July, the height of summer. Outside the window the cicadas droned on without pause, as if trying to boil the whole afternoon away.
Tsushima Kagami sat by the living room window, his brush gliding across white paper with a faint scratching sound.
Sunlight spilled in through the half-drawn curtains, cutting a line between light and shadow across the living room.
He happened to be sitting on the shadowed side, only the hand holding the brush occasionally catching a stray patch of light.
Several drafts lay scattered across the desk, eraser shavings dusting the surface, the faint scent of ink hanging in the air.
It was just past one in the afternoon. He was alone in the room.
Tsushima Kagami set down his brush and flexed his stiff fingers.
He glanced at the calendar on the corner of the desk — July 13th. Still some time before the big summer doujin convention in August.
His pace wasn't fast, but it wasn't slow either. As long as he didn't slack off in the days ahead, he'd finish in time without sacrificing quality.
He was about to pick the brush back up when the doorbell rang.
"Ding-dong~"
Kagami looked up toward the entrance.
Who would it be at this hour? Yukinoshita Shizuku and Hiratsuka Shizuka were both in Chiba, and Nayotake had gone back to her own family's house.
Sayuri had called yesterday before dawn saying she was up all night drawing — knowing her, she probably wouldn't wake until evening.
Thinking this over, he got up, circled around the low table in the living room, and crossed the short hallway to the entrance.
The moment he opened the door, a wave of heat rushed in.
Two people stood outside.
Kosaka Akane wore a pale blue slip dress and a raffia sunhat, her long hair loosely gathered over one shoulder, dragging a dark blue suitcase behind her, the loose strands over her forehead mussed by the wind.
The instant she saw Kagami she broke into a smile, her eyes curving into two pretty arcs, as if she didn't need any reason at all to be happy.
Standing behind her, Machida Sonoko was quieter, dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt and khaki casual pants, her signature black-framed plain glasses perched on her nose, giving off an air of mature, intellectual poise.
She too pulled a suitcase, slightly bigger than Akane's, looking rather full.
"Akane-senpai? Sonoko-senpai?"
Kagami blinked, not quite processing it.
"What are you two..."
"Wondering why we suddenly showed up?"
Kosaka Akane cut in, stepping forward with a grin.
"What, not welcome?"
"No, no, of course you're welcome."
Kagami stepped aside to clear the doorway.
"Come on in. It's too hot out there."
Cool air spilled out from the entrance and collided with the heat outside, forming a small pocket of breeze at the door.
Kosaka Akane pulled her suitcase eagerly across the threshold and let out a satisfied sigh.
"Ahh... the room's so much cooler."
Machida Sonoko followed her in, then turned back to close the door for Kagami, nudging the latch into place.
Watching the suitcases trailing behind them, Kagami couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't just a visit — it looked more like they'd come to stay a while.
But he didn't ask, and simply led the two of them down the hallway toward the living room.
Their heels clicked rhythmically on the wooden floor, three sets of footsteps overlapping, and the once-quiet house suddenly came alive.
Kagami's drawing desk still looked just as he'd left it — drafts spread across the surface, the chair askew.
He walked over, straightened the chair, then turned to face the two women standing in the middle of the living room.
"Sit down, don't just stand there."
Kosaka Akane plopped onto the sofa without ceremony, pulled a cushion into her arms, and sank into the soft seat.
Machida Sonoko leaned her suitcase against the armrest first, then sat down.
Kagami headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge, cold air washing over him.
Rows of drinks lined the shelves. He glanced them over, then called back over his shoulder.
"Coke or lemon tea?"
Kosaka Akane tilted her head, glanced at Sonoko beside her, and the two exchanged a look, as if reaching some silent understanding.
Kosaka Akane spoke first.
"Lemon tea."
"Lemon tea for me too."
Machida Sonoko pushed up her glasses.
"I feel like I've been putting on weight lately."
Kosaka Akane nodded along at once, her tone carrying that particular earnestness girls got about such things.
"Exactly, exactly. At this rate I won't even be able to fit into a swimsuit."
Kagami pulled two cans of lemon tea from the fridge, condensation immediately beading on the cold metal.
He walked back and handed one to each of them, smiling.
