Yamada Kenta clutched the last remaining copy of Eizonyan and hurried to join the checkout queue, which was still stretching out in a long line.
His heart fluttering with nerves, he shuffled forward one step at a time, darting anxious glances left and right just as he had before, and unconsciously tugged the peak of his baseball cap down even lower.
Hazuki had actually rung him earlier today, wanting to make plans to hang out — but today happened to be the release day for Kairakuten.
He hadn't known at the time that this issue of Kairakuten would be coming out without a new work by Xuanyayi-sensei. All he'd been thinking was that no matter what, he had to get out early and get his hands on the magazine.
So he had turned Hazuki down flat. But during that phone call, she had mentioned she was heading to Shinjuku Ward — and he had been planning to do a sweep of Shinjuku Ward himself first.
The last thing he needed was for Hazuki to take his refusal on the chin and head out alone anyway, only to bump into him in the middle of his frantic magazine hunt. That would be mortifying beyond all recovery.
Which was precisely why Yamada Kenta had gone to the trouble of putting on a baseball cap and a face mask before leaving the house, disguising himself to near-perfection — so that even if they did cross paths, he hopefully wouldn't be recognised.
Ahhh, just a little longer and he'd be topping up his month's supply of life energy. He needed to get home, fast — he was absolutely desperate!
At last it was Yamada Kenta's turn at the register. He shoved the magazine and the exact cash he'd prepared in advance across the counter in one motion. No change needed. Before the cashier had even finished scanning and thought to ask whether he wanted a bag, he had already stuffed the magazine deep into his backpack.
"Thanks — no bag needed."
Yamada Kenta zipped up his backpack at speed, swung it back onto his shoulders, and made straight for the exit.
He was rounding the corner outside, trying to work out whether it would be faster to head to the nearby subway entrance and wait for a train, or to just run home from here — when a familiar voice reached his ears.
"Yamada-kun!"
Yamada Kenta froze on the spot. Then he yanked his face mask up a little higher, gave the peak of his cap another sharp tug, and dropped his voice low.
"Sorry, you've got the wrong person."
Hazuki looked at the strangely turned-out Yamada Kenta with an expression of pure bafflement — and then her face broke into a wide, delighted grin.
"Is this a scene from some manga or something?"
"Ahaha, you're such a character!"
And with that she reached up and plucked the cap clean off Yamada Kenta's head, settled it onto her own, and ran through a perfect re-enactment of what he'd just been doing.
Yamada Kenta could see there was no keeping this up any longer. He turned back towards her with a stiff, embarrassed smile.
"Oh my — if it isn't Hazuki!"
"What are you doing out here by yourself?"
At that, Hazuki tilted her head and smiled. Well, she said, you told me you were busy, so what was she supposed to do but come out on her own?
"Actually — speaking of which. Where exactly has the 'too busy' Yamada-kun been coming from just now?"
Yamada Kenta looked at Hazuki's smile — that smile he genuinely couldn't tell was pure innocence or calculated needling — and his throat gave an involuntary gulp.
"I was... I was just picking up some condiments for home."
"Oh, is that so."
"So you're all done then, Yamada-kun?"
"Yep, all done."
"So does that mean you're free now?"
"There's actually a new dessert place that just opened up nearby — I was going to ask if you'd come try it with me."
Hazuki smiled as she said it, hands clasped behind her back, watching him.
Yamada Kenta, who had now told Hazuki two separate lies within the space of a single day, was too ashamed to meet her eyes.
He turned his head aside instead, reached back and touched his backpack, feeling the weight of its contents — light, so light, and yet somehow so significant.
"I'm sorry!"
"I really do have urgent business!"
"I have to go home right this instant!"
This was not a lie.
"Hahaha, why are you being so serious about it, Yamada-kun."
"Go on then, get going."
Hearing that Hazuki wasn't going to hold it against him, he quietly let out a breath of relief.
He wasn't going to bother with the subway.
"I'm sorry, Hazuki."
"Next time — next time I'll definitely come out with you!"
With those words thrown over his shoulder, Yamada Kenta broke into a sprint towards home, which wasn't far.
Hazuki watched his retreating figure disappear around the corner of the street. The bright, sunny smile she'd been wearing up until a moment ago cooled at once. She stamped her foot softly, just once.
