I just want to quietly draw manga Chapter 35

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*Late at Night, at Kotone's Home*

Kotone quietly slipped into her family's small apartment, located in an aging residential block on the eastern edge of town. It was already past eleven.

It usually took her about twenty minutes to get home from Haruki's place. On school days, she'd head there right after classes, working alongside him until late. Ever since they started collaborating, their weekly chapters had been turning out smoothly, both in quality and on schedule.

Most nights followed this routine—school, assisting with manga, then home to rest. To outsiders, her life might seem repetitive or even dull. But to Kotone, these past weeks had been some of her happiest. Once she got over the initial awkwardness of working with Haruki, they'd gotten along better than she expected. Surprisingly well, actually.

The fact that the manga they worked on—Rurouni Kenshin—was now being serialized in Sora still felt surreal. It hadn’t been long since Haruki had casually said he wanted to reach the top, and yet... it didn’t seem so impossible anymore.

Even if she wasn’t the official author, just being part of something this successful made her genuinely proud. The sting from all those past rejections—the submissions no one responded to—had started to fade.

She unlocked the door and stepped inside.

It was brighter than she expected. Normally, the apartment was already dark by this time—her grandmother would usually be asleep. But tonight, something was different. The flickering light from the television spilled into the room, where her grandmother sat on the couch, listlessly flipping through old photo albums filled with family pictures.

“Grandma?” Kanna called out softly. “You’re still up?”

Her grandmother Sachiko Shirasaka, looked up. Small and slightly hunched from age, she turned off the TV and gave Kotone a tired smile.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was thinking about your father... and your grandfather.”

Kotone froze for a moment in the doorway, unsure of how to respond.

“Your father was so caught up in those manga... He really believed he could make something of it. That trip to Tokyo—he was chasing a dream. If only he hadn’t gone... maybe things would’ve turned out differently. And after that, your grandfather... he never really recovered.”

She paused, wiping her eyes, then sighed again. “But… there’s no point dwelling on it. It’s all in the past.”

Kotone stepped inside, slipping off her shoes. She set her bag down by the door.
“I’m home, Grandma. It went alright today.”

“You’re in your final year of high school,” Sachiko said suddenly, her tone shifting to concern. “You should focus on studying. That tutoring job you’re doing… I know you say it helps you review, but coming home this late every night—how are you supposed to get enough sleep?”

“I’m alright, really,” Kotone said quickly, sitting beside her. “Helping others study is kind of like reviewing for myself. And it’s not hurting my grades—I've still kept my spot at the top of the class.”

Sachiko looked skeptical. “You’re too much like your father. He used to say things like that too. And look how that turned out.”

She began to reminisce, as she often did. “Your father… he wasn’t great at school. But once he found manga, that was it. He dropped out to become an assistant, then spent years drawing without earning a yen. Eventually, someone agreed to publish his work, and that’s when he met your mother. She came to help him as his assistant, and, well… the rest is history. That’s how you were born.”

“He always talked about going to Tokyo. Even dreamed about publishing overseas someday. But in the end… he never made it there.”

Her voice faltered. “If only he’d focused on his studies instead… maybe he’d still be alive.”

Kotone sat in silence, her chest tight with emotion.

Sachiko reached over and patted her hand. “You’re different. You’re bright. You have a real chance. I want you to go to a good university, get a stable job, marry someone reliable. That way… maybe I’ll feel at peace with what happened to your parents and your grandfather.”

Kotone had heard this speech many times before.

She knew her grandmother blamed manga for everything. First for corrupting her father’s ambitions, then for the tragedy that followed. To Sachiko, manga had taken everything from their family.

She could never understand that the very thing she hated had also become Kotone’s passion.

That’s why Kotone never told her the truth. That she wasn’t just tutoring—that she was a manga artist too. That she worked with Haruki, and that their series was currently one of the hottest titles in serialization.

As long as her grades stayed high, Sachiko let her keep the part-time job.

But how long could she keep up the lie?

Could she really live like this forever?

Later that night, after Sachiko had gone to bed, Kotone stood by the window of her room, watching the snow drifting quietly outside. The soft glow of the streetlights illuminated the flakes as they fell, silent and slow.

She sighed, leaning her forehead against the cold glass.

She really was her father’s daughter.

Their personalities might’ve been different… but deep down, they shared the same dream.

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*In December in Osaka, the temperature dropped sharply, and the snow in the sky has basically never stopped since it began to fall.*

But unlike this cold weather, Rurouni Kenshin's reception in the Osaka manga market was quite the opposite.

Since the first episode was ranked only eleventh in the voting on the mangas, the second episode jumped to fourth, with the number of votes reaching an impressive 14,000.

Since then, although there have been as many as 20 serialized manga, the results of most of the works could only be described as tepid. In reality, the entire Kurokawa Publishing is closely watching four mangas.

The veteran author of Kurokawa Publishing, Shinji's Demon Realm, Haruto Minami's Celestial Book,

and the top manga artist of the original sora Series who had joined Kurokawa Publishing,

and the newcomer who had never appeared in front of everyone, with only his editor Sora being responsible for contacting him, Mizushiro-sensei.

Throughout the manga industry in Osaka, Mizushiro-sensei and his work Rurouni Kenshin were gaining more and more recognition, and the fourth chapter of Rurouni Kenshin opened a new chapter in Lost Cat.

After the astonishing meeting of the two in the second episode, the scene in the third episode shifted. The woman who had met Kenshin in the rain fainted and was taken by Kenshin to the place where he lived.

Kenshin also learned the woman’s name.

Yukishiro Tomoe!

The following plot seemed somewhat slower, focusing on the daily life and memories of the characters Kenshin, Kaoru, and others in the manga. Compared to the intense fight scene between Kenshin and the enemy in the rain, and the stunning meeting with Kaoru at the end, the excitement appeared to drop a bit.

Many readers who had eagerly awaited it for a week seemed disappointed. They wrote letters and comments on the website, urging the author to draw more action-packed scenes.

But even so, the number of votes in the third episode still rose sharply, from more than 14,000 votes in the previous issue to over 19,000 votes in this issue.

This surprised some in Kurokawa who had initially thought that the second episode of this work was just a flash in the pan.

Nowadays, most people in the entire manga industry already understood it.

Rurouni Kenshin was truly a dark horse.

It had entered the manga market with a bang during this cold winter, quickly becoming one of the top manga among the three major manga Magazine in city with only four serializations.

Although it was still ranked fourth in terms of votes, people with discerning eyes could see that the popularity of this work was trending upward. Even Haruto Minami's Celestial Book, which was ranked third, had already started to feel the pressure.