Ayumi Ito had just descended to the restaurant located right next to the company's office building. Since it was still normal working hours, this fast-food chain restaurant barely had any customers inside yet.
There were only three or four diners quietly eating their meals: a young couple wearing matching outfits, a balding middle-aged man in a cheap business suit, and a strikingly handsome young man with slightly messy hair.
But all of them had already ordered their fast-food meals and were actively eating. Surely none of them could be Aoyama-sensei, who had specifically asked Ayumi to treat him to a meal.
It seemed Aoyama-sensei hadn't arrived yet.
However, there were still a few minutes left before their previously agreed-upon meeting time, so waiting a little while longer wasn't an issue.
Ayumi was just about to find an empty seat to sit down and quietly wait for Hayashi Aoyama's arrival.
But right at that moment, the handsome young man sitting not too far away suddenly waved an enthusiastic hand at her. "Are you Ito-san?"
Ayumi froze for a second. "Uh... I am..."
Ever since she moved to The Metropolis for work, this was the absolute first time she had heard someone address her using the traditional naming customs of her hometown in Japan.
A bright, joyful smile bloomed on Hayashi's face. "You finally made it... oh, by the way, I'm Hayashi Aoyama!"
"You're... Aoyama-sensei?!" Ayumi blinked repeatedly, her voice filled with sheer astonishment.
"Yeah... I am..." Hayashi awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed.
...
Ayumi stared closely at the handsome young man with slightly long, messy hair sitting across from her. She still couldn't quite bring herself to believe it.
After all, even though the manga industry didn't strictly discriminate based on age, the harsh reality was that the vast majority of successful mangaka only reached serialization after years of agonizingly grinding out life experience and honing their craft.
This was especially true in the Japan region. Over there, most mangaka almost never debuted with their own original works right out of the gate. They inevitably started from the absolute bottom as assistants to established, veteran manga artists.
And even if a mangaka miraculously managed to debut with an original serialization right away, the overwhelming majority of those debut works crash-landed and ended in utter failure.
But regardless of all that, it was an undeniable fact that Hayashi Aoyama had submitted his manuscript to Manga World Publishers strictly as a completely unknown, rookie mangaka.
So wasn't it perfectly normal for him to be on the younger side?
Yet, when Ayumi looked back at the wildly mature, gritty art style of 'Edgerunners,' alongside its breathtaking storyboarding that practically rivaled a high-budget anime production, she had subconsciously convinced herself that Hayashi Aoyama had to be a much older, incredibly experienced newcomer.
But looking at him now...
The young man's hair was somewhat messy and unkempt, but it was incredibly thick, dark, and glossy. Sitting just beneath his messy bangs were a pair of strikingly bright, slender eyes, accompanied by a sharp jawline that formed a perfect, clean 'V' shape. This youthful physique and boundless energy clearly belonged to a young man who was practically the exact same age as Ayumi herself!
"Is something wrong?" Hayashi asked through a muffled voice, happily slurping down a massive mouthful of cheap noodles with a look of pure, unadulterated bliss on his face.
Ayumi hurriedly shook her head. "No, it's nothing. However... Aoyama-sensei, do you want to order anything else to eat? I still have some money on me. I can easily treat you to something a lot better than plain vegetable ramen."
Before she had even arrived at the restaurant, Hayashi had already boldly ordered a bowl of cheap vegetable noodles, greedily eating his fill while shamelessly waiting for her to arrive and foot the upcoming bill.
On the surface, it sounded incredibly rude and presumptuous. But if you were going to call him rude... his grand, demanding meal was literally the cheapest, saddest bowl of vegetable noodles on the fast-food menu...
Ayumi couldn't help but feel that Hayashi Aoyama was an incredibly hard man to read.
Hayashi fiercely gulped down the last few drops of the vegetable noodle soup, loudly smacking his lips in complete satisfaction.
Only then did he casually reply, completely devoid of any shame, "It's fine. Having a hot bowl of vegetable noodles is more than enough to completely satisfy me. Besides, you're the one generously treating me to this meal, right? I can't be too greedy and take advantage of you. Plus, I'm already completely full anyway."
Hayashi had always been incredibly grounded and self-aware. He absolutely refused to abuse someone else's generosity and extravagantly squander their hard-earned money just because they offered to pay.
Furthermore, looking closely at the Japanese girl sitting across from him, it was obvious she was part of the 'Magic Drifter' crowd. Surviving in The Metropolis wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly couldn't have been easy for her to travel thousands of miles away from home to work here. Letting her buy him a cheap bowl of noodles to fill his starving stomach was more than enough.
Honestly speaking, he had been violently starving for so long that even this cheap bowl of plain vegetable noodles tasted like a genuinely exquisite, five-star delicacy.
"Well... alright then," Ayumi conceded. "In that case, shall we officially discuss the commercial serialization of 'Edgerunners'?"
Hayashi nodded firmly. "No problem."
"Aoyama-sensei, did you bring your original manga drafts and your formal ID card with you?" Ayumi asked professionally.
"Right here." Hayashi casually pulled a manila file folder from the seat beside him, followed by digging out his plastic ID card.
Ayumi's eyes instinctively drifted toward the ID card first.
Hayashi Aoyama, age 25...
He was literally only two years older than her...
She then respectfully pulled out the original manga drafts, but...
Unlike the incredibly messy, chaotic scribbles typical of real original drafts, Hayashi's pages had a jarringly high level of polish. Just looking at them, it didn't feel like she was looking at raw drafts at all.
Generally speaking, a 'draft' or 'name' was the initial rough sketch a mangaka drew when actively mapping out the chapter's plot and panel layout.