Yamada Kenta ran all the way home without stopping.
He didn't even pause to catch his breath — just made straight for his room on the second floor.
Only then did he pull the two magazines out of his backpack: Kairakuten and Eizonyan.
He tossed Kairakuten to one side first, and took Eizonyan carefully into both hands.
Now, at last, he had the time to properly look over this brand-new debut issue, fresh from Akaneshinsha's presses.
On the cover was a crowd of...
Lolis?
He looked at the title again.
Eizonyan...
Surely it couldn't be an eternal-loli magazine?!
Didn't Akaneshinsha already have a magazine aimed squarely at loli fans? Why on earth were they launching another whole new series?
That thought had barely formed when Yamada Kenta's first instinctive reaction was —
Wait. Xuanyayi-sensei draws lolis?
He rubbed his eyes and checked again. He hadn't been seeing things.
Delicate features. A petite frame. A childlike face.
It was unmistakably loli artwork, no question about it.
Xuanyayi-sensei is actually a lolicon?
Yamada Kenta murmured to himself.
He thought back to the loli-genre manga he'd read in the past — all those kids doing nothing but acting cute, being clingy, calling out "Onii-chan" and "Otou-san" and "Ojii-san".
Honestly? He had never had much interest in that sort of thing.
He'd even felt a vague resistance towards it.
It always felt so... deliberate.
Deliberately cute. Deliberately pandering. Deliberately nudging you towards thoughts you really shouldn't be having.
And above all else — faced with a little girl whose secondary sex characteristics hadn't even developed yet, he simply couldn't get going!
No, he'd always preferred someone with a more... healthy development. At the very least, a girl in her teens!
Lolicons — pathetic lot, the lot of them.
Hmph. Xuanyayi-sensei — my tastes are on a whole other level from yours!
That said.
This being Xuanyayi-sensei's new work, he owed it a thorough academic examination, whatever he thought about the subject matter.
Magazine in hand, he went through his customary ritual — drew the curtains closed, sat himself down at the desk he'd readied before heading out.
He took a long, deep breath, and turned the cover.
He found the table of contents.
He found Xuanyayi-sensei's page number.
In the end, Tsushima Kagami had settled on this piece — Eizonyan No. 8 — as the lead work.
She felt that its themes of life-span theory and reincarnating pure love were a better fit for the concept that Eizonyan represented as a whole.
It was to serve as the flagship work for the inaugural issue — a guiding light for the other artist contributors.
The hope was that it would inspire them to create more and better Eizonyan-style works going forward, even now, in this era.
So when Yamada Kenta turned to the main story pages and found that the heroine was, right from the very first panel, a member of the oni clan — complete with horns growing from her head — he blinked.
Not a human loli, but an oni loli?
Did you really think that just by switching the race, you could escape suspicion of being a lolicon?
Next, the hero appeared on the scene, declaring he would challenge the oni heroine.
And within just a few pages, that challenge had ended up in bed.
Sub-par. Decidedly sub-par.
Xuanyayi-sensei, what are you doing?!
Where's the build-up?! The elaborate, deviously layered groundwork you're so famous for?!
How have you thrown them into a pas de deux together without a single shred of preparation?
Where's the trap?
Where's the plot?
Where's the pure love?
Though Yamada Kenta kept up a running internal commentary of complaints, he turned the pages anyway.
Until the point where the hero and heroine were enthusiastically producing child after child, and he ran out of words entirely.
I didn't come here to read a stud farm!
Suppressing his disappointment and irritation, he kept turning pages.
Until the scene shifted — the hero had grown old, lying at death's door in his final moments.
The heroine still wore the same eternally youthful face. She cupped the hero's face in both hands, her expression a mingling of happiness, sorrow, and quiet anticipation.
Until she asked him: "Are you satisfied?"
The scene shifted again. It was revealed that the heroine had eaten mermaid flesh to keep her youth forever, and that the hero had known her from long, long before — protecting her from enemies who had sought to take advantage of her.
In the end he had fled with her from battle, gravely wounded, barely clinging to life.
And in that moment the heroine had made a vow with him: if there truly is a next life —
Then please, no matter what, find your way back to my side.
And now the hero, on the edge of his last breath, found the memories of his previous life returning to him at last.
