Xia Jing knew the serialization meeting for his submitted manga was being held today, but he also knew that in most cases, the results wouldn't be given on the same day. Usually, the decision would only come down from the magazine's mid-to-high-level editors the next day.
He couldn't help feeling both hopeful and anxious.
He was absolutely confident in the quality of 5 Centimeters per Second.
But when it came to the taste of Illusion Dream Group's senior editors, he was far less certain.
There were plenty of cases—both in China and in his previous world—where the mangaka believed in their work, the editor in charge believed in it, and then some higher-up with scrambled brainwaves buried it anyway.
Attack on Titan, for example, had originally been submitted to Weekly Shonen Jump, only to get rejected before it found a home at another publisher.
"No matter what, I'll know by tomorrow," he told himself.
Before going to sleep, Xia Jing forced himself to clear his mind of stray thoughts.
In his dreams, he saw 5 Centimeters per Second being rejected by Illusion Dream Group. After that, he submitted it to several other publishers and got turned down again and again, until he finally gave up on being a mangaka in this world altogether and decided to study seriously and walk a completely different path in life…
At dawn, he woke from the dream.
Another ordinary day passed uneventfully. By the time school ended in the afternoon, the Su Qingxiao he hadn't seen for two days was once again waiting early at his classroom door, just like before.
Seeing her poking her head in from the hallway and waving at him, several classmates immediately turned to stare at Xia Jing again.
No way… The rumor about him and Su Qingxiao from Class One having something going on and maybe "dating early"… could that be true?
What normal "just friends" would come to the classroom door to get you every couple of days? And even wait specially after school?
A few minutes later, the bell rang and his class was dismissed too.
"Your teacher really loves dragging class out," Su Qingxiao joked.
But Xia Jing had zero mood to keep that topic going.
"Su… Su Qingxiao… did the serialization meeting results come out?" he asked.
"You forgot what I told you before again," she said with a grin.
"Su Qingxiao, have the results… come out yet?" Xia Jing corrected himself immediately.
"Mm. Since you don't have a phone, my sister texted me at four this afternoon. She asked me to bring you over to see her after school. I only saw the message once classes ended," Su Qingxiao explained.
"She didn't spell out the result in the text, but if it hadn't passed, there'd be no need to go to all this trouble. She could've just told me to pass the rejection on to you verbally."
"Congratulations, Xia Jing."
Her smile, lit by the orange sunset, looked especially beautiful.
"Thanks…" he said after a brief pause—those were the only words he could manage.
You could say Su Qingxiao's role in all of this had been huge.
If not for her, he'd probably still be agonizing over which company to send 5 Centimeters per Second to. The nightmare he'd had last night—of getting rejected by other publishers one after another—might well have become reality.
An hour later, Xia Jing and Su Qingxiao arrived once again at her villa community.
It was his second time there, so he felt a lot less awkward than the first. And this time…
For the first time, he saw a smiling expression on Su Mingxi's face.
She was naturally reserved, but that didn't mean she walked around scowling all day. When it was time to smile, she could smile.
Especially at the mangaka who had just helped her win back momentum in the serialization meeting.
Before this, the works she'd brought to the meeting had lost to Gao Dian's picks twice in a row.
"Congratulations, Xia Jing-sensei. Your work passed the serialization meeting. I asked you here today to discuss your contract," she said, handing him a standard-form agreement.
A contract.
Hearing that word, the last stone in his heart finally dropped. He picked it up and gave it a look.
Lines and lines of dense text, full of legal jargon he couldn't understand at all.
Of course, Su Mingxi also gave a brief, plain-language explanation.
In short: payment.
Manga page rates were paid per page. For Sakura Weekly, the standard base rate was ¥370 per page. That was just the baseline.
If a chapter ranked higher in that issue's popularity poll, the pay would be adjusted upward based on its performance. That said, even for a chapter ranked number one, it would never exceed triple the base rate.
If you did the math with a "normal" weekly schedule—twenty pages a chapter, four chapters a month—then a mangaka running a series in Sakura Weekly could expect a minimum monthly income of around ¥30,000 just from page rates.
By the same logic, 5 Centimeters per Second was already fully drawn at over a hundred pages. Even if every single installment placed dead last each week, the guaranteed total page-rate payment would still come out to nearly ¥40,000 yuan.
With that kind of money, even if the court soon seized his current apartment to repay his late parents' debts, at least he'd have some financial cushion.
Of course, for a mangaka, page rates were never where the real money lay.
The biggest slice was almost always the royalties from tankōbon sales.
The basic split was six percent. For every ¥100 in sales, ¥6 would go to the mangaka.
That was already the lowest royalty rate in the industry—not because the capitalists didn't want it lower, but because China law stipulated that literary works couldn't be paid less than that.
And for a newcomer like him, that was the standard treatment.
If a series got popular enough to spawn merchandise, there was a complicated formula to calculate those earnings too.
But realistically, unless the manga was recognized by the market and adapted into an anime, it was better not to think about merchandise yet.
Listening to all that made Xia Jing's head pound. His legal knowledge was shaky at best, and he understood even less of China's specific laws.
He glanced over at Su Qingxiao.
