"Use your strength..." she murmured.
Tanaka tensed the muscles of his back in cooperation.
Rinko could clearly feel the way his back muscles seemed to come alive, swelling up in an instant, brimming with a dangerously seductive power.
She could already imagine what kind of overwhelming visual impact it would have once that power was captured on the page.
Her breathing grew faster and faster, her body trembling slightly from excitement.
This unprecedented experience of observing and touching top-grade reference material at such close range had driven her cerebral cortex into a state of wild overactivity.
Without realizing it, her body had pressed firmly against Tanaka's back.
The softness of her chest, separated from him by only a thin layer of fabric, clearly felt every contraction and relaxation of the muscles in his back.
And Tanaka, in turn, could distinctly feel the warmth and softness pressing against him from behind.
He knew then that the fish was completely hooked.
"Kurosawa-sensei." His voice carried a note of subtle temptation. "We have covered the basics of human structure. Next... should we move into reference studies of 'extreme human reactions'?"
Rinko shuddered from head to toe, waking up as if splashed with cold water.
Only then did she realize she had somehow ended up clinging to Tanaka's body entirely, in a position so suggestive it was almost obscene.
But...
Her hands betrayed her, sliding from his back to wrap around him even tighter...
At that moment, there was only one thought left in her mind.
She wanted to see... wanted to touch...
That thing she had drawn countless times, yet never managed to imbue with "soul"... what it really looked like in reality...
The air in the pantry turned thick and scorching.
This "reference gathering session" finally tore off its last fig leaf and plunged headfirst toward an indescribable abyss.
...
The next day, something happened in Flower Company's office that was even more shocking than the president announcing, "We landed funding."
Kurosawa Rinko, the ace illustrator who treated "coming late and leaving early" as a life creed and viewed the punch-in machine as her mortal enemy, was actually sitting at her desk, ready for work, half an hour before official office hours.
"Clack."
Ayase Miki, the blonde scriptwriter, walked into the office with a cup of coffee in hand and nearly dropped it when she saw the scene.
No mistake. It really was Kurosawa Rinko.
But Rinko looked... different today.
She was still wearing her perennial white shirt and dark blue pleated skirt, and her straight black hair was as smooth as ever.
Yet on that perpetually icy face of hers that usually said "do not mess with me" by default, there were, for the first time, two very distinct dark circles under her eyes.
The shade of those shadows was so strong it looked like carefully blended smokey eye makeup, adding a hint of frail, alluring sickness to her usual beauty.
Even stranger, she seemed absentminded all day.
She had not put on her headphones to shut out the world as usual. Instead, she kept jerking her head up like a startled rabbit, her gaze nervously sweeping around the office in circles.
Whenever her line of sight was just about to collide with the new guy, Tanaka, she would jerk her head down as if electrocuted, pretending to be utterly absorbed in her tablet. Meanwhile, the tips of her ears would quietly flush with a suspicious shade of pink.
"Hey, Shizuka." Miki slid over to Mochizuki Shizuka's side and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Do you not think... Rinko is really weird today?"
Shizuka did not even bother looking up. Her fingers clacked rapidly across the keyboard as she replied in cool, clinical tones, "Heart rate has increased by roughly fifteen percent compared to normal. Eye movement and gaze shifting frequency: up three hundred percent. Micro-expressions: multiple abnormal fluctuations detected, including shyness, regret, and... reminiscence."
"Conclusion: last night she experienced a physiological event intense enough to overturn her existing worldview."
Miki: "..."
She had to admit, Shizuka's analysis was disturbingly accurate.
What made them even more curious, though, was Rinko's art that day.
Around noon, Yua bounced happily over to Rinko's desk, ready to check on her progress.
"Rinko-chan, how is the new CG coming alon... g..."
Her words got stuck halfway.
Those lively eyes of hers went perfectly round, her mouth forming a shocked "O". The rabbit plush in her arms nearly slipped to the floor.
On Rinko's pen display, a new H-lineart (hentai) had just been completed.
The composition was bold and brimming with tension.
The male lead was no longer the identical, generic cardboard cutout he had always been before. Now, he was a figure overflowing with raw, compelling physicality.
His back faced the viewer as he pinned the heroine against the wall. Every muscle along his back swelled with effort, captured in a way that made one's heart skip.
From the smooth lines down to the tight curve of his waist, every contour of the muscles and the path of force transmission was drawn with crystal clarity. It was not just a drawing, it was as if someone had pressed a living male torso flat onto the screen and traced it with a pen.
The lighting was even more exquisite. A few beams of light streaming in from the window fell just right across his shoulder blades and the groove of his spine.
The interplay of light and shadow created a mesmerising contrast, giving that powerful back a nearly sacred artistic beauty.
And the man in the drawing... looked extremely familiar.
Miki narrowed her eyes, glancing from Tanaka to the broad back of the man on the screen, then back again.