When I awoke, there was an unfamiliar ceiling above me.
(Where am I? My head hurts so bad. My throat is throbbing. Iâm feeling exhausted.)
Itâs dark.
Even a faint flicker of light from an electrical appliance, much like the moonlight flowing through the curtains, is out of my sight.
(What time is it? Thatâs right. Phone, whereâs my phone?)
I reach out while laying on my back, looking for a light source and information.
However, it just grasped at the air with no response at all.
I had no choice but to raise my heavy body.
âUgh, ack!â
It took me by surprise.
I was suffocating, as if I had been stabbed in my throat.
Sure, my tonsils look swollen, but this is a different kind of discomfort.
I felt a chilly metallic roughness on my neck when I ran my hands down it.
(Is this a collar andăŒăŒchain?)
A donut-shaped choker around my neck.
The chain was connected to the back of the chokerâs neck and stretched further out to somewhere else.
(Iâm chained up. So that meansăŒăŒIâm being held captive?)
I got goosebumps the moment I realised this.
And this chill is most likely not caused by my health condition.
(Stay calm. Stay calm.)
Take a deep breath, and wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness.
A rectangular silhouette vaguely emerges in the bleak room.
(A Box?)
I crawled closer to the box, taking care of the length of the chain.
Fortunately, it appeared to be in the other direction of the chainâs end, and I was able to reach it without any difficulty.
Paper with a texture that is somewhere between smooth and gritty.
The box looks like cardboard.
Thereâs something on top of the cardboard.
A thin, flat board with a smooth texture.
Right next to it was a shorter stick that fit three fingers in comfortably.
It was an object that, no matter how dimly I saw it, I couldnât have mistaken it for anything else.
(LCD tablet! Now I can call for help!)
The LCD tablet, or liquid tab, is a familiar tool.
I donât need to look to locate the power supply.
The startup sound was awfully loud.
The screen lights up.
Itâs not connected to the Internet.
It was now 23:17, according to the time displayed on the screenâs edge.
The only application that was installed was illustration software.
(This is, indeed, my tablet. But how did it get hereăŒăŒ?ïŒ
Rustle, Rustle.
I was about to recall something when I heard a noise from outside the room.
Creakeee.
The door opens as soon as I turn around.
The lights in the room are turned on.
I closed my eyes reflexively to shield my eyes from the blinding light.
When I opened my eyes again, there was a high school girl standing in front of me.
I identified her as a high school student because she was dressed in a school uniform.
If it was just the uniform, she could be a junior high school girl, but there is no such line in terms of physical development.
She glances up at me as I watch her from below.
Barefoot.
The bottoms are short skirts.
As for top itâs a blazer and a shirt.
Her shirt was unbuttoned up to the second button, exposing her collarbone.
A black mask for the mouth, and fingernails.
She has a small face, and her eyes full of life.
Her hair was black and long enough to reach her waist.
Because of the mask, itâs difficult to say for sure, yet sheâs so attractive that the atmosphere tells you sheâs a beautiful girl.
So far, so good.
It can be summed up in a single sentence: âvery modern high school girl.â
She did, however, have something in her right hand that was obviously out of place for a high school girl.
A kitchen knife.
It is a typical all-purpose knife found in most houses.
Of course, a high school girl can have a knife.
If itâs a kitchen, you can count on a home-cooked meal made with love, and so on.
But itâs a different story when the knife is right under my nose.
And fortunately or unfortunately, I had seen her before.
(Yes. Iâm pretty sure Iâve met her beforeăŒăŒ)
As I gazed at her, I began to recall events from my memories.
â»â»â»
I was in a slump.
The work I was serializing at the time had been completed, and I needed to begin preparing for a new work.
However, the projectâs editor asked me to write a romantic comedy project, which I was not used to, because it was a selling point, and I couldnât think of any good ideas.
To escape reality, I spent my days drinking and smoking, and to top it all off, I was so stressed that I required sleeping pills to sleep.
Of course, in such a state of mind, it was impossible to come up with a good idea.
(Iâm pretty sure thatâs when I saw her.)
I remember now.
That was when I went to a bookstore to buy a manga book to use as a reference for my new project.
To be honest, it was also difficult for me to watch all of my peersâ active manga on the market. But I managed to endure it because the manga I went to buy was one that was selling so well that it was stupid to be jealous.
The manga I bought for work can be an expense.
I need a receipt for this, however my name is rather complicated when written and difficult for others to grasp just by saying it.
So I leaned over the checkout counter and wrote it myself.
