However, what Chōji could understand, Hikaru in the manga also naturally understood.
Hikaru was very clear that Akira wanted to play against Sai, not him.
And Hikaru no longer wanted others to mistake Sai's strength as his own, so he only looked at Akira with a serious expression.
Petals from the first-floor utility room drifted through the window.
"Akira, I don't want to play Go with you anymore."
Chōji turned the page and saw this line spoken by Hikaru.
In the manga, Akira's expression instantly became flustered and helpless.
"You don't want to play Go with me. Hikaru, what does that mean?"
"I want to stay here and work hard with Tsutsui to win this year's Go team competition, so the club can finally be recognized by the school."
After saying that, Hikaru closed the window and pulled the curtain shut.
The dim light in the room illuminated Hikaru's pained and unwilling expression, and the confused faces of Tsutsui and Akari beside him.
Outside, Akira called out loudly:
"Hikaru! Hikaru Shindō!"
But only silence answered him.
Chōji's heart hurt.
He felt sad for Akira, whose pure desire to battle Sai was rejected, and equally sad for Hikaru, who didn't want to deceive Akira anymore.
Fairness was the foundation of all competitive games.
If the manga let Hikaru keep relying on Sai forever, deceiving everyone, then Hikaru would simply be a fraud.
His decision to stop was painful, but right.
"You have to wait for me. Wait for the day I catch up to you."
Hikaru stood with his back to the window. Sai looked at him with a soft sigh.
Outside, Akira stared at the shut curtain, utterly lost.
Chōji paused on the panel for a long time.
Then came Akira's internal monologue as he walked away from the school:
"Why won't you play Go with me? You're not afraid of me, it's me who should be afraid of you."
He repeated Hikaru's words about wanting to win the team competition with Tsutsui.
He looked back once more, his expression firming.
The next panels showed Akira transferring to a nearby elite school, which is last year's Go team champions.
And his purpose?
To join the Go club there and qualify for this year's team competition.
Chōji was stunned.
This was too intense.
A Go prodigy appearing in the news, about to take the professional exam, actually transferring schools just to chase one rival into a middle school tournament?!
The school's Go coach probably couldn't even beat Akira…
And all of this for just one thing:
A legitimate match against Hikaru.
If Hikaru refused to play him privately, then he would force a match on the tournament stage.
Chōji turned the page.
And saw the start of the next manga.
"It's over…?"
His chest felt empty.
"Damn it, Shirogane, stop reading textbooks! Use that time to draw two chapters a week!
Hire assistants! Don't sleep! Give me more pages!!"
After ranting to himself, Chōji still dutifully logged in to Hoshimori's official site, voted for Hikaru no Go, and opened the forum.
As expected, fans were devastated.
"It's so hard to watch."
"Hikaru is so selfish! Akira clearly just wants to play Go with Sai, but he won't let him, and he's talking about playing when he grows up later."
"There's no choice! He can't tell anyone about Sai possessing him, and he can't accept continuing to hide the truth and play Go with Akira, so he can only do this!"
"So the next plot is Akira and Hikaru's third match in the school-organized Go team competition in the second year?"
"It should be. It's just unclear what the outcome of this match will be."
"Akira… he's too persistent."
"I hope Akira can resolve his inner conflict in the upcoming third match. And I hope Hikaru, the male lead, stops with the tricky moves. I've noticed that from beginning to end, a series of things were caused by Hikaru. Sai just wants to play Go properly, but he always likes to stir up trouble."
"But has everyone noticed that Akira in chapter seven has grown so much taller and become so much more handsome!"
"After all, almost a year has passed since his appearance in chapter one, and Akira is thirteen and growing, so it's not strange for him to grow taller. Isn't Hikaru the same?"
…Every week after Dream Comic's serialization update, internal staff would notice a significant increase in Hikaru no Go's discussion popularity compared to the previous week.
And this week, the rise was even more obvious.
