"Nanamine-kun."
"..."
He tried again. "Nanamine-kun."
"..."
Now he was close to shouting. "Nanamine-kun! Are you listening to me?"
The aforementioned Nanamine-kun took off his hi-tech headphones connected to the desktop monitor that had happily replaced the darker laptop, and spun around in his customary revolving chair to face the seething face of his acquaintance. His brown hair was messier than before; he looked like he hadn't seen the sun in days, let alone gone outside. Nanamine scoffed at his editor in a mocking greeting, evidently annoyed – not quite unlike a normal teenager, Kosugi thought.
"What?" the aspiring author and artist replied curtly.
Kosugi tried to maintain his composure, in and out. Although this mangaka was supposedly a JUMP genius, potentially on the same level as Eiji when he was in high school, Kosugi couldn't help but feel that Nanamine embodied anything but. After discovering his true nature and the ongoing "war" with Ashirogi Muto – if you could call it that – and his rather rapid downfall, Kosugi had come to regard Nanamine Toru as extraordinarily cunning, yet incredibly idiotic for an eighteen-year-old. As far as he could see, his protégé had been chatting with his Internet "friends," just on the side of the screen that he was now covering.
Some people just don't change that easily.
"If it's about that name... I'm not finished with it yet, so could you come back later?" He spun back to his original position and clicked on a Rebecca Black song entitled "Friday." Immediately, it started playing throughout the computer-study room. Shaking his head at Nanamine's eccentric music tastes, Kosugi walked over to the desk that currently held the scattered pages of his manga. A quick scan revealed that these were the pages of a name that Nanamine hadn't handed in. What a liar.
Ah. But he still hasn't lost his motivation for drawing manga, even if he did only briefly after his utter defeat. That much was true; it was arguably the one and only part of Nanamine that Kosugi liked. He hated his guts, and Nanamine hated Kosugi's guts, and wouldn't that be a perfect, mutual relationship defined purely by hatred?
Yet, the Editorial Division of Weekly Shounen Jump continued to prod Kosugi to do better as an newbie editor, owing to the fact that the formerly popular "What is Required for a Good School Life" had now fallen as far as the nineteenth. Nineteenth. That constituted a part of the infamous Bottom Five. No, better (or worse) yet, the disastrous Dead Last.
If he doesn't step up his game soon, Kosugi may as well be fired...
Kosugi took yet another breath and slowly exhaled to calm his racing mind. No, this isn't over! The serialization meeting that would determine the future of "What is Required" – even if cancellation seemed like a looming, inevitable possibility – there was still a chance for this manga, however a tenth of a tenth of a tenth percent, and for this aspiring mangaka. There was so much that Nanamine Toru (Toru was his last name, wasn't it?) had to learn. His social skills, for example.
"Nanamine-kun." He began again, taking a seat next to the young author, who bore a striking appearance to a pretty galaxy boy who'd taken 2ch by a storm five years ago. Kosugi pointed at the scattered papers.
Nanamine's dull brown eyes marked by dark circles averted to these white rectangles, and he huffed a "huh" although the editor knew that he knew what was coming. "Oh, those? I was gonna throw them out 'cause they're trash. I just forgot." He made a motion to do so, but the determined Kosugi wasn't going to have it.
The teenager just sat there, bewildered and staring at his now reddened hand in the midair. "Eh... you promised me you wouldn't assault me anymore..."
"And you promised me that you wouldn't give up on manga either! And since when did I make that kind of promise?"
He blinked. Waving his editor's agitation away in a typical Nanamine manner, he assumed a superior air and huffily denied the claim. "I'm not giving up, stupid. I'm not that kind of person anymore! Hell, I'm not using the Internet for ideas–"
"Then why are you chatting? Look, you're even talking to them about your manga! Asking for info and such!" He stared daggers at the screen, which beeped orange with unanswered messages.
"Research! For the love of God, why are you acting this way? Real life doesn't work out like some stupid shounen manga! I thought that you were cool when you were a hot-blooded editor back then, but this is going too far!"
"Okay, maybe I went too far with that..." Kosugi admitted, his tone dropping significantly in volume. "But you didn't give me the name yesterday, even though you said you'd finished. And then you didn't return my call–"
"I just wanted to start over, okay?" The name was thrust at him. "Are you happy now?"
Picking up the few papers that fell to the ground, the editor adjusted his glasses for a better view and read through the first ten pages. "Besides, I'm actually kind of worried about you. You have a second job, right?" Kosugi said as he went along with the name, nodding every now and then.
The mangaka's hands almost slipped off the desk at the mention of that word. Then he coughed an unhealthy lot. "Oh look, someone really cares about me!" Nanamine said sarcastically. He leaned back on his trusty revolving chair that had survived the damage of his tantrum last month, in a "relaxing" pose. "I called my boss, said that I'm taking a few days of vacation. So it's fine."
"In reality, you're just worried because this is the last chapter before the serialization meeting next week. Recently your chapters have been getting ranked in the bottom half…"
He shot up from his "relaxing" pose and stared at his editor, who was still flipping through the pages at an alarmingly slow rate. "Why else?" the mangaka said. "Why else do you think I've been pulling all-nighters for the last few days? Why else haven't I gone outside in days? Why else do – …hey, why are you making that stupid face?"
Kosugi quickly altered his face.
"Why don't we have some assistants come in for overtime?" he went on. "Nothing too drastic, of course. If we can squeeze those nineteen pages into the last three days, including today, it'd be perfect."
"Wait, what does this have anything to do w–"
"The first thing that I'd like you to do is to change the ending, just as we discussed last week. The serious humor's not too bad, but do try to tone it down so that the story isn't totally lost. Otherwise, you really took my recommendations in mind and made this a stellar chapter." He looked up at long last, mirroring Nanamine's neutral expression. "You know, we still have eight more chapters left just in case of cancellation (even though it's definitely not going to happen so soon), so don't get too cocky."
Nanamine blinked. Then a private smirk made its way, slowly creeping onto his gaunt face.
"You're the one to talk," he allowed.