Chapter 22: The First Trail.
I opened my eyes.
Light. Soft. Familiar. Warm in a way that didn't belong here. That belonged to somewhere else entirely. It took me a second to understand what I was looking at. A ceiling. Flat. White. Slightly uneven where paint had been reapplied over time. A faint crack ran along one corner.
I blinked. The Library was gone. The cold, ancient silence…
Gone.
In its place:
The low hum of electricity. The distant murmur of traffic. The faint buzz of a refrigerator. My chest tightened.
Slowly, I sat up.
The desk in front of me was cluttered, papers stacked in uneven piles, ink bottles, pens scattered like fallen soldiers. A tablet screen glowed faintly to one side. Coffee, cold, sat forgotten near my elbow.
My hand was already moving. Drawing. A pen rested between my fingers. Not the G-Pen. Just… a pen.
My breath caught.
The light was wrong. Or right. I couldn't tell anymore. It came through the windows at that particular angle, late afternoon, maybe, the sun already sliding toward the western edge of the city, painting everything in that soft, amber glow that made even this cramped studio apartment feel like somewhere worth being.
My studio apartment. The one in Shimokita, with the balcony that barely fit a chair and the walls that never quite blocked out the sound of trains. I knew this space. Knew the way the light pooled on the floor at this hour, the way dust motes drifted through it like slow constellations.
I was at my desk.
A manuscript lay open in front of me. Pages spread across the surface, panels and gutters and dialogue I had written months ago, or was writing now, or would write. Time felt strange here. Not absent, just... soft. Blurred at the edges, the way it does when you've been drawing too long and the world outside has faded to a distant hum.
The G-Pen was in my hand.
I looked at it. Just a pen here. Metal and ink and the familiar weight of a tool I'd used for years. It didn't hum. Didn't glow. It was just a thing, sitting in my fingers, waiting for me to draw.
This was right. This was normal. The ache in my wrist from too many hours at the board. The smell of ink and paper and cold coffee. The faint electrical hum of the city beyond the walls, cars and trains and a million lives moving without me.
I'd missed this.
The thought surfaced without weight, without urgency. Just a fact, settling into place like something that had always been true.
"So for the manga cover," Hana was saying, "I think this one look better than the last one, and her hand."
I turned.
They were there. Hana at the edge of my desk, tablet in hand, stylus tapping against the screen in that rhythm I'd listened to for years. Noa beside the window flipping through layouts, Ryota beside her, leaning against the bookshelf, arms crossed, the same frown he always wore when he was working through a problem. Their voices, their names, the particular cadence of their arguments, all of it was right. Precisely, mundanely, comfortably right.
"Before the face," Hana continued. "So we recognize the technique before we recognize her."
"But she's been drawing the whole series," Ryota said. "We know her hands."
"Not like this. This cover is different. The way she holds the pen changed after…" Hana stopped, glanced at me, then away. "After."
The title “I thought this world was easier than my deadline.”
I should have asked what they were talking about. Which cover or chapter. Which character. Which scene.
Instead, I found myself nodding. "Show the hands first."
They both looked at me. Surprised, maybe. Or pleased. Or something in between.
"That's what I said," Hana said, grinning.
Ryota shook his head. "You always agree with her."
"I agree with whoever's right."
"You agreed with her yesterday about the color palette."
"Because she was right about the color palette."
They kept talking. I kept listening. The conversation moved around me like water moving around a stone familiar, predictable, worn smooth by years of repetition. Hana pushing. Ryota pushing back. Both of them circling toward the same solution from different directions, the way they always had.
I should have been present. Fully present, the way I'd always been in these moments, caught between them, mediating, deciding, being the one who had to say “this works, this doesn't, let's try it this way.”
Instead, I was listening to something else.
Not their words. The spaces between them. The rhythm. The way Hana's voice rose at the end of a sentence when she was still working something out. The way Ryota went quiet when he was about to concede. The way the afternoon light shifted across the pages of the manuscript, catching on the edges of panels I'd drawn years ago…
“Years?”
I looked down at the manuscript. Clean lines. Inked panels. Dialogue bubbles. My handwriting. My style. My story. My chest tightened again, but not from fear.
From something else. Recognition.
"...Where were we?" I asked quietly.
"The library scene," Noa said, flipping a page. "Chapter twenty-one. You had the protagonist enter some kind of ancient ruin honestly, the atmosphere is really good, but I'm not sure I fully get the magic system yet."
Library. The word landed strangely. Like it belonged somewhere else. I frowned slightly and pulled the page closer. The panel stared back at me. A girl, Small, Silver hair, grey eyes. A satchel at her side. Holding a pen.
My breath caught. "...this..."
