James sat in his room, his breath hitching with a mixture of professional exhaustion and fan-fueled rage. He couldn't wrap his head around it. How could an author take a character like Maine, a pillar of reliability and a beacon of charisma, and turn him into a malfunctioning beast?
He couldn't just sit there and translate. He had to do something.
He pulled up his personal Twitter account. James wasn't just a faceless translator; he was a minor influencer in the Western manga community, with over eight thousand followers who looked to him for recommendations on obscure, high-quality foreign works.
He began to draft a tweet, his fingers heavy with frustration.
"I'm genuinely devastated by the latest chapter of 'Edgerunners.' Maine represents everything good about the crew. Aoyama-sensei, please tell me you aren't really planning to kill off the Big Brother via cyberpsychosis. We black fans finally got a legendary leader, and you're turning him into a monster? #SaveMaine #Edgerunners #Cyberpunk2077"
He attached a high-resolution screenshot of one of Maine's most heroic moments, a double-page spread from the earlier archives where he was firing his arm cannon into a swarm of maelstrom gangers. He hit 'Post.'
The response was instantaneous.
Within thirty minutes, his notifications tab was a blur of engagement.
"Wait, James, what do you mean? Maine is a psycho now? That's insane!"
"If this is true, I'm dropping the series. Aoyama is a hack."
"Ouch. I knew it was a tragedy, but that's just cruel."
By the three-hour mark, the tweet had hundreds of replies and thousands of retweets. But as the thread grew, the tone began to shift. It wasn't just about the "tragedy" anymore. The "Bro Army," the core demographic of black readers who had felt seen by Maine's character, was starting to get vocal.
"Wait a minute... why is it always the black guy who gets the worst end of the stick?" one user asked.
"For real. He's the only black guy in the main crew and he gets turned into a mindless animal? That smells like a certain 'ism' to me."
The fire spread. The hashtag #AoyamaIsARacist began to trend in the niche manga circles of the US. In the land of the free, where the legacy of racial politics was a constant, simmering undercurrent, a move like this was seen as a deliberate provocation.
Protests began to ripple through the international fandom. People who had never even read the manga started weighing in, fueled by the screenshot of the "oppressed black leader" being victimized by a foreign author.
---
Back in the Federation, the air was considerably fresher.
Aoyama stood on the grassy bank of the river, his leash held loosely in one hand while Pochita sniffed at a particularly interesting patch of clover. The setting sun cast a golden glow across the water, making it look like a sheet of hammered copper.
Aoyama reached down and picked up a smooth, flat piece of slate.
"Check this out, Pochita," he murmured, his eyes gleaming with a strange, focused intensity.
He'd just used his newest Gacha reward: [King of Stone Skipping (Bronze)]. It was a niche ability, the kind of thing most people would consider trash, but to Aoyama, it was a mountain of new technical data for his physics engine in Cyberpunk 2077.
He took a deep breath. He centered his gravity, forming a perfect triangle with his feet and the soft earth. He drew back his arm, his waist, shoulders, elbow, and wrist moving in a synchronized, fluid chain of kinetic energy.
Flick.
The stone hissed through the air, hitting the water at a shallow angle. It didn't sink. It didn't even splash. It began to dance.
"One... two... three... twenty-four... forty-two... fifty-one!"
The stone finally vanished into the depths near the opposite bank, leaving a trail of fifty-one concentric ripples in its wake.
"Hah! A new personal best!" Aoyama laughed, his hands on his hips. "Take that, laws of physics!"
Pochita barked twice, wagging his tail. He didn't understand the achievement, but he liked it when his human was happy.
A buzz in his pocket interrupted the quiet victory. It was Ayumi.
"Sensei? Are you there?" Her voice sounded like she was hiding under a desk.
"Hey, Ayumi. Is it manuscipt time already? I still have five finished chapters in the box."
"It's not the manuscripts, Sensei. It's... it's the internet."
"Oh? Did the fans like the 'afterglow' scene? I thought the lighting in that panel was some of my best work."
"No, Sensei. It's the Maine situation. It's... it's gone global. There are people in America calling you a 'raci-st' for turning Maine into a cyberpsycho. The Board is panicking. They're worried about the brand's international image."
Aoyama scratched his head, his expression vacant. "Racist? Me? Because of the chrome? That doesn't even make sense. The chrome doesn't care about melanin."
"The Chief wants you to do something," Ayumi continued, her voice pleading. "He says the plot is yours, but he needs you to 'manage the public.' He wants you to open an official social media account. Explain your process. Smooth things over."
Aoyama looked at Pochita, then back at the river where his stone had just conquered the water. "Social media? That sounds like a lot of talking."
"Please, Sensei? For my sake? And for the sake of the weekly slot?"
Aoyama sighed. "Fine. But I'm not apologizing for the truth of the story. Night City isn't a nursery school."
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]