And thatâs when I realized Iâd dropped my phone.
No, it appears that I dropped it.
Normally, I would think that if I dropped my phone, I would notice it by the sound, but at that moment I had no idea.
After all, I was always wearing earphones, rejecting the outside world, and even during the day, I was in a daze and lacked normal judgement.
Even in this situation, I can afford to receive a receipt, which I find selfish.
However, if youâve been self-employed for a long time, receiving receipts for your purchases becomes a habit that you almost instinctively follow.
Anyway, I dropped my phone and left the store without realizing it. So she, who was in line behind me at the time, picked up my phone and ran after me to hand it to me.
I was grateful for the kindness of the casual observer who had run so hard for me.
The image of her breathing on my shoulder at that moment is burned into my mind.
She was somehow different from the average high school girl.
High school girls are the strongest.
As a living organism, the body is at its peak, and as a human being, this is the last time we are allowed to dream endlessly.
The energy of life that pervades them even brings a sense of spirituality, and they just laugh, frolic, and exude an unbridled energy to their surroundings.
She, on the other hand, was the polar opposite.
She was beautiful, but her physic was not strong.
I donât feel like I have any mental space to ground it myself.
Weak and feeble, as if she would fly away if the wind blew.
She gave off the impression of being somewhat fragile and deviating from reality.
I probably said âIâm sorryâ or âthank youâ out of reflex, but if we did, it would have been a very short conversation, two or three words at most.
In any case, thatâs the only thing that connects me to her.
But of course, having a high school girl pick up my phone didnât change my life in the end.
I still couldnât give up drinking, I smoked more cigarettes, and my name kept getting rejected.
(What did I do after that? ăŒăŒThatâs right. I was so drunk that I decided to move out.)
Even with the help of all kinds of legal drugs, I finally couldnât come up with any ideas, and I began to think about moving out.
I wanted to escape from everything.
I should have run away to Hokkaido, Okinawa, or even overseas, but I didnât.
The poor side of me came out, wanting to stifle the price of moving. As a result, I decided to look for one in the vicinity.
I made the decision to move to a new place without considering the consequences. It was difficult to find the movers, in part because it coincided with the hectic spring moving season.
With no time to spare before I had to move out of my room, I decided to throw away all of my household goods. They were being so stingy with the moving costs and throwing away the home items, which seemed contradictory, but I was so furious that I didnât care.
Iâm not a religious person, but I was in the mood to declutter everything and get rid of evil.
The only exception to this was the LCD tablet.
I couldnât get rid of this one.
All of the other home appliances were cheap, but the LCD tablet was an expensive piece of equipment, costing more than 200,000 yen. Besides, the LCD tablet had become more of a part of me than an object, so throwing it was out of the question.
It was a miserable separation, but the positives soon became a reality.
For the first time in a long time, I was able to have a face-to-face meeting with my editor.
I was happy to see that lately Iâve been using e-mail exclusively for name exchanges, and even meetings over online calls have disappeared.
I was glad that they hadnât given up on me yet.
I left the room in high spirits and went to see the editor in charge.
Maybe itâll work this time.
I had such a premonition.
(Well, as it turns out, that premonition was just a misunderstanding.)
I was aware that the name had been rejected.
The editor in charge of my work expressed concern about me since I kept sending him names with incoherent contents and requested to meet with me in person.
We live in a time when weâre afraid to meet people.
The meeting was over in less than thirty minutes.
Iâll never forget the look in the eyes of the editor in charge who said, âDonât worry about the deadline for your name, so donât put too much root in it.â
That look of care and compassion was half of what you see when you look at a sick person.
At least, it wasnât the way he looked at a mangaka with a promising future.
I left the publisher early.
I felt awful when I left.
I was no longer confident that âmanga artistâ was the first thing that sprang to mind when describing who I am.
I had a feeling that âunemployed,â âself-proclaimed mangaka,â or âpsychoâ would be more appropriate.
âSickness begins with the mind,â as the saying goes.
My body began to weaken as though in response to my depressed mood.
I barely noticed a slight cold during the train ride. But, as soon as I stepped off the train at the next station, my health began to worsen dramatically.
I experienced heart palpitations by the time I left the ticket gate, and by the time I crossed the intersection, I had a headache and nausea. A severe sensation of exhaustion began to take over my body while I was just a hundred metres away from home.
I made it to the entrance of my new house while hobbling and clinging to the railings.
Then I slipped my hand in my pocket and tried to get my keys out of my walletăŒăŒand thatâs where the memory went blank.