Mangaka almost never wasted significant time or effort on these initial sketches. The characters were usually drawn as incredibly chaotic, hasty scribbles. Sometimes, they were literally just blank mannequins or even primitive stick figures. As for the backgrounds, they would often just violently draw a massive circle and quickly jot down a messy note saying 'Draw a building here.'
But Hayashi Aoyama's "drafts" featured hyper-detailed, highly completed character portraits and breathtakingly complex backgrounds. It was only when Ayumi meticulously cross-referenced them with the finalized 'Edgerunners' manuscript burned into her memory that she noticed the incredibly minute differences between the two.
This terrifyingly high baseline of quality was entirely thanks to Hayashi's Master-level 'Drawing Kaleidoscope' ability, which inherently ensured that even his most casual, throwaway sketches possessed a jaw-dropping level of completion.
And there was another glaring reason... He wasn't actually a formally trained, orthodox mangaka. In reality, he didn't even completely understand what the hell a 'draft' actually was. In his stubbornly straightforward mind, there were only manga pages that were drawn 'well' and manga pages that were drawn 'poorly and needed to be redrawn.'
These highly detailed "drafts" were simply the initial pages he felt he hadn't drawn perfectly enough.
The second Ayumi laid her eyes on these drafts, she was internally one hundred percent certain that Hayashi Aoyama was the undeniable creator of 'Edgerunners.'
But her heart skipped a beat when she finished flipping through the first dozen pages of the "draft" and turned to the next section.
"Are these... the drafts for Chapter 4 of 'Edgerunners'?" Ayumi asked, her eyes widening in surprise.
"Yeah. I actually brought along the completed drafts for Chapters 4, 5, and 6," Hayashi casually shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't actually bring that many drafts with me."
Ayumi's eyes instantly lit up entirely. "In that case, Aoyama-sensei, if you don't mind me asking, how many chapters of the story have you already finished drafting?"
"Oh, I'm already done drawing up to Chapter 23," Hayashi answered without missing a beat as if discussing the weather.
Ayumi's heart lurched violently in momentary panic. "Sensei, the core requirement for our Newcomer Grand Prix dictates submissions must be medium-to-long serialized works... Aoyama-sensei, please don't tell me you..."
"I know all about that." Hayashi waved a dismissive hand, speaking with complete confidence. "Don't worry about it. 'Edgerunners' is strictly planned to conclude entirely in exactly 40 chapters."
Because the original 'Edgerunners' anime was only ten episodes long, and one standard anime episode typically adapted roughly two to three manga chapters, reverse-engineering the anime back into a manga meant the core story would span a maximum of about thirty chapters.
However, the 'Edgerunners' anime was fundamentally an adaptation heavily reliant on a pre-existing video game. Its primary target audience consisted almost entirely of dedicated players who had already sunk dozens of hours into the 'Cyberpunk 2077' game. Therefore, the anime aggressively skipped wasting precious screen time heavily explaining its intricate world-building and background lore.
But in this parallel world, the 'Cyberpunk 2077' video game literally did not exist. He absolutely had to seamlessly integrate and fiercely explain the story's complex background, the shifting power dynamics of the various mega-corporations, and the gritty, underlying mechanics of the world!
That was the exact reason why Hayashi had deliberately expanded the very first chapter by meticulously adapting scenes directly from the iconic 'Cyberpunk 2077' promotional trailers. It served as a crucial, immersive introduction to the brutal background lore of 'Cyberpunk 2077.'
Later on in the story, he continued to smoothly integrate necessary explanations for Illegal Braindances, the strict definitions and classifications of Cybernetic Implants, as well as the sprawling, labyrinthine factions and district divisions of Night City itself. Taking all of that crucial world-building into account, the entire definitive run would wrap up perfectly in roughly 40 chapters.
"23 chapters already?!" Ayumi was absolutely floored by his monstrous output speed. "Then, Aoyama-sensei, how exactly do you plan out the remainder of the plot?"
"Oh, that's simple. It's the classic tale of the protagonist forcefully implanting a powerful cybernetic, joining an underground gang, meeting the main heroine, violently forging strong bonds with his crew, and eventually fighting his way straight to the absolute peak of life," Hayashi wildly summarized with casual ease.
"Just as I expected! The protagonist is going to violently clash and forge deep bonds with an amazing crew of companions!" Ayumi fiercely nodded her head in total satisfaction.
"In that case, let's officially proceed with signing the serialization contract. According to our standard company procedures, since Aoyama-sensei is making his official debut through this Newcomer Grand Prix, your work will be formally serialized in our 'Manga World GoGo' magazine. It is a bi-weekly publication, meaning one chapter will be heavily serialized every two weeks. At the exact same time, based on the series' ongoing popularity and the total number of reader votes, it will actively compete in both the Newcomer Grand Prix and against all other concurrently running serializations..."
"Regarding the manuscript compensation, the absolute highest rate we can offer a debuting newcomer sensei is 400 yen per submitted page. Assuming, Sensei, that you serialize two full chapters a month, that comes out to roughly 30 to 40 pages a month..."
(End of Chapter)
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
T/N: The Metropolis (魔都) - A collective name for the metropolitan area.
T/N: Name (ネーム/Draft) - The extremely rough, primitive storyboard layout a mangaka draws to establish a manga chapter's dialogue, panel progression, and overall pacing before drawing the final, polished ink version.
T/N: Braindance (BD) - In the Cyberpunk setting, these are highly immersive virtual reality recordings that allow a user to directly experience another person's recorded emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations. Black market versions (Illegal Braindances or "XBDs") often feature extreme, traumatic, or explicitly illegal content.