Chapter 2: I Was One Chapter Away [2]
He used the same animation cycle for his sword swing three times.
The dialogue had the depth of a puddle.
Alex turned off the TV. His hand was trembling.
It wasn't fear.
It was a mix of horror and a creeping, manic excitement.
The trip to town happened three days later. John fired up the rusty Ford pickup truck to head into town for supplies, and Alex tagged along.
The town, Oak Creek, was a single-street affair. A post office, a clinic, a hardware store, a diner... and a bookstore.
Alex practically bailed out of the truck before it stopped moving.
The bookstore was small, smelling of old paper and dust. He scanned the shelves. Textbooks, romance paperbacks, cookbooks... and a small spinning rack in the corner.
He walked over, his fingers trailing over the spines.
The Adventures of Captain Strong.Magical Mary.Robot Force 5.Star Lovers.
The covers were generic. Muscle-bound men in spandex. Girls with oversized eyes and wands. Clunky robots. He pulled out a copy of Captain Strong and flipped it open.
The panel layout was a grid. A perfect, boring grid. Box after box, left to right.
The art? Serviceable, but stiff. No dynamic angles. No motion lines.
The plot: Hero saves girl, punches bad guy. End of issue.
He grabbed Magical Mary.
Same grid layout. Plot: Girl transforms, uses the power of friendship to zap a shadow.
He grabbed Robot Force 5.
Robots punch each other. Bang. Pow. Zap.
He frantically tore through every book on the rack.
Thirty magazines. Fifty trade paperbacks.
They were all the same.
Formulaic. Cliché. Shallow.
No pacing. No foreshadowing. No emotional weight.
There was no One Piece.
No Naruto.
No Bleach.
No Fullmetal Alchemist.
No Hunter x Hunter.
No Jujutsu Kaisen.
No Attack on Titan.
No Demon Slayer.
Nothing.
"Looking for something specific, son?"
The owner, an older man with reading glasses perched on his nose, looked up from his newspaper.
"Do you have anything... complex?" Alex asked, breathless. "Something with a detailed world-building system? Gray morality? Character arcs?"
"Complex?" The owner chuckled. "They're comic books, kid. They're meant to keep you quiet for twenty minutes. Why would you want them to be complex?"
"What about... stories about regular people? Not superheroes, just... normal life? Students? Office workers?"
The owner laughed out loud this time. "Who would buy that? People read comics to escape reality, not look at it."
Alex slowly put the comic back on the rack.
He walked out of the store and stood on the sidewalk. The afternoon sun was blinding. People walked past him, kids on bikes, a woman with groceries, a man smoking a cigarette against a brick wall.
It was such a mundane scene.
But inside Alex's head, a tempest was raging.
He remembered the first time Luffy told Coby, "I'm going to be King of the Pirates!" The chills that ran down his spine.
He remembered Edward Elric standing before the Gate of Truth. "One is All, All is One."
He remembered Gon and Killua learning Nen.
He remembered Gojo lifting his blindfold. "I'd win."
Those scenes. Those lines. The way the panels flowed to control the passage of time. The way a single double-page spread could make you cry.
This world had none of it.
The people here didn't know what Haki was. They didn't know about Alchemy. They didn't know about Cursed Energy.
Their entertainment was stuck in the Stone Age.
"Ha..."
A laugh bubbled up in Alex's throat.
First, a twitch of the lips. Then his shoulders began to shake. Finally, he bent over, hands on his knees, laughing until tears pricked the corners of his eyes.
Passersby gave him strange looks, steering clear of the crazy kid laughing at the sidewalk, but Alex didn't care.
His brain held the cultural wealth of an entire civilization.
And this world? This world was a blank canvas.
They returned to the ranch in the late afternoon. While John and Sarah unloaded the feed bags, Alex went straight to his room.
He rummaged through the drawers until he found the previous owner's art supplies—some charcoal pencils, a generic eraser, and a pad of thick, grainy paper. The old Alex liked to sketch the landscape, but it was just a hobby.
The tools were primitive, but they would work.
He sat at the wooden desk and smoothed out the paper.
What do I draw?
The first work had to be the hook. It couldn't be too complex, or the audience here wouldn't get it. It couldn't be too esoteric. It had to be something they could accept, but unlike anything they had ever felt.
One Piece was too long. Hunter x Hunter was too complex. Fullmetal Alchemist was too dark for a debut. Jujutsu Kaisen needed too much context.
He tapped the pencil against his chin.
He looked out the window.
Outside, the sun was setting, casting long, golden shadows across the fields. His father was herding the cows back into the barn, cracking a whip with practiced ease. His mother was taking laundry off the line.
He was here. On a farm.
He had the most authentic reference material right in front of him.
Alex smiled. He remembered a story about an agricultural high school. About a city boy who didn't know a pig from a cow, learning about life, food, and the weight of existence.
Silver Spoon (Gin no Saji). By Hiromu Arakawa.
It was heartwarming, grounded, educational, and deeply human.
And he lived the setting every single day.
The pencil touched the paper.
Scritch. Scratch.
He drew slowly at first. He had to get used to the muscle memory of this new body, adapting to the lack of a digital tablet, layers, and undo buttons. This was raw. Unforgiving.
But his hand was steady.
He drew Yugo Hachiken standing in the middle of a vast field, looking completely lost.
He drew the look of shock on the character's face when he saw the massive sign for the Agricultural High School.
He drew the detailed anatomy of a dairy cow, highlighting the heavy muscle and the gentle eyes.
One page. Two pages. Three pages.
The sun went down, and the room grew dark, lit only by a small desk lamp.
"Al? Dinner's ready!" Sarah's voice came through the door.
"Eat without me, I'll be down in a minute!"
The door creaked open. Sarah walked in, wiping her hands on her apron. She stopped when she saw the desk covered in sketches.
She peered over his shoulder.
On the paper, a boy was crouching next to a cow, looking terrified but determined. The shading captured the texture of the cow's fur, the dust in the air, the weight of the animal.
"This is... did you draw this?" Sarah asked, her voice hushed.
"Yeah."
Sarah stared at it for a long time. "It looks so... real. Like you can feel the heat coming off the animal."
She paused, then gently touched his shoulder. "Come eat before it gets cold."
"Okay. Be right there."
The door clicked shut.
Alex put down the pencil and flexed his cramping fingers.
Outside, the night had fully settled. The ranch was quiet, save for the chirping of crickets and the distant lowing of a cow.
It was peaceful.
But inside Alex, a fire was roaring.
The worlds that lived in his head the heroes, the villains, the laughter, and the tears—they shouldn't just exist in his memory.
They deserved to be seen.
He was going to show them to this world.
He picked up the pencil again.
He inked the lines, adding depth and shadow. He used white-out to add the gleam in the character's eyes.
It was late.
But he couldn't stop.
(To be Continued)
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