Time gradually marched forward.
For Hayashi, his daily life continued much as it always had.
It wasn't particularly chaotic, nor was it exceptionally ordinary.
The main difference in his life now, aside from the constant companionship of Pochita, was the regular presencia of two frequent visitors: Tachibana Akane and Ayumi Ito.
Due to their shared affection for Pochita, Akane and Hayashi would almost always find one day during the weekend to meet up so she could visit the dog.
As for Ayumi Ito, the girl from Japan likely frequented Hayashi's place because she didn't have many other friends in The Metropolis. She found a sense of comfort in conversing with Hayashi, who happened to be surprisingly knowledgeable about Japanese regional culture.
As the winter break approached, Akane, being a university student, left the city to head home for the holidays.
Hayashi actually didn't know exactly where Akane was from; all he knew was that the wealthy young lady wasn't a The Metropolis local.
But honestly, that wasn't really any of his business.
Ayumi Ito also took the opportunity to return to Japan for the Lunar New Year celebrations.
For Hayashi, the New Year celebrations in this world weren't particularly cause for excitement.
He was entirely alone, but he still had Pochita to keep him company. On New Year's Day, he made a point of opening several high-quality cans of dog food for the little guy.
It was more than enough to make Pochita spin around in circles with sheer, unadulterated joy.
Once the New Year festivities had concluded, both Akane and Ayumi eventually returned to The Metropolis.
Meanwhile, Hayashi's 'Edgerunners' continued its regular serialization. Its popularity in the polls fluctuated somewhat, but it generally remained within a stable, acceptable range.
At its lowest point, it had dipped to 16th place. However, its highest peak occurred with the release of the most recent chapter--Chapter 7.
...
Akane was the first to tear into the latest issue of 'Manga World GoGo.' She immediately flipped to the table of contents and located the page number for the newest chapter of 'Edgerunners.'
The previous chapter, Chapter 6, had ended on a major cliffhanger: Lucy inviting David back to her apartment.
Lucy had clearly been introduced as the story's primary heroine. Her striking, multi-colored hair and her unique short cut completely shattered the common manga trope where the main heroine always had long, flowing hair. It was a refreshing and visually captivating design.
Akane reached back and toyed with her own ponytail, wondering idly if Hayashi simply had a personal preference for short-haired girls.
She didn't dwell on the thought for long, focusing her attention back on the manga.
The title of this chapter was simply: "The Moon."
Akane didn't think much of it and began reading.
The story opened with Lucy leading David into her minimalist, Cyberpunk-inspired apartment. She immediately pulled two bottles of beer from her fridge.
"I only have beer. You don't mind, do you?" Lucy asked with a playful smirk.
David looked visibly awkward and out of his element. "I... I don't mind."
He took a bottle and clinked it against hers. "Ch-cheers."
Lucy responded by lighting up a cigarette, looking like a woman who carried a lifetime of stories behind her eyes.
A moment later, David took a sip of the beer and immediately began coughing violently, having been caught off guard by the carbonation.
Seeing his reaction, Lucy burst into amused laughter. "Are you serious? Is this your first time drinking, too?"
"I'm fine with alcohol, usually. I just don't really like carbonated drinks... or the smell of smoke," David replied helplessly.
"Wow, I can't believe people like you still actually exist..." Lucy chuckled.
"I'm not lying!" David insisted, trying to regain his dignity.
"You look ridiculous... and your clothes are trash. Take them off," Lucy said, pointing toward his iconic yellow jacket with a teasing glint in her eyes.
David froze, but under Lucy's relentless insistence, he eventually relented and pulled the jacket off.
Lucy immediately snatched it up and put it on herself. She then turned her back to David and began working on the design on the back of the jacket right in front of him.
"Hey, don't just write whatever you want on there!"
David protested nervously. But a moment later, two words written in stylized English script appeared across the back of the yellow fabric:
"Edge... Runners"
'Edgerunners.' So that was the significance of the title. But what exactly did it mean in this world?
Akane continued reading, her curiosity piqued.
"It's another name for a Cyberpunk," Lucy explained. "That's what you want to be, isn't it?"
David merely smiled and replied, "Actually, I'm just a huge fan of the 'Kurokane' Edgerunners series."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. What about you? What's with that incredibly tacky vintage poster you've got there?" David asked, pointing toward a poster on Lucy's wall.
The poster was old and faded, featuring a central image of an astronaut pointing toward the moon. Across the top, in large English letters, was the slogan: "YOUR NEW LIFE AWAITS!"
Lucy's expression instantly turned cold. "You got a problem with it?"
"No, no problem at all," David stammered, trying to backpedal. "I just... I've always hated those corporate advertisements that try to paint the moon as some kind of shiny paradise. I mean, do you have any idea how many people have literally died just to build those lunar colonies?"
"To me, it's not a paradise. It looks more like a dark, lifeless hell."
"You seem like you know quite a bit for your age..." Lucy noted, her expression softening back into a teasing smirk.
"The lessons I learned at Arasaka Academy aren't exactly the kind of things they put in their advertisements."
"Ah, spoken like a true privileged brat who can actually afford to attend an academy like that."
"I am not a brat!"
...
Faced with Lucy's persistent teasing, David's expression gradually grew serious. He took a long swig of his beer and said, "...I never should have gone to Arasaka Academy in the first place. But my mother... she worked herself to the bone just to afford the tuition. But I knew the entire time that I would never truly be one of them."
