The following morning.
6:00 AM.
Yumiko Oumi's eyes fluttered open. She woke in a heavy daze, her mind already drifting toward the familiar morning routine of breakfast and getting the kids ready for school.
"Honey..."
By habit, she reached over across the bed, expecting to feel Hiroshi's arm or the familiar warmth of his body. But her fingers found only cold fabric and empty air.
Yumiko forced her eyes open, blinking against the dim morning light. The mattress beside her was undisturbed.
"Hiroshi?"
She offered a tentative call into the stillness of the room. 'Did he get up early to use the restroom?'
But as her head cleared, she realized she didn't recall the bed shifting or the sound of the door opening during the night. Had he even come to bed at all?
A sudden, sharp wave of anxiety washed over her. 'Had Hiroshi actually spent the entire night away?'
She remembered him retreating into the study with his laptop right after dinner, claiming he had some urgent work to finalize. But Hiroshi wasn't the type to pull all-nighters; he valued his sleep almost as much as his family.
'Could it be...?'
Darker thoughts began to creep in. Hiroshi had been a model husband and father for years, never giving her a reason to doubt him. But a close friend's warning echoed in her mind: "The better they behave on the surface, the deeper the secrets they're usually hiding."
Yumiko had laughed it off as cynical gossip then. Now, staring at the empty space beside her, her composure began to fray.
She threw back the covers and stood up, reaching for her phone to demand an explanation. But as she gripped the device, she noticed a faint, warm glow spilling through the doorway of the study across the hall.
She froze, then moved silently toward the light.
Hiroshi was there.
A heavy sigh of relief escaped her, quickly followed by a fresh surge of concern.
Hiroshi was still fully dressed, slumped in his chair. He was staring blankly at the computer monitor, his eyes a map of broken, bloodshot veins.
"Honey... Hiroshi? Hiroshi!" Yumiko rushed into the room, place a hand on his shoulder to snap him out of the trance.
Hiroshi didn't even blink. He just stared at the screen, his voice coming out in a hollow, mechanical rasp. "It's all... meaningless."
"Thousands of years from now... it all ends."
"Morals... they don't matter."
"Identity... a lie."
"Faith... is just an empty box."
His entire frame shivered as he spoke, his breath coming in shallow, labored gasps.
In the silence of the room, it sounded like the rattling breath of a terminal patient,someone who had used up their very last reserve of life and was simply waiting for the end.
"Hiroshi, you're scaring me..."
Yumiko was on the verge of panic. She looked at the screen, trying to understand what could have broken him like this. It was a manga panel,a scene in a movie theater.
A man and a woman were smiling at each other in an empty audience. It looked warm, even beautiful.
'Could this really be it? A single manga panel did this to him?'
Yumiko drew a blank. She pushed the thought aside, focusing entirely on her husband, whose health was clearly spiraling toward a breakdown.
---
"Congratulations, Tsuruki-sensei! This week's rankings for The Divine Race held steady at rank four!"
Guderian's excited voice crackled through the phone.
"Thank you, Guderian-san."
Tsuruki Junsei allowed himself a small, satisfied smile as he hung up.
Even though The Divine Race hadn't moved up, he wasn't disappointed. The plot had slowed down after the high-octane "Dragon-Slaying" arc in Bronze City, so maintaining a top-five position was better than expected.
It proved that his reader base was solid. More importantly, it meant his current strategy was working.
He needed a new peak,a new climax that would break the internet.
However, Tsuruki realized something now: simply killing off minor characters with brief appearances wasn't enough. While it caused a stir, the impact didn't last.
To replicate the success of Edgerunners, he needed to follow the setup exactly. Characters like Maine or Dorio were given chapters of development, small details that made readers fall in love with them.
Then, when the hammer fell, the grief was a physical weight.
He couldn't just focus on the protagonist. He needed to build up the secondary cast for maximum emotional devastation.
Tsuruki sat at his desk, a new plan forming in his mind. He would pour all his focus into the auxiliary characters next.
"Alright... another major setup at the Academy."
He spoke the words aloud, his confidence returning. He would build them up, make them indispensable. As for the protagonist,well, he could remain a chronic underachiever for a while longer. It was safer that way.
Tsuruki finalized the outline for the next chapter before turning to look at the six volumes sitting on the corner of his desk.
Edgerunners.
He felt a complicated mix of admiration and contempt looking at them.
"What a shame. Chainsaw Man is just... disappointing," Tsuruki muttered with a sigh. "Was Edgerunners really your absolute peak, Aoyama? Now that you're at the top, have you already run out of ideas?"
He'd had high expectations for Chainsaw Man at the start. He'd even planned to study it for narrative tricks.
But the recent chapters felt... average. Mediocre.
The character designs were charming,Makima, in particular, hit all of Tsuruki's preferences for a mature, red-haired beauty,and the tension between her and Denji was great. But tension alone wouldn't be enough to beat The Divine Race.
His upcoming arc was going to be a non-stop chain of climaxes.
"If you keep going at this pace..."
Tsuruki looked at the cover of Edgerunners, almost as if he were challenging Aoyama directly.
"The next round is mine."
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
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Sorry for the late chapter, im editting all the error i can spot, anyway bonus 1 chapter across all the fics i translated, also if u found an error i skipped, please do tell, ill fix it asap or next week!