"Akane-senpai and Sonoko-senpai are both a long way from fat."
Kosaka Akane took the can, her fingers flinching slightly at the cold.
Then she looked down at herself, as if seriously assessing the matter, and finally smiled, satisfied.
"Since when did Kagami get so good with words?"
"He's always been good with words."
Machida Sonoko popped the tab with a crisp click, took a small sip, her eyes crinkling behind her glasses.
Kagami grabbed a can of coke for himself and sat back down at his desk.
He didn't open it right away — first he glanced at the half-finished draft to check nothing needed immediate attention, then pulled the tab and took a drink.
The fizz popping on his tongue cleared his head a little.
The living room went quiet for a few seconds, leaving only the low hum of the air conditioner outside.
Kosaka Akane suddenly seemed to remember something, her eyes sweeping the room.
"Oh right, how come I don't see Yukinoshita Shizuku and the others?"
Kagami set down his can and explained.
"Yukinoshita Shizuku and Hiratsuka Shizuka both have internships this summer. They went back to Chiba, wanting to get the internship done early before coming back."
"Oh~"
Kosaka Akane nodded, then, as if recalling something else, asked another question.
"What about Nayotake?"
"She went home to be with her mother."
Hearing that, Machida Sonoko's gaze swept the room again without her quite meaning to.
She kept feeling like something was missing — an indescribable sense of wrongness slowly surfacing in her mind.
Like a jigsaw puzzle missing one crucial piece.
She frowned, thinking it over for a moment, then her brow relaxed as she spoke up.
"Where's Sayuri? Why isn't she here either?"
She paused, turning her head to look at Kagami, a teasing edge in her voice.
"I heard Sayuri's been running over to your place nonstop lately?"
Kagami chuckled, leaning back in his chair, his tone easy.
"This time, the art style and character designs for The Little Prince's illustrations have finally been settled with Sayuri."
He paused, the smile at the corner of his mouth deepening.
"She even called me at dawn yesterday, saying inspiration hit her and she was pulling an all-nighter drawing."
"Given how she gets, she's probably still catching up on sleep right now."
Kosaka Akane and Machida Sonoko exchanged a glance and both laughed.
"That's Sayuri for you."
Kosaka Akane hugged her cushion, her tone knowing.
"That habit of throwing her whole schedule out the window the moment inspiration strikes — still the same as ever."
Machida Sonoko shook her head.
Kagami laughed in agreement, then, as if suddenly remembering something, got up from his chair and said to the two of them,
"Right, you two sit tight, I'll go grab some snacks."
He headed toward the kitchen, but after a couple steps he glanced back at their suitcases, his gaze lingering a moment before he let it go without asking.
By the time he came back carrying a small basket, Kosaka Akane and Machida Sonoko had already pulled drawing paper and manga tools out of their suitcases, laid out neatly on the low table in front of the sofa.
The table hadn't been large to begin with, and now the two of them had claimed nearly half of it.
Paper, pencils, erasers, rulers, screentone sheets, and several different sizes of technical pens were spread out one by one, as if they were setting up camp.
Kagami set the basket of cookies down on the corner of the table, then finally couldn't hold back the question nagging at him.
"So, why did you two senpai bring a whole suitcase?"
Kosaka Akane, in the middle of unwrapping a fresh pack of paper, paused at the question.
She and Machida Sonoko exchanged a look, and the corners of their mouths curved up in unison.
That smile held a trace of mischief and unspoken understanding.
"Because there's some stuff we need to reference for the manga."
Kosaka Akane pulled the paper out and set it on the table, her tone light, as if this were a trivial thing.
"So we brought along some physical reference props."
"Physical reference props?"
Kagami raised an eyebrow, his gaze drifting back to the suitcases.
Something about that phrasing felt off, but he decided not to press it.
Digging up physical references for manga work was common enough — he'd done similar things himself before.
He nodded, sat back down at his desk, and picked the brush back up.
The moment the pencil settled into his hand, the familiar feel drew his attention naturally back to the paper.
The tip touched down, and lines grew from nothing across the white page, like a plant slowly unfurling its leaves.
The living room fell quiet, leaving only the scratch of pencils on paper.
