Torishima was caught off guard. He hadn't expected Oda to actually hold him to it.
The young man's expression was dead serious. Completely earnest. Not even thinking about giving him an easy way out.
"Fine." Torishima nodded calmly. "I was wrong."
Oda froze for a second, then let out a long breath.
Being denied by someone was painful. Especially when that someone was the first editor of his favorite manga, Dragon Ball.
"I accept it."
"Kanzaki-sensei." With the weight off his shoulders, Oda's brow lifted. He looked around the hall, then back at Kai. "I'm going home to draw manga. I'll be taking off."
"Not staying a bit longer?" Kai tried to hold him.
"No." Oda shook his head. "I can't wait to try that method you told me about."
Kai nodded. "Alright, but before you go, can I get your autograph?"
He pulled out a signing board and held it out with both hands. "Please. One Piece is incredible. I'm a real fan."
Oda bowed as he took the board. "I'm so happy. My serialized work has lived up to your expectations, Sensei."
"Everything about it is perfect," Kai nodded. "Except for the Red-Haired losing his arm."
Oda drew a quick sketch of Luffy on the board, then wrote in the bottom right corner: "To the invincible Kanzaki-sensei."
— Oda Eiichiro.
"That was forced by my editor to build tension. It really was a mistake." He sighed. "From now on, if something doesn't feel right, I'll push back."
After saying goodbye to Kai, Oda exchanged brief pleasantries with Kaitani Shinobu, Tokuhiro Masaya, Watsuki, and a few others before hurrying out of the venue.
"Truly decisive. No wonder he's going to go as far as he will." Kai watched him leave.
Torishima, unfazed by the public confrontation, sat down beside Kai as if nothing had happened.
"Death Note propped up the collapsing building and saved Weekly Shonen Jump. I owe you a great deal. Without you, I'd have ended up like Horie, exiled to some backwater division." He chuckled. "So thank you."
With Jump's crisis averted, the tension in his shoulders had visibly loosened.
For over two years, the magazine had been sliding. Torishima had waited and waited, and finally, Kai appeared.
If it had taken another two years, even a manga as strong as Death Note wouldn't have been able to reverse the damage to Jump's gutted reader base.
"Mm." Kai nodded, accepting it matter-of-factly. "That's exactly why I came."
Torishima studied him and thought once again that his instincts had been right.
Confident enough.
Betting his career on Death Note had crushed him with pressure. Now that the gamble had paid off, he felt lighter than he had in years, and his impression of Kai climbed even higher.
In this mood, the business with Oda was a spring breeze. Barely worth noting. Besides, the kid genuinely had talent. He'd become a pillar of Jump.
Torishima moved on to business. In a few weeks, TV Tokyo would be inviting Kai for an interview to promote the collected volumes and the upcoming anime.
Kai agreed.
It was a minor thing. Torishima didn't need to deliver the message personally.
He just wanted the excuse to talk.
Torishima was swamped with official duties and had a hall full of people to network with. He didn't stay long before standing up to leave.
But after two steps, he stopped. He turned his head, raised his champagne glass, and tilted his chin slightly.
"Keep up the good work, Kanzaki-sensei."
Kai raised his glass in return. "Will do."
Then he drained it in one gulp.
...
Finally, nobody came to bother him. Kai enjoyed the rest of dinner in peace.
After eating his fill, the person in the corner still hadn't moved. He was just sitting there alone, picking at his fingers.
Kai had no idea why the guy had even come to the annual meeting. Curiosity got the better of him, and he walked over.
Introverts were just toys for extroverts, right?
"Hello. I'm Kanzaki." He sat down across from him. "Why are you sitting here by yourself?"
The man had an unconventional hairstyle and fashionable clothes. He didn't look like a manga artist at all. No trace of the corporate slave aura that clung to most people in the industry.
More like an artist.
As Kai sat down, the man tightened his jacket and shrank back into the sofa.
Wild on the outside. Shy on the inside.
"I'm Kubo Nobuaki." He introduced himself. As for why he wasn't socializing: "Isn't this kind of event just a place for senior manga artists to look down on newcomers?"
Kubo Nobuaki. The name sounded incredibly familiar. Kai felt like he'd heard it before.
But it was vague. He couldn't place it.
"It's just people flattering the powerful and stepping on the weak," Kubo continued. "There's no value in it."
Kai blinked. He'd had the exact same thought when he attended the Tezuka Award ceremony. That was why he hadn't gone around asking senior manga artists for advice.
Kai preferred to interact with people as equals, on level ground.
The condescending gaze was hard to stomach.
"You're too proud."
"Perhaps." Kubo accepted the assessment. "I might regret it later, but I don't want to force myself to be something I'm not right now."
