Kai had no choice but to sign an autograph for Arata.
He spent over ten minutes drawing Light Yagami on a piece of paper, then signed his own name in the bottom right corner.
Kai Fujin.
Below his name, after a moment's hesitation, he wrote something else: "Ryuji Kanzaki."
"What's this?" Arata asked curiously.
"This is the pen name I'll use in the future."
Kai's tone was complicated. Ryuji had been his real name in his previous life, and Kanzaki was his mother's surname.
"Sounds cool," Arata muttered.
"Yeah." Kai's mood was hard to place. After writing the date, April 19, 1997, he handed the signed drawing over. "Make sure to keep it safe."
Arata had originally figured it would just be a quick signature, but seeing how long Kai had worked on it and how good the drawing turned out, he decided to treasure it.
"I will." He nodded.
...
As soon as the weekend ended, the apartment manager contacted Kai. He'd already found several listings and was waiting for Kai to choose.
The man probably hadn't rested all weekend. He was really grinding hard.
Kai wasn't picky. He only looked at two apartments before deciding on his new place.
It was located in Oumi Town, Chiyoda Ward. A remote area, but it only took thirty minutes to get to Shueisha by train.
The surrounding area had everything he needed: a park, a clinic, and a small shopping district.
Dealing with an easygoing client was a pleasant experience, so the manager didn't try to gouge him and even knocked a bit off the rent on his own.
A two-story detached house, built only six or seven years ago, with a floor area of a hundred square meters and a thirty-square-meter front yard. Ninety thousand yen a month.
That wasn't an unreasonable figure.
But with the 270,000-yen deposit, the 30,000-yen "thank you" fee for the landlord, the 90,000-yen agency fee, plus management and cleaning costs, Kai had to hand over 500,000 yen in one shot when he signed the contract.
Fortunately, the prize money from the Tezuka Award had already come through. Otherwise, he never could have pulled that kind of money together.
After the manager left, the house was temporarily his.
He opened the front door wide, sat down on the clean veranda, and felt the breeze blow through. Part of him ached over the 500,000 yen that had just evaporated, but a deeper part of him felt nothing but relief.
After more than a year of scrambling, his life was finally back on track.
...
Returning home from work, Rin Tsukasa spotted a large furniture delivery truck parked at her doorstep.
The workers were struggling to haul furniture toward the house next door.
She glanced at the nameplate on the neighbor's door and noticed it had been changed from "Kurasu" to "Fujin."
Standing next to the workers and giving directions was a young man about her age. He had a gentle expression and looked easy to talk to.
Probably her new neighbor, Fujin-san.
She walked up and asked, "Um... do you need any help?"
Kai turned around and saw a beautiful woman dressed in office attire.
She had her hair pulled up in a high ponytail and looked sharp and capable.
But her face was strikingly young, which made Kai wonder if she was a high school student playing dress-up in adult clothes.
Her figure, though, told a different story. The pantyhose outlined her slender legs, which disappeared into a fitted short skirt.
She was a person of contradictions from head to toe.
"It's almost finished," Kai replied, then asked, "And you are?"
"Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself." She pointed to the house next door. "I'm Rin Tsukasa. Your neighbor."
"Ah, I see." Running into a friendly neighbor right away was a nice bit of luck. Kai thanked her with a small bow. "That's really kind of you. I'm Kai Fujin."
"Then I won't keep you any longer."
Tsukasa gave a slight bow and headed home, disappearing through her front door within Kai's line of sight.
"Once I'm done here, I should go say a proper hello."
...
Furuta was seeing Kai so often now that the initial excitement had faded.
Someone you ran into all the time couldn't bring the thrill of a long-awaited reunion.
They just nodded at each other in passing.
"The Death Note one-shot is going to be published in Akamaru Jump."
Heishi explained why he'd asked Kai to come to Shueisha today.
Akamaru Jump was a special issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, published only three times a year: during Golden Week, Obon, and the New Year period.
Japan's Golden Week fell at the end of April, and counting the days, it was almost here.
"The Editor-in-Chief is very optimistic about Death Note, especially after I told him about the plot for the first chapter of the serialization."
"But he's not fully sure how readers will take it."
"It is a unique manga, after all. If it rubs people the wrong way, it could bring negative attention to Shueisha."
"So we're going with Akamaru Jump."
"Akamaru Jump serves two purposes. First, it fills the gap when Weekly Shonen Jump is on break. Second, it publishes one-shots and uses reader survey results to determine whether a series should be serialized."
"Make sense, Fujin?"
Kai nodded.
It was a good thing, no matter how he looked at it.
"How much is the manuscript fee?" he asked.
"You really are..." Heishi was a little lost for words.
Most newcomers cared more about the prestige, but Kai's first question was about the money.
He answered anyway. "8,000 yen per black-and-white page."
"Forty-six black-and-white pages..." Kai did the math. That came out to 368,000 yen.
It wasn't a fortune, but it would keep him going for a while.
After buying the computer and furniture, his savings were running thin.
This was a lifeline.
"Fujin," Heishi said with a meaningful look, "if the results for Death Note are strong enough, then serialization will..."
As an editor, he couldn't make absolute promises. Better to leave it there.
"I understand." Kai nodded.
He handed over the storyboards for chapters two and three of Death Note that he'd brought with him.
"Please take a look."
"You really are reliable." Heishi took them and started reading.
After a while, having finished both chapters, he looked up at Kai with a complicated expression.
"You... you really are a monster."
Just a newcomer, and the plot was already this airtight.
As an editor, he actually had no room to intervene. All he could do was point out some issues with the artwork to justify his role.
"Thank you for the compliment."
Kai accepted the praise on behalf of the real creator of Death Note, Tsugumi Ohba.
Heishi didn't plan to formally accept the three chapters of storyboards just yet. He asked Kai to revise them a bit more.
Once the reader results for the Death Note one-shot came in, he would immediately submit the three chapters to the team leader for the serialization meeting.
Kai was getting closer and closer to serialization.
"By the way, Heishi-san. I've come up with a pen name. When the Death Note one-shot is published, please use the name 'Ryuji Kanzaki.'"
He wrote the characters for "Ryuji Kanzaki" on a piece of paper.
_______________________
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