[Wait, this one isn't NTR? I'm grieving for Xuanyayi-sensei on one hand, and congratulating the male lead on the other.]
[I'm so gullible — I got tricked by Xuanyayi-sensei again, and I even bought two copies!]
[My little bro chid in and said it doesn't count as being tricked.]
[The proposal succeeded, and now our blonde-haired protagonist is riding high — but pride cos before a fall!]
[The heroine in a doujin is ant to be corrupted by fate.]
[If Xuanyayi-sensei isn't drawing NTR anymore, what are we supposed to live on?]
[Fine by — if he's going pure love, I'm all in on pure love too!]
Yamada Kenta finished reading the rest of the forum comnts and closed the page.
A deep, hollow emptiness washed over him all at once.
Maybe… it's ti to change.
He'd use this as his chance — ti to kick the NTR habit once and for all.
Still sitting in his chair, his eyes drifted for no particular reason to the bookshelf beside him, landing on the copy of the Gunzo literary supplent he'd just set there.
He got up and walked over to the shelf, reaching out to grab it — and that's when his eye caught the doujin manga sitting right next to it: Inorganic Girl. He'd bought that one at a Comic Market, lining up specially after hearing Xuanyayi-sensei would be at the indie circle booth.
He'd given one copy to Tsushima Kagami, and this copy — his own — he'd kept on a strict policy of not reading anything that was pure love. So it had just sat there, untouched, treated as a collector's item.
But now, as if guided by so invisible hand, he reached up and pulled that one pure-love doujin down from the shelf.
He carried it back to his desk and sat down, then began reading through it, page by page.
That's when he discovered sothing: Xuanyayi-sensei had spent a full forty-nine pages just on emotional buildup.
Not a single other doujin artist — not even those who put out hundred-page books — had ever done anything like that.
As expected of Xuanyayi-sensei. Pure love really is your true calling, isn't it.
He watched the boy and girl in the manga et through a shared interest, beco friends, gradually start noticing each other, feelings budding awkwardly and tentatively, careful little overtures back and forth — and then the quiet restraint, the respect for boundaries, until finally everything fell into place naturally.
Yamada Kenta found himself thinking about his first love.
But that was a sha, really. His first love had its sweet monts — and then an aftertaste far too bitter to bear.
He shook his head to clear it, burying that mortifying chapter of his life, and threw himself completely into the doujin.
He had to admit — Xuanyayi-sensei's new art style was just as gorgeous as ever. It hit hard.
It was only then that Yamada Kenta noticed his pants were sohow around his ankles again.
Well, they're already off. Might as well — together with that tribute he'd already been building up from the Happy Heaven issue earlier — dedicate this one to Xuanyayi-sensei as well.
He turned the final page, shuddered, then slumped back in his chair, mind completely blank, staring up at the ceiling.
Huh. So I can release just fine with a pure-love doujin too.
Well… at least with Xuanyayi-sensei's pure love, I can.
After a long mont he ca back to himself and opened the forum again, scrolling through the replies to his earlier post.
He thought about typing sothing, but that bottomless emptiness still clung to him like a fog.
In the end, he slowly typed out…
[Sorry, my hands were occupied just now.]
[But now I can't help but ask everyone a question — if human desire is nothing more than biological hormones, then where is humanity headed? And I find myself wondering: what is the secret of the universe? What is the aning of life? What is it that compels us to exist in this cosmos?]
After posting, he looked over at the copy of Gunzo he'd grabbed along with everything else.
[I recomnd Yamada-kun read Dassai-ya-sensei's 'Hear the Wind Sing' in this issue.]
He thought again about what Yuzuki had said to him today.
So he flipped open Gunzo, found "Hear the Wind Sing," and gave the title page a cursory glance.
[There is no such thing as a perfect piece of writing, just as there is no such thing as absolute despair.]
Is there really no such thing as absolute despair?
Yamada Kenta sat with that thought, and started reading slowly.
What he'd expected to be a writer reflecting on the struggles of his craft turned, after the latter half of the first chapter, into sothing else entirely — a deadpan, absurdist, quietly lancholic slice of daily life between "I" and a friend called Rat.
And then ca the girl with four fingers on one hand.
Yamada Kenta kept reading.
When his mother called him down for dinner, he brought Gunzo to the table and read while he ate.
Afterward, he went back to his room, collapsed on his bed, and kept reading.
He was completely spellbound — drawn in by the story's atmosphere of absurdist wandering shot through with a faint, persistent lancholy.
In the story, the narrator ets a young woman at a bar. She's in low spirits, utterly drunk.
He goes to considerable trouble to see her ho. He'd ant to leave, but worried about alcohol poisoning, so he stayed and kept watch over her through the night.
Through that long-short night, he had no improper thoughts. Aside from asuring her height with his fingers from head to toe — roughly 158 centiters — he did nothing more than silently keep vigil over this stranger he'd only just t.
He also noticed that one of her hands had only four fingers.
The next morning, the girl woke to find herself completely naked. Thinking he had taken advantage of her while she was unconscious, she said: "A guy who sleeps with a girl who doesn't know what she's doing… is absolutely worthless."
