Once Koharu Hosokawa confirmed that the person on the other end of the line really was Tsukasa Higashino, the author of Ring, she wasted no time introducing herself.
“Hello, Higashino-sensei.
My name is Koharu Hosokawa.
I’m an editor for Weekly Shiver at Urashima Publishing.”
There seemed to be a brief conversation happening on the other end of the line.
About five seconds later, the reply came.
“Hello, Hosokawa-san.
I’m Tsukasa Higashino.”
He sounds awfully young…
Like someone who isn’t very old at all.
Koharu found that a little strange.
It might have sounded prejudiced, but most horror manga artists she knew were already in their thirties or older.
They had accumulated enough life experience to give their stories a certain depth and atmosphere.
Generally speaking, when an inexperienced youngster tried to draw horror manga, the result tended to lack that particular flavor.
Still, it would have been inappropriate to ask about his age.
She wasn’t conducting a census, after all.
Her job was simply to speak with him about Ring.
“Higashino-sensei, I’ve given your manga Ring a preliminary read.
Would you happen to have some free time in the next few days?
I’d like to meet you in person and discuss the work in more detail.”
“I should be free tomorrow at around four in the afternoon.”
Around four?
Does he have a job or something?
Koharu didn’t think too much about it.
The manga industry had been struggling lately.
Some artists she knew had even taken side jobs at construction sites.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis had only recently passed, and Japan’s economy had suffered a severe blow.
With so many industries still recovering, simply having a job was already something to be grateful for.
Construction work wasn’t particularly unusual.
Carry bricks, move materials, do whatever needed doing.
The pay was often settled daily, which actually made it surprisingly convenient for manga artists.
With the manga industry in such poor shape, quite a few artists had spent so much time working construction that they had practically become permanent laborers.
Perhaps Higashino-sensei was in a similar situation.
Koharu efficiently wrote down the appointment and replied, “Understood.
Then how about four-thirty tomorrow afternoon at our editorial office?”
“That works.
I’ll see you then, Hosokawa-san.”
The author of Ring answered politely before hanging up.
Koharu couldn’t help letting out a breath of relief.
Finally.
The meeting was arranged, and the entire conversation had gone smoothly.
“Well?
Hosokawa?
What did the author of Ring say?”
A male editor who had been staring at her for quite some time leaned over and asked with unusual eagerness.
“Uh…”
Koharu was about to answer when she realized that it wasn’t just him.
Every editor in the room was staring at her with shining eyes.
Koharu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
They were editors for a horror manga magazine.
Wasn’t it a little embarrassing for professionals like them to have been frightened this badly by a horror manga?
Then again…
She wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize them.
Koharu glanced at the television in front of her, the one currently bound shut with a thick iron chain, and gave an awkward cough.
Two days earlier…
At the time, Koharu had just returned from the downstairs mailroom carrying the manga manuscripts that had arrived that week.
Collecting submissions was part of her job.
Although she was still a rookie editor, she took these unsolicited manuscripts from newcomers quite seriously.
After climbing upstairs, the first thing she saw was Urashima Publishing’s emblem: a pale-gray rocky island.
According to company lore, the founding president had dreamed of turning Urashima Publishing into the number-one publisher in Japan.
That was why he had designed the logo as a solitary island rising from the sea, as though striving to become the highest peak.
There was even a legendary story about a former editor-in-chief who had blamed himself when Weekly Shiver’s sales kept falling.
Believing that he had failed the founding president, he had gathered the entire editorial staff in front of the company emblem and made everyone kneel in apology.
Supposedly, they had only stopped short of pressing their foreheads to the floor.
Those passionate company legends didn’t stir much emotion in Koharu.
She had the least seniority and lowest position in the entire editorial department, so she was constantly ordered to run downstairs and collect submitted manuscripts.
She saw that so-called “solitary island” logo five or six times every single day.
After seeing it that often, she was sick of it.
How was she supposed to feel inspired?
Besides, she had never lacked enthusiasm for her work in the first place.
She could do without the corporate motivational speeches.
If management really wanted to improve her morale, they could hire a courier.
Running up and down the stairs all day was exhausting.
Carrying the stack of manga manuscripts, Koharu entered the editorial department.
