Manga

Ming City Fifth Middle School, Class Three, Grade Three.

During the break, many students who were tired from studying leaned over their desks and closed their eyes for a quick nap.

"Wang Wei, do you know where Chu Yu went?"

A girl walked over to Wang Wei's seat in front of Chu Yu's desk and, feeling a little embarrassed, softly called to wake him.

She wore a light blue school uniform, her waist-length ponytail tied behind her. Her eyes were clear, and her skin was fair and smooth. She looked at him with a trace of apology in her gaze.

Though the break was only ten minutes long, Wang Wei's extraordinary napping skills had nearly carried him off into dreamland.

Being woken so suddenly didn't make Wang Wei lash out, but the displeasure on his face was unmistakable as he raised his head.

Then he saw the girl, and the displeasure on his face melted away like snow beneath the blazing sun.

"Q-Qin Qianyv." Wang Wei stumbled over his words, suddenly nervous.

After all, she was one of the prettiest girls at Third Middle School, and the object of many teenage boys' secret crushes.

As luck would have it, Wang Wei was one of those boys.

"W-What do you need Chu Yu for?"

"It's the family information form the homeroom teacher asked us to turn in. Chu Yu's is the only one left. The teacher told me earlier to take it to the office during the break, so I came to ask." Qin Qianyv explained.

"Oh, that?" Wang Wei smiled.

"That guy Chu Yu probably went to the bathroom. Try looking in his desk. If he brought the form, it'll be in there."

"But... isn't that wrong?" Qin Qianyv hesitated.

"What's wrong with it?" Wang Wei waved a hand.

"Chu Yu isn't stingy like that. Don't worry! Besides, didn't the homeroom teacher ask you to take it to the office right away? It'll be time for class in a few minutes."

"Look in his desk first. If it's there, turn it in and we'll deal with the rest later. I'll explain it to him when he gets back."

"I suppose so..." Qin Qianyv hesitated again. After thinking it over, she finally made up her mind. The homeroom teacher had sounded rather urgent.

Chu Yu's desk was full of all sorts of textbooks. Qin Qianyv took them out one by one, carefully checking whether the form she was looking for was tucked inside.

Suddenly, she pulled a stack of papers from Chu Yu's desk.

"What's this?" Qin Qianyv's pupils narrowed slightly.

The paper felt different from ordinary paper, and every sheet was covered in drawings.

The picture on the top sheet showed a man and a woman sitting apart in a pavilion, sheltering from the rain.

The man seemed to be a student, holding a drawing board and concentrating on his work.

The woman seemed to be a working professional. She was drinking canned beer, but her eyes were fixed on the boy.

The cover alone instantly captured Qin Qianyv's attention.

The characters on the page were beautifully drawn, with remarkably fine details.

A short poem was written in small characters near the top of the cover:

"Faint thunder rolls, a cloudy sky—yet still I hope the rain will fall..."

"So I can keep you here!"

Four large characters appeared at the bottom of the cover:

"The Garden of Words."

"A... manga?"

Qin Qianyv was rather surprised. To be honest, she wouldn't have reacted at all if she'd found a manga or a novel or two in Chu Yu's desk.

But she could tell what this stack of papers was: original manga pages!

Qin Qianyv flipped through them. There was the boy and the woman who met on a rainy day, the boy designing shoes on his drawing board, the woman drinking beer in a lakeside pavilion on a rainy day...

After a brief encounter, the woman left, and all she left the boy was a short poem.

"Faint thunder rolls, a cloudy sky—yet still I hope the rain will fall, so I can keep you here!"

The plot seemed rather subdued, but for some reason it had a faint allure that drew Qin Qianyv into the pages.

Suddenly, a hand snatched the manga from her.

Qin Qianyv jumped in fright.

A boy had appeared beside her without her noticing.

"What are you doing?" Chu Yu frowned slightly, looking displeased.

"Uh..."

Qin Qianyv was nervous. She explained what she'd been doing.

"The family information form?" Chu Yu thought about it. He'd brought it to school ages ago, but his procrastination had kept him from turning it in.

Chu Yu rummaged through his desk, found a sheet of paper, and handed it to Qin Qianyv.

"This is the one."

"Oh, okay." Qin Qianyv looked uneasy, like a child caught doing something wrong. She didn't dare look Chu Yu in the face.

"And next time, just look for the form. Don't go poking around in other people's stuff."

