Tokyo: Oreimo

"So she's the one who drew the fan art for us at the last electronics district festival?"

Misaki Asakura whispered to Ayumi, her voice tinged with surprise.

She had seen that painting before, because Ayumi often took it out to copy, and it was indeed a very outstanding work.

"No wonder you said she's a great painter; just by looking at her demeanor, you can tell she's a very talented person."

"When have I ever lied to you?" Ayumi opened her sketchbook, picked up her pencil again, and a slight smile appeared on her lips.

Looking at everyone's reactions, Tian Zhongxue felt a strange sense of pride welling up from somewhere. He put his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest.

"How about that! Our manga club's lineup is getting stronger and stronger! Takashiro is the club's lucky star, and now we have Takashiro's sister to help us too. We'll definitely put on our best work for this winter's commercial!"

"President, Ling Nai isn't a formal member," Ayumi coldly poured cold water on the idea.

"But she's here! Now that she's here, she's practically a manga fan! Isn't that right, Takashiro-kun!" Tanaka stared intently at Ryosuke.

"Wouldn't it be better if you asked her directly about this?"

Ryosuke smiled slightly.

......

After a brief period of excitement, club activities returned to normal.

Ayumi led Ling Nai to a cubicle in the corner of the activity room.

That place was originally a storage room, but Ayumi cleaned it up and put two tables and a few chairs in it, making it the "creation area" of the manga club.

"Ling Nai, how should I handle the shadow layers here to make it look more realistic? I've drawn several versions, but none of them feel right."

Ayumi sat at the table, her pencil lightly tapping the sketch spread out in front of her.

It was an illustration from the second chapter of "Kara no Kyoukai" (The Garden of Sinners), depicting an abandoned warehouse in the rain. Two figures facing each other were blurred by the rain, with only the short sword in one of their hands gleaming coldly in the darkness.

"There are too many lines here, and they are too dense, which actually makes the overall atmosphere feel oppressive."

Ling Nai looked down for a while, then stretched out her finger and gestured vaguely above the picture. "What you want is not detail, but a sense of oppression. This should make the reader feel breathless when they see this illustration, not count how many rain lines have been drawn."

Ayumi was stunned.

Her long-standing habit is to pile up as many details as possible.

When Ryosuke Takashiro helped her revise the drawing, he also pointed out that her details were too complicated.

But today she was reminded not to get caught up in the lines, and the feeling of being seen through was clearer than ever before.

"But, to capture the feeling of a rainy day, if you don't draw enough lines..." She didn't finish her sentence before her voice trailed off, lacking confidence.

“You put a lot of effort into this drawing, but you don’t actually need so many lines. The focus of the whole picture is being overshadowed by these details.”

Ling Nai crossed her arms and spoke in a low voice, but with precision, "Reduce the density of the raindrops and use white space to express the feeling of cascading."

"If it can be completed, even if there are only a few diagonal lines on the screen, people will understand that it is rain."

"Like this."

Ling Nai took the pencil from Ayumi's hand, flipped it to the back of the diagram where Ayumi had drawn it incorrectly, and did so with such fluidity that it seemed as if she had repeated it a thousand times.

She didn't make any drafts; with just a few strokes, the feeling of the rain pouring down was conveyed.

"Oh My God..."

Ayumi felt her heart skip a beat and subconsciously murmured something.

She had always thought that the only difference between her and Ling Nai was their professional knowledge, but after seeing Ling Nai take action, she realized where the difference lay.

"You mean, you want the space to feel like it's breathing, right?"

Ayumi seemed to be deep in thought.

"Try using the shades of ink to express the layers of water mist."

Ling handed the pen back to the other person.

Ayumi took the pen, her fingers tightening slightly, and nodded earnestly.

She kept her head down and revised for about fifteen minutes, while Ling Nai stood beside her watching her revise, occasionally offering a word or two of guidance, each word so precise it didn't sound like something she'd said casually.

"Here, it would be better if the characters were positioned slightly off-center."

"The see-through effect is fine, but it doesn't convey a sense of movement. I'm considering slightly moving the hem of the garment so that when the wind blows, the overall effect will be completely different."

Ayumi discovers that she is gradually grasping what she has always felt was missing from her paintings.

This person is very perceptive; not only can they spot the problem, but they can also point it out in the simplest and most direct way, and they can even demonstrate it for you.

This is not the drawing skill of an ordinary high school student.

"Ling Nai, you really are a professional, aren't you?"

Ayumi said something in a low voice.

"I'm not a professional artist; I've only been painting for a few years."

Ling Nai looked away.

I simply can't believe this claim.

Ayumi pursed her lips. Unlike Tian Zhongxue, who only had a superficial understanding of drawing, she had put a lot of effort into it.

To reach the same level as Ling Nai, she lacks not only skills, but more importantly, experience.

