Perhaps one day he'd hear the news that Kai Fujin had dropped dead from overwork.
Nozaki couldn't help thinking it.
He didn't understand where the strength behind Kai's relentless effort came from. All he felt was a quiet admiration.
Only someone that unwilling to be ordinary would ever make a name for himself.
"How about this," he said, lifting his left hand and miming a drink to his lips. "As a celebration, let's grab a drink after work. Your treat."
Kai looked apologetic.
"Sorry, Nozaki-senpai. There's something I really need to do after my shift."
"Figures." Nozaki wasn't surprised. "Going to study drawing, right?"
Kai smiled. "Yeah."
"That's so like you."
A guy who was usually cold and quiet had suddenly started showing flashes of something brilliant. Nozaki found it strange and hard to get used to.
Starting around four o'clock, though, customers began pouring into the restaurant one after another.
Kai was run off his feet, spinning nonstop through the cramped few dozen square meters of floor space.
As the other man brushed past him again and again during the rush, Nozaki felt a sense of familiarity settle back in.
This was still the Kai Fujin he knew.
...
The restaurant closed at eight o'clock sharp.
By the time they finished cleaning up, the sky was completely dark and the streets were empty. After a full day's work, Nozaki was exhausted. All he wanted was to swing by a bar, knock back a couple of drinks, and drag himself home to bed.
"I'm heading out, Nozaki-senpai."
Kai slung his backpack over his shoulder with a hint of anticipation on his face.
"Yeah." Nozaki watched him with a small smile. "Take care."
Kai disappeared into the night.
Watching that retreating figure, Nozaki muttered to himself.
"You'd better make it, Fujin."
"If someone as hardworking as you can't succeed, then I've got no reason left to believe in this world."
...
Hard work alone didn't guarantee success.
The reason Kai could throw himself completely into studying manga was because he had over a dozen works stored in his memory that had already stood the test of the market.
Since those works were guaranteed to be loved by readers, he had nothing to worry about. He just had to push forward with everything he had.
The harder he worked, the closer he got to success. That constant feeling of momentum and reward made him genuinely enjoy the process.
Near the cheap apartment Kai rented, there was a bookstore. This was where he'd gotten copies of Slam Dunk and Video Girl Ai to study their storyboarding.
The bookstore was still open at nine, and a fair number of people were reading quietly inside.
Kai looked the place over, and maybe because he believed he was about to become a published author, he found himself seeing it from a completely different angle.
Not as a reader anymore, but as a creator.
On the most prominent shelf right by the main entrance, the collected volumes of Kindaichi Case Files were stacked high.
That was what market recognition looked like.
If the collected volumes of Death Note could sit on that shelf after its serialization, he would call that a massive success.
"I can't wait for that day."
Beyond the display shelves were the regular bookshelves, filled with all kinds of titles: manga, mystery novels, and literary classics.
They were all popular works, every one of them.
Kai paid special attention to the manga volumes. He spotted Detective Conan, Rurouni Kenshin, and Hell Teacher Nube.
These were the series that had made him happy as a kid. But in the future, they would be his competition.
"Life really is something."
He kept going deeper into the bookstore until he reached a different section.
After asking a staff member for directions, he went straight to the reference area. A quick search turned up several of the professional books Heishi had recommended.
They were expensive. Four or five times the price of a manga volume. But he gritted his teeth and bought them all.
Leaving the bookstore, he stopped at a convenience store for some late-night food, carefully stepped around the office workers passed out drunk on the sidewalk, and finally headed home.
His footsteps rang out with a hollow metallic thud on the iron staircase as he climbed to his apartment door on the second floor.
He opened the door, and the entire fifteen-square-meter studio apartment spread out before him.
There was no kitchen. The living room was the bedroom. The bathroom was horrifyingly small. Boxes on the floor were stuffed with used manuscript paper, and with nowhere to store them properly, they sat there cluttering up the space like an eyesore.
Living in a place like this for too long could drain a person of the will to keep going.
And yet, from what Kai had gathered, several of his neighbors had been living in rooms just like this one for years.
After all, it was one of the few things they could actually afford in Tokyo.
...
Without stopping to rest, he pulled the stool out from under his desk. With the cool night breeze drifting in through the window, Kai didn't feel lonely at all. He cracked open Japanese Paper Animation Techniques and started reading with genuine interest.
He nodded along as he went.
Time passed.
The lights in the surrounding apartments went out one by one, and the world outside grew darker and quieter.
The light in Kai's room was the last one still on. Just before the sun began to rise, there was a soft click, and he was out.
That kind of life continued for several days. The books he was working through grew thinner while the stacks of used manuscript paper on his floor grew thicker without him noticing.
While Kai was building himself up, he was also waiting for word from Heishi.
On the wall calendar, X's were drawn one after another.
The date finally reached the 18th.
...
In the restaurant, Nozaki watched the last customer walk out the door. He didn't even bother clearing the dishes before turning to Kai.
"So? Are the Tezuka Award results out? How'd it go? Did you make the cut?"
In the past, he'd never paid much attention to the Tezuka Award. He just read whatever looked interesting.
After Slam Dunk and Yu Yu Hakusho ended, he hadn't bought an issue of Weekly Shonen Jump in ages.
He'd switched over to Weekly Shonen Magazine instead.
But because of Kai, he was paying close attention to the Tezuka Award this time around. Getting the inside scoop before anyone else gave him a real sense of satisfaction.
Kai shook his head. "Editor Heishi said he'd let me know today, but it's barely past one in the afternoon. I probably won't hear anything until five or six."
"Are you serious?" Nozaki was wound up. His usual lazy composure was gone, replaced by anxious pacing back and forth across the restaurant floor.
Kai, the one who actually had something riding on this, was far calmer by comparison.
He sat in a corner of the restaurant and spread out his manuscript paper to work on the storyboard for the first chapter of Death Note.
The real Death Note. The story of Light Yagami, a model student who transforms into a cold-blooded killer the moment the Death Note falls into his hands.
This was a plot Kai knew inside and out, and after days of studying and working through the details, the storyboards were already crystal clear in his mind.
Putting it on paper should have been simple. He just had to draw what he could already see. And yet he hesitated to start. His eyes went unfocused as he slipped into his own thoughts without even realizing it.
'I wonder how the discussion is going over at Shueisha right now…'
...
Heishi stood in the hallway clutching a file, lost in thought.
Raised voices and heated arguments drifted out from the editorial department's meeting room every so often. The judges for the Tezuka Award were all big names: editors-in-chief and renowned manga artists.
A junior editor like him didn't have the standing to sit in on that conversation.
"I'm so nervous."
_______________________
Support me at patreon.com/CulturedOne and read 50 Advanced Chapters