Completed

(Some readers pointed out that my pacing was slow and that I spent too much time describing the female characters. I'd noticed it too. After giving it some thought, I'm no Great God, and readers don't have the patience to follow a bunch of foreshadowing. I'll pick up the pace and cut some scenes involving less important characters! If you notice a supporting character disappearing later, just ignore it.)

After feeling down for a few seconds, Zhao Qinyin quickly rekindled her fighting spirit.

The reason she'd come to work as another manga artist's assistant in the first place was to learn from other artists' strengths. She couldn't afford to lose heart here.

The days passed, and a week flew by!

The students at Ming City's Fifth Middle School didn't notice any changes in their daily routines. The students in Class Three Grade Three didn't notice that their class monitor kept glancing at a manga during breaks, then looking back at someone in the seat behind her.

The students in Class Five Grade Three didn't notice either that their class monitor, Zhao Qinyin, had been daydreaming in class lately, or that whenever she ran into someone in the corridor, she always smiled and nodded.

Today was the day The Garden of Words ended.

As soon as afternoon classes were over, Qin Qianyv stopped by to buy the latest issue of Man Ying on her way home.

"W-what kind of ending is this?!" As she walked, Qin Qianyv finished reading the latest installment of The Garden of Words, looking completely bewildered.

After six chapters of emotional buildup, Qiu Yue confessed his feelings, but Yukino brushed him off with the excuse that they were teacher and student. Qiu Yue left in despair, and Yukino finally made up her mind to chase after him. Then, in an outdoor stairwell, Qiu Yue broke down emotionally, and Yukino lost control too... and threw her arms around him.

"Every morning..."

"I get dressed and ready to go to school..."

"But I'm always so weighed down by fear that I can't take a single step."

"And there, you were the one..."

"Who gave me the strength to move forward."

Yukino said these words as she hugged the male lead and cried.

The scene ended abruptly.

The view pulled back from a close-up to a wide shot. All that remained in the background was the torrential rain and the beautiful sun.

And that became the final page of the manga.

The words "The End" made Qin Qianyv wonder if she'd read it wrong.

"That's it?" Qin Qianyv blinked.

Whether the two ended up together or not, Qin Qianyv could have accepted either outcome.

But she really couldn't accept such an ambiguous ending.

It truly left the rest up to the readers' imagination.

"This... this is a Bad Ending, right?!"

Unlike Qin Qianyv, who was utterly confused, many working adults found the ending a little disappointing, but also felt it made sense.

An Open Ending might have been best for the two people in the manga, who were separated by the double gulf of age and status.

If they really got together, it would be far too melodramatic. It would also clash with the way Yukino had been established over the previous six chapters. If it were drawn that way, her characterization would fall apart!

Of course, plenty of people could accept this ending, and plenty couldn't.

On the voting page on Ink Shadow's website, a whole crowd of The Garden of Words fans who'd read the ending turned into haters. They voted for the worst-performing work on the site and left comments saying they'd never read another one of Shui Xin's works.

Of course, plenty of fans who could accept the ending also took a moment to cast their votes when the final chapter was published, showing their support for the series one last time.

For a while, the vote count for Chu Yu's The Garden of Words soared to nearly three thousand. Meanwhile, the haters' votes for a manga on Ink Shadow that was performing so poorly it was about to be axed climbed to second place, with nearly fifteen hundred votes. The two works took the top two spots on the poll.

This gave the person in charge of Ink Shadow's magazine a new perspective on the manga artist Shui Xin.

Only the authors of the works that had previously ranked second and second from the bottom on Ink Shadow's poll were left feeling miserable.

The first was bound to be upset to discover that their work had fewer fans than The Garden of Words had haters. The second had thought that at least someone else was at the bottom of the magazine's rankings, so they wouldn't be in last place. Who knew this would happen? The work with the fewest votes in the previous issue had suddenly jumped to second place, while their own work had fallen straight to the bottom. They could practically feel the axe about to fall.