Occasionally there was the soft rustle of paper being turned, along with the steady low hum of the air conditioner outside.
The three of them drew their own things, undisturbed by one another.
The air carried a quiet, focused atmosphere.
As if all three had settled into the same breathing rhythm.
This quiet lasted about fifteen minutes.
Kosaka Akane's pen froze mid-stroke as she was drawing.
As if something had just occurred to her, she looked up toward Kagami.
Watching his focused profile, she asked,
"What's Sayuri planning to draw this time?"
Kagami's brush didn't stop moving as he answered.
"Sayuri was originally going to draw a new doujin, but because of The Little Prince it's taking more time than she expected, so she's put it aside."
Kosaka Akane and Sonoko both nodded at the same time.
"You should thank Sayuri properly, you know."
Machida Sonoko said it teasingly, though her tone carried genuine warmth toward a junior.
"After all, she gave up her own hobby, all for Kagami's sake."
Kosaka Akane chimed in, her voice a touch lighter than Sonoko's.
Kagami's pen paused faintly against the paper.
Of course he knew. He'd seen countless times just how completely Sayuri lost herself when she drew.
She could have drawn whatever she wanted — all those endless whimsical ideas spilling out of her head.
Ever since Akane and Sonoko had graduated, what she'd wanted most was for everyone to found the Manga Research Club together again at university, to draw doujin together happily like before, selling their new work one copy at a time at conventions.
But now she was pouring most of her time and energy into the illustrations for The Little Prince.
Only because it was his invitation. His request.
"I understand."
When Kagami said those three words, his voice dropped a little lower than usual, as if he were quietly filing something away.
The living room fell silent again for a few seconds.
Then Kagami looked up, his gaze passing between the two of them, and changed the subject on purpose.
"So, Akane-senpai, Sonoko-senpai — what genre are you two planning to draw this time?"
Kosaka Akane and Machida Sonoko exchanged another look, and this time their smiles were even more pronounced, the mischief in their eyes deeper.
"You'll find out soon enough."
Kosaka Akane said mysteriously.
Machida Sonoko pushed up her glasses and added,
"It's a secret for now."
Watching the two of them, Kagami felt a flicker of curiosity, but held back from pressing further.
He knew better than to poke at girls' little secrets.
Kosaka Akane set down her pen and turned the question back on him.
"What about Kagami? We keep forgetting to ask what you're drawing this time."
As she spoke, her gaze naturally drifted to the stack of drafts on his desk.
Machida Sonoko followed her line of sight, curiosity plain on her face.
Kagami didn't hesitate. He pulled a single sheet from the stack.
He stood, walked over to the low table, and handed it to them.
As Kosaka Akane took it, her fingers pinching the edge of the paper, Machida Sonoko leaned in, their heads coming together as both sets of eyes landed on the draft.
"Roughly speaking..."
Kagami sat back down in his seat and picked up his drink, taking a sip.
Then, in an offhand tone, he said,
"A pure-love story about a quality handsome guy who happens to meet a pure-hearted nun."
Kosaka Akane, gazing down at the draft, watched her eyes light up bit by bit.
Machida Sonoko's reaction was more restrained, but the speed with which she pushed up her glasses was noticeably quicker than usual.
Kagami noticed this had become a little habit of hers ever since she'd started wearing plain-lens glasses.
The draft showed a man's profile.
The lines were smooth and clean, without a single wasted stroke.
The man's features were sharp and well-defined — high, angular brow bones, a straight nose bridge, a jawline curved just right, neither too severe to seem cruel nor too soft to lose its strength.
His eyes were deep and expressive, as if fixed on something in the distance, or lost deep in thought.
The pupils weren't fully rendered yet, but already they carried that magnetic depth.
This wasn't the kind of male character sketched with a lazy outline and called good enough.
Nor was it the typical doujin "male lead" — sleazy, or creepy, or sometimes not even given a proper face at all.
Even set against josei manga standards, this face — soft yet strong, brimming with sexual tension — was top-tier material.
After all, male leads in josei manga could be, well, hit or miss.
Kosaka Akane stared at the face for several seconds, glanced up at Kagami, then back down at the draft, her lips slowly curving upward.
