Chapter 102.
Nishinomiya Shoko.
A gentle, quiet, hearing-impaired girl who faced the world with a smile, even when she was cruelly isolated and bullied.
Shijun was intimately familiar with the character.
A Silent Voice was part of the first batch of works he had published—alongside JoJo's Bizarre Adventure—after acquiring his own publishing house. Before the summer vacation, Maria had already arranged the logistics; all Shijun had to do was provide the manuscripts.
He had released it purely out of his own love for the medium. He didn't particularly care if it was a massive commercial success. As long as it made him happy, it was worth it. With enough capital, you could make the devil grind millstones, and with the heavy marketing push, both JoJo and A Silent Voice were currently selling exceptionally well in Japan.
The plot of A Silent Voice was relatively grounded, telling the story of the hearing-impaired Shoko and the boy who once tormented her, Shoya Ishida.
Right now, Erina was tightly clutching the first volume of that exact manga. However, Shijun completely failed to understand why the heiress was glaring at him with such intense, burning resentment.
"Do you have any conscience at all? Why did you force her to suffer so much?!"
Erina demanded angrily, her voice wavering with genuine indignation.
Shijun blinked in profound bewilderment.
Is this beautiful, elite chef seriously losing her mind over a manga plot?
He wasn't surprised she knew he was the author. The manuscripts he had pulled from the system were all published under the same distinct pseudonym: Kujo Jotaro. Given the publisher and the pen name, it didn't take a genius for Erina to connect the dots.
She had stayed up late reading the first volume over and over again. Watching the poor, defenseless Shoko transfer to a new school only to be relentlessly tormented by the male lead and her classmates had genuinely broken Erina's heart. She couldn't fathom how Shijun could effortlessly switch between two vastly different art styles, but that was irrelevant. She had stormed over here to demand answers from the sadistic author.
"Are you even human? How could a school like that exist in the real world?!"
Erina fumed, clearly deeply empathetic to the heroine's childhood suffering.
"Aren't you being a bit hypocritical?" Shijun sighed, crossing his arms. "Totsuki Academy is infinitely more ruthless and cruel than the school in that manga."
"..."
Erina froze.
"The things you've done to the other students—crushing their research societies, expelling them over minor flaws—are fundamentally the same as what the bullies did in the story."
Shijun pointed out reasonably.
"Why is it that you can dish it out in real life, but you can't accept the setting of a comic book?"
Faced with such a blunt, undeniable truth, Erina was instantly left speechless. His words hit the nail perfectly on the head. The educational policy at Totsuki was, objectively, a survival-of-the-fittest meat grinder.
"I... I was simply engaging in culinary exchanges with my peers!"
Erina stammered, stubbornly refusing to admit her Shokugeki purges were a form of bullying. Besides, she was too distracted by the art to stay mad.
"And whose fault is it for drawing the characters so beautifully that I actually care about them?"
Shijun rolled his eyes, deciding to ignore the tsundere heiress's blatant duplicity.
"Anyway, what about the rest of the story? You must have the upcoming drafts here, right?!"
Having vented her frustration, Erina finally revealed her true objective.
She was here to urge the author.
Because Shijun had rapidly produced the second and third parts of JoJo, she accurately guessed he was sitting on the rest of the A Silent Voice manuscripts. She had rushed over here entirely out of a desperate need to know what happened next.
What else was he supposed to do when a beautiful, tsundere heiress showed up at his door begging for spoilers?
Shijun turned and walked toward his bedroom to fetch the drafts.
Without a second thought, Erina immediately followed on his heels, entirely too consumed by her manga obsession to realize she was brazenly walking into a man's private bedroom.
The top floor of the house was essentially Shijun's private apartment, making the bedroom quite spacious. He crouched down and opened a bottom cabinet, searching for the original drafts.
Standing behind him, Erina's eyes widened. The cabinet was absolutely stuffed with towering stacks of paper. Some were highly detailed manga storyboards, while others were dense pages of novel manuscripts.
Are these all his?
Erina thought, her mind reeling. She had seen the quality of the two works he had already published. If everything in this cabinet was of the same caliber, it was terrifying.
He is a master chef, a possibility of a brilliant novelist, and a top-tier manga artist? Is there anything in this world he can't do?
Out of sheer curiosity, Erina squatted down beside him, trying to peek at the titles of the other manuscripts.
Just as she leaned in, Shijun found the correct folder and suddenly turned around.
Their faces ended up mere inches apart.
The atmosphere instantly shifted. There was no physical contact, but in such close proximity, Erina could see every sharp, resolute detail of Shijun's face. Her heart violently skipped a beat, and a furious blush instantly crept up her neck and cheeks. She couldn't explain why, but lately, she lost all her composure whenever she was this close to him.
Panicking, Erina hastily stood up, smoothing down her skirt and clearing her throat to regain her aristocratic dignity.
"Are these the follow-up drafts?" she asked, forcing her voice to remain serious.
Shijun, completely unfazed by her rapid face-changing routine, handed the folder over gently.
"You can read them, but stay here. Do not lose them."
These were the original, physical manuscripts. There was only one copy in the world. If Erina lost them, Shijun would weep. While he could technically redraw them from memory, recapturing the exact emotional charm of the original strokes would be agonizing.
Erina nodded solemnly. She had finally processed the fact that she was standing in his bedroom, but since he explicitly told her to "stay here." she wasn't about to argue.
I'm just reading a manga for a little while. It doesn't mean anything!
Erina comforted herself.
Understanding how precious the pages were, she gingerly sat down on the edge of his bed, treating the manuscripts like fragile artifacts, and was instantly sucked back into the story.
Shijun watched her for a moment, momentarily speechless. He knew she was a hardcore manga addict, but he hadn't expected her to completely abandon all sense of caution and casually make herself at home on his bed.
Shaking his head with an amused smile, completely unaware that Erina had taken his warning as a direct invitation to stay in his room, Shijun sat down at his desk and began idly surfing the internet.