Master of the Machete Style Manga

Chapter 70 The People Who Came Together
In an old apartment building in Adachi Ward.

Ken Sakamoto sat at his desk, his G pen hovering above the manuscript paper, hesitant to put it down.

Mio Natsume had already started working at the convenience store, but the sudden hug and the soft warmth on her back felt completely different from the familiar, almost taken-for-granted feeling she had last time with her husband.

"Forget it, I'm not drawing anymore..."

Feeling a bit disoriented, Ken Sakamoto put down his pen and decided to take a break.

He pulled a magazine from the bookshelf; it was this week's Weekly Shonen Jump.

Aside from the portion published in his own "Chainsaw Man" magazine, he hadn't really looked at the rest of the content in this issue.

He lay back on the tatami mat, picked up the comic book, and began to read it page by page.

Sunlight streamed in through the open window; it wasn't hot, but the light was still a bit glaring.

As I flipped through my eyes, my eyelids grew heavy.

Ken Sakamoto yawned and simply covered his face with the magazine in his hand to block out the sunlight.

He planned to take a nap like this.

……

Meanwhile, on the other side of Tokyo, Ai Hoshihara was at home.

She had just gone through the submissions on the call for papers page again, but she didn't see his pen name.

Since Ken Sakamoto announced the news directly during Friday's live stream, he probably won't be using an alternate account to participate in the submission.

This indicates that the short comic he mentioned is not yet finished.

Having agreed to serve as a judge, Ai Hoshihara carefully reviewed several of the works.

The call for submissions is divided into two main categories: "Reality" and "Fantasy." It's still unknown which one he will choose, so Ai Hoshihara is looking at both.

However, the review process was tedious, since the vast majority of the works were of poor quality, and even the few that were readable did not meet her standards for good works.

A total of more than a dozen works have been reviewed, and the highest score given is only 6.5 out of 10.

As my lover from the future, I hope your work will impress me.

She closed the somewhat tedious call for papers page and instead opened a few papers.

"Superconformal Field Theory and the Big N Limit of Supergravity", "Constructing Spacetime with Quantum Entanglement", "Wormholes Connecting Entangled Black Holes"...

These are all research topics she is currently exploring, but her hypotheses will go even further.

So she applied to the college, but the old men rejected her research on the grounds that it was too abstract and unrealistic.

But now, these purely theoretical approaches seem to have found a real-life example in her case.

She picked up the pen on the table and wrote a word on the paper.

"Rebirth"

After thinking about it, I decided to put a question mark after the word.

What is the essence of rebirth or time travel, which frequently appear in novels and comics?
Ai Hoshihara believed that it was simply a transmission of information.

Memories of the future, or memories of another world, as a stream of information, transcend the barriers of time and space in some form and are delivered to the brain of a specific individual in another time and space.

The brain receives and decodes this information, and thus, "rebirth" occurs.

Ai Hoshihara drew a schematic diagram of the suggestion on a piece of paper, with overlapping time dimensions, and then drew an information flow through it with an arrow.

But the real world is obviously much more complex than the purely theoretical environment depicted in novels.

She drew several outward-split branches on the arrow representing the information flow.

Information inevitably suffers significant attenuation and distortion during its transmission across time and space.

This is why one's memories of that "future" are incomplete and vague.

But there's one crucial characteristic here. Ai Hoshihara wrote that name heavily at the very beginning of the feed.

Ken Sakamoto

She circled the name, signifying that the information within the circle was less susceptible to loss.

All memories unrelated to him were blurred as if they had been pixelated, and she couldn't even remember the faces of the other two women who had been intimate with him and who ultimately joined him in killing him.

Everything about Ken Sakamoto—his appearance, his voice, and every touch he made when he was intimate with him—was exceptionally clear.

This means that he is the core of this information.

However, these are all just speculations at the moment.

To reach a conclusion, we need to design a practical and feasible experiment; only experimental data will be the most objective and accurate.

But how should this experiment be designed?

The collaboration with Keio University has been submitted, and she will soon be able to lead the project at their laboratory.

Some of the older guys at the University of Tokyo are stubborn; they even said she was writing science fiction, not doing scientific research.

In private schools, many things are easier to handle.

After sitting at her desk all morning, a series of brainstorming sessions left her feeling a little hungry.

Ai Hoshino got up and went to the kitchen.

She took a rice ball from the refrigerator, tore open the packaging, and briefly heated it in the microwave.

With a "ding," she took out the warm rice ball and sat on the high stool by the kitchen counter, eating it in small bites.

She has high standards for alcohol, but not much for food; as long as it fills her stomach, she's fine.

After a simple lunch, Ai Hoshihara sat back down at her desk, looking at the lines and words on the paper, trying to make out a clearer picture.

But my thoughts were like a tangled mess; the more I tried to untangle them, the tighter they became.

She paced around the room somewhat irritably, her bare feet silently treading the floor.

Before I knew it, I felt sleepy.

Ai Hoshino yawned and decided to take a nap.

Instead of going back to her bedroom, she walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window in the living room and lazily sank into the chaise lounge by the window.

All the other windows in the room had their curtains drawn, except for this one.

Because the apartment is located on a high floor of the tower, the large window offers unobstructed views of the city, so there's no need to worry about privacy.

Here, she can enjoy sunbathing freely anytime, anywhere.

The warm spring sun shone in, and the air conditioning kept the temperature constant, making the warmth just right.

The light fell on her smooth skin, giving it a soft, ivory-like sheen, making it appear fair and radiant.

She draped her long legs over the edge of the recliner, the warmth enveloping her entire body. Hoshino Ai let out a soft, comfortable hum, stretching out her body.

"Hey Siri, wake me up in half an hour."

"Okay, I've set your alarm for half an hour later."

Ai Hoshino has a special talent: she can fall asleep within minutes anytime, anywhere, and in any position, whenever she wants to.

In that memory, we had a minor argument, and I could fall asleep even when he was rocking me back and forth.

Then I just ignored everything, let him do whatever he wanted, and refused to cooperate at all...

After setting the alarm, Ai Hoshihara closed her eyes.

(End of this chapter)