The female lead clearly carried an exquisite mixed-heritage look.
Deep-set eyes, a slightly upturned nose tip, full soft lips, long wavy hair spilling from her shoulders.
The hair strands were rendered with delicate, natural care.
The nun's habit outlined a sense of sacred restraint that faintly showed through despite itself.
"Wow."
Kosaka Akane let out a short but heavily loaded exclamation.
Machida Sonoko said nothing, but she studied the draft for a long moment before finally lifting her eyes, looking at Kagami with a new kind of understanding.
Kosaka Akane looked up, a probing look in her eyes.
"How'd you suddenly get the idea to draw a nun?"
She paused, her tone turning suggestive.
"Don't tell me Kagami's suddenly awakened some new kink?"
Hearing this, Machida Sonoko's eyes crinkled.
She reached up, took the black-framed plain glasses off her nose, and stood up.
She walked over to Kagami.
Before he could react, she leaned down and gently set the glasses on the bridge of his nose.
Then tapped the tip of his nose lightly with one finger.
Kagami felt a faint warmth where the nose pads touched his skin.
Machida Sonoko stepped back, tilting her head to study his face carefully.
Then nodded, satisfied.
"With those on, you actually look a bit like the male lead."
Then, as if something had just occurred to her, she covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
"No way, no way~"
"Kagami, you didn't draw him based on yourself, did you?"
"That's so self-absorbed — a pervert who draws himself into his own doujin~"
Kosaka Akane jumped right in, her voice bright with the thrill of uncovering the truth.
"So he really has awakened some new kink!"
The two exchanged a look and nodded in perfect unison, their expressions perfectly matched.
Both wore the same look of "I knew it," "just as expected," and "we suspected as much all along."
Kagami stopped his brush and let out a helpless sigh.
He reached up, took the glasses off his nose, pinched the frame by its edge, stood, walked over to Machida Sonoko, and set them back on her nose.
But as he settled them in place, he gave the frame a light flick with his finger, producing a faint snap.
Machida Sonoko's face colored slightly.
"Isn't it because you're going on exchange to Yale next semester?"
Kagami sat back down, his tone turning serious again.
"I just had a sudden idea, thought about nun-related elements."
"Figured nun characters have been pretty popular in anime lately, so I just tried drawing one."
This era's social climate in Japan was exactly like that.
After the bubble economy burst, the whole country seemed to have had its spine broken, sinking back into a worship and longing for the West.
A sentiment of fawning over foreign things permeated every corner of society.
This was especially visible in anime, if you looked closely enough.
Anime from this period was full of foreign holidays and customs like Halloween and Christmas, while Japan's own traditional festivals and customs were steadily pushed into the background.
Character designs leaned heavily toward nuns, vampires, Western girls, or mixed-heritage figures — Western elements everywhere you looked.
It wasn't until the 2010s that this trend began to slowly reverse.
More and more people started re-examining and valuing their own cultural traditions, and anime began featuring more traditional festivals, clothing, art, and elements of Japanese traditional aesthetics.
Even Western holidays became rare in anime.
It was, in its own way, an understandable form of cultural protection.
Not to mention the task the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had quietly assigned — exporting the nation's culture, and slipping in a bit of ideology, through anime.
The manga Kagami wanted to draw was a treasure he'd dug up from memory.
In an era flooded with nun-themed works, this manga still counted as an underrated pearl.
The art style was exquisite and beautiful, every page's storyboard carefully composed, the male lead's face the kind you wanted to screenshot on sight, the female lead's beauty exotic and striking.
And the story itself was far more interesting than the offhand line he'd just given — "a quality handsome guy meets a pure-hearted nun."
The story's male lead was a man deep in career burnout.
He didn't know what he wanted, didn't know where he was heading.
Every day repeated the one before — wake up, go to work, wade through an endless pile of tasks, come home, sleep, then wake the next day and repeat the same cycle.
His life felt like an assembly line running on a preset program, and he was just one part in it, spinning passively, wearing down bit by bit, until the day he finally broke.
He began thinking about the meaning of life, about the future, about what he truly wanted.
But the thinking brought no answers — only deeper confusion.
Like standing in a vast maze, roads stretching in every direction, none of them telling you which one led out and which only pulled you further in.