If, as the other party claims, she's not a professional, then she probably isn't even an amateur.

...

The clock in the activity room points to four in the afternoon, and the sunlight outside the window has changed from the blazing white of midday to the lazy golden hue unique to the afternoon.

Tian Zhongxue put the Dong COMI exhibition plan into a folder, let out a long sigh of relief, and visibly slumped in his posture.

The tense "combat meeting" mode has been switched to the relaxed daily mode.

"Alright! That's enough business! Now it's free time!"

He clapped his hands, announcing the official start of the second half of today's club activities.

Ryosuke closed the notebook in front of him, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the creative section in the corner.

The cubicle door was half-open, and you could hear Ayumi asking in a low voice and Ling Nai occasionally blurting out a few short sentences.

"Speaking of which, do you guys remember the joke Okubo made during the voting last Thursday?"

"What joke?" Asakura Misaki asked, holding her strawberry milk and blinking.

"That's the one! The one where he mistook the number D for the one the chairman wrote!"

Shota Okubo showed no shame at being exposed; instead, he remained calm and said, "How can you blame me? Who would have thought a newcomer could write something like that?"

"You have the nerve to say that?" Tian Zhongxue covered his face.

Yosuke Kobayashi looked up from his notebook, adjusted his glasses, and gave a rare smile: "When Okubo said, 'It's impossible for a first-year student to write a work like this,' Takashiro was sitting right next to him, without batting an eye."

"I didn't know!" Okubo spread his hands. "But seriously, this incident taught me a profound lesson: never judge a book by its cover, and never judge a book by its age, especially someone like Takashiro who appears calm on the surface but is actually full of... ."

"What's in your head?" Ryosuke's lips twitched, and he glared at the other person.

"He's got a lot of talent." Okubo quickly changed his tune.

Misaki Asakura burst out laughing, almost choking on her strawberry milk.

Once the atmosphere of the conversation warms up, topics pop up one after another like dominoes being toppled.

From the booth setup at Winter COMI to the newly opened themed cafes in Akihabara, and then from the cafe's menu to the quirky customers they encountered at their respective part-time jobs.

When Okubo was working at a family restaurant, he imitated a customer who insisted on adding cream to his curry rice with great emotion, and even Ayumi peeked out from the cubicle to take a look.

Then, someone started the conversation, and the topic veered into the realm of romantic gossip.

"Speaking of which, have you heard about this?"

Shota Okubo leaned back in his chair and spoke in a tone that suggested he had all the information in the school, "The things that happened around the time of the entrance ceremony are still being talked about."

"What is it?" Asakura Misaki was always the first to answer.

"That's her. Someone saw a super beautiful girl on campus the other day. She's supposedly very tall and has such a strong presence that people around her don't dare to get close."

"Ah, I know that!"

Misaki Asakura's eyes lit up immediately, and she quickly agreed.

"I heard she's not a student at our school. That girl has a boyfriend. On the day of the entrance ceremony, someone saw her walking hand in hand with a boy on campus."

Ryosuke paused slightly as he picked up the oolong tea.

"A stunning beauty? Tall?" Yosuke Kobayashi pushed up his glasses, seemingly remembering something. "Ah, I think I've heard someone mention her. Someone saw her on the ginkgo avenue in front of the teaching building after the club recruitment ended that day, but I was tidying up in the activity room at the time, so I didn't see her in person."

"That freshman is quite something, to have a beauty of that caliber come all the way to school to wait for him."

"It's a real shame I wasn't there. According to witnesses, she's a remarkably beautiful woman..."

Okubo was halfway through his sentence when he suddenly turned to Ryosuke, "By the way, Takashiro, you're also a first-year student, so you should remember this, right? After all, it's hard not to notice someone who looks like a model, isn't it?"

Chapter 245 Gao Cheng, you're not single, are you?

The cubicle door was half-open.

Ling Nai leaned against the table, twirling a pencil in her hand, her gaze fixed on the drawing that Ayumi was revising.

The conversation outside drifted in through the crack in the door. At first, it was just a muffled background noise, but Shota Okubo's voice was quite loud.

"On the day of the entrance ceremony, someone saw a stunningly beautiful woman on campus. She was very tall, and her aura was so strong that no one dared to approach her..."

Ling Nai stopped writing with her pencil.

"I heard she's not a student at our school. That girl has a boyfriend. On the day of the entrance ceremony, someone saw her walking hand in hand with a boy on campus."

"That freshman is quite something, to have a beauty of that caliber come all the way to school to wait for him."

Ling lowered her eyes and continued twirling her pen.

She found out about what happened on the first day of school.

Ryosuke didn't hide it from her; he honestly told her in the text message that Saori had come to visit him at school and they had even walked hand in hand on campus.

She stared at the text message for a long time, typed a line and then deleted it, finally replying with just "Oh".