"Then why do you hate Oda?" Kai asked the question that had been bugging him.
Kubo crossed his arms, looking uncomfortable.
"So you heard all of that. I really don't want to answer."
They'd published one-shots in the same issue once. Kubo had lost to Oda.
And while Oda had been given a hard time by Torishima, he'd started serialization quickly.
Kubo? He still couldn't see the sky. Still struggling like a weed growing through cracks in concrete.
So yeah. He resented Oda a little.
"And what about me?" Kai pointed at himself. This was the question he really wanted answered. He hadn't done anything wrong. Why the hostility?
Kubo let out a long sigh, like a man being dragged to face his own personal hell.
"I'm sorry, Kanzaki-sensei."
He started with an apology. Unexpectedly polite.
"I'm too jealous of you. You drew something as cool as Death Note. Mystery, style, justice versus evil, power versus morality... it's everything I want to be as a creator."
"Standing next to you, I'm ashamed of how far behind I am. I want to draw Shinigami too, but everything I've come up with falls so far short of Death Note..."
He was dissecting his own heart, his body trembling, every word painfully sincere.
"I kept asking myself, why? Why can't I break through? Why can't my manga get serialized? But when I read Death Note, I understood. My work was too boring."
"Admiration is the furthest distance from understanding. Admiring you, Sensei, I wanted to stay away from you until the day I could truly see you as an equal."
It clicked.
Kai suddenly knew who this was.
Tite Kubo. The creator of Bleach.
The man who brought the world Kurosaki Ichigo, one of shonen manga's most iconic protagonists, and Aizen Sosuke, one of its greatest villains.
Being admired this much... the feeling was incredible.
Kai rubbed his chin, fighting to keep the grin off his face.
This. This was the feeling he'd most wanted from tonight.
Being looked up to by a future national-level manga artist. It was deeply, unreasonably satisfying.
"That's a hell of a line. You should put it in a manga someday. You really are like a poet." Kai patted his shoulder. "I gave Oda some advice, so I'll give you something too."
"Please, Sensei." Kubo looked at Kai, eyes full of anticipation.
Maybe this was his moment of clarity.
"Change your pen name. Kubo Nobuaki doesn't suit you. Use your real name."
"Huh?" Kubo stared at him. What kind of advice was that?
But thinking it over, ever since he'd started using the pen name Kubo Nobuaki, nothing had gone right. Not a single success.
Maybe changing his name really would open things up.
"Thank you..."
He looked up to express his gratitude, only to find that Kai had already left.
The man was running across the hall toward Inoue Takehiko like an excited kid.
"Inoue-sensei, please! I need your autograph!"
Kai was a genuine fan of Inoue Takehiko. He'd even quoted Sakuragi Hanamichi's legendary line from the Shohoku versus Sannoh match during his Tezuka Award acceptance speech.
"My most glorious moment is right now."
If Inoue Takehiko didn't exist in this world, Kai would have seriously considered copying Slam Dunk himself.
"If I had a Death Note, I could make manga artists disappear and then recreate their works..."
Listening to this fanboy's muttering, Inoue felt a chill. Cold sweat broke out on his back.
He signed his name quickly and handed the board to Kai.
"Done."
Then he tried to slip away.
"Sorry, this one's for a friend," Kai said, looking sheepish. "Could you sign one more for me? If you could draw Rukawa Kaede too, that would be amazing."
Inoue sighed. "Alright."
He was an easygoing person.
"Fujin, I think very highly of your manga. I hope you can finish Death Note perfectly, without being disturbed by the noise outside. — Inoue Takehiko."
After Shohoku defeated Sannoh, the manga ended. It had felt almost like a rushed conclusion.
But it was the most perfect ending. Shohoku had spent everything they had. They had nothing left for the next round, and losing to Aiwa Academy afterward was only natural.
Youth was always full of regret. Shohoku failing to dominate the nation was real and profound.
Most importantly, stopping the story there gave readers the sense that the Shohoku players' youth hadn't ended. That they were still chasing their dreams somewhere beyond the page.
That kind of open-endedness was brilliant. It had stayed with Kai for years.
But ending a manga that way was incredibly difficult.
Toriyama had tried to end Dragon Ball again and again, only to be stopped. Inoue, on the other hand, had been resolute. He wasn't afraid to walk away.
And now he was passing that conviction along to Kai.
"Whether commercial value matters more or your own work matters more, I hope you choose the latter."
He patted Kai on the shoulder and walked away.
Kai put the signing board away, completely untroubled.
He'd already made his choice a long time ago.
In his past life, other people's decisions had controlled him. If he came to a whole new world and still let that happen, what was the point of being reborn?
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