went outside to get away from it for awhile.
She'd thought she was past this... the second-guessing, the midnight revisions. Saint ♰ Rewind's failure had been a clean death compared to the others which slowly bled-out, but it all left scars. Now the industry was giving her one last shot, and all she could think was—
"What if I can't do it anymore?"
Her phone lit up with a new message. Ayumi, Renji's assistant: "Moboshi-san says he's claiming #1 next issue. Thought you should know."
Aoki snorted. Of course he'd heard. The manga world was smaller than a konbini at midnight, everyone knew everyone's business.
She typed back: "Tell him to get in line."
The reply came instantly: He says "The line starts behind him."
"Some things never changed." Against all odds, Aoki laughed. It was the same trash talk they'd traded back when she was asked to play the role of his editor for awhile when he got serialized.
Renji would always tell her how much of an inspiration she was for him. He reminded her so much of her younger self. She knew he didn't really like Saint ♰ Rewind didn't say it to her face.
She felt more confident than earlier as the evening breeze swept her hair sideways. "I'll make a manga that would not only prove to them that I'm an asset to the world of manga, but will set records they had never seen.
The fountain pen's weight shifted like a living thing agreeing with her vow.