Her name…
It was Mizuki Ito.
"Mizuki Ito?"
Sitting at his desk, scribbling with desperate intensity, Ren suddenly remembered the name of the girl whose memories lay dormant in his own soul. The feeling was the same as when one suddenly remembers the name of a childhood friend - a strange, fleeting excitement that vanished almost immediately, leaving only frustration.
Most people think writing a novel is easy - just write fast and you'll get to ten thousand characters a day.
But think about it: ten thousand characters is roughly equivalent to writing twelve complete essays. And how many students struggle even to finish one? Writing 10,000 characters without regular practice is unimaginably painful.
And Ren was learning this the hard way.
He thought adapting the plot of "Ao Haru Ride" - the anime stored in his inherited memories - would be simple. But as soon as he started writing, the differences became painfully clear. Characters, settings, expressions, small details… nothing resembled the writing of the essays he was used to.
Of course, he had never written a light novel before, but he had read many. His writing skills were deficient, but his taste and critical sense were anything but weak.
After two hours, he looked at the page and grimaced.
"What the hell did I write...?" It was so embarrassing that he wanted to curl up and die.
"As expected... it's not that easy," he murmured, although he had already anticipated this.
He trusted his Japanese language skills, but good grades didn't mean good narrative flow. And even if he followed the anime's plot to the letter, that didn't guarantee that his version would match the emotional impact of the original.
In the memories of Mizuki Ito - the girl whose soul merged with his - there was an anime called Byosoku 5 Senchimetoru (5 Centimeters per Second). After the anime became popular, two official novel versions were released: one written by the original creator, Shinkai Makoto, and the other written by a professional novelist.
The same story. Two completely different reading experiences.
Ren exhaled deeply, staring at the disorganized pages scattered across his desk.
Too many useless descriptions.
Between writing and revising, he grew increasingly tired. Before finally falling asleep, he only managed to handwrite about two thousand words of the novel based on the anime's plot, from memory.
But when he dreamed… He had become the girl named Mizuki Ito again.
However, this time the dream didn't continue from where the previous one had left off. Instead, she was sitting in front of the computer playing an online zombie shooter game, happily controlling characters like Choi Ji-yoon and Anna, decimating waves of the undead.
"Hey! Could you please remember the rest of the Ao Haru Ride episodes instead of playing shooting games?!" Ren shouted to himself.
But of course, she couldn't hear him. They were just memories - immutable and immune to his complaints.
When he woke up the next morning, Ren woke up and played CS, CF, Dungeon Fighter Online, and Genshin Impact.
For eight hours, the girl had switched between all her maxed-out accounts without watching a single new scene of the anime he needed. But Ren found himself strangely entertained watching her play. The satisfaction she felt while playing was transmitted to him, providing him with a strangely gratifying "dream gaming experience."
Stretching lazily, he looked back at his desk.
"Alright. Let's go. Today I'll finish the initial chapters."
He resumed writing, the pen gliding swiftly across the page.
His improvement was surprisingly rapid - what had seemed awkward the night before now flowed much more smoothly. Whenever he got stuck, he would simply pick up one of the many light novels he owned and examine how professional authors handled similar scenes.
Slowly, the stacks of manuscripts grew, and his adaptation of Ao Haru Ride - transplanted to a school and urban setting - began to take shape. Of course, it was all still a first draft. He needed to revise, correct, and refine the text later.
Three days passed. By this point, Ren had already converted all of Mizuki's memories from episodes 1 to 5 into a manuscript he could be proud of.
Why only up to episode 5? Because, in his memory, the girl fell asleep before finishing episode 6, interrupting the story well before the end.
And in those three nights, only one dream allowed him to relive her memories: participating in a cosplay event at a convention.
The other two nights? Nothing. Just normal sleep.
Which made Ren realize something: this situation of watching the anime through the memories of another person's soul in his dreams was something he couldn't control, at least for now; for the time being, he could only wait to see if the situation would change in the future.
When he recalled the previous night's dream, it was a very strange feeling, a completely new experience he had never had before. In his soul's memories, he transformed into a cute girl in black stockings, wearing Gothic Lolita clothes, enjoying the admiring gazes of passersby at a comic convention, taking photos and hugging the high-level cosplayers he knew in that world.
Snap! Ren slapped his forehead.
"You can't be envious of this lifestyle! You're a man!" he scolded himself.
The fact that he had briefly thought that dressing as a Gothic Lolita girl seemed "kind of fun" horrified him.
"Am I a pervert?"
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
There were only five days left until classes started. As soon as classes resumed, his free time would disappear. He needed to finish and hand in his light novel before then.
Japan was a country with a highly developed two-dimensional industry, encompassing mainly games, comics, novels, and animation, which had become one of the pillars of the economy. Renowned novelists, comic book artists, and animators enjoyed a prestigious position in the country and had considerable incomes. But Ren knew he was still just a newcomer.
Major publishers would never bet on someone without experience. In the Japanese light novel industry, countless series were abandoned midway, authors disappeared, manuscripts were never delivered, and editors spent months hunting for missing creators. If even veterans behaved like that, a newcomer was pure risk.
Of course, signing with top-tier publishers was still a long way off for Ren. These industry giants wouldn't easily risk collaborating with newcomers.
Therefore, he wouldn't be so reckless as to submit his manuscript, which he had spent several days writing, to these major publishers. Furthermore, the headquarters of these large light novel publishers are concentrated mainly in first-tier cities like Tokyo, so sending the manuscript by mail would be very time-consuming.
His realistic goal was to submit his work to one of the five medium-sized local publishers based in Minami. The light novel market in Japan was extremely competitive. Aside from the large, nationally distributed brands, most publishers operated regionally - their books sold well only in their own prefectures or neighboring regions.
And that was normal. How could any company possibly have the capital, strength, and resources to build a national or even global sales network?
Building a national sales network was expensive, time-consuming, and brutally difficult.
A strong local presence was already a great achievement. These five Minami-based publishers couldn't rival the national giants, but in their respective territories, their sales were impressive – sometimes even surpassing national brands in the region.
With established local networks, shops, promotions, and discounts tailored to the city of Minami, they had the advantage of playing at home.
Since they couldn't win through prestige, they would win through accessibility.
Ren photocopied seven or eight copies of his manuscript at a print shop, grabbed his student transportation pass, and left the building.
End of Chapter 2
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