Satoshi Morita yawned without opening his mouth, eyes fixed on the monitor. His studio in Shibuya was the kind of place a rookie could only dream of—sunlight filtering through half-lowered blinds, coffee cups stacked beside high-end display tablets, and assistants sketching under focused silence. But inside his head, there was noise. Heavy noise.
"Alright, guys," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "That cut-in panel on page 17… it's weak. I need more tension in Ryo's eyes before the swing lands."
One of his assistants, Kai Nishida, glanced up. "I thought the stare-down worked."
"It's fine," Satoshi said, pacing. "But 'fine' doesn't beat Kuruma-sensei."
The room stilled slightly at the name.
Kai leaned back in his chair. "You mean the Monk?"
Satoshi didn't reply, but everyone in the room knew who he meant.
Kuruma-sensei, officially Yuuji Kuruma wasn't just the number one mangaka in Shōnen Black; he was the measuring stick. His current series, "Epitaph Parade", had been sitting atop the rankings for eight consecutive weeks, an unusual streak for a manga rooted in gothic symbolism and poetic pacing.
Some readers called him the Monk because of his long silences during interviews. Others because of how his works preached emotion without saying much. His name hadn't trended on social media in months, yet everyone still felt his presence like incense in an old room.
Satoshi scratched his head, walking toward the printed ranking chart stuck to the corkboard.
Yuuji Kuruma at #1.
Satoshi Morita at #2.
A new title, The Flower of Margaria by Aoki Itsumi is highlighted in gold just below, marked as a NEXT STAR's #1. A one-shot, yet already under watch.
"She has lost her serialization thee times, and yet people are throwing her name around like she's the second coming," he muttered.
"You talking about Aoki?" said Jin Yumoto, his first assistant. He stepped into the room carrying a plastic bag of snacks. "I bought melon bread. The good kind, with the chocolate crust."
Satoshi ignored the bread even though it was his favorite.
"Yeah, I'm talking about her. One one-shot, and they're calling her 'natural.'"
"I can't lie, she kind of is," Jin replied, unwrapping his bread. "I looked over her manga again. The emotional beat in the final panel was just insane. It's not just technique—it's… I dunno, presence," he said shrugging his shoulders.
Satoshi sighed. "She wasn't like this before. I remember reading the first release of Saint ♰ Rewind and some of her previous works. She always had good rhythm, but never like this."
Another assistant, Mei Sato, spoke without looking up from her inking. "You think she got help?"
Satoshi hesitated.
"No," he said. "But there's a possibility, but the board won't accept it and she knows. That two-page spread in her one-shot... I've seen that kind of composition before. In Kuruma-sensei's sketchbooks from last year."
Kai raised a brow. "So what're you gonna do?"
Satoshi looked out the window, the late-afternoon sun spilling across his work table.
"She's been in the game longer, sure—but my art's on another level. That one-shot? Lucky swing. The board's already bent over backward for her, no way they hand her another serialization."
Still… the panels were so perfect that the couldn't get it out of his head.
Meanwhile, Aoki's apartment was quiet except for the distant hum of traffic.
Her workroom took up most of the main space—three desks, a wide window, and a metal rack stacked with manuscripts and old volumes from her earliest works. The walls were covered in sketches, dried ink pages, sticky notes, and fan comments she'd printed from past series. Down the short hallway, her bedroom waited. It was abit small but separate space where her futon and a bookshelf gave her a bit of distance from the constant pull of deadlines.
She leaned back on her chair, an ice pack pressed against her wrist. Three hours of sketching names, and none of them worked.
The Flower of Margaria had characters who felt alive, yet she couldn't decide who deserved the spotlight in a serialization. One name felt too soft, the other too dramatic, and the third too plain.
She scribbled and scratched, erased, and rewrote. Nothing felt right.
Her phone buzzed. It was Yuka Shinozaki, one of her assistants, who had sent a text:
~"I know you're stressing. Just reminding you: no pen is more powerful than the hand behind it. You got this, senpai."
Aoki smiled faintly. Yuka was always the energetic one, the first to rush to the store when snacks ran out, and the first to cheer when a clean draft finally came together.
