Just like that, Tsushima Kagami leisurely spent his days with Yukinoshita Shizuku coming to the hospital every day after school to keep him company, only to catch the very last subway train home. It wasn't until he had been hospitalized for seven days that the doctor finally agreed to process his discharge papers.
Only then did Tsushima Kagami and Yukinoshita Shizuku return to their peaceful daily routine: leaving the house together every morning and waiting at the convenience store for Shizuku to finish her shift in the evening to go home together.
The entire month of June passed like a montage in a movie on fast-forward, arriving at the end of June in the blink of an eye.
During this period, the serialization of the second issue of The Setting Sun unsurprisingly pushed Shincho sales past the one million mark in late June. Readers, upon learning that the bunko edition would be released in mid-July, grew increasingly vocal about their impatience to buy it for their collections.
At the same time, Literary Girl, published in Comic Kairakuten, once again broke the sales record set by the previous work, Hiiragi-senpai, pushing Comic Kairakuten to new heights.
...
Inside the Manga Research Club at Private Ousai High School.
Tsushima Kagami and the others were bent over their desks, focused on drawing their own manga as usual.
After some time passed, Tsushima Kagami stopped his work of applying beta blacks and screen tones. He finally let out a breath and stood up to stretch his back.
"Have you finished, Kagami-kun?"
Sayuri, sitting to the side, looked over.
While stretching, Tsushima Kagami replied to Sayuri, "The first half is done. I'll start drawing the second half in mid-July. I still have to continue drawing the manuscript for the Comiket doujin fair."
Machida Sonoko, sitting across from him, also looked over.
"Can your body handle that? Not only are you double-serializing, but both are works exceeding one hundred pages."
"Rest assured, it's no problem," Tsushima Kagami replied with a smile, then sat back down and picked up the manuscript to review it.
Kosaka Akane, sitting nearby, casually picked up a sheet. While admiring it, she asked Tsushima Kagami, "Are you really going to serialize this?"
"Didn't I say it back in the computer room? I'm going to deal a head-on blow to those Minotaurs!"
"A man does what he says!"
"Kagami-kun can really be childish sometimes," Kosaka Akane laughed, covering her mouth.
What Tsushima Kagami had completed this time was precisely the story he had conceived in the computer room that day—a story designed to take revenge on those true Minotaurs. He wanted to draw a story that would make victims fall silent and 'Golden Retrievers' (NTR protagonists) shed tears.
Originally, this manga wasn't a doujinshi, but an 'eroge' (erotic game).
The title was The Housewife Next Door is Alone Today Too 2.
To be honest, the gameplay was average, and the character sprites were quite lackluster. Under normal circumstances, Tsushima Kagami would never have played this game.
This is because Tsushima Kagami has three 'No-Play' rules:
First, no play without CV (voice acting).
Second, no play without dynamic CGs.
Third, no play without a full clear save file.
Mainly because when Tsushima Kagami plays eroge, he aims to 'take off' immediately. How can one 'take off' without voice acting and dynamic CGs? As for the plot, long and smelly like foot-binding cloth, who reads that? Isn't it more pleasant to load a clear save, enter full CG appreciation mode, and rush straight into the clouds?
As for why he ended up playing this game, he was actually deceived by the tags. Although it was an SLG (Simulation Game) type, it was effectively a PowerPoint presentation, yet someone had slapped a 'Dynamic' tag on it.
Plus, there really were no other new games that caught his eye. Since he had already downloaded it, he decided to give it a try.
Because there was no clear save, skipping through the dialogue at high speed often meant not knowing how to achieve the clear conditions. In the end, he could only play slowly, reading the story bit by bit from the beginning. The result was that the more he read, the more something felt off.
Tsushima Kagami was completely captivated by the game's textual narrative.
By the time he reached the 'E Ending', he felt a sense of profound loss and gain; the aftertaste was truly potent.
The game content describes a simple, conventional NTL plot: a blonde college student protagonist meets a neighbor housewife, an older sister type, and falls in love at first sight. He then seeks to take her from her husband.
But with just such a conventional theme, ordinary gameplay, lackluster art, and mediocre BGM, the god-tier writing single-handedly hoisted the entire game onto a divine altar.
It was evaluated as 'Hardcore' by major Uploaders and enshrined as 'Pure Love' by netizens everywhere! It is a divine oil that truly makes victims silent, makes blondies weep, and makes the 'Pure Love God of War' scream that they dare not play it a second time!
For the sake of the woman he likes, the male protagonist 'accidentally meets' the heroine every day, inquiring about her preferences and schedule, then memorizing them. He constantly studies to improve his conversation skills and substance. He pays for more than three dates a week entirely out of pocket, works three part-time jobs totaling over 10 hours a day, and completes a week's worth of schoolwork in two days. He is simply a Superman!
The heroine, in fact, is in an arranged marriage. Her husband was a capable employee of her father's company and had done their family a favor. Eventually, it was proposed that she marry him. Out of gratitude, and with no real objection, she married this man who was much older than her—in his fifties.
Out of respect for the heroine's father, the husband always took extra care of her. They treated each other with mutual respect, and he provided her with a very good material life. Unfortunately, the husband was dull; a good leader but not a good husband. He neglected his wife's spiritual needs. Eventually, they had less and less to talk about, and the marriage slowly became sexless.
This gave the male protagonist his opportunity.
The entire plot benefits mainly from the detailed, moving, and aesthetic depiction of the heroine tasting true love for the first time, and her internal struggle between social morality and marital loyalty as she falls into depravity step by step. Distinct from the wooden blocks and trophy heroines in past manga, this was the kind of plot Tsushima Kagami had always yearned for but never seen.
