The best part of Mitsuri’s day comes at ten p.m., when her husband goes to bed. She calls it her Golden Time. She arranges her things neatly on the dining table: a laptop, a tablet, a half-read manga, and her phone. All she needs is a cup of freshly brewed coffee, and she’s good to go.
“Lots of material today, that’s for sure.” Mitsuri took a sip of hot coffee and giggled to herself. Just learning the name of the young beautician would have been wonderful enough, but that he was already under the clutches of their Phero-Manager, that was a real coup! And on top of that, she had gotten a little closer to the mystery man.
“Ayumu is definitely going into the Friday installment.”
The laptop was powered on, with the browser open to the top-ten list on Pixiv.com. Pixiv was a website for artists, devoted to sharing original manga comics online. Mitsuri ran her finger down the list to third place: The Phero-Manager’s Indecent Diary. She giggled again. Who would have thought that the manga that I drew could have become so popular? It’s like a dream.
Mitsuri loved manga truly, madly, deeply. She had been drawing her own comics since middle school. She kept it up through high school and college, and even started submitting her work to manga magazines, although she never made the final cut. Then she fell head over heels in love with a man she had met, and they were married. Before she knew it, they were blessed with a child, and after that the days seemed to fly by in a frenzy. Eventually her relationship with her husband settled into a pleasant routine, while their only child began to crave independence, and she remembered her old drawings. Once she started to feel that she had some time to herself, naturally, the first thing she thought of was manga.
We live in an amazing time, Mitsuri thought. Anything you make, you just post it on the Internet and everyone can see. Back in the day she would publish fanzines with friends, desperate to get their work out, but if they didn’t sell, they’d end up in a stack of remainders. They were all driven to tears, hoping for someone—anyone—to read them. Now the number of readers was growing all the time, and she got all sorts of encouraging comments: “So much fun!,” “Can’t wait for the next installment.” It was really a wonderful time.
“Well, all of that is thanks to the Phero-Manager, anyway,” she said to herself.
Sometimes you need money to fully enjoy a hobby. Mitsuri had originally taken the job at the store because she wanted a tablet, but she thought it was fate that she met Mr. Shiba there.
When Mitsuri learned that Shiba was just the manager—a hired hand like the rest of them—she was moved. What a perfect, perfect manga character he was! A convenience store manager, throwing his love bombs everywhere—just perfect. It was too funny! Even while she was clocking in for job training, she was also clocking her boss, gathering notes for her new manga.
The more she got to know the store manager, the more interesting he was. Although the aura surrounding him was the last thing you’d expect at a convenience store, he served customers with the greatest care and courtesy. In the Tenderness chain’s annual customer service competition, he had been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Strangely, although his entourage of rabid fans continued to expand, girls in high school and middle school were repelled by him—they called his special chemistry “facial harassment.”
His private life was a mystery. First he would show up at the store on his day off, and then he’d say he was taking a break and they wouldn’t see him for several days in a row. One day Mitsuri spotted him at the Kanmon Strait Museum, walking arm in arm with a beautiful woman in a kimono, and the next, she saw him being carried into the Mojikō Premier Hotel by a man even more muscular than Nomiya. Finally, her curiosity got the best of her and she had to ask: “What kind of people are you associating with?” He brushed off the question with a laugh, saying, “We have to start by clarifying what ‘association’ means between the two of us.”
Before she knew it, Mitsuri had become obsessed with Shiba, although it had nothing to do with love, or even lust. How could she not make this person into a manga? Shiba would be the main character, and the setting, of course, had to be the convenience store. It would depict the daily life of the Phero-Manager and the people around him. The title was a perfect fit: The Phero-Manager’s Indecent Diary. She was confident as soon as she began to draw it that there would be interest, but she’d never thought for a second that it would be so popular, even after several years.
Does this store manager exist in real life? If so, please tell me where the store is! #badthoughts
When Mitsuri saw the DM someone had sent to the X account linked to her profile, she laughed. In the beginning, as the manga was slowly starting to grow in popularity, she came clean about the project to Shiba, asking for his consent to continue her work.
“I’ll stop if it makes you uncomfortable,” she said, head bowed, but Shiba’s eyes lit up.
“That’s fantastic!” he said. “Feel free to use me as much as you like, but please leave out the name of the store, just in case.”
“Absolutely, of course,” said Mitsuri firmly. Comments had already started to arrive from people wanting to locate the actual Phero-Manager. She was well aware that to share the location of the store in real life would cause an uproar. After Mitsuri promised to protect his privacy, Shiba lightly replied, “Well, okay then.” And that was the end of the matter.
“He does exist,” she replied to the fan, “but I can’t tell you where. If this becomes a nuisance to the store manager, I’ll have to cancel the series, so please give up your search.”
She typed the reply for the umpteenth time, sipping her coffee. Then, as she was responding to the last of the comments, Kōsei appeared. He opened the refrigerator door, chugged some milk directly from the carton, and turned to Mitsuri, glowering. “Manga again? Act your age, Mum, don’t be such a freak!”
“Didn’t I tell you not to be rude about your mother’s hobbies?” Mitsuri pressed her lips together in annoyance. Her son always seemed bothered about her manga. Although when he was little, he would always talk about how “Mama was really good at making pictures.” It was adorable, but if she reminded him of that now, Kōsei would make an even more terrible face, so she decided to keep it to herself. “If you don’t like what you’re seeing, then go back to your room, please.”
“I’m going there whether you ask me to or not,” he replied. “Oh, by the way, did you ask a junk collector to pick up the bike?”
“Why?” she asked, surprised.
“Just as I was getting home from school a little truck pulled up.” Kōsei took another gulp from the milk carton. “The guy said that you’d asked him to pick up the bike and if it was okay to take it now. That’s why.”
“D-did he have a beard? Like Mr. Shōhei?” He couldn’t have come already!
But Kōsei nodded. “His beard looked like Old Red’s, but aside from that, he was totally different. He was really young, you know?” He paused. “Not that it really matters, but he was interesting. Also, he seemed kind of cool.”
“Cool?”
Another surprise. But you could hardly see his face!
“I think there’s a good-looking face under that beard. It’s for the best that women can’t see it,” he said matter-of-factly.
Grown-up words for a boy who just turned sixteen, Mitsuri thought.
“Anyway, I gave him the bike, so…” And with that, Kōsei returned to his room.
“Wow, that was fast.” Mitsuri took the card she had been given earlier out of her bag and looked at it. She hadn’t been aware of it until now, but apparently she had been looking forward to contacting him. She found herself slightly disappointed. “My funny-guy sensor is going off…”
Tsugi had something special about him. She could feel it.