The second chapter of "Fate/stay night" immediately followed the end of the first chapter. Emiya Shirou realized his existence had been discovered and began to flee, engaging in a tense chase with the spear-wielding man.
In this chase, Akira focused on Emiya Shirou's perspective, incorporating elements of horror movies to emphasize Lancer's power and the sense of oppression.
During this process, Emiya Shirou also displayed his own supernatural abilities, leading readers to believe for a moment that the protagonist had the ability to fight against the spear-wielding man.
But in the end, the spear-wielding man casually pierced the protagonist's heart, bloodily revealing the huge gap in strength between the two sides.
"Tch, a tiresome job."
"To be called a hero like this, how ridiculous."
After killing Emiya Shirou, the spear-wielding man's self-deprecating words revealed a lot of information, especially the word 'hero' from his mouth, which was very thought-provoking.
Finally, as the spear-wielding man left, the scene froze on Emiya Shirou's corpse lying in a pool of blood, and Tohsaka Rin walking out of the shadows with an expression of disbelief on her face.
"Why, why did it have to be you...!"
...
The content of Chapter 2, as expected, sparked a discussion online.
Whether it was the death of the protagonist Emiya Shirou, the words of the spear-wielding man, or the sudden appearance of Tohsaka Rin at the end, all had plenty of topicality.
"The protagonist died in Chapter 2, is he going to turn into a ghost next?"
"YuYu Hakusho? Yusuke even died in Chapter 1."
"Is this really a newcomer? Daring to draw like this right from the start?"
"Why did Rin appear there? And she seems to know something."
"Greek Milk."
...
...
However, in the 32nd issue of "Weekly Shonen Jump" this week, there was another equally remarkable thing —
That was the serialization of "The Prince of Tennis".
Not to mention the content, the rare situation of having a new serialization in Shonen Jump for two consecutive weeks was enough to cause discussion.
But conversely, for the work "The Prince of Tennis" itself, the response on the internet was not as enthusiastic as FSN.
Akira roughly looked at the comments online and found two reasons:
One is because of the subject matter;
Before "The Prince of Tennis", the most famous tennis manga was a shoujo manga called "Aim for the Ace!", but there were no famous works in the shonen manga field.
Therefore, many people had some doubts about the manga "The Prince of Tennis";
The second is because of the name of "The Prince of Tennis".
Although Shonen Jump has many female readers, there are more male readers, and the positioning of Shonen Jump itself is more inclined towards the male market.
And because "The Prince of Tennis" contains the word 'prince', many people thought it might be a manga aimed at women, so they didn't read it at all.
Uh...
Akira just felt that the other party was a bit wronged, but after thinking about it, it didn't seem to be very wronged.
At least in his impression, "The Prince of Tennis" was indeed more popular with women, and there were countless boys' love fan fictions about many of its main characters.
Then it's fine.
After paying a little attention to the situation of the manga and finishing the line art for the latest chapter of FSN, he continued to devote the rest of his time to music creation.
Thus, time unknowingly arrived at the day when the results for shōsei came out.
However, this time, the voice of Hisashi on the other end of the phone sounded a bit regretful:
"This week "Fate/stay night" is second place, a bit of a pity."
"Second place is pretty good, isn't it?"
Akira asked a bit strangely:
"Is Mr. Sasaki's ambition so strong?"
I'm the one who wants to ask why you, as a newcomer, don't seem to have any ambition at all.
Hisashi couldn't help but complain in his heart, but on the surface, he answered helplessly:
"It's not that."
"But if it hadn't just happened to coincide with the end of the arc of "One Piece" this week, "Fate/stay night" would still have had a chance to get first place."
This is where he felt it was a pity.
This week, "One Piece" was serialized to chapter 95, where the Straw Hat crew defeated the villain Arlong and Colonel Mouse in the previous chapter, liberating Nami's hometown.
And in this chapter, Nami officially joined the Straw Hat Pirates and waved goodbye to her relatives in her hometown.
The Arlong Park arc was highly acclaimed during its serialization, and as the perfect conclusion to the Arlong Park arc, Chapter 95 naturally gained the support of countless readers, easily sending "One Piece" to the first place.
"Is that so?"
Hearing Hisashi say this, Akira laughed instead:
"But I think it's more acceptable to lose this way, after all, the other party deserves it."
"Well, that's indeed true..."
Although the logic is sound, Hisashi always felt it was a bit subtle.
Generally speaking, shouldn't the Manga Artist feel unwilling about the ranking, and then he would be the one to encourage or comfort the other party?
Forget it.
As long as it is something related to Akira, past common sense seems never to work.
He was almost getting used to it.
"By the way,"
At this time, Akira remembered something and asked curiously:
"Does Mr. Sasaki know what the ranking of "The Prince of Tennis" is?"
"The Prince of Tennis" is ranked 5th."
Hisashi smiled:
"After all, it's a niche subject, this ranking is still within expectations."
In addition, 3rd and 4th place are "Shaman King" and "Yu-Gi-Oh!" respectively. Both of them had exciting battle episodes this week, so their rankings surpassed "The Prince of Tennis".
"And by the standards of a new Manga Artist, if the long-term ranking of the manga can be stable in the top 10, that is already a very good result."
However, having said that, Akira certainly cannot be treated by the standards of a conventional new Manga Artist.
After confirming the ranking for shōsei, the matters regarding the manga for this week came to a temporary end.
On the song side, the melody and lyrics for the two songs were finally completed, and now he needed the help of Rin.
...
"You mean, you wrote two songs?"
Rin asked uncertainly:
"Just in this period of time?"
"Yes."
Akira was too lazy to pretend, anyway, cheating isn't really cheating.
He nodded as usual, smiled, and handed the two scores in his hand to the other party:
"Anyway, take a look first."
He was most confident in the quality of "Snow Flower", so when he handed the score to Rin, he played a little trick and put "Marigold" on the top, wanting to see the other party's reaction first.
Rin didn't notice anything, took the score, and naturally started reading from the first one.
"Marigold"?
She didn't know much about flowers, so she didn't know what kind of flower this was, nor did she understand why Akira would use it as the song title.
However, she buried this doubt in her heart for the time being, continued to look at the melody and lyrics part, and silently sang along in her heart, her eyes gradually lighting up.
This song...!
She suddenly raised her head to look at Akira, her tone urgent:
"Let me try singing it once!"