Chapter 147: Half Of An 18-year-old Boy Is A Pervert
Sakamoto Ken buried his head in drawing the storyboard draft; the storyboard for chapter 33 was nearly complete.
At that moment, the studio’s doorbell rang.
Kaji Keiko hurriedly stood up and walked over to open the door.
“Coming, coming.”
She arrived at the doorway and saw the screen of the smart door lock, which showed two familiar girls.
Kaji Keiko opened the room door and saw Natsume Mio and Mikazuki Haruna.
“Mio-chan, Miyuki Haru Sensei, you’re back.” Kaji Keiko smiled and stepped aside to let them in.
As soon as Mikazuki Haruna entered, she saw Sakamoto Ken and immediately puffed up her cheeks, glaring at him.
Natsume Mio, on the other hand, wasn’t like that. She first politely nodded to everyone in the studio before walking to Sakamoto Ken’s desk.
“A Jian, you’re finally back. Where did you go today?”
Natsume Mio’s voice was very gentle, but Sakamoto Ken still detected a faint tone of questioning in it.
He didn’t stop the pen in his hand and just faintly replied: “Went out for a stroll to find inspiration.”
“Find inspiration?” Natsume Mio’s pitch rose slightly. “Where did you go? And why didn’t you reply to my messages?”
“Huh?”
Only then did Sakamoto Ken put down his pen, pick up the mobile phone on the desk, open the chat interface with Natsume Mio, and the seven messages there all turned to read status at once.
“Sorry, sorry. You know, I usually have it set to silent mode.” He put down the mobile phone and said, “It’s normal to occasionally miss checking messages.”
Sakamoto Ken had long prepared this excuse; actually, he didn’t even need to think about it because he had used it many times in the previous life.
“Right, today I mainly ran into a reader who recognized me.” Sakamoto Ken added, “We chatted a bit, and I even brought them to visit the studio.”
“A reader?” Natsume Mio and Mikazuki Haruna said almost simultaneously, full of doubt.
“Have you reached the point now where people recognize you outside?” Mikazuki Haruna pouted, her tone full of sourness. “I’ve never been recognized.”
Sakamoto Ken shrugged and said: “Maybe because your manga’s popularity isn’t as high as mine.”
“Tch!” Mikazuki Haruna was precisely hit in her sore spot. She huffed in dissatisfaction. “Just you wait. I’ll definitely surpass you someday!”
Natsume Mio ignored the popularity contest between Haruna and Sakamoto Ken; she was more concerned about another issue.
“That reader just came for a visit and left?” she probed.
“Of course.” Sakamoto Ken answered straightforwardly.
“Right!” Mikazuki Haruna suddenly remembered a key issue. “How could you casually tell a reader the studio’s address? What if it gets spread around?”
Mikazuki Haruna’s interruption directly disrupted Natsume Mio’s train of thought.
Upon hearing this, Natsume Mio hurriedly said: “Exactly! A Jian, that’s too dangerous! What if some extreme reader comes to harass us?”
“Don’t worry, it won’t happen.” Sakamoto Ken waved his hand and said, “I read people well; otherwise, I wouldn’t have brought them.”
Natsume Mio still wasn’t reassured. She turned to look at Kaji Keiko.
“Kaji!” She directly asked the key question. “That reader… you saw them, right? Was it a guy or a girl?”
As soon as this question was asked, the studio instantly fell silent.
Ryū Kōshin and the other two, though keeping their mouths shut, simultaneously slowed their inking actions and quietly perked up their ears.
Kaji Keiko was stunned by the question. She looked at Sakamoto Ken, then at the nervous Natsume Mio and Mikazuki Haruna, and showed a somewhat troubled smile.
“That… was…” Kaji Keiko dragged out the end of her sentence.
“A girl.”
Sakamoto Ken answered very decisively.
“A female reader?!”
This time, Natsume Mio and Mikazuki Haruna’s voices overlapped, their pitches both rising a few notches.
