Chapter 10: Pissing Me Off!
Mikazuki Haruna stayed up until nearly midnight.
The desktop was covered with sheets of freshly completed manuscript paper.
From dinner until now, she hadn’t stopped for a moment, growing more and more excited as she drew.
Time was about up, so Haruna put down her pen.
Just then, there was a knock at the door.
“Young Lady, Madam asked me to remind you that it’s time to rest.”
“Got it, got it, Kazuko Aunt.” Haruna grabbed her tablet and walked to the room doorway, calling out to the person outside.
The footsteps outside faded away, and Haruna stretched lazily before pushing the door open and walking out.
Her house had three floors, with her parents living on the second floor, Kazuko Aunt as the family’s nanny living in a room on the first floor, and the third floor all to herself.
The room’s main entrance faced the bathroom directly, with hot water prepared at 8 o’clock and the bathtub kept warm the whole time.
Entering the bathroom, the entire space was divided into three sections, all separated by glass doors, so the humid heat from the bathtub side wouldn’t drift over to the sink area.
Mikazuki Haruna stood casually and stripped off her clothes, tossing them into the laundry basket.
Facing the mirror in front of her, Mikazuki Haruna’s corner of the mouth curved up slightly as she smiled at herself.
She then patted her slightly underdeveloped chest and muttered to herself, “Miyuki Haru Sensei’s work is about to go big.”
As she was sizing up her figure, the image of that passerby she met today inexplicably popped into her mind.
At the time, she had even introduced her manga to her and asked her to follow it.
But why was she thinking of her at a time like this?
Especially since that guy’s figure was better than hers…
She shook her head, shaking off the extraneous thoughts from her mind.
Mikazuki Haruna tied her hair into a bun, rinsed off under the shower, and then got directly into the bathtub to soak.
The hot water, pre-mixed with bath salts, gave off a pleasant aroma; soaking like this every day left her with a very natural fresh scent.
She covered half of the bathtub with its lid, propped up her tablet computer on it, and Mikazuki Haruna tapped the JUMP+ icon.
Seeing her work as the lead image, she nodded in satisfaction and clicked into it.
She flipped through page by page; she didn’t know how many times she’d read it, but it still left her wanting more.
Hurry up and add an update, author!
Oh, I’m the author, so that’s fine.
She hadn’t planned to linger on the page much, but Mikazuki Haruna’s eyes happened to catch the comment section at the bottom of the last page.
「Feels average, not as good as Chainsaw Man next door.」
Mikazuki Haruna’s eyes instantly widened.
What? How is there already a comment, and it’s a bad review no less.
Fine, a bad review is one thing, but what’s with the putting down competitors?!
Mikazuki Haruna clicked on that comment, but JUMP+ comments were all anonymous, so there was no way to know the other’s ID or any other information.
The only operation possible was clicking the 「Report」 button after the comment.
It would feedback the comment to the backend; once reports accumulated to a certain number and staff reviewed it as involving insults or such, it would be deleted.
Mikazuki Haruna clicked it hard.
But on the page, aside from the 「Report」 text changing to 「Reported」, there were no other changes.
Damn it!
She couldn’t even reply with a follow-up comment below.
So, Mikazuki Haruna posted in the comment section herself:
「What’s up with the person above? This manga is clearly really good!!! You’re Chainsaw Man’s author, right? Coming to someone else’s place to advertise and put down competitors, that’s too malicious!」
So infuriating!
Infuriated enough that her chest even got bigger!
She had to see just what this Chainsaw Man manga was about.
“Huh?” After clicking into the manga’s page, Mikazuki Haruna noticed the author’s name.
“Sakamoto Ken? Why that name?”
She hadn’t paid much attention to the small light-colored text below when she glanced at this manga before, but once on the page, the author’s name stood out a lot.
It was a completely ordinary name, but to Mikazuki Haruna, it meant something different.
In that dream, the author of this manga from her pen was Sakamoto Ken.
He wasn’t just the author of this manga; he was her… boyfriend.
Of course, things in dreams weren’t real; in reality, Mikazuki Haruna had met at least two Sakamoto Kens, and she knew of even more online.
For instance, the head of Itabashi Ward in Tokyo Metropolis was named Sakamoto Ken.
So, she had always thought that in that dream, her subconscious had just casually slapped an ordinary name that’s everywhere onto that man.
The manga’s first page loaded.
The male protagonist wearing an eyepatch on one eye was talking with a mascot that had a chainsaw growing from its forehead.
「Chopping trees, can make 60,000 a month I guess.」
「The kidney I sold before made 1.2 million…」
“Another broke person in debt opening? So cliché.”
“Ah? Balls… balls? You can sell those too?”
“What the heck!”
Mikazuki Haruna kept reading while complaining.
“But the mascot is cute, a little dog with a chainsaw on its head—kinda original.”
Flipping further, Mikazuki Haruna realized this was a manga with combat elements; the male protagonist actually used the mascot as a weapon.
Pretty interesting?
After just a few pages, Mikazuki Haruna found herself interested in this manga.
「Pochita, today’s food is just a slice of bread oh.」
It was a cliché broke person opening, but why did it inexplicably feel cute?
Next, she saw the plot of the male protagonist hugging Pochita and talking in his rundown shack.
「If my dream could come true, I’d want to hug a woman once before dying…」
“Such a poor little thing.” Mikazuki Haruna commented.
Flipping further, Mikazuki Haruna saw the flashback of how the male protagonist met Pochita.
But right after, the bad guys arrived.
The male protagonist was ambushed, hugging Pochita as he fled, but ultimately got surrounded.
Amid a flurry of blades, the male protagonist was dismembered and thrown into a dumpster; even Pochita was cleaved in half.
“Ah?”
Mikazuki Haruna was completely stunned.
What kind of development is this?!!
The male protagonist dies in the first chapter?
Twist! There must be a twist later!
Haruna sat up straight in the bathtub, her wet hands cradling the tablet computer, eyes glued to every storyboard on the screen.
When it hit the dying flashback sequence, her heart clenched.
Though she knew there was probably a twist coming, these pages had already fully built up the emotion.
Finally, Pochita began fusing with the male protagonist Denji, and he stood back up.
The male protagonist pulled the cord on his chest, chainsaws growing from his head and arms, counter-killing all the demons.
Standing atop a mountain of corpses and sea of blood, suddenly an embrace.
“The heroine makes her entrance!”
「You have two choices: be killed by me as a demon, or be raised by me as a human.」
「If raised, I’ll give you bait.」
“The heroine’s lines are pretty cool too.”
“Is it a living off a partner plot? The heroine keeping the male protagonist?”
The moment “keeping” crossed her mind, Mikazuki Haruna thought of that man’s figure again…
Come to think of it, in that weird dream, she had kept a guy too.
He was a broke person as well.
But he was handsome and good in bed.
Why did it feel so similar to this manga’s plot…