Then one day, without meaning to, he took a wrong turn.
He passed through an unfamiliar tunnel.
That small mistake, that trivial deviation, carried him to a place he'd never been before.
He'd driven past that tunnel countless times, but never once turned into it.
It was just a side road along the route between his office and home.
But this time, his mind wandering, he turned into the tunnel without meaning to.
At the end of the road lay a beautiful lakeside, and beside it stood a monastery.
The monastery housed a number of children.
There, he met a nun — the female lead.
The moment the female lead laid eyes on the male lead, her eyes lit up.
Something more direct, more primal, stirred awake inside her the instant she saw him.
Call it love at first sight, or call it lust at first sight.
As a nun, she could see at a glance that this man was lost about his life, clearly caught in some kind of struggle.
So she took the lost lamb by the hand and led him straight into the confessional.
By rights, it should have been the man voicing his troubles, and the nun offering guidance.
Instead, it turned into her pouring out her own complaints to him.
She told him that in her five years as a nun, four of her friends had already married and had children.
Every time she saw a friend standing at the altar in a wedding dress, every time she received a wedding invitation or a photo of a newborn, she found herself quietly counting how much longer she'd have to walk this path.
She'd held to her vow of purity, serving the Lord with few desires.
But anxiety grew inside her like vines, coiling tighter and tighter around her heart.
At this rate, she'd end up a spinster nobody wanted.
So she made a bold, absurd request to this man she'd known for less than twenty minutes.
She wanted them to "relieve each other's troubles" — a kind of mutual redemption, in its own way.
The male lead was stunned.
On the surface, this looked like the story of a repressed nun finally snapping.
A woman driven half-mad by a life of celibacy, throwing herself at the first quality man to walk through the door — a simple, blunt premise.
But think it through, and it wasn't so simple after all.
She hadn't taken her final vows yet — she was still in the temporary vow stage.
For those five years, she could have left the religious life at any time.
She could have taken off the habit, walked out the monastery gates, found an ordinary job, met a fine man, and lived the married life she dreamed of.
She could even have sought out "special services," if she'd wanted.
After all, a woman bold enough to make that kind of request to a stranger within twenty minutes was clearly capable of far bolder things.
But she didn't.
In five years, not once.
She chose to stay.
She chose to follow the rules, to remain in that small monastery, wearing that uncomfortable black-and-white habit.
Praying on schedule every day, singing hymns, copying scripture, dedicating her youth bit by bit to a God she wasn't even sure existed.
Even with her heart full of anxiety and complaint, she never once chose to give up being a nun.
Until the male lead appeared.
That man who entered her life because of a single moment of distraction.
That man who had passed the same intersection every single time before, and never once turned in.
However you looked at it, the two of them were fated.
Their meeting wasn't coincidence, wasn't chance, wasn't some random event out of probability theory.
It was a script already written, a plot already arranged, an inevitability bound to happen sooner or later.
Sooner or later he would take the wrong turn at some fork in the road; sooner or later she would meet, on some ordinary day, the one exception that made her stop wanting to keep her vow.
Pure love.
Not the clingy, saccharine kind, and not the kind of forced pairing manufactured just to satisfy a ship.
But something more essential, more fated, something impossible to argue with.
There really did exist, in this world, one person whose arrival gave meaning to everything you'd held onto and waited for.
That kind of pure love — that was the god-tier of pure love!
As Kagami thought all this through, the corner of his mouth curved without his noticing.
This manga was none other than [Toriiza]-sensei's "The Nun on a Marriage Deadline."
Besides this one — which Kagami considered the best material by far —
Toriiza-sensei also had two other famous works, "Portrait Among the Waves" and "Boy, Embrace Me."
Their strength lay in their delicate portrayal of the growing pains of adolescent boys and girls.
Their weakness, naturally, was being too artistic to make for good material.
These two could be said to resemble [Nakani]-sensei's earlier work, "Just As We Wrote This Story Together" — both god-tier artistic pieces.
But unlike [Nakani]-sensei's rough, sketchy art style, [Toriiza]-sensei's style was exquisitely refined, and the figure work was on a god-tier level all its own.
____
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