Urashima Publishing’s office environment was fairly decent.
Each editor had one of those bulky 2003-era desktop computers sitting on the desk in front of them.
They rarely used the machines, however, except when checking and compiling manga sales figures.
Beside every computer sat a landline telephone connected through the front desk, which the editors used to communicate with manga artists.
Not far from the main work area, the walls were decorated with colorful posters of series that had once appeared in Weekly Shiver.
There was also a television nearby for the editors to watch news reports during their breaks.
Koharu greeted each of her more senior colleagues in turn.
Then she rubbed her temples, sat down, and began removing the submitted manuscripts from their document envelopes one by one.
It was time to start reviewing them.
If she discovered a promising newcomer, then as the editor reviewing the submission, Koharu could contact the creator ahead of everyone else and become the editor assigned to that manga.
If she managed to nurture a genuinely successful series, it would reflect extremely well on her.
Her own name might even appear in the manga magazine as the series’ editor.
That was the dream, anyway.
In reality, Koharu wasn’t expecting much.
Good manuscripts almost never arrived through the mail.
Experienced manga artists usually contacted editors directly, discussed their ideas with them, and only then finalized a manuscript.
The people who blindly mailed their work to an editorial department were usually completely unknown newcomers.
And the average skill level of completely unknown newcomers?
Well…
everyone in the industry knew the answer to that.
Koharu had even received submissions drawn by elementary and middle school students.
Some of them were supposedly horror manga, though they looked more like something inspired by the science-fiction film Alien.
That was why, despite having worked at Urashima Publishing for an entire month, Koharu still had nothing to her name.
She wasn’t responsible for a single series.
Brutal, but true.
There was nothing she could do about it.
She was only a rookie editor.
Unlike her seniors, who had veteran manga artists actively bringing them manuscripts, all she could do was spend her days sorting through submissions mailed in by newcomers.
In the Japanese workplace, people liked to call this the “accumulation period”—the time when a newcomer quietly built experience and waited for an opportunity.
Koharu estimated that she would have to keep “accumulating” at the bottom for another two or three months.
She shook her head and continued flipping through the manuscripts.
As she worked, a loose sheet of paper suddenly slipped out from beneath her hand and fell to the floor.
It didn’t look like manga manuscript paper.
Proper manuscript sheets were much thicker.
So what was this?
Koharu picked it up and quietly read the sentence printed across it.
Editors with a history of heart disease or epilepsy are advised not to read this manuscript.
“Huh?”
Koharu stared at it.
Seriously?
It even came with the kind of warning you would see before a movie?
The longer she looked at the note, the more amused she became.
This manga artist was certainly interesting.
He had even thought of using a ridiculous little gimmick like this to manufacture suspense.
While Koharu muttered to herself, the male editor beside her turned around and glanced at the note in her hand.
He chuckled as well.
“New manga artists these days are pretty entertaining.
He actually slipped in a warning note like that?
Is he trying to build hype?”
“Well, I have to admit it worked.
Now that he’s written something like this, I actually want to see what the manga is about.”
Koharu answered him, then stopped counting the rest of the manuscripts.
She decided to read the manga that was supposedly unsuitable for editors with a history of heart disease or epilepsy.
As for whether a horror manga could genuinely frighten her?
That had to be a joke.
To put it bluntly, which editor in this room hadn’t already read dozens—if not hundreds of horror manga?
They were professionals in the horror manga industry.
What gave some unknown newcomer the confidence to swagger in front of experts like them?
That wasn’t arrogance.
It was simply an accurate assessment of their own experience.
If any random horror manga could scare professional editors into epileptic seizures or fatal heart attacks, then the industry would be sending more than a dozen people to the morgue every day.
They would run out of editors to kill.
The author of Ring was bragging far too much.
At the end of the day, he simply underestimated the people who worked in this profession.
“Ring…”
Koharu murmured the title written on the sealed brownish-yellow document envelope.
At least the title was simple and easy to understand.
Still, judging from the name, it sounded like yet another horror manga built around the thoroughly overused telephone theme.
She shook her head.
Great.
Thinking about it that way had already killed most of her anticipation.
But she still had to read it.
Koharu forced herself to focus, picked up the thick stack of manuscript pages, and began to read.