Furuta Kazuo tilted his head back and watched the stream of aspiring submitters coming and going.
Ever since the economic collapse, the number of people hoping to become manga artists had grown steadily. People had lost their jobs and were adrift, uncertain about the future.
Just a few years earlier, working as a construction laborer, a real estate agent, or an advertising creative had been enough to live a decent life.
You could go play golf. You could go skiing.
Back then, submitting manga had been little more than a casual hobby for most people. Submitters were easygoing, smiling, equals with the editors. A rejection didn't sting. They took it in stride.
They weren't trying to make money from manga.
But now, these same people arrived with desperate expectation written across their faces, hurrying along with urgent steps. When rejected, they were heavy with suppressed frustration and unwillingness to accept defeat.
Dejection, despair, tears, silence...
The entire lobby of Shueisha felt like a hospital ICU, thick with anxiety and dread, helplessness and powerlessness seeping into every heart.
They wanted prizes. They wanted to become manga artists, to seize a generous reward and rescue their crumbling households.
Manga had become their last lifeline. People who had once coasted through life on the confidence of a booming economy were now confronting the hardships of a new era head-on.
Yet the odds of actually making a living from manga were less than one in a hundred thousand, roughly the same as winning the lottery.
The people left behind by the economic collapse had all become gamblers.
Furuta couldn't help but reflect aloud: "It's been several years since the bubble burst. The government keeps saying the overall environment is stabilizing, but everyone's lives are still a complete mess."
The fact that even a security guard like himself now had standing to look down on these wishful thinkers gave him a peculiar sense of superiority.
He was still savoring that feeling when someone approached from outside, clutching a parchment envelope. Another new submitter, by the look of it.
Furuta quickly opened the door to let the person in.
He couldn't afford to lose his job over a complaint.
People these days were capable of anything.
Extremism and distorted thinking were the defining traits of this era.
...
Hirano Makoto entered the Shueisha building with the security guard leading the way.
His clothes had been washed so many times they had faded to a pale, bleached-out white. A surgical mask covered most of his face, leaving only his eyes visible, bloodshot and burning red.
He looked like a man to whom life had not been kind.
Furuta tensed immediately, sliding his hand toward his hip, ready at any moment to subdue Hirano if he turned out to be a threat.
But Hirano paid no attention to anyone around him. He simply pulled off his mask, threw his head back, and let out a tremendous sneeze.
"Ahh... achoo! Spring in Tokyo is absolutely awful. Pollen everywhere."
He rubbed his nose and muttered his complaint.
Furuta stood there for a moment, blinking. He hadn't seen a submitter carry himself like this in a long time. The man showed no nervousness, no hesitation, only the easy, unself-conscious looseness of someone who had nothing to prove.
He looked like someone who had walked straight out of Japan's economic boom years.
Still, he wasn't dangerous, just a poor soul suffering from hay fever. Furuta let out a quiet breath of relief.
He began to study the man more carefully, and then his eyes went wide.
"Hirano... Hirano! You're Hirano from Aomori Hankai High School, aren't you!"
"That's me, yes." Hirano blinked his stinging eyes, then gave a nod, looking puzzled. "And you are...?"
"I'm Furuta! We were in the same class. Have you really forgotten me?"
He gave Hirano a firm punch on the shoulder, feigning offense. "That's terrible. You come to Tokyo and stop recognizing people?"
Hirano searched his memory, and the recollection of Furuta slowly surfaced.
Furuta had been class representative for Year 3, Class 1 at Hankai High School, diligent and serious, full of ambitions for the future.
He had gotten into a good university and been the pride of his school, the glory of his family.
Yet here he was, working security at Shueisha.
"I remember now," Hirano said with a smile. "You're 'Number One Furuta,' right? You got that nickname because you always topped every exam."
"Those were the days," Furuta said, tilting his head toward the ceiling so the tears wouldn't fall.
Back then he'd been full of fire, planning to land a position at a major company, earn a high salary, give his parents a comfortable life.
Now all he wanted was to keep things as they were, so his parents wouldn't worry.
"Damn it. How did the country end up like this?"
"What about you, Hirano? How are things? I remember you were always drawing manga in high school, saying you wanted to become a manga artist."
"Me? I'd say I'm firmly in the 'doing very poorly' category." Hirano's expression remained calm. "Odd jobs every day, either at a supermarket or a restaurant. No savings, living in a cheap apartment, drifting along, just burning through days without purpose."
That was what you got when the original occupant of this body had been a mediocre young man who abandoned his hometown to chase the fantasy of making it as a manga artist in Tokyo, then crumbled at the first setbacks, lay down, and waited to disappear. Hirano had transmigrated here and inherited this wretched life.
