Since Misaki had moved to Shirogane Animation, the manuscript handoff arrangent had changed. Rei now scheduled a ti to et the Hoshimori Group's new editor, Hana Yoshimoto, at Miyu Yukishiro's villa. He did not particularly enjoy one-on-one etings with people he did not know well, and Miyu's presence made the arrangent comfortable for everyone.
When he arrived, Miyu already had her manuscript ready. She was standing in the entrance when he ca through the door, and the professional composure she kept for business settings relaxed visibly when she saw him.
"Rei, you're here."
"Mm." He stepped inside and brushed the snow from his coat and hat. January in Tokyo occasionally produced light snowfall. The warmth of the house reached him imdiately.
"Shirogane-sensei." Hana Yoshimoto straightened when she saw him, her expression tightening with the particular anxiety of soone who was very aware of the stakes of this relationship.
She had co up under Misaki's supervision and had t both Rei and Miyu several tis before in that capacity. Misaki's strong recomndation had secured her this position. Even so, she was conscious every ti she was in the sa room as Rei that her career as an editor was contingent on this working relationship functioning smoothly. She chose her words carefully as a result.
"No need to be nervous," Rei said.
He hung his coat on the rack and pulled the manuscript folder from his bag. The Demon Slayer: Kitsu no Yaiba Hashira Training arc chapter.
Hana worked through the standard review process efficiently. When she finished and confird there were no issues, she exhaled.
"Everything is in order. Thank you both. I will take my leave."
"It is dinner ti. Stay and eat before you go," Miyu said.
"Thank you, but I really must be going." Hana gathered her things quickly. She was not oblivious. The dynamic between Rei and Miyu was not the dynamic of professional acquaintances, regardless of what the industry rumours said or did not say about them. She had no interest in sitting through dinner as the only other person at the table.
After Hana left, Rei looked across the room at Miyu.
The temperature outside had been dropping all week, but inside the house she was dressed casually: a white shirt and a light blue skirt, her hair loose. The fair skin he had noticed the first ti they t had not changed. What had changed was everything else. The slight awkwardness of the high school version of her had been replaced entirely by sothing that could only be described as settled. She knew who she was. It showed.
They were both twenty-two. Graduation was approaching. Six or seven years had passed since they first t.
Miyu set the dinner out on the table and sat down.
"The manuscript you just handed over was the final chapter of the Hashira Training arc, wasn't it?"
"Mm."
"That was fast." She said it quietly, to herself as much as to him. "I was serialising Touch of Glass when you were doing Hunter x Hunter. I was still on this manga when you moved to Demon Slayer. Now Demon Slayer is about to end and I am still serialising the sa work."
"That ans it is popular enough to keep running. There is nothing wrong with that." Rei sat down and began helping himself to the food without ceremony. He had spent New Year at her house for several years running. There was no version of restraint that made sense in this setting.
"University is almost over," Miyu said. "I look back and realise I spent the whole of it drawing manga. My goal at the beginning was to surpass you. I understand now how naive that was."
"I told you in high school not to use as your benchmark," Rei said, looking at her. "What you should be aiming for is the position of the second-best creator of this era."
"That sentence makes angrier every ti I hear it," she said, but without any real heat behind it.
"If I had known what kind of person you actually were, I would not have spent my entire university life studying manga at this intensity."
"Do you regret it?"
"Not exactly. But manga is a lifelong practice. These four years are not. When I am forty and looking back, the picture is: junior high, drawing manga. High school, chasing your shadow while drawing manga.
University, trying frantically to surpass you, drawing manga, and losing decisively. It is a very specific kind of boring. I should have let myself be a little more distracted."
She said it lightly, the self-deprecation easy and natural between them. She was not looking for sympathy. They knew each other too well for that.
"So if you could go back, you would want the kind of youth you see in manga," Rei said.
"Sothing like that."
"Manga competition aside." Rei took a sip of his drink. "Youth should have other things in it. Dating, for instance."
Miyu looked up. She had not been expecting the conversation to move in that direction.
"What are you talking about? Why did you bring that up suddenly?"
"Because I have been thinking sothing similar," Rei said, after a pause.
Miyu's eyes were very still.
"University is not over yet," Rei said. "We still have the second sester of our final year."
"The youthful life you want. You can still create it."
The atmosphere in the room shifted.
Miyu looked at Rei.
Had the blockhead actually changed his ways?
She and Rei had maintained their relationship after high school through their shared status as mangakas, but if the foundation of their contact was purely professional, then none of what had developed over the past several years made any sense.
Inviting a colleague ho for New Year was not normal. Spending this much ti together was not normal. She had stayed single through four years of university despite having no shortage of people expressing interest, had not pursued any aningful closeness with anyone else, had consistently made ti for Rei and sought out reasons to see him.
She did not think he was unaware of any of this. She did not think he was unaware of what it ant.
She also understood his schedule. The pace he had been working at for years left no room for anything else. When he had announced five new works, she had felt a specific variety of despair, knowing that the next year or two would look the sa as every year before it.
But what he had just said.
She looked at his eyes, which were as calm as they always were, and felt sothing shift in her expression that she could not entirely contain.
"That is a reasonable point," she said carefully. "I really should start dating before graduation."
She was not going to assu anything. Not yet. She needed to understand what he was actually saying.
"Mm," Rei said.
"Do you actually understand what I am saying?" Miyu asked.
"Yes," Rei said, and looked at her directly.
The front door opened.
Misaki ca through it carrying a snow-dusted umbrella, surveyed the dining table with the expression of soone who had arrived at exactly the right mont, and sat down without ceremony.
A mont passed. She looked at her sister with mild curiosity.
"Miyu, do you have a cold? Your ears are very red."
"You startled when you opened the door," Miyu said, in her usual composed tone.
The colour in her ears was slow to fade.
"You are genuinely timid," Misaki said, with complete seriousness, and reached for the food.
Through dinner, Misaki registered that sothing about the atmosphere at the table was not quite what it usually was, but she did not pursue it. After the al she pulled Rei aside to go through the day's operational decisions from Shirogane Animation. By the ti they finished it was late enough that Rei simply stayed in the guest room rather than going ho.
Both sisters had that level of easy trust in him. It had been true for years.
The following night was Thursday.
Demon Slayer: Kitsu no Yaiba broadcast day. The final episode of the Swordsmith Village arc.
Tens of millions of viewers across Japan, possibly approaching a hundred million if the overseas broadcast audience was included, were settling in front of their televisions with no knowledge of what the series' creator had been doing the previous evening.
For many of them, the Swordsmith Village arc had produced real criticisms alongside genuine enjoynt, and those two things had coexisted without reducing their engagent with the work.
But welcoming the final episode of the arc carried its own particular weight tonight.
After the battle concluded, the story's rhythm required a recovery period for the protagonist group.
Several weeks of quieter material. And once those weeks of material had aired, the tiline brought the series directly to February, when the first Demon Slayer: Kitsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle arc film was scheduled to premiere.
Which ant that what was broadcasting tonight was, for all practical purposes, the conclusion of the main television storyline.
After tonight, Demon Slayer in its television form was complete.
For the story to advance further, the audience would have to wait for the films.
...
STONES PLZZ
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