She replied with a thumbs up but didn't believe it.
She hadn't told anyone about the fountain pen. When she used it, the feeling had been impossible to explain. The lines poured out like water. Scenes built themselves. She didn't draw. She watched herself draw.
And then… it vanished. Her heart sank at the memory.
What if it had been a one-time thing?
What if she could never draw like that again?
She stood, walked to the kitchen, a little compartment, poured herself barley tea, then returned to her desk. She sighed and picked up her G-pen again, then dropped it before dumping herself in her chair.
Aoki stood alone in her workroom. The sun had begun its descent, casting a soft orange light through the window blinds. Her laptop was closed. Her G-pen lay untouched beside a pile of blank manuscript paper. She had been sitting there for nearly two hours, trying to draw a single line that could be compared with the original.
Her hand hovered over the name sheet again, then fell away. She let out a breath, leaned back in her chair, and glanced around the room toward the window, then the shelf by the door, the inkwell, her cup of cold barley tea.
And then she saw it.
Her eyes locked onto the far end of the desk. Lying across her sketchbook was the fountain pen.
Aoki didn't speak. She didn't move. Just stared, unsure if it was real.
After a moment, she stood. Her feet moved slowly, cautiously, until she reached the other side of the desk.
She picked it up.
It felt well-balanced and smooth in her grip. Like it belonged there.
A blank page slid onto the desk beneath her fingers. She tilted the nib slightly as she sat back down. The pen moved easily, almost without friction.
Without thinking, she drew.
A profile of a woman—long hair tangled with feathers, sharp eyes, thin lips curled into the faintest frown. Elira. The outline felt confident, steady. She hadn't practiced this face since finishing the one-shot, yet it appeared naturally.
Below it, a tall figure in layered armor took shape, kneeling with one knee planted and a shattered blade in his hand. Lord Vahn.
To the side, another man leaned against a crooked tree, cloak torn, eyes hollow. General Fiss.
Then without thinking, her hand moved again—smaller strokes, a lighter touch. A young boy. Barefoot wearing a worn robes with oversized sleeves, a defiant spark in his gaze. Wren.
She paused.
The line work wasn't just clean, it was tight, expressive. It looked better than anything she'd managed with the G-pen. Better than what she remembered drawing before.
A breeze crept in from the slightly open window, brushing the curtains aside. Light spilled over the page.
Aoki stared at the characters staring back.
She ran her fingers along the pen's barrel and smiled, just a little.
"Let's try one more time."
She placed the pen gently on its side, pulled over a new page, and began laying out the storyboard grid. Boxes. Flow. Panel sizes. Notes beside the margins.
She scribbled the words in the margin beside the first storyboard panel, just a working title, maybe.
Chapter One.
"The Flower of Margaria: Rise Again."
It felt right but as she drew, her wrist ached in ways that shouldn't be possible - the pain felt decades old.
___
The afternoon light slipped through the blinds, casting slow-moving stripes across Aoki's cluttered desk. The air was still, save for the faint scratch of her G-pen dragging across the paper. A near-complete storyboard lay in front of her—three chapters of The Flower of Margaria, drawn clean and methodical. The story flowed from the protagonist's quiet beginnings in the garden to her haunting first encounter with the blue-eyed knight.
It should have felt satisfying but it didn't.
She leaned back, stretching her fingers, and glanced over the pages. Everything was… fine. The panels were balanced. Dialogue was sharp. Action smooth. But there was a hollowness she couldn't name.
Her hand hovered over the final spread of Chapter 3, then slowly dropped.
The story of Flower of Margaria had unfolded in delicate lines: A dying world where every lie erased memories of loved ones. A florist who kept silent, clinging to the last scraps of memory. And a mysterious man who confronted silence with radical honesty. It was her most personal story yet, and now it needed to live up to the one-shot that shook the NEXT STAR chart.
Something was definitely off.
She stared longer, eyes narrowing as she tried to find the problem. Was it the pacing? The emotion? Why couldn't she feel anything from her own work?