"Then why did you keep going?"
"I didn't have a choice... I had to graduate if I ever wanted to get a job at Arasaka Corp and climb the corporate ladder."
David's gaze turned distant and filled with a sense of profound loss. "At the very least, it was my mother's wish... her dream."
"That was the only reason."
It wasn't his own dream, but his mother's. That was the only thing that had kept him pushing through the misery of the academy for so long.
Akane felt a pang of sympathy for David as she read. He was a boy living without a dream of his own, carrying the heavy burden of his mother's expectations, even though she was gone now.
"But that was someone else's dream," Lucy said, standing up and looking David directly in the eye.
"Someone else's?"
"You and your mother are two different people. Why should you spend your entire life trying to fulfill her wishes instead of your own?" Lucy asked, her tone one of genuine confusion.
"Is that... is that wrong?" David asked, clearly bewildered by the concept.
"Your own dreams shouldn't belong to anyone else but you."
"Spoken like someone who's actually found their own dream," David replied with a faint smile.
His gaze drifted back toward the vintage lunar poster. "Wait... you don't actually mean...?"
Lucy stared out the window at the neon-drenched Night City skyline, her reflection shimmering in the glass.
"You said you think the moon is hell... but to me, this is hell."
Outside the window, Night City was a breathtaking tapestry of vibrant neon lights and towering structures, a visual masterpiece of light and color that only truly came alive at night.
But in stark contrast to the city's artificial brilliance, Lucy's eyes were filled with a profound, soul-crushing sadness.
Even through the hand-drawn panels, Akane could feel the sheer weight of the grief radiating from her.
Lucy... did she have a tragic past of her own?
"Is it really that bad here?" David asked softly.
"I just want to get as far away from here as possible," Lucy replied, avoiding the question.
The scene shifted to a composition of Lucy and David sitting side-by-side. "I want to show you something," she said.
In the next panel, the two of them were tearing open the packaging for a specialized Braindance (BD) chip. They lay down on the bed together, their eyes glowing with a soft, ethereal pink light as the simulation initialized.
Suddenly, the world of Night City was replaced by the desolate, breathtaking surface of the moon.
"Whoa! The resolution is incredible! And the sun... it's so hot!" David exclaimed in awe.
"It's using your Neural Link to simulate the sensation of the sun's heat. If I let you feel the actual temperature of the sun, you'd be fried crisp in an instant. I've tuned it down to a level an ordinary person can handle," Lucy explained with a smile.
In the virtual simulation, David began to float weightlessly. Seeing him play around in the low-gravity environment, a genuine, joyful smile spread across Lucy's face.
"Not bad, right?"
"It's incredible."
"I know."
"Follow me."
...
The two of them began exploring the lunar surface together. David followed closely behind Lucy until, suddenly, she reached back and offered him her hand.
Seeing Lucy's slender, graceful silhouette against the lunar landscape... Akane felt that the scene was almost agonizingly sweet.
She had no way of knowing that in a story like 'Edgerunners,' any moment of sweetness was merely a precursor to a devastating emotional blow.
Just as David was hesitating, wondering if he should reach out and take her hand, Lucy took the initiative and grabbed his arm.
They skipped and leaped across the moon together, their movements filled with a sense of pure, unadulterated freedom. The artwork in this sequence was truly magnificent, as if Hayashi had used his 'Artistic Kaleidoscope' to perfectly recreate a high-budget animated feature onto the page.
But just as the romantic tension reached its peak...
"Game over, idiot!"
In the real world, David suddenly jolted awake on the bed.
Beside him, Lucy was sitting up, calmly smoking a cigarette as if nothing had happened.
A group of heavily modified thugs, none of whom looked particularly friendly, were all staring down at him. Their leader, a massive, imposing man, loomed over him with a predatory grin.
"Kid! Sorry to ruin your little lunar date, but that implant you're wearing... it's mine!"
"And now, it's time for it to return to its rightful owner!"
The chapter ended with the massive man landing a brutal punch that sent David flying backward.
In the distance, a rocket arced high into the Night City sky, seemingly bound for the moon.
[End of Chapter]
...
Akane stared at the final page, her jaw dropping in disbelief.
David... he'd been played?
All those sweet, romantic moments on the moon... were they all just a trap to lower his guard?
Akane couldn't believe it. It was such a cruel and unexpected twist.
Normally, no author would ever structure a story like this! Hayashi truly was a one-of-a-kind creator.
Or wait... was it possible that Lucy wasn't the main heroine after all? Was there someone else?
As a seasoned fan of ACGN culture who had consumed countless manga and anime, Akane had never seen a plot progression quite like this.
It was entirely unpredictable.
However, she did recognize the massive man who had punched David. He was 'Maine,' a character she had seen in Hayashi's early drafts.
If that was the case, David probably wasn't in mortal danger. In fact, based on what she knew, this was likely the moment where David finally joined the crew.
(End of Chapter)
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
T/N: Initial Popularity (初显人气) - The series finally begins to gain a following as the emotional core of the story is revealed.
T/N: The Moon (月球) - A central motif in Lucy's character arc and a recurring theme throughout 'Edgerunners.'
T/N: Maine (曼恩) - The leader of the edgerunner crew David eventually joins.
T/N: Kurokane (吉黑) - A localized name for an in-universe fictional series David enjoys.