Volume 1 - Prologue

Prologue

Translated by Valentin

Edited by Valentin

Prologue

When I awoke, there was an unfamiliar ceiling above me.

(Where am I? My head hurts so bad. My throat is throbbing. I’m feeling exhausted.)

It’s 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? That’s right. Phone, where’s 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.

“Ugh, ack!”

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 andーーchain?)

A donut-shaped choker around my neck.

The chain was connected to the back of the choker’s neck and stretched further out to somewhere else.

(I’m chained up. So that meansーーI’m 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 chain’s 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.

There’s 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 couldn’t 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 don’t need to look to locate the power supply.

The startup sound was awfully loud.

The screen lights up.

It’s not connected to the Internet.

It was now 23:17, according to the time displayed on the screen’s edge.

The only application that was installed was illustration software.

(This is, indeed, my tablet. But how did it get hereーー?）

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 it’s 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, it’s difficult to say for sure, yet she’s so attractive that the atmosphere tells you she’s a beautiful girl.

So far, so good.

It can be summed up in a single sentence: “very modern high school girl.”

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 it’s a kitchen, you can count on a home-cooked meal made with love, and so on.

But it’s a different story when the knife is right under my nose.

And fortunately or unfortunately, I had seen her before.

(Yes. I’m pretty sure I’ve met her beforeーー)

As I gazed at her, I began to recall events from my memories.

※※※

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 project’s editor asked me to write a romantic comedy project, which I was not used to, because it was a selling point, and I couldn’t 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.

(I’m pretty sure that’s 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 peers’ 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 that’s when I realized I’d 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 you’ve 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 don’t 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.

If I were to define her in one word, it would be a cliché: “unworldly.”

(At that time, what did we talk about?)

I don’t really remember all the details.

I probably said “I’m sorry” or “thank you” out of reflex, but if we did, it would have been a very short conversation, two or three words at most.

In any case, that’s the only thing that connects me to her.

But of course, having a high school girl pick up my phone didn’t change my life in the end.

I still couldn’t give up drinking, I smoked more cigarettes, and my name kept getting rejected.

(What did I do after that? ーーThat’s right. I was so drunk that I decided to move out.)

Even with the help of all kinds of legal drugs, I finally couldn’t 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 didn’t.

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 didn’t care.

I’m 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 couldn’t 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 I’ve been using e-mail exclusively for name exchanges, and even meetings over online calls have disappeared.

I was glad that they hadn’t given up on me yet.

I left the room in high spirits and went to see the editor in charge.

Maybe it’ll 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 we’re afraid to meet people.

The meeting was over in less than thirty minutes.

I’ll never forget the look in the eyes of the editor in charge who said, “Don’t worry about the deadline for your name, so don’t put too much root in it.”

That look of care and compassion was half of what you see when you look at a sick person.

At least, it wasn’t 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 “manga artist” was the first thing that sprang to mind when describing who I am.

I had a feeling that “unemployed,” “self-proclaimed mangaka,” or “psycho” would be more appropriate.

“Sickness begins with the mind,” 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 walletーーand that’s where the memory went blank.