Chapter 30: Inviting You To Join The Group Chat
After returning home, Sakamoto Ken sat at the desk and prepared his drawing tools.
His mind was filled with a ton of inspiration; by staring at the manuscript paper, he could recreate the illustration, and now he was particularly motivated.
In actual drawing, he could complete about one page in half an hour, and simpler illustrations could be even faster.
From returning home until late at night, he finished the manuscript for Chapter 8.
Sakamoto Ken took the manuscript paper to a convenience store and scanned it with a coin-operated printer.
Today, he had made an appointment with Editor Kaji that whenever he finished a chapter, he would send it to her as soon as possible.
As for Shueisha, the editorial department’s office was still brightly lit.
There were a few writers who were used to rushing manuscripts at night, and their editors had adjusted their biological clocks accordingly, coming in every night to discuss the plot with him over the phone.
The entire editorial department had people around almost 24 hours a day because everyone’s work hours were mostly staggered.
Kaji Keiko rubbed her slightly sore eyes, took a sip of green tea beverage, and prepared to finish the last bit of work at hand before going home.
The featured work she was previously in charge of was canceled by JUMP, and now she only had some WEB manga on hand, urgently needing to launch her own weekly serialization work as soon as possible.
After sifting through a massive amount of new manuscripts for two or three months, she finally found the promising stock that was Sakamoto Sensei in the New Work Award submission library.
At that moment, a new email notification popped up in the bottom right corner of the computer screen.
Sender: Sakamoto Ken.
Email subject: 《Chainsaw Man》 Chapter 8.
“So fast?!”
They had just met in the afternoon, less than half a day later, and the new chapter was already done?
However, she had already witnessed his astonishing creation speed during the face-to-face meeting, so Kaji Keiko wasn’t particularly surprised.
She opened the scanned manuscript in the email attachment.
As expected, it was still in the 《Chainsaw Man》 style.
The quality hadn’t dropped at all; it even had more tension than the previous chapters.
Kaji Keiko checked the manuscript while marveling in admiration.
Suddenly, she remembered something.
She pulled open her drawer and took out from a file bag the few pencil drafts that Sakamoto Ken had casually drawn in the meeting room that afternoon.
At the time, Sakamoto Ken hadn’t taken those sheets of manuscript paper with him, and she had casually put them away.
“The content of Chapter 8 is this segment he drew in the afternoon, right?”
She muttered to herself, placed those few pencil drafts on the desk, and displayed the corresponding electronic draft pages from the computer side by side.
With just a rough glance, a thought made her heart skip a beat.
How could it be so similar?
No, it wasn’t just similar.
She zoomed in on the image of the electronic draft and carefully compared the lines on the pencil draft.
The characters’ outlines, the subtle details of expressions, the damage marks on the buildings in the background, the splattered blood droplets… everything was almost identical.
Kaji Keiko stood up, first printed out the manuscript Sakamoto Ken had sent, then took those few pencil drafts and quickly walked to the corner of the office.
There was a light table commonly used for hand-drawn animation production; editors occasionally had to review animation original drawings as well.
She first laid out flat the pencil drafts Sakamoto Ken had drawn that afternoon on the glass board, then placed the printed new manuscript on top.
She turned on the switch of the light table.
Bright white light lit up from below, penetrating through the two layers of manuscript paper.
Kaji Keiko furrowed her brows tightly and checked the manuscript paper on the light table bit by bit.
The line images on the two sheets of manuscript paper overlapped together.
It wasn’t similar, but… almost completely overlapping!
Whether it was the expression on protagonist Denji’s face, or every tooth on the chainsaw in his hand, even every scattered piece of gravel and glass shard in the background—the direction, curvature, and thickness of the lines all matched to a terrifying degree of consistency!
She was certain that these few pencil manuscripts in her hand were drawn on the spot by Sakamoto Ken while she watched; he hadn’t taken them home or taken photos.
This meant that without any reference, he had hand-drawn a perfect recreation of the illustration from a few hours ago.
Not a single discrepancy!
This precision could even be called a human printer, right?
This was beyond what the word “genius” could explain!
After the shock, Kaji Keiko couldn’t hide the joy on her face; she nearly laughed out loud.
This time, she had really found a treasure!
