“…W-well? What did you think?” Anzu asked gingerly, the trepidation plain to hear in her voice. She was sitting upright on her knees in formal seating posture. As promised, I gave her my honest review.
“I thought it was really, really great!” I exclaimed, holding up the manuscript in awe. “I found the main character to be super likable and compelling. Especially in that last scene, where we find out she’s actually an android who thinks she’s human. The way it hits her so hard at first, but she gets back up and continues her search for survivors regardless—that part really resonated with me. Oh yeah, and I also love how much foreshadowing you peppered in throughout to kind of hint at the fact she was an android all along. I didn’t pick up on it at all on my first pass, but now I really want to read it again to see what else I missed. It was definitely a real page-turner, that’s for sure. Loved every minute of it.”
“You… You did?!” Anzu replied, her voice squeaky and ecstatic.
“Yeah. If you told me this was a one-off story in some major weekly manga magazine, I wouldn’t bat an eye. It’s really incredible, honestly. I had no idea you were such a talented artist, not to mention storyteller. And the fact that you’re already putting yourself out there and entering your stuff in competitions and whatnot is pretty—”
“Uh, s-sorry, could you give me a sec?” Anzu interrupted. She stood straight up, then dove onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow. At first, I didn’t know what to make of this, but then she started rapidly kicking her legs up and down and squealing with glee.
“H-Hanashiro?”
All I could hear was the sound of her muffled elation. I didn’t know if she was trying to hide it or what, but I was glad to see that she was apparently quite pleased with my review. She went on kicking her legs like this at full speed for a good several seconds too, until finally, she stopped all at once as though her batteries had run out. She slowly twisted her body around, then sat upright and tried to collect herself. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead and frizzy from the static.
“…Welp, I think that’s enough happiness for the next five years,” she said.
“Ha ha. Guess it was a good thing you let me take a look after all! If you’ve ever got more stuff you want me to ‘proofread’ for you, just say the word. I think it’s definitely a good idea to get feedback if you’re aiming to do this for a living someday.”
“I mean, I’m not actually trying to be a professional or anything—I don’t put in nearly enough work to ever make it big. I just submit my stuff to competitions sometimes for the hell of it, and because I like the feedback…”
“Huh, really? That’s a shame. I think your work is pretty damn good already.”
“No it’s not…” Anzu mumbled shyly, turning to look away from me. She went crimson from ear to ear all over again. I waited for her to regain her composure, then dove right into my next question.
“So hey, I was meaning to ask you something.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“All those papers we found at the Urashima Tunnel before… Were those pages from previous manga you wrote?”
Anzu’s eyes widened a bit, though only for a second before she straightened her posture and nodded affirmatively. “Yeah, they were. All stuff that I wrote way back in elementary school.”
“Aha. So I was right, then…”
From the fleeting glimpse I got at the time, I had been fairly certain that they were manga pages; I’d just had no idea what significance they might have held for Anzu.
“Sorry about that, by the way,” she said. “I acted pretty selfish back there…”
“It’s cool. What’s done is done. Though I would like to know what those pages meant to you, if you don’t mind telling me.”
Anzu let out a sigh of resignation, then answered in a soft, meek voice. “They’re all my old stories that my parents threw away.”
“Wait. They tossed your artwork in the trash?”
“Yeah. When I was ten years old, I got in trouble for drawing in the middle of class, and then my folks found out during parent-teacher conferences. They told me to stop wasting my time on stuff that ‘wouldn’t help me amount to something in the real world,’ then made me watch as they threw everything I’d drawn up to that point in the garbage.”
“…Ouch. That’s pretty harsh.”
“I poured so much time and effort into every one of those pages. I bawled my eyes out and got in a huge fight with my parents. From then on, I made a point of continuing to draw as much as I could out of spite, right where they could see me doing it. I never told anyone else about it, but I refused to give up on manga, no matter what. Honestly, that was where all of my issues with them started, and what ultimately led to them cutting me loose and sending me here.”
“Damn…”
This was pretty heavy stuff. Now I understood why Anzu had gone so feral trying to gather those pages in the tunnel. I had to respect her determination, though, continuing to draw manga because it was what she loved to do, even when her parents vehemently disapproved. I found that kind of passion to be quite noble.
“But I mean, if you really love making manga that much, I don’t see why you felt the need to hide it from me in the first place. Especially considering you’re so good at it.”
“It’s because it means so much to me that I didn’t want to share it with you.”
“Huh. Is that how being an artist works?”
“At least for me, it is,” Anzu said, biting her lip. There was a long pause, and then she shifted gears: “…But why would my old manga show up inside the Urashima Tunnel?”
“What do you mean? Probably because you wanted it back, I assume.”
“Huh… Did I want it back, though?”
“Don’t ask me. How should I know?”
“To be honest with you, I’m not one hundred percent sure myself. Like, obviously I wasn’t going to just leave my old manga there in the tunnel, but as for whether I’d been harboring some deep-seated desire to get it back all these years… Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.”
“Really? Huh…” I replied noncommittally, leaning against the bed as I looked at the ceiling. Then all of a sudden, I felt an epiphany coming on, and I let out a tiny gasp. Anzu looked over at me, mildly startled. Hell, I was pretty startled myself, to be honest.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Oh, uh. Nothing,” I lied. “Don’t worry about it…”