In his previous life, the real Hirano had been born in a rural village in one of China's depressed inland cities. As a child, he couldn't afford instant cup noodles. He had never set foot in a youth activity center. His English was a disaster. He had studied his hardest just to scrape into a second-tier university, then stumbled and fumbled his way through the working world after graduation.
With no prestigious degree and no connections, he had eventually managed to buy an apartment in that same depressed city, get himself a car, accumulate savings he could use to support his family, and carve out a decent life for himself.
Then something, he had no idea what, had hurled him all the way back to Japan in 1997.
Once again he had nothing. He was living in a cheap apartment that froze in winter and baked in summer, with no friends, no savings, stripped bare.
Facing this brutal reality, Hirano had gritted his teeth and gone out to find work, only to discover that every single position had hundreds of people competing for it. Some applicants were even advertising that they'd sleep at the office if hired.
He had thrown himself into the competition, and been turned away every time for insufficient qualifications.
A construction site, of all places, demanding that kind of standard. What on earth were they thinking?
Hirano seethed, and the resentment inside him kept building.
He had already gotten as far as sawing off a section of water pipe to fashion himself a makeshift shotgun, half a step away from charging into the street to rob a bank, when he had spotted a discarded magazine on the subway. It was a copy of Weekly Shonen Jump, with a short manga story printed inside.
"I could draw something like this."
The thought struck him, and he set down the dangerous idea.
Over the following six-plus months, he had recovered the original body's drawing skills, channeled every ounce of his rage, and adapted Death Note (the short story version) into his own submission. Today, he had come to Shueisha.
...
Replaying the wretched arc of "Hirano's" life in his mind, Hirano couldn't help grinding his teeth.
"I'm here to submit for the Tezuka Award," he said. "I want to place and turn my situation around."
"I know how it is. That's just the way things are now..." Furuta nodded in weary agreement.
If even this hometown academic star had ended up as a security guard, what did that say for "Manga Artist Hirano," who had been the butt of classmates' jokes back in the day?
"Wait!" Something suddenly clicked for him. "Did you say the Tezuka Award? You're aiming for a placement in the Tezuka Award?"
"That's the Tezuka Award we're talking about. The newcomer prize everyone dreams of. It's not something you just waltz in and collect. Why not try the Monthly Award instead? That one's a bit more realistic."
Hirano shifted his gaze toward the bulletin board near the elevator bank in the Shueisha lobby, the most prominent spot in the room, where a poster announced the Tezuka Award's call for entries.
"The Monthly Award comes around every month, and it's only five hundred thousand yen. I need to seize this chance and submit for the Tezuka Award, which opens only twice a year."
To speak of the Tezuka Award was to speak of Tezuka Osamu, the God of Manga himself.
Before Tezuka Osamu, manga was kept at arm's length from the mainstream. After Tezuka Osamu, manga became Japan's calling card to the world. Children read it, housewives read it, the elderly read it.
Tezuka Osamu had also introduced cinematic camera language and storyboarding techniques, vastly expanding manga's range of expression.
He had worked across an enormous variety of genres, pushing manga's boundaries further with every title. Mighty Atom(Astro Boy), Black Jack, Phoenix, all works of Tezuka Osamu, were timeless classics, works of genuine depth worthy of serious discussion.
He was manga's great reformer, called the God of Manga, and his place as Japan's supreme manga artist was beyond dispute.
The Tezuka Award, established to honor his extraordinary legacy, naturally held the strongest pull for newcomers.
Hojo Tsukasa, who had created Cat's Eye; Araki Hirohiko, who had created JoJo's Bizarre Adventure; Oda Eiichiro, who had created One Piece: these pillars of Shonen Jump had all been discovered through the Tezuka Award.
The Tezuka Award carried the brightest prestige, a two-million-yen prize, and served as a true test of a submitter's ability.
Win the top prize in Japan's premier newcomer award for boys' manga, and becoming a serialized manga artist would be just one step away.
Fame, acclaim, no longer a nameless nobody.
"But!" Furuta knew all of this perfectly well. He wasn't sure whether to scoff at his old friend's ambition or feel a surge of excitement on his behalf.
He only felt that this person was strangely peculiar, not at all like someone ground down by years of failure and frustration.
"You're really that confident you'll succeed?"
Hirano extended his palm, facing upward.
"Hm?" Furuta didn't understand.
"Winning a prize..." Hirano smiled and flipped his hand over, palm facing down. "Is as easy as turning my hand around."
Merely aiming for a prize wasn't enough. He was going to claim success in this strange world that both resembled and differed from the one he knew.
Take first place in the Tezuka Award, become a manga artist, earn money, more and more money, buy a grand mansion, buy a luxury car, marry a beautiful and gentle woman.
Hirano strode forward, a storm surging in his chest. He would become the next God of Manga and say no to this terrible world.