Although she hadn’t launched a featured work in months, it wasn’t to the point of being fired by the company.
But it would still feel embarrassing; watching colleagues around her chatting animatedly with the writers they handled, while she could only manage some marginal WEB work.
Kaji Keiko flipped through the manuscript page by page, holding a red pen for marking, but after looking over it several times, she couldn’t find a single place to make suggestions.
For a genius writer like this, just let him perform freely.
No need to burn brain cells with the writer considering the plot, no need to repeatedly pick out errors in the manuscript—every editor dreamed of this.
After organizing the manuscript, Kaji Keiko prepared to go home.
But just as she stood up, she saw in the frontmost spot a bald head blocked by manuscripts and books.
“Chief Editor?” Kaji Keiko hadn’t noticed anyone here earlier and greeted him in surprise as she passed by, “Chief Editor, still working?”
Ono Tomohiro lifted his head from a pile of resumes, pushed up his glasses, his face showing some fatigue.
“It’s Kaji…” He pointed to a stack of information on the desk and said, “Helping Miyuki Haru Sensei screen assistants; her requirements are really quite high.”
Ono Tomohiro picked up a sheet of original manuscript and handed it to Kaji Keiko: “Take a look at this; it’s Miyuki Haru Sensei’s new manuscript, just the line art for one page, but the drawing skill has clearly improved another level.”
Kaji Keiko took it and looked; indeed, the illustration was much more refined than the two chapters published before, especially in detail handling, almost impeccable, even the patterns on the stockings following the legs’ outlines to draw natural deformations.
For handling like this, ordinary writers would just blacken it directly or use toner sheets, but Miyuki Haru Sensei chose hand-drawn.
“To achieve this effect, she plans to offer assistants a daily wage of 30,000 yen,” Ono Tomohiro said.
“30,000?!” Kaji Keiko was a bit surprised, “Such high pay—even assistants for many well-known writers don’t get that, right?”
Ono Tomohiro chuckled and shook his head helplessly: “The young lady from a wealthy family wants to experience the fun of manga serialization; for her, money is probably just a number.”
He changed the subject, as if remembering something.
“By the way, today Miyuki Haru Sensei said she wants to meet Sakamoto Sensei and exchange ideas with him.” Ono Tomohiro looked at Kaji Keiko, “Give me Sakamoto Sensei’s email or LINE, and I’ll send it to her.”
Kaji Keiko was about to pull out her mobile phone upon hearing this, but then thought better of it and showed a troubled expression.
“Chief Editor, would this… be a bit inappropriate?” she said cautiously, “After all, personal contact information is Sakamoto Sensei’s privacy; giving it out without his consent…”
“Hmm…” Ono Tomohiro nodded too, “You’re right; I didn’t think it through.”
“Actually, there’s an even simpler way.” Kaji Keiko suggested, “Neither of them has joined our writer exchange group yet, right? We can just pull them both into the group and let them contact each other there.”
Ono Tomohiro nodded and said, “Good idea; let’s do that. I’ll pull in Miyuki Haru Sensei, and you pull in Sakamoto Sensei on your end.”
With that, he picked up his mobile phone and started operating.
……
In Mikazuki Haruna’s room, the lights were bright.
Several freshly completed refined drafts were neatly placed on the desk, but her mind was completely not on them.
That fleeting glimpse in the Shueisha corridor today replayed repeatedly in front of her eyes.
That side profile, that gaze, completely matched the image that had appeared countless times in her mind.
She irritably pushed away the manuscript paper and took out a sketchbook from the desk drawer.
Flipping open the book, the later consecutive pages were all sketches of the same person.
There was him looking down seriously creating, and also his side profile while sleeping.
Flipping to the later pages, the drawing style changed, and a sketch of a naked male body appeared.
This one she had drawn very meticulously, with every detail of the body depicted in fine detail.
Haruna’s fingertip lightly traced the abdominal muscle lines on the paper, her cheeks involuntarily flushing red.
She rubbed it gently, but unfortunately, the drawing paper was flat and couldn’t feel that solid texture.
At that moment, the mobile phone screen on the desk lit up.
She absentmindedly picked it up to look, and the screen showed a LINE notification.
「Ono Tomohiro invited you to join the group chat『JUMP Writer Exchange Group』.」