The assistant leaned over my shoulder. "Yeah, your main character. I really like her design. The 'colorless' concept is super unique."
Colorless.
The word echoed. Not as sound…
As memory. For a moment, something flickered at the edge of my mind. Stone. Cold air. A door opening. I blinked. Gone.
"Sensei?" Noa prompted.
I exhaled slowly and forced my focus back onto the page. Right. Work. Deadlines. That's what mattered. I flipped to the next page.
The panels continued. The girl stood in a vast library. Shelves stretching endlessly into shadow. Light floating in the air. The assistant tapped the page.
"This part here, when she touches the book. I like the idea that she can't read it at first, but then she uses some kind of magic to understand it. That's really clever."
My fingers tightened slightly on the paper.
"...magic..."
"Yeah, like combining elements or something? You didn't explain it yet, but it feels like you're setting something up."
I flipped another page.
The panels showed…
A circle. A pen drawing lines. Air. Earth. A glow. My breath caught. I knew this. Not because I wrote it. Because…
A flicker. Wind brushing my skin. The weight of something ancient. A voice…
I blinked hard. The image steadied. Ink. Paper. Clean lines.
"...did I draw all of this already?" I murmured.
The assistants exchanged a glance. "Uh… yeah?" Noa said. "You've been working on this arc all week."
All week. Of course. That made sense. Everything made sense. I exhaled slowly, grounding myself in the rhythm I knew. Pen. Paper. Deadlines. Reality. I turned another page.
The panels grew denser. More detailed. The protagonist stood in front of a massive book.
No…
A grimoire. Noa leaned in again, excited now.
"This part is really interesting. When she touches it, you cut away immediately. Is that where the twist happens?"
Twist. The word felt wrong. Too light. I stared at the panel. My character's hand hovered over the cover. Fingers just about to touch. Something in my chest twisted.
"...what happens next?" I asked quietly.
Hana blinked. "You tell me. You're the one writing it."
A pause.
Then a laugh.
"Don't tell me you forgot your own plot."
I didn't laugh. My gaze drifted back to the page. To the girl. To the hand reaching forward. My hand.
No.
That wasn't right.
A strange unease settled in my stomach. I flipped backward.
Earlier chapters. The market. The village. A small house. A woman. A man. A boy.
The pages were beautiful. Carefully drawn. Emotionally composed. Scenes of warmth. Struggle. Loneliness.
Noa pointed.
"This scene, where the father gets hurt during the attack? That hit hard. The emotion was really strong."
My fingers froze on the page. The panel showed: A man on the ground. Fire. A child screaming. My breath caught.
For a moment…
Just a moment…
I smelled smoke. Felt heat. Heard…
A voice.
"...Elsbeth…"
My heart skipped.
The page in my hand felt wrong. Too thin. Too quiet. Too…
Controlled. I stared at the panel longer. Something wasn't right. It looked perfect. Too perfect. The lines were clean. The composition balanced. The emotion…
Correct.
But…
"...this isn't…"
I frowned.
Ryota tilted his head. "Hmm?"
I shook my head slightly.
"No, it's just…"
I looked at the page again. The scene. The father. The fire. Everything exactly where it should be. And yet…
It felt like watching something through glass. Distant. Safe. Contained. My chest tightened.
"No," I said softly.
Hana blinked. "No what?"
My grip on the manuscript tightened. My eyes moved from panel to panel. Every moment. Every emotion. Every memory…
Reduced. Structured. Organized into something readable. Something clean. Something… manageable. A slow, quiet realization settled over me.
"...this isn't my story."
The room seemed to still.
"What?" Noa asked.
I shook my head again, more firmly this time.
"This is just…" I searched for the words, my voice growing steadier, "this is just what I would have written."
I looked up. At them. At the room. At the life that felt so familiar. And yet…
Something in my chest refused it.
"...but I've lived more than this."
Silence. The assistants didn't respond. Didn't move. The hum of the refrigerator faltered. The light in the room flickered.
Once.
Twice.
I stood slowly. My chair scraped against the floor, the sound too sharp in the suddenly fragile quiet.
My gaze returned to the manuscript one last time. The girl on the page looked back at me.
Still.
Perfect.
Incomplete.
"...you're missing things," I whispered.
My hand trembled slightly.
"Things I could never have drawn."
The air shifted. The edges of the room began to blur. The assistants froze mid-motion. The page in my hand…
Cracked.
A thin line splitting through the ink like fractured glass. Then another. And another. The illusion shattered.
Not fading.
Breaking.
Panels split.
Light fractured.
Sound collapsed into silence.
And I…
Stood alone in the space between...
It seems Elsbeth has broken through the illusion.
What will happen next...
Next time, same time, same place.