All in all, over the two months The Garden of Words was serialized, Chu Yu went from an unknown ordinary person to a manga artist with a modest reputation in Ming City.

Plenty of people in Ming City liked his manga, and quite a few had become his haters.

At one in the morning on Thursday, after working for seven straight hours, Chu Yu finally set down his pen.

The final thing he'd drawn was Kenshin killing an enemy in the rain. The enemy's blood had splashed onto her umbrella, her clothes, and her face.

A dark, narrow alley.

The corpse of the man Kenshin had killed.

Kenshin knelt on the ground, sword in hand. The old scar on his face—the one left by a man he'd killed long ago—was bleeding again.

Kenshin raised his head. Before him stood a woman dressed all in white, her face expressionless.

The woman looked at him and spoke.

"You really..."

"Can bring..."

"Blood and carnage wherever you go!"

The woman's full-length portrait took up an entire manga page. Chu Yu had carefully rendered her expression, clothes, and background, along with the bloodstains on her clothes, face, and umbrella.

Beside him, Zhao Qinyin watched Chu Yu draw without blinking.

Chu Yu hadn't let her help with this page at all. He'd spent a full six hours drawing the complete scene of Xuedai Ba holding an umbrella, all by himself.

And Zhao Qinyin had stood beside Chu Yu and watched for the entire six hours.

"So beautiful!" Zhao Qinyin murmured as she looked at the page.

Yes, despite standing amid bloodshed and being spattered with blood, the woman in the illustration had a striking, unconventional beauty.

After working together for a week, Zhao Qinyin had grown used to Chu Yu's unorthodox way of working.

How to put it?

One idiom described Chu Yu's drawing perfectly: he had the whole picture in mind before he began.

He only gave his manga name to Zhao Qinyin as a reference. He never looked at it himself. Apart from correcting drawing mistakes, he drew the compositions and panel layouts directly, without revising them.

This full-page portrait of Xuedai Ba had showcased Chu Yu's skills to the fullest. He even had the vague feeling that his drawing ability had made a significant leap after he finished it.

"Yeah!" Chu Yu said, looking at the page.

This was absolutely the most painstaking page he'd drawn so far—and the pinnacle of his artistic skill.

With that, the first three chapters of Rurouni Kenshin: Reminiscence Arc were fully drawn.

"Hey, Su Ruo, wake up!"

It was already the middle of the night. Su Ruo, who'd been waiting for the manga draft to be finished, was sprawled on the sofa at Chu Yu's home, fast asleep.

"What is it?" Su Ruo mumbled groggily.

"Is it morning already?"

"..."

"..."

After handing the manga draft to Su Ruo and seeing the two of them off, Chu Yu washed up and collapsed onto his bed.

He'd wanted to tell them not to go to the trouble and just sleep at his place, but with the difference between men and women, he hadn't felt comfortable saying it.

The three of them had been exhausted this past week. Luckily, Zhao Qinyin had helped out. Otherwise, Chu Yu wouldn't have been able to refine some of the earlier pages after finishing all three chapters of the original artwork.

Now that his work was done, all that remained was to wait for Friday's Serialization Meeting!

Compared with the modest success of The Garden of Words, Chu Yu had no intention of settling for being a third-rate manga artist at Ink Shadow. Man Ying, Luo Province, the comic center of Dragon Nation in Modu, and even RB Island, the birthplace of manga in the world—that was where Chu Yu wanted to go next.

But he had to take things one step at a time. If he couldn't make a name for himself in places like Luo Province and Ming City, then if he really went to Modu to submit his work, the editors would probably toss a manuscript from an unknown artist straight into the trash without even reading it.

After all, manga companies like Modu Seven Greats rarely serialized newcomers. Usually, only manga artists who were well-known in their home provinces were qualified to submit to them—and even then, those companies might not accept their work!