Is It Okay If I Don't Want to Try Anymore? [2]

School was out.

As card-carrying members of the “Go-Home Club,” Higashino Kanade and Izumi Konata packed up as fast as they could.

One was in a hurry to get home and draw manga.
The other was in a hurry to get home and watch anime.

“I’m just saying,” Konata chirped, “why hang yourself on the manga tree? There’s still light novels! If one of those hits it big, you can still live off royalties.”

“I’m not writing toilet paper. And that’s still not an excuse for wrecking my manga pages.”

“Geez, so petty. A beautiful girl’s drool is a holy relic to a true gentleman, you know.”

“Listen to yourself, Konata. You just called yourself a beautiful girl.”

“Obviously I am! Hmph. Wait—aren’t we forgetting something? Feels like something’s missing…”

“Missing what? Forgetting what? You ever heard that anything you can forget wasn’t important in the first place? Don’t change the subject—my manga. My draft. Let’s go. How’re you making this right?”

On the way home from school, Kanade and Konata were still arguing over the incident with the original pages.

Kanade’s dream of becoming a manga artist wasn’t driven by some pinky-swear with a beautiful girl—no vow to get married once it got adapted into an anime. He just genuinely loved drawing manga. He wanted to become a pro. He wanted to live off royalties.

He had confidence in his art. More or less. Before transmigrating, he’d been an art student. Though he’d chosen animation in university with lofty dreams of revitalizing Guoman (Chinese animation), he’d ended up just another corporate drone—caught between unreasonable clients, cranky team leads, and soul-crushing deadlines.

But after reincarnating, he found that his artistic talent had grown. His grasp of drawing, panel layout, and even storytelling felt sharper, more instinctive.

Everyone knows transmigrators get a cheat. If you don’t have one, are you even really a transmigrator?

Kanade’s cheat wasn’t some system interface—it was a superpower. A real one. It let him teleport, move objects remotely, fly, hypnotize people, even exorcise spirits. Convenient and powerful.

The only catch? It ate up mental energy like crazy. If he used it for too long or pushed it too hard, he’d black out. Full-on pass out. Eyes go dark, wake up in a Pokémon Center kind of black out.

Okay, the eyes-going-dark part was real. Waking up in a Pokémon Center? Not so much.

If he was lucky, he’d collapse and wake up right where he fell. If not… well, he’d only passed out twice so far, and both times it was at home. He woke up each time with a splitting headache, like the worst hangover imaginable.

His powers ran on mental strength. And for some reason, his mental strength increased a little each year. Maybe that’s why his art skills kept improving, too. Things he didn’t understand before suddenly clicked. Things his hands couldn’t execute back then? Now they flowed naturally. Problems that once felt like insurmountable walls? Now they were barely speed bumps.

Granted, some of that was just him being bad back then. Still, while he wouldn’t call himself the second coming of the Manga God, he was confident he had what it took to go pro.

“Found ‘em! Earless freak and her little sister!”

“She an alien or something? I hit her and she didn’t even flinch.”

“Eugh, she’s smiling at us. Gross.”

…What?

The taunting voices of a few kids snapped Kanade and Konata out of their bickering.

Along the riverside path, three boys were chasing two girls and pelting them with small stones. One had brown hair, the other black. A pudgy kid ran up behind the brown-haired girl, and in the blink of an eye, snatched something off her ear and flung it into the river.

A hearing aid.

Kanade, whose eyesight was excellent, saw it clearly.

“That’s so messed up,” Konata muttered, her eyes sharpening. She glanced around, scanning for anything she could use as a projectile.

Evil must be punished.

“You gonna go fight them?” Kanade asked, already warming up his shoulders.

“Heh. That’s what you’re here for.”

Konata grinned, flashing her brilliant shark teeth. She couldn’t take on three boys alone—but didn’t need to. Her childhood friend was a superpowered boy. As long as Kanade stepped in, everything would be daijoubu. Moe da nai.

“I knew it.” Kanade sighed and dropped his bag, tossing it to Konata. “Hold this. I’ll handle it. Just sit back and enjoy the show—hero saves the day.”

“OK!” Konata caught the bag and held up a clenched fist, all serious. “Use Flame Fist! Hit ‘em hard!”

“No.”

“Why not?!”

“Hmph. I’m a Kamen Rider, thank you very much. Watch closely—my Rider Kick!”

Striking a cool pose with his thumb brushing past his nose, Kanade charged forward.

“Sky-Tearing Thunderstrike—Double Dropkick!!”

The pudgy bully turned at the sound—only to see a figure silhouetted against the sun leaping toward him.

Then: a sharp pain in his gut, and he went flying.

“That’s not a Rider Kick at all!!”

Konata exploded in rage.

What the hell was that? Sky-Tearing Thunderstrike Double Dropkick? What kind of bootleg reference is that?!

In this world, the ACG culture was similar to his previous one, but not identical. There were still things like Action Mask in Crayon Shin-chan, and Masked Heroes in Detective Conan. This world had a Kamen Rider series too—but the plots, characters, and music were all a bit different.

Konata had never seen Luoluo's Adventure Chronicles, so she had no clue where that reference came from. She just saw Kanade kick someone so hard their shirt ripped, snatch the boy’s backpack, and hurl it into the river. Then, as two other boys grabbed his arms, he started kicking the third one mercilessly.

Savage.

This wasn’t her first time seeing Kanade fight. Back when Suzu got bullied, he’d always gone after the kids who picked on her. But this time? This was next level. He’d thrown someone’s backpack in the river and now he was chucking people in too. Even Konata felt the urge to jump in. It was like a fighting game come to life.

She wasn’t worried Kanade would lose. Her childhood friend was basically a Kamen Rider. One-vs-three? Easy. Even ten would be fine. With his superpowers, these kids were no match. He was like a god descending from the heavens, chasing them all into the shallow riverbed.

The river wasn’t deep—it barely reached their knees. If it had been deeper, Kanade wouldn’t have dared throw them in.

“You three! Get in there and find that hearing aid. No coming out until you do.”

“You’ve got until sundown. If you don’t find it by then, I’m sealing your feet in concrete and dropping you in Tokyo Bay.”

“You’re crying? That still counts against your time.”

Like a full-on villain, Kanade stood on the shore, spouting lines straight out of a yakuza movie as the boys flailed in the water.

“Kanade, we really did forget something,” Konata said suddenly, now standing beside him, finger to her chin.

“What? I told you—if you can forget it, it wasn’t important.”

Kanade scratched his head. But now that she mentioned it, he did feel like he’d forgotten something.

“I mean, just hypothetically—what if that thing you forgot… was your little sister?”

Konata looked around, checking both sides of him. There was a certain tiny cutie who normally bounced around him like a happy puppy… conspicuously absent.

“…Shit. That’s… actually possible. Wait—did we leave Suzu at school?!”

Kanade’s scowling face changed instantly. Right. He had a little sister. And he’d totally left her behind.

“THEN WHAT ARE YOU STANDING HERE FOR?!”

“RUN!!”

“You go. I’ll stay here and hold the fort.”

“NO WAY!!”

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This is a fan translation of 不想努力可以吗？by 优的布丁 All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!