Master of the Machete Style Manga

Chapter 47 Ai Hoshihara

“Professor Hoshihara, Keio University has agreed to our collaboration with their laboratory.”

At the office door, a girl in a white lab coat walked in with a printed document in her hand.

Ai Hoshino was still writing and drawing in a notebook when she looked up at the girl who had walked into the office.

"So soon? Okay, then be prepared that you might be going to Keio University for an exchange program for a while," Ai Hoshihara said.

“We should all just follow Mr. Hoshino’s lead.” The girl placed the printed document on the desk.

She then asked, "Speaking of which, are the laboratory conditions at Keio University better than those at the University of Tokyo?"

Ai Hoshihara nodded and said, "Todai is a national public university, so it's not so convenient to procure equipment. Some things are too slow to process by going through layers of applications."

“That’s true, the new equipment our lab applied for last academic year hasn’t even arrived yet.” The girl nodded and said, “But, won’t the college have any objections to the professor collaborating with other schools like this…?”

"Don't worry about that." Hoshino Ai waved her hand and said, "I'll take all the pressure. It won't affect you. If the academy blames you, you can come back first. I'll stay there alone."

"Does the teacher think highly of this topic?" the girl asked after thinking for a moment. "Actually, I don't quite understand it yet..."

"If I told you this is Nobel Prize-level research, would you believe me?"

"I..." The girl hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I believe you."

"Hehe, none of the old men in our academy believe it," Hoshino Ai said with a smile.

"Speaking of which, Keio University is incredibly efficient, and they're very generous with their funding," the girl said.

"I just used some connections. In this regard, connections at private schools are much more useful than those at national and public schools." Ai Hoshihara said, looking at the various events neatly recorded in her notebook. "For me, this project is more important than anything else. Since it's difficult to pass at the University of Tokyo, I'm just looking for other ways..."

She paused for a moment, then said, "If all else fails, I'll just switch jobs and go to Keio University."

The girl was slightly surprised when she heard her teacher bring up the topic of changing jobs.

Although there are no particularly strict regulations prohibiting university teachers from changing jobs, such cases are rare.

Even if such cases exist, they involve moving from an ordinary school to a top university. In such cases, the leaders of the original school can understand, and it can also be considered as expanding the network of contacts within the original school.

To jump ship from the pinnacle of academia to Keio University, and to become a young professor in her early twenties, is definitely a slap in the face to the university leaders.

She was initially touted as a genius female scholar and the youngest physics professor, but it hasn't been many years yet.

But she didn't care about any of that.

As for the Nobel Prize, I was just talking about it with a few students I was supervising. Although I did think that if this research could produce results, it would indeed be Nobel Prize-worthy, but that was almost impossible.

The reason she still does this is mostly because of that person...

The girl who had just come in had already left the office. Ai Hoshino's pen tip traced across the notebook, connecting the two numbers.

[2025 — 2015]

Below each of the two numbers, the same name was written.

Ken Sakamoto — Ken Sakamoto

With a flick of the wrist, the pen spun around the thumb once, then was firmly held in the hand.

She first learned of this name a month ago.

She stayed up all night in the lab that day, until noon the next day.

After organizing the experimental data, I lay down on my desk and fell asleep immediately. Then, I had a very long dream.

In the dream, it seemed like many years had passed, and I was with a man named Ken Sakamoto.

The two initially met by chance on the street.

She came out of the lab late at night, feeling frustrated because the data processing kept going wrong. She thought of going to an izakaya to eat some grilled skewers and have a few drinks.

As a result, I accidentally drank too much.

When I came out, I felt dizzy and wanted to fall asleep as soon as I leaned against the roadside.

It was winter, and she wasn't wearing many layers when she came out of the heated lab. If she had just collapsed and fallen asleep on the roadside, she probably would have frozen solid.

Then he came over, greeted her, and asked if she had any family or anything. In that dream, everything felt incredibly real, including the feeling of being drunk. Plus, she now had a peculiar hazy feeling about that dream, and she couldn't remember many things very clearly.

In short, she seemed to have grabbed the man and begged him to take her home.

They talked about something along the way, but they can't remember it.

Once home, she looked at the man who had brought her home, and for some reason, his face was incredibly appealing to her. The physical contact he'd made on the way, combined with the confusion of being drunk, made her lunge at him...

They didn't do anything particularly outrageous, just gave each other a big kiss.

She never imagined that she would give her first kiss in her dream.

Nothing more happened between them that day, and the man left quickly, but she remembered it vividly. For several days afterward, she waited on the same road until he finally reappeared.

In short, after repeated attempts, the two of them got together.

Later I learned that he was a cartoonist who drew shonen manga called "Young Lady, Sniper Rifle, and Pantyhose!"

However, she doesn't read shonen manga; the only genre she enjoys is science fiction. After all, she studied physics and writes her own stories occasionally. She even published some works while in school and joined SFWJ, the science fiction writers' club.

However, she was more interested in scientific research than writing, and she didn't continue writing after that book.

The relationship with Ken Sakamoto progressed smoothly at first.

The two often went on dates, drank together, and had sex. They felt most comfortable when they were drunk, experiencing a sense of complete freedom.

However, she later discovered that this man named Ken Sakamoto was not only dating her...

From here on, things changed. The three of them joined forces and forced Sakamoto Ken onto a rooftop.

It was a bright, sunny afternoon when, in a fit of rage, she pulled out a knife she had prepared beforehand…

I watched him lying in a pool of blood, his body convulsing due to nerve reflexes. Several minutes passed until he became completely still.

Her mood shifted from anger to fear, then to regret, and she felt a chill run through her body.

At this point, the dream vanished like a bubble.

That's roughly the whole process, but there are many details involved.

The notebook in Ai Hoshihara's hand contained all the details of the dream that she could recall.

By piecing together the blurry images, she was able to find some relatively clear evidence.

So, for the past month, Ai Hoshihara has been visiting people in real life, searching for any clues about him.

(End of this chapter)