But the narrator explained plainly: "You undressed yourself."
He didn't argue. He simply fell silent.
As the story continued, the girl gradually ca to believe him. The two began seeing each other, though their relationship always kept a quality of restraint and mutual respect — a careful distance.
Their connection faded naturally eighteen days later when sumr break ended. The girl disappeared without a trace — no physical relationship, nothing left behind but a resonance of the spirit, and a quiet regret.
[The girl with four fingers on her left hand — I never saw her again.]
[When I returned that winter, she had already quit her job at the record shop and moved out of her dormitory, vanishing without a trace into the great river of people and ti.]
[When I went back the following sumr, I often walked the road we used to walk together, and sat alone on the stone steps of the warehouse, staring out at the sea. When I wanted to cry, the tears would never co. It was always like that.]
A platonic love, then?
Even the regret itself is part of love?
So which matters more — the process of two souls rging, or the act of possessing each other's bodies?
The question surfaced in Yamada Kenta's mind, and then he smiled and let it go.
None of that has anything to do with , anyway.
He'd been reading without noticing the ti, and by now it was deep into the night. Yamada Kenta slowly let his heavy eyelids fall and drifted off to sleep.
He might have slept for centuries. Or maybe just a few seconds.
His mother's voice pulled him back, and he gradually ca awake.
"Kenta, one of your classmates called for you."
He looked at the morning light already coming through the window, heard his mother calling again, and finally shook off the last of his drowsiness.
Yamada Kenta figured it was probably Tsushima Kagami, so he climbed out of bed and headed downstairs to the living room.
"Today's trash collection day, don't forget to put the garbage out later."
"I'm heading out with your father now~"
His mother shoved the phone into his hand and hurried out the door.
"Hello, Kagami?"
"Pfft — who's Kagami? Is that a girl?"
"Who is this?"
"It's ."
Yamada Kenta listened to the sowhat familiar female voice on the line, thought for a mont, and said, a little uncertainly:
"Yuzuki-san?"
"Got it in one!"
"But no prize~"
"What did you need?"
"Wait — how did you even get my ho number?"
"Oh, didn't I ntion? My mother is a teacher at the school."
"I asked her yesterday and looked you up in the contact directory."
"I see. So what are you calling this early for?"
"Nothing much, really. I'm just a bit bored."
"Didn't you say yesterday you'd recomnd so manga to ?"
"I was thinking — maybe I'd co over to your place and read manga today."
"…You want to co to my place?"
"Is that a problem?"
"We could go to a manga café instead, if that's easier."
"No, it's not a problem…"
"Then your place it is."
"I've always wanted to see what an otaku's room looks like, hehe."
That might end up being a disappointnt, Yuzuki-san.
"Don't say such deflating things — let keep a little anticipation."
"Oh, the address is the sa as in the directory, right?"
"Yes."
"Okay, I'll head over in a bit then."
"You're leaving right now? That fast?"
"Is sothing wrong? Do you have sothing on, Yamada-kun?"
"Not particularly, I guess."
"Then get your manga ready and wait for ."
"O-okay. See you."
After hanging up, Yamada Kenta had a distinctly unreal feeling about all of it.
He half-suspected he was still dreaming.
He drifted back to his room and sat on the edge of his bed, spacing out for a while, before it finally hit him and he muttered to himself:
"Right — right, I need to clean up the room. And get so snacks for when she arrives."
"And take out the trash!"
That snapped him into action. He emptied the overflowing trash can he'd stuffed to capacity the night before, fitted in a new bag, then threw the window open to air the room out, gave it a few sprays of air freshener, and got to cleaning.
Finally, he swept his eyes over the bookshelf — and rembered.
His prized [Yamada's Finest Selection] of curated NTR doujins were all lined up along the back of the shelf.
If Yuzuki-san browsed the bookshelf and spotted those, it would be bad. Very bad.
So he pulled all of his treasured volus out and started packing them into a cardboard box to stuff under his bed.
As he loaded them in one by one, he found himself thinking back to yesterday — to Xuanyayi-sensei's new chapter in Happy Heaven, to Inorganic Girl, and to Hear the Wind Sing.
He rembered the resolution he'd made just yesterday: to try, one more ti, to change this deeply ingrained habit of his.
He glanced at the clock. The trash collection window was almost over.
And for no particular reason he could na, he set that whole box of hard-won, carefully curated doujins right alongside the garbage bag.
Yamada Kenta made it just in ti, hauling everything out at the last possible mont for collection.
He stood there watching the garbage truck pull away, its jingle fading into the distance.
All my NTR doujins are in there.
Too late for regrets now.
Arigatou, NTR-san.
Even without , I hope you find happiness, NTR-san.
Will we ever et again, NTR-san?
NTR-san… NTR-san!
How am I supposed to live without you?!
NTR-san… take with you!
NTR-san!
He never caught the truck. Yamada Kenta stood on the roadside, panting, red-eyed, watching the garbage truck round the corner at the end of the street and disappear from sight. He couldn't stop himself from raising one hand in a final farewell.
Goodbye, all my NTR.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Oshi No Ko: Co-starring with Kana Arima
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!
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