Chu Yu wasn't like Wang Wei. As a 2D steel straight man, he had little interest in 3D creatures, so he didn't bother to soften his words.

Qin Qianyv puffed out her cheeks. But she had been in the wrong, rummaging through Chu Yu's desk and looking at his manga, so she couldn't come up with a single word in her defense.

All she could do was silently call Chu Yu a stingy person.

"Come on, Chu Yu, why are you getting so worked up? I told her to look in your desk. You weren't here, and she was in a hurry to turn in the form!"

Wang Wei hadn't noticed that Qin Qianyv had been looking at the manga in Chu Yu's desk. He'd only seen Chu Yu's stern expression, which left him feeling awkward too.

Chu Yu glanced at Wang Wei and sighed.

"Forget it. Let's just leave it at that this time."

He'd been classmates with Wang Wei through his first and second years of high school, and they got along well enough. Now that they'd ended up sitting in front of and behind each other again at the start of their final year, you could say it was fate. He'd be the stingy one if he made a big deal out of it.

Seeing this, Wang Wei gave Chu Yu a satisfied look, thinking that Chu Yu had done him a favor.

"Oh." Qin Qianyv puffed out her cheeks and answered unhappily. She turned and left. The mood was awkward, and she didn't want to stay any longer.

"I was a little worked up just now. I was too harsh. Don't take it to heart."

Chu Yu's voice came from behind her.

He'd only lost his temper because someone had looked through the manga he'd drawn without permission. Once he'd calmed down, he realized it wasn't a big deal. After all, he was the one who'd kept putting off turning in the form until he'd almost forgotten about it.

Chu Yu's words eased some of the hurt and embarrassment Qin Qianyv felt over having looked at his manga.

Qin Qianyv turned slightly. All she saw was Chu Yu's profile as he tidied his desk.

His gaze was calm, and his features were rather delicate.

Chu Yu had already put the manga she'd been looking through back in his desk.

Qin Qianyv wanted to ask whether he'd drawn it, but after thinking it over, she kept the question to herself.

She could justify rummaging through someone else's desk to find a form she needed to turn in, but picking up his manga and reading it without permission had definitely been wrong. She didn't feel she had the right to ask more.

Still, that little incident left a deep impression on Qin Qianyv: both her new classmate Chu Yu, who had only recently joined their third-year class, and The Garden of Words, the manga she'd only read a small part of.

Chu Yu dropped heavily into his seat. What had just happened was only a brief interruption.

He took out the pages of The Garden of Words and looked at the characters drawn on them.

His thoughts drifted back to a month and a half earlier.

It was summer vacation then, and he'd still been asleep.

Out of nowhere, the system had possessed him.

It called itself the Mangaka System, and it came with a vast collection of 2D works from the parallel-world Earth Plane.

Honestly, Chu Yu didn't mind having a system. He could just ignore it. But the many 2D works from the Earth Plane that came with it made his heart itch.

As a seasoned otaku, he'd already seen pretty much all the interesting 2D works available in the Dragon Nation Plane.

He often envied newcomers to the fandom. At least they had years' worth of excellent works ahead of them, more than they could ever finish.

For someone like Chu Yu, though, it was hard to find even one work worth watching in years.

So the many excellent works that came with the system ignited his enthusiasm in an instant.

He'd consciously studied how to draw manga for more than ten years, but only as a hobby. He'd never considered becoming a mangaka.

But somehow, the system had talked him into becoming one. With the system's binding rewards—Manga Mastery Skills and The Garden of Words—he'd set out on that path.

He'd spent a month drawing the seven chapters of The Garden of Words, then submitted them to three manga magazines in Ming City ten days ago.

It had been summer vacation, so Chu Yu had plenty of time to work on it. Even so, drawing seven chapters—a total of a hundred and seventy or eighty pages—had worn him out.

Without the original manga pages the system had given him to copy and use as reference, and the Manga Mastery Skills that had improved both his drawing and his speed, there was no way he could've finished those seven chapters in a month. Even three months would've been a struggle!

"It's been ten days since I submitted it..." Chu Yu's thoughts wandered.

Ten days had passed, and none of the three manga companies had contacted him.

"I still haven't heard anything. Does that mean it's a no-go?"

The thought weighed on Chu Yu's heart. He'd sacrificed half his summer vacation, getting up early and staying up late to draw this work. He could accept it if no one liked it, but he'd definitely feel down for a while!

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