Especially in Chapter 6, where the husband's monologue provides a direct reversal. The husband is not only a good person but often reflects in solitude and tries hard to change. He slowly begins to appreciate the heroine's contributions to the family, starts praising her beauty and gentleness, and even begins creating romantic surprises to make her happy.
This instantly tortured the players outside the screen.
From Chapter 6 onwards, one can see that the blonde male protagonist has actually already lost. The heroine has not only wavered but wants to return to her husband's side. In the end, the male protagonist is forced to use forceful and despicable means he had never used before to make the heroine submit.
Therefore, Tsushima Kagami, who usually plays eroge and reads doujinshi from a third-person 'God's eye view' without self-inserting, finally chose the 'E Ending'—where the male protagonist lets go—as a spectator player. At the same time, this ending is the 'True Ending' that made everyone cry out in pain.
Especially the scene in the heroine's later diary: upon learning the male protagonist was moving out of the apartment, she secretly delivered cookies to him and left silently, echoing the cookies from the beginning.
And the ending CG: that backward glance, signifying that 'rather than moistening each other with foam, it is better to forget each other in the vast lakes.'
You simply cannot imagine how an eroge could end with such a textbook example of the 'Aesthetics of Mono no aware'.
Many netizens also commented that it would have been better to just lay cards on the table, let the heroine divorce, and marry the male protagonist.
But anyone who has read A Lost Paradise should understand why many couples in Japan rarely divorce even if they know about an affair; at most, they just play their own games.
Because if they really divorced and the male and female leads married, they might end up just like the couple in A Lost Paradise. Even if they moved to a place where no one knew them, thinking it was a brand new life, the result would still be the severance and denial of all interpersonal social relationships, ultimately leading to love suicide.
This narrow island nation is just such a magical and oppressive country.
Moreover, even disregarding Chapter 6 where the heroine wavered and wanted to return to her husband... just the changes the husband strove to make were already far superior to those trashy victims in NTR works.
What can those victims do besides get an erection in pain?
Just for this point, he won Tsushima Kagami's respect. Plus, Kagami didn't want to see other messy routes that claimed to be marriage but were actually just depravity destroying that sense of beauty. So, for various reasons, he supported the E Ending.
Thus, Tsushima Kagami decided to draw this game in manga form to give those true Minotaurs a taste. After all, using original soup to digest the original food works best. Due to cultural differences, placing it in the context of Tokyo University might have many points worthy of criticism, but placed in the context of Little Japan... one can only say it feels too right!
For the sake of this manga, Tsushima Kagami not only switched to a highly 'fappable' and exquisite art style and redesigned the characters, but he also used the 'Pure Love Points' accumulated from Literary Girl, The Setting Sun, and Hiiragi-senpai to significantly boost his hand speed and accuracy regarding manga in his [Personal Abilities].
Now, Tsushima Kagami didn't need to draw rough sketches and then ink them; he put pen to paper directly for the line art. Fast, accurate, and steady. His efficiency and speed had improved greatly. While in the hospital previously, he had spent the entire day drawing this manga.
Because of the length, the manga was mainly divided into the 'First Part', covering the pursuit of the heroine, and the 'Second Part', covering the beginning of her depravity.
The first part of the manga focuses on the male protagonist's offensive to woo the heroine, containing no 'battle scenes'. So, back in the hospital, Tsushima Kagami had asked Machida Sonoko to ask Editor Watanabe if it could be moved to a general-audience publication.
The result was that Editor Watanabe and the Editor-in-Chief decided to publish it directly in Comic Kairakuten.
Tsushima Kagami could already imagine the flustered and exasperated looks of the readers when they flipped through his manga only to find no battle scenes by the end.
But they needn't rush. When they see the ending of the Second Part, when their big heads control their little heads...
Heh...
Hehehe... I can't...
I can't laugh yet. Just endure another 40 days.
No, better to laugh in 30 days.
No good... hold it in...
Ihihihi, uhahahahaha!
"Kagami-kun, what are you giggling at?"
Tsushima Kagami snapped back to reality, seeing Sayuri and the other two looking at him with expressions that said 'What are you looking at, you idiot?'.
"Cough, cough."
Tsushima Kagami restrained his expression a bit, then spoke.
"The computer room shouldn't be closed yet. Let's go make a post."
...
Inside the computer room, after Tsushima Kagami waited for Machida Sonoko to open the website, he sat down and began typing to start a thread.
[Hello everyone, I am Xuanyayi. I have been cyberbullied.]
[But that's not important. The suggestions from netizens last time were what mattered to me.]
[Therefore, I humbly accepted everyone's advice and created a new NTL-themed manga.]
[Do you want to see my manga?]
[If you want to see it, I can give it all to you. Go find it!]
[I have placed all the content in the next issue and the issue after that of Comic Kairakuten!]
[Do you believe in NTL?]
[I deeply admire the first Blondie.]
[Because doing that might get the police called.]
[Madam, after I investigate your family's information...]
[I will definitely come to discipline you.]
[One last thing.]
[My investigation is about to be completed.]
[Lover's Future]
[Job Transfer]
[School Bullying]
[High-Interest Loans]
[Living Apart]
[Seven-Year Itch]
[Class Reunion]
[Sexless Marriage]
[Bondage]
[Electric Toys]
[Widow]
[Childhood Friend]
[Time Stop]
[Transparent Man]
[I have said enough.]
[The housewife next door is alone today too~]
____
New Story: Junji Ito: I Shall Smash Hellstar Remina
✅ Read 40 chapters ahead of everyone else.
✅ Get cool exclusive stuff and updates!
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!
🚀140 MEMBERS = 5 extra chapters on all stories for supporters!
👻 P - Walnutchan