"Don't look at me. My contract is exactly the same as yours," she said with a laugh.
Capitalists were the same everywhere.
It was inevitable that the big manga companies in China squeezed their creators through the contract terms—especially once a series got famous. Plenty of mangaka had discovered their IP was generating millions through adaptations and merch, only to realize they'd signed away the rights for a one-off buyout fee. However much the company made afterward had little to do with them…
But right now, that was far beyond his pay grade.
As a total newcomer, his only real option was to accept the terms for now. If he became famous later, then he'd have the leverage to negotiate better terms for future projects.
So after thinking for just a moment, he took the pen from Su Mingxi and began filling in his personal information.
Ten minutes later, after checking all the details, Su Mingxi nodded slightly.
"In that case, our collaboration is officially underway, Xia Jing-sensei—you, me, and our company," she said.
"I wanted to ask—since 5 Centimeters per Second passed the serialization meeting, when will it actually start running?" he asked.
"Three weeks from now. Friday, June 13th, 5 Centimeters per Second will debut in that week's issue of Sakura Weekly," she replied. "The main content and characters featured on the cover will be the two new series starting that issue: 5 Centimeters per Second and Love Like Fireworks, as part of our new-series promotion. Also, I'd like to ask you to color the first five pages of chapter one yourself so they can run as color pages."
Cover promotion and color pages, huh?
That was indeed how most magazines promoted new series.
The only catch was… there would be another new series launching alongside his.
"And one more thing—have you thought of using a pen name?" she asked. "My sister publishes under the pen name 'Shui Xi.' With a pen name, you won't have to worry about your daily life being affected by your series' popularity."
"In that case, I'll go with… Aoba," he said.
That was the pen name he'd used in his previous life as a flop mangaka.
He couldn't use his old real name in this world—but if that pen name became widely known here, it would be a way of honoring the self who'd been reborn.
Mulling it over, Su Mingxi decided it sounded quite good, then held her hand out to him.
"Then here's to a good partnership, Aoba-sensei."
"Aoba-sensei, you haven't eaten yet, have you? Qingxiao and I haven't either. Let's have dinner together—I can go over some of the finer points of our cooperation while we eat…" she added.
This was her usual practice.
She typically treated the mangaka she worked with to a meal or visited them at home, building rapport so that future deadline reminders or editorial feedback wouldn't feel as stiff or abrasive.
After all, it's harder to stay mad at someone who's fed you.
"Hey, Sis, how come you're calling him 'sensei' and not me? I'm one of your serialized mangaka too, you know," Su Qingxiao protested.
"When your work makes it onto Illusion Dream Comic, we can talk," Su Mingxi replied with a cold little smile.
"Right now, you're still miles away."
…
That night, when Xia Jing got home, the confirmation of serialization had finally lifted the weight from his chest.
Lying in bed, he started daydreaming about all the possible scenarios and developments after 5 Centimeters per Second began its run.
"Finally… I've taken the first step," he murmured before slowly drifting off to sleep.
In his dreams, he relived a memory from his previous life: sitting up late at night, watching a movie, watching it very seriously, very carefully—while the same sadness he'd once felt poured back into his heart.
He even remembered hunting down the original novel after finishing the film.
The story, the content, the title—along with that memory—became engraved once more in his sleeping mind.
When he woke up the next morning, all the sorrow he'd collected in last night's dream came rushing back at once. It left his expression looking terrible, his eyes faintly red.
He was an emotional person, after all, and he immersed himself deeply in stories.
At the same time, the name of that work surfaced in his mind.
"Even If This Love Disappears from the World Tonight…"
He remembered that romance novel from Sakura Island in his previous life—and the film adaptation as well.
It was the story of a girl whose memories reset every night because of an illness, and the boy she met, fell in love with, and then forgot.
The title itself was the premise. It was the reason they fell in love—and also the source of the tragedy at the end.
Even If This Love Disappears from the World Tonight.
There were several works with similar setups. There was one in the anime ef ~ A Tale of Memories, and the heroine of One Week Friends had a similar condition. But the one that left the deepest mark on him was, without question, this one.
His stomach ached just thinking about it.
Why did he keep remembering all these depressing, soul-crushing stories he'd read and watched?
Couldn't his brain dredge up something like Gintama for once so he could draw a comedy?
He could only sigh at himself.
He hadn't enjoyed a "double dose of comedy" yet, but he was getting back-to-back double doses of angst—once in his previous life, and now again in this one.
In terms of heartbreak, this work was definitely on par with 5 Centimeters per Second. It was one of those "sweet at first, then brutally painful" romance stories.
It had only been adapted into a live-action film, though—never an anime—so it wasn't that famous in animation circles.
"Hmm…" Xia Jing sifted through his memories, lost in thought.
"5 Centimeters per Second is only five chapters long—it'll wrap up in a month. In that sense, dreaming of this story now is actually perfect timing."
"If I want to ride the wave of 5 Centimeters per Second's popularity and launch a new series right after it ends, I really do need to start preparing the next manga now…"
The fact that the original was a novel didn't matter much.
Converting stories between novel, manga, and anime formats was industry standard. As long as the core story was strong enough, it didn't really matter which medium you used to present it.