A sudden gust of wind rustled the edge of a sketch taped on her wall—one from her university days. A smiling girl standing on a cliff, hair dancing in the wind. It looked rougher, messier… but it had something this one didn't.
Aoki's gaze softened.
She remembered her university days. Back in her university manga circle, the room always smelled like ink and instant noodles. Aoki sat cross-legged by the window, sketchpad on her knees. Her pencils moved without hesitation, capturing the posture of a character mid-laugh.
"Yo, you're drawing again?" came a voice from behind.
She turned slightly. It was Satoshi.
His hair was a little longer back then, and his confidence was less sharp. He leaned against the wall, watching her lines come to life.
"You ever gonna enter one of the national contests?" he asked, chewing gum.
She shook her head. "Why? I like drawing at my pace."
"Your characters have heart," he said after a moment. "More than most serialized stuff. You should let the world see them."
She was surprised, not expecting praise.
He smirked. "You can keep on hiding. I'll take the spotlight myself soon."
Back in the present, Aoki blinked away the memory. She stood, grabbing her clipboard and slipping the storyboard pages into a plastic file. Maybe she just needed fresh air or a new pair of eyes.
The editorial office buzzed in the background as she walked through the hallway. Before she could enter Takeru's wing, a voice called from behind.
"Aoki?"
She turned.
A man in a brown coat and scarf stood at the corner. His beard was longer than she remembered, but the calm in his eyes was familiar.
"I'm fortunate to have met NEXT STAR's finest."
"Hayashi-senpai?" she called out in disbelief. "You're back?"
He gave a small nod, stepping forward with a smile. "Just this week. I got tansferred back to the main branch two days ago. I thought I'd see you in one of these halls sooner or later."
She grinned. "How long has it been? Two years? Since Whispers Beyond the Fog ended."
"That's the one."
It had been her first serialization—Whispers Beyond the Fog, a psychological mystery about a girl who could hear lies as whispers in the wind. It lasted 31 chapters before ending in a rushed arc due to declining votes. But Hiroki Hayashi had believed in it until the final page.
"You look better," he said rubbing his neck. "But overwhelmed as usual."
She hesitated. "Actually... I was just on my way to Matsumoto-senpai with my storyboard. But... do you have time for tea?"
At a quiet cafe across the street, she spread the pages across the table. Hiroki scanned them slowly, a finger trailing the flow of the panels.
He didn't speak for a while.
"You've matured," he said finally. "Your pacing's cleaner. The transitions hit harder. But—"
She waited.
"Page 5's confrontation - where's the rawness from your one-shot? This feels like you're copying yourself."
Her brows furrowed.
"There's heart in it. I can tell you care about the world. But I think you're still drawing from the memory of your one-shot, not what this version of the story wants to become."
She looked down. The words weren't harsh, but they landed with weight.
"So I should redraw everything?"
"Not everything," he replied. "But start fresh. Forget the one-shot. Draw the story as if this is the first time anyone's meeting these characters."
She sat with his words for a moment, then quietly gathered the pages.
"When's the serialization meeting?"
"In two days," she said as she put the pages into the file.
"If a cancelled mangaka like Aoki can rebound this fast... what does that make me?" He muttered to himself.
They chatted a little longer before parting ways.
Back in her studio, Aoki stood still in front of her desk. She pulled out the pages, scanned them one last time, searching—hoping—for something redeemable.
She dropped the storyboard in the trash and returned to her desk. The characters' eyes in panel 4... they'd blinked when she wasn't looking.
Two days left and the clock was ticking.
___
At the other end of the city, Hikaru Nitta hunched over his lightboard, sweat beading on his forehead. The same page lay in front of him for the third time—an action splash panel of his protagonist jumping through smoke.
His assistant, Mina Susuki peeked in. "Nitta-san, you're redrawing it again?"
He didn't look up. "The anatomy was stiff. I need it to flow better."
"But the deadline is tomorrow"
"I don't care." His voice was low. "Aoki's probably gonna getting a serialization offer. I saw her one-shot."
He picked up his pen and swept a confident line across the paper. The figure leapt again—this time, fluid and fierce. "And Kuruma-sensei's still #1. Eight weeks straight. I'm not losing to both."