Chapter Five: Time and Distance
The room quickly quieted down. Su Mingxi sat on the sofa, flipping through the manga manuscript page by page.
Su Qingxiao, meanwhile, had unknowingly come to stand behind her.
In the Xia Country version of five centimeters per second, the names of people and places would definitely be altered, and the timeline adjusted according to the plot.
And because Xia Jing was from Modu, the setting naturally shifted to Modu from over a decade ago.
As for things like the street where cherry blossoms fell and the railway tracks crossing the city, even if they didn't exist in reality, it didn't really matter. 90% of the schools, buildings, and streets that appear in manga actually don't exist in reality.
However, because Modu was indeed very large, and the historical background was suitable, Xia Jing actually found a similar sloped area with a railway at its end while researching in the library. It's just that there were no cherry blossoms on either side of the road in reality.
These scenes were recreated by Xia Jing in the manga... The manga began with a scene of a boy and a girl chasing each other up a slope.
Their dialogue unfolded.
"Do you know? It's said to be five centimeters per second."
"What?"
"The speed at which cherry blossom petals fall is five centimeters per second."
"Akari, you know so much," the boy said.
Su Qingxiao turned to the next manga page.
The cherry blossom rain sprinkled, passing through the gaps of the girl's outstretched fingers. She looked back at the boy, smiling softly.
"Hey, don't you think it's just like snow?"
Su Qingxiao's heart was a little... touched.
She was someone with a strong sense of immersion, and coincidentally, after the soul fusion, Xia Jing's manga art style also had that strong sense of immersion—beautiful, elegant, and the background compositions were full of atmosphere.
So, that's what the title five centimeters per second meant?
His manga dialogue was written with such profound imagery.
Su Qingxiao glanced at Xia Jing, who was drinking coffee with his head down nearby, and thought to herself.
Next, the manga plot got to the main point.
The boy and girl ran together to the end of the slope. The girl crossed the railway first, then the barrier beside the railway descended, separating the two on opposite sides of the barrier.
The girl held up her umbrella and looked back at the boy, smiling.
"Akari..." the boy called out.
"Takaki... How nice it would be if we could watch cherry blossoms together next year," the girl's face showed anticipation.
Then, a passing train moved by, blocking their view.
Su Mingxi's foot, which had been resting on her other leg, was now down. She sat up straight. At first, she had been reading the manga manuscript quickly, but now she went back and reread the previous few pages.
The five centimeters per second manga manuscript had over a hundred pages. The 'Cherry Blossom Chapter' and 'the astronaut' chapters, following the tradition of the Xia Country manga industry, could be divided into several chapters.
The final chapter, 'five centimeters per second', formed a single chapter on its own.
The entire manga consisted of five chapters.
There was no music, no voice acting.
There was only the sound of manga pages turning in the silent villa hall, and the increasingly heavy, then light, breathing of the two women as the manga's plot progressed.
It was impossible for Xia Jing to present all the scenes from the anime version of five centimeters per second in his previous life on black-and-white manga pages, but the sense of loneliness, solitude, and sadness that permeated the original work accumulated on page after page, eroding the hearts of Su Qingxiao and Su Mingxi.
Akari and Takaki, a girl and a boy who became best friends at school due to shared interests, thought they would go to school together and stay together forever.
But Akari, who had to transfer due to family reasons, gathered her courage the night before leaving and called Takaki, only to receive a negative response from her friend who had lost control of his emotions.
After her transfer, Takaki always remembered the harm he had caused Akari when she needed comfort the most. A year later, the boy and girl, through their exchanged letters, finally decided they wanted to meet again... Then, the idea was put into action.
The boy made a meticulous plan: the train route, transfer stations, and arrival time, all agreed upon with the girl in the story.
But... the train was delayed in the snowstorm.
In that era, information wasn't so developed. If the boy didn't arrive on time, Akari, waiting for him, would probably only think she had been stood up.
Especially with the weather being so cold... As the train stopped in the heavy snow, Takaki, tormented and even crying because he had long missed their appointed time, could only pray in his heart... "Please, Akari, don't wait any longer."
The sad emotions in the plot accumulated little by little, until... in the early hours of the morning, after being delayed for several hours, Takaki finally arrived at the agreed station, thinking Akari must have already gone home in this sub-zero weather. He pushed open the waiting room door... Su Mingxi turned to the next manga page.
Under the black and white lines, the situation in the waiting room was not very bright under the light of a kerosene lamp, but in the early hours of the morning, in that empty waiting room, the lonely figure of a girl with her head bowed immediately caught her eye.
An uncontrollable surge of emotion arose.
Akari, she was still waiting!
Su Qingxiao showed much more emotion than her sister. By this point, her nose was already red, but she felt it was too embarrassing to cry while reading someone else's manga, so she tried to act cool with a calm expression on her face.
She glanced at Xia Jing again, only to find him smiling back at her.
Xia Jing's smile slightly eased Su Qingxiao's heart.
Hmm, he seems like a very sunny young man. Although the story and art style make one feel lonely and sad, the ending should be good, she thought.
As she continued reading the subsequent manga pages, Akari had initially thought Takaki had broken their promise and not come, but she had waited bitterly until dawn with a glimmer of hope. When the boy finally arrived... Su Mingxi turned the page again, and as she looked at this next original manga page, the calm on her face vanished, replaced by a flicker of heartache in her eyes.
There was not a single line of dialogue in the manga. After Akari realized Takaki's arrival, her hand tightly clutched his sleeve, her head bowed so her face couldn't be seen. Not a single line of dialogue expressed her inner struggle from waiting from 8 PM until the early hours of the morning, or why she was reluctant to leave this waiting room and go home to rest.
But the few drops of tears falling on the back of her hand spoke volumes.
Su Mingxi gazed at this one manga page for a full two minutes, trying to calm her thoughts.
Subsequent in the plot: their walk on the street in the snow, their gentle kiss under the cherry blossom tree, their all-night chat in the abandoned wooden house by the roadside.
And then, their separation at the station the next morning, Takaki and Akari.
They wished each other well in front of the station.
Will they ever meet again?
Can their promise to watch cherry blossoms together next year still come true?
Su Mingxi continued to turn the pages, only to find that the first chapter of the story, 'Cherry Blossom Chapter', had ended.
The title of the second chapter was 'the astronaut'.
the astronaut?
Why this title?
Su Mingxi continued reading.
The story, from the perspective of Kayano, a high school girl from a seaside rural town, depicted the daily life of Takaki, the boy who transferred from the big city of Modu.
Her unrequited love, admiration, and secret crush on him.
Takaki always gazed into the distance alone, seemingly missing someone.
Takaki always seemed to be texting someone on an old phone.
Was he in contact with Akari?
Su Qingxiao thought this when she read that.
Then Kayano's bitter love would ultimately come to nothing.
In this chapter, because the perspective was with Kayano, the initial atmosphere of loneliness and sadness was not evident.
But it wasn't until the plot of 'the astronaut' chapter progressed to the latter half... that the narrative perspective switched to Takaki.
He and Akari had long since lost contact. The text messages he seemed to be sending to someone alone on his phone were only due to loneliness; in reality, all the edited messages were unsent, and he couldn't even find a recipient.
Takaki and Akari had completely lost contact.
Upon reading this, Su Qingxiao's heart trembled. She looked at the calm-faced Xia Jing, who noticed her gaze and smiled at her.
Hey, Xia Jing, what kind of development is this?
In the first chapter, Akari and Takaki clearly liked each other so much. How could they lose contact in just a few years?
Could a mere few hundred or thousand kilometers of distance block two people who truly love each other?
...