Natsume Mio stepped forward, staring tightly at Sakamoto Ken: “A Jian! You… you didn’t bring her here just because she was a female reader, did you!”
Sakamoto Ken leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, pretending to ponder for two seconds.
“Hmm… you’re right.” He nodded. “If it wasn’t a female reader, I wouldn’t have chatted so much; at most, I’d just say hi and leave…”
“You—?!”
Natsume Mio was so angry she was momentarily speechless.
“Hey, hey, you guy, you’re not hitting on that female reader or something, are you?!” Mikazuki Haruna also frowned, scrutinizing him with a gaze.
The two girls exchanged another glance; this time, their eyes both showed an “I knew it” expression.
“They say half of an eighteen-year-old boy is a pervert…” Mikazuki Haruna muttered softly.
“I think A Jian is exactly that!” Natsume Mio immediately followed up.
Sakamoto Ken shook his head and said in an extremely innocent tone: “For an eighteen-year-old boy to keep half of himself from being a pervert is already quite impressive.”
Natsume Mio: “…”
Mikazuki Haruna: “…”
Natsume Mio and Mikazuki Haruna were directly stumped by Sakamoto Ken’s words.
Meanwhile, Endo Tatsuya and the other two were desperately holding back laughter; Ryū Kōshin even quickly pulled out a small notebook from his crossbody bag and jotted down that line from earlier.
As expected of Sakamoto Sensei!
A model for us all!
“Ahem…”
Natsume Mio coughed heavily twice; she felt her cheeks heating up from anger.
All the way back just now, she had been mentally rehearsing how to question A Jian.
But now, her plan was completely disrupted.
She took a deep breath and forcibly pulled the topic back to her prepared track.
“Wait, wait!” Natsume Mio waved her hands repeatedly. “A Jian, actually I wanted to ask you about something else.”
“Hm?” Sakamoto Ken looked at her doubtfully.
Natsume Mio pursed her lips, pulled out her mobile phone from her pocket, and opened the photo album.
She opened a photo and held it up in front of Sakamoto Ken.
“Do you know where this is?”
The photo showed an ordinary-looking civic park, with a high-rise apartment building in the background.
The instant Sakamoto Ken saw the photo, his pupils contracted sharply, but he immediately returned to normal.
The photo was of the civic park downstairs from Hoshihara Ai’s apartment building.
He had just been in the dream with Hoshihara Ai on a bench in that park… doing an experiment.
Sakamoto Ken’s mind surged with waves, but he barely maintained a calm expression.
How did Natsume Mio have a photo from here?
Did she go there specially today?
Makes sense… She did appear in that dream, though she disappeared for some reason soon after, but she must have seen something.
No problem, it’s not a big deal; it was just a dream.
“A civic park.” Sakamoto Ken answered in a calm tone.
“A Jian,” Natsume Mio stared tightly into his eyes, “have you been there?”
Sakamoto Ken was about to answer when Mikazuki Haruna curiously leaned over from the side.
“Isn’t this the place we went to earlier? I even asked why you were taking photos in such a boring spot…” Mikazuki Haruna said.
She had been with Natsume Mio the whole time today; when asked, she wouldn’t say, and kept complaining about not waking her up—even one minute later would have been fine…
“Civic parks like this all look pretty much the same.” Sakamoto Ken said. “I can’t tell… why are you asking this?”
“I…”
Natsume Mio opened her mouth but didn’t know how to bring it up.
She couldn’t exactly say in front of everyone that she had a dream where A Jian and some woman whose face she couldn’t see clearly were, in broad daylight, on a bench in this park…
That would be too ridiculous!
And…
Damn it! Why did she dream of him with another woman!
Even in a dream, why couldn’t it be her and A Jian on a bench, or anywhere else…
The more Natsume Mio thought, the angrier she got. She glared fiercely at Sakamoto Ken and glanced at the oblivious Mikazuki Haruna beside her.
Tch, forget it, you wouldn’t even have seen it!