In the manga Hikaru no Go, the rivalry between Hikaru and Akira runs through the entire story.
When Rei watched the original Hikaru no Go in his previous life, he noticed that whenever the plot started to feel a little dull, the creator would always let Akira appear and interact with Hikaru, and instantly the story would heat up again.
It could be said that early on, the main hook for readers was anticipation of a showdown between Akira and Sai.
Later on, it shifted to anticipation of the male lead's showdown with Akira.
Everything else, the dan exams, the club matches, were paving the road to that clash.
The transitional plot of the last few weeks was a little boring to fans.
Sai playing Go is exciting. Hikaru playing Go? Not so much.
But after this chapter's release, the forum suddenly exploded with Go discussions.
The next day
Misaki sat at her desk, waiting for the editorial department's 9 a.m. update.
Right at nine, a message popped up.
Misaki quickly opened the file and skimmed it from top to bottom.
She didn't care about rank 1 through 9, but when she reached tenth place, her expression froze.
She stared for half a minute.
"Hikaru no Go- Chapter Seven
Popularity Rank: 10
Rating: 9.2
Rating Rank: 5"
Tenth place.
Dream
'This…'
Misaki needed a moment to process it.
Historically, only manga artists with established careers and massive fanbases achieve that level this quickly.
As for brand-new manga artists, debuting less than a year ago, this achievement appeared only a handful of times in the entire history of Japan's manga industry.
The difference between ranking 10th and 11th in Dream Comic was a massive gulf.
The group's resources were limited. They would only give promotional funds, ads, and exposure to works with real potential, including the support Han hinted at last week.
Even if the company wanted to favor Rei, the manga had to prove itself with numbers.
If it couldn't even break into the top ten, the senior management wouldn't waste resources.
Originally, Misaki had worried Hikaru no Go might hover outside the top ten for months or years, causing executives to lose patience.
But now…
"Seventeen years old."
"Seven weeks of serialization."
"Already top ten in Dream Comic."
"And it's a Go manga."
Her thoughts felt unreal, like a dream. But it was the truth.
Before serialization, everyone doubted this manga.
But it turned out to be so compelling that even readers who didn't understand Go kept coming back every week.
Misaki lifted her head and found every other editor in the Dream Comic office staring at her.
Their gazes were complicated: jealousy, envy, bitterness, even frustration because Hikaru no Go's rise pushed their own works down the rankings.
But they all understood one thing:
Given Shirogane's age and the strength of Hikaru no Go…
For the foreseeable future, Hoshimori Group's resources would tilt heavily toward Shirogane and this manga.
At noon, Rei received Misaki's message.
He leaned against the rooftop wall, staring at the sky. Beside him, Miyu sat quietly, deep in thought.
They had planned to celebrate when Hikaru no Go entered the top ten…
But now that it happened, the shock left them both speechless.
"Hey, Rei… do you think Hikaru no Go might actually climb to the top of Dream Comic?" Miyu finally said after a long silence.
Her expression was complicated.
In less than a year, Rei had gone from an unknown rookie, to someone competing among the top ten of Dream Comic.
Not even Miyu dared to draw a plot this exaggerated, yet reality was even more dramatic than manga.
"Who knows?" Rei paused, then continued.
"I was very confident that Hikaru no Go would break into the top ten or even top five before serialization started.
But the top three, or even number one, that's something only the market can decide. No manga artist dares to predict that." Rei looked at Miyu beside him.
"Alright, don't overthink it. Winning or losing for now doesn't mean much. Even if I'm one step ahead of you today, who knows, maybe in ten years, you'll be ten steps ahead of me."
Those words instantly swept away Miyu's anxiety, the feeling that Rei was running too far ahead of her. Her energy came back, and she clenched her fists.
"Rei, don't get cocky! I'll finish Sakura Rain in six months, and when I break into Dream Comic, my sixth series will stomp you flat!"