He finally understood why, from the moment he first heard the heroine's name, he had been unable to stop himself from going to find her.
And the heroine had been waiting for him, in the same place as always.
Now that the memories had come flooding back, he understood, too, that he had kept his vow faithfully — and so he smiled, and spoke the words "I am satisfied," and breathed his last.
Then, in a final scene shift, time leapt swiftly from the ancient past into the present day.
In the panels, the heroine moved through a crowded city street — and brushed past a young man.
The young man started, then immediately turned back and reached out through the crowd to take her hand...
Ahem, ahem...
"What's your name—"
"...Still."
"Let's talk about the old days. About the children. So many things I have to tell you. All the living I've done until now — everything up until this moment — I want to tell it all to you."
When Yamada Kenta finally finished reading, he let out a long, satisfied breath.
Then he smiled and shook his head.
Xuanyayi-sensei. Of course. Only you could pull this off.
Life-span theory — and even reincarnation, a love so completely locked-in it spans lifetimes?
Having gradually come to savour exactly what he was tasting, Yamada Kenta flipped back to the earlier pages where the two of them had been enthusiastically making babies.
He had a feeling it wasn't entirely impossible to get going after all.
Yamada Kenta took in the scene of the heroine's tiny frame — carrying a belly the size of a watermelon — going three hundred rounds with the hero.
Suddenly, enlightenment struck.
Traditional craftsmanship level up — again!
Yamada Kenta had by now entered Sage Mode, staring vacantly up at the ceiling.
His mind kept replaying the scenes from the manga, over and over.
The loli's outward appearance — and yet those eyes, carrying a quality of intelligence and maturity he couldn't quite put into words.
Not a performance of maturity, but the kind that had been tempered naturally by the long passage of time, simply flowing out of her as a matter of course.
She spoke with gentleness. She cared for others with attentiveness. She kept quiet company. She drew the hero softly into her arms when he was grieving.
What did these kinds of lolis remind him of?
He turned it over in his mind.
They reminded him of...
A mother?
No, not that kind — not the fussing, meddling, nagging kind.
Although, come to think of it...
That didn't sound half bad, did it?
They looked so small, so in need of protection.
And yet those eyes of theirs were so warm, so reassuring, so utterly compelling — you just wanted to lean on them.
That contradiction —
Was extraordinary.
A loli's body and childlike face, combined with that mature, knowing, radiantly maternal quality — and yet not a drop of innocence or charm sacrificed in the process.
Was this something categorically different from the lolicon manga of today, which did nothing more than put a child's infantile qualities on display?
Yamada Kenta flipped back through from the beginning.
Then through it again.
Finally he closed the magazine, lay back on his bed, and stared at the ceiling.
He had to admit: with Xuanyayi-sensei leading the charge, the art quality and story quality in this debut issue of Eizonyan were both extraordinarily high.
And his mind was full of nothing but the various heroines from this issue.
Their eyes. Their smiles. The gentle way they spoke.
If only, back when he had been betrayed by girlfriend after girlfriend, he could have broken down and wept in the arms of someone like them.
If only someone like them had patted him on the back and offered soft words of comfort — perhaps he would never have gone down that dark road of NTR-chasing in the first place.
As it was, thanks to Xuanyayi-sensei's firm corrective intervention, he had slowly been weaning himself off it — racking up the impressive record of several consecutive months with no NTR-related content and no giving in to the urge to get involved with girls who were plainly going to cuck him!
But...
But if only there had been a "mother" like that from the start — someone whose embrace he could have cried himself out in —
He wouldn't have had to carry so much of this alone.
"I..."
He murmured to himself.
"I think I might have... fallen in love with a character who doesn't exist?"
At that thought, Yamada Kenta hauled himself up off the bed again.
He opened his computer and went to the forum.
He found the forum already full of threads discussing the magazine.
He clicked on the one with the most traction and scrolled through it.
He nodded along in a spirit of kindred minds thinking alike.
It seemed everyone had already discovered the charm of the lolis drawn by Xuanyayi-sensei's hand.
Xuanyayi-sensei, I apologise for mocking you as a lolicon.
My understanding was shallow.
As Yamada Kenta browsed the thread and silently offered his apologies to Tsushima Kagami in his heart —
He left a comment at the very bottom of the page.
[How I wish she could be the one to guide me!]
____
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