Rei couldn't help smiling at Miyu's fiery expression.
Transmigrating into another world and drawing manga could feel lonely sometimes, but having a friend in the same field at school made that loneliness vanish fast.
Still, Miyu's words made Rei think.
How far could Hikaru no Go go in this world?
Works that were popular in his previous life would generally be popular here too.
But how popular depended on market taste, and capital support.
Shōnen Jump's massive influence was what helped Hikaru no Go dominate Japan and Asia in his past life.
But what about Hoshimori Group?
…
As March ended and the weather grew warmer, people swapped winter coats for early spring clothes.
And Hikaru no Go began appearing everywhere, news sites, critic columns, manga industry discussions across the country.
"Genius high school manga artist Shirogane's new series Hikaru no Go breaks into the top ten of Dream Comic within seven weeks, the fastest rise in six years for a new creator."
"A sports manga masterpiece you can enjoy even without understanding Go."
"The single-volume release of Hikaru no Go will include an exclusive short story from Shirogane-sensei from Akira's perspective after his first and second matches with Hikaru."
"Hoshimori Group's director praises Hikaru no Go for significantly boosting the national Go community."
"Go training centers in Japan report a 20% surge in enrollment since the manga's debut."
"Shadow Realm Animation reportedly in talks with Hoshimori Group to purchase animation rights for Hikaru no Go."
"Hoshimori Group announces a signing event for Shirogane-sensei at a major sports venue upon volume one release!"
During the serialization of chapters eight and nine, Hikaru no Go news dominated every manga forum.
Insiders knew this wasn't "natural buzz", Hoshimori Group was pushing hard.
Otherwise, those reports wouldn't keep emphasizing: the manga, Shirogane, and "high school genius manga artist". And with single-volume and animation news spreading everywhere, the promotional machinery was clearly heating up.
Of course, the manga itself kept performing strongly.
It didn't rise beyond tenth place, but it held tenth for two weeks straight, and weekly votes continued increasing.
Even though readers still hadn't gotten a new match between Hikaru and Akira, chapters eight and nine gave something else:
Akira, desperate to play Go with Hikaru again, transferred into another middle School's Go club, only to be rejected by the original members, after all, he was a sudden new arrival who immediately took someone's spot on the competition team.
Even when he was mocked behind his back, ridiculed openly, and even bullied into playing blindfold Go against multiple opponents at once, Akira did not give up.
For the sake of playing Hikaru again, he was willing to sacrifice an entire year of his youth: hiding himself inside Kaio Middle School's Go club, enduring students whose Go strength was far inferior to his, swallowing the jealousy, exclusion, and bullying, accepting humiliation from people who had no idea how strong he actually was.
All because he believed Hikaru was the only opponent who could answer the question in his heart.
After these two weeks of serialization, Akira's character popularity ranking online completely overtook Hikaru, and was now second only to Sai.
Of course, because Hikaru no Go stayed in 10th place for three consecutive weeks, a bunch of loudmouths who disliked the series, or resented a genius high-school author like Shirogane, began mocking it.
But that criticism… was meaningless.
A seventeen-year-old manga artist, only one year after debuting, achieving this level of success?
No amount of online negativity could shake Hikaru no Go or its author.
In truth, the series had already far exceeded every expectation the market had.
No one had any right to demand that a teenager meet the standards of a top-tier veteran.
April arrives.
At this time, Rei also had to fully cooperate with Hoshimori Group due to his original contract obligations.
The first major event: April 4th, the official release of Volume 1.
Most of the rumors floating around online were deliberately leaked early by Hoshimori Group to build excitement.
And yes, Rei really did need to take a leave of absence that day and appear at a large sports venue to host the first official signing event for Hikaru no Go.
Once this information was officially confirmed, it spread like wildfire across Shirogane's growing fanbase.
"Shirogane is finally appearing in person?"
"And it's a signing event?!"