Tokyo: Earth Online Manga Artist.

Natsume Akane has been very happy lately.

Because over this period of time, according to her plan, she has successfully become closer to Eri Aragaki.

The four girls, namely Eri Aragaki, Erina, Ayane Takeda, and Akane Natsume, have become best friends over this period of time.

They would even go out shopping and eating together once or twice a week, but... Natsume Akane still doesn't know exactly where Aragaki Eri's apartment is located.

But she wasn't in a hurry... she wanted to take it one step at a time.

Today she plans to invite Eri Aragaki and the others to a newly opened Chinese restaurant for a meal.

Because... she discovered that Eri Aragaki seemed very interested in things related to the culture of the Republic across the strait, especially food.

According to Eri Aragaki and her friends, the last thing they ate at in Shibuya on their first trip was that they ate tonkatsu dan dan noodles...

The People's Republic of China has a history of five thousand years, and its cuisine is unmatched by any other country in the world.

So even though Eri Aragaki is a homebody, she'll definitely come out if Akane Natsume tells her that a new Chinese restaurant has opened somewhere.

For example, last week they went to eat Sichuan and Chongqing spicy soup, and the week before that they went to eat dim sum and pan-fried buns. Basically, whenever Chinese food is mentioned, Eri Aragaki will agree to go.

This time, Natsume Akane also found a newly opened Chinese restaurant in Ikebukuro called Yang's Chinese Restaurant.

She saw several recommendation posts online, saying that the Mapo Tofu and Shredded Pork with Green Peppers were popular dishes at this restaurant, and that the chef came from Sichuan and Chongqing in the People's Republic of China, so the taste was very authentic.

Seeing that the date was approaching, she picked up her phone and sent a message to Eri Aragaki.

"Eri, let's go to this Chinese restaurant together tomorrow."

"This Chinese restaurant in Ikebukuro is really popular lately. Apparently, their Mapo Tofu and Shredded Pork with Green Peppers are their most popular dishes."

The message has been sent.

Natsume Akane put her phone on the table and continued flipping through magazines.

After waiting for about ten minutes, she picked up her phone and glanced at it.

The message has been read, but there has been no reply.

Natsume Akane waited a while longer, but still received no reply.

She put down her phone, thinking that Eri Aragaki was probably busy with something and would reply soon.

So she took a shower first, and after coming out, she dried her hair and picked up her phone, but there were still no new message notifications on the screen.

"strangeness."

She muttered something.

That evening, Natsume Akane lay in bed and picked up her phone again.

The two messages she sent are still lying quietly in the chat box, without receiving any reply.

She stared at the screen for a few seconds, then exited the chat interface and clicked on Ayane Takeda's profile picture.

"Ayane, did Eri contact you today?"

A few minutes later, Ayane Takeda replied, "No, senpai didn't contact me today. What's wrong?"

Natsume Akane replied "It's okay" and put her phone next to her pillow.

She rolled over, stared at the ceiling for a while, and then closed her eyes.

But she still cared about that.

The next morning, the first thing Natsume Akane did after waking up was to pick up her phone.

Eri Aragaki's profile picture still doesn't have the red unread message marker, and the last two messages in the chat box were sent by her yesterday.

She bit her lip, sat up in bed, and dialed Eri Aragaki's number.

The phone rang for a long time.

Then the call ended automatically.

Natsume Akane stared at the "Call Ended" message on the screen, her heart tightening.

She dialed again, and this time the phone rang for so long that she almost thought it was going to hang up automatically again, but it was finally answered.

As she breathed a sigh of relief, she was about to ask what had happened to Eri Aragaki recently.

But just then, the voice she heard wasn't Eri Aragaki's.

"Moshi moshi, is that Sister Qian?"

Natsume Akane paused for a moment.

"Erina."

She asked in surprise, "Where's Eri? Why isn't she answering her phone?"

Erina Aragaki replied, "Sorry, my sister is working on a manuscript and can't answer the phone. I'm helping her out."

Natsume Akane was immediately surprised.

I'm rushing to meet a deadline.

Her mind raced for a moment, then she tentatively asked, "You're rushing to meet a deadline...?"

"Sister Qian, didn't you know? My sister's current job is as a cartoonist..."

Erina Aragaki was also a bit surprised. "She has a manuscript due soon, so we're busy with that right now."

Akane Natsume indeed didn't know this.

Eri Aragaki never mentioned what she did for a living in front of her, and she never had the chance to ask.

"Is that so..."

Akane Natsume tried to keep her voice as calm as possible as she asked, "Is she very busy right now?"

"Yes...we're all very busy."

Erina glanced at Eri Aragaki, who was still drawing, and then said.

Eri Aragaki is indeed extremely busy.

When I learned that there were only four days left, no... I should say three and a half days, before the deadline, I was told that the manuscript had to be submitted.

Naturally, I'll have to work incredibly hard to meet the deadline.

Normally, if a cartoonist works entirely by themselves without an assistant, it usually takes them six days to draw one chapter.

Of course, this only applies to the average comic artist. Some comic artists hire several talented assistants and only need to be responsible for the plot and storyboards. Other comic artists are incredibly fast writers, serializing two or three comics a week...

These vary from person to person.

A typical cartoonist works about six days a week, with one day off.

Such work arrangements are relatively relaxed, just like the usual workday of an ordinary worker, with six to eight hours of work per day, or even more relaxed.

Even Eri Aragaki was a copyist.

Her plots and storyboards are basically copied, so she doesn't have to think for herself at all. Plus, with her cheat codes, drawing a single chapter of a serialized story is even easier for her.

It takes about four to five days to finish drawing one chapter. She gritted her teeth and worked hard to finish the first five chapters of Attack on Titan in less than twenty-five days.

But now...

With less than four days left until the deadline, we had to give it our all.

The air conditioning in the studio is on 24 hours a day.

Eri Aragaki sat in front of her worktable, a thick stack of drawings piled up in front of her.

Her hair was casually tied into a bun, and she had two obvious dark circles under her eyes.

Several empty cans of energy drinks and a few empty instant noodle bowls were on the table.

She has been sleeping only four hours a day for the past three days.

This was because Erina Aragaki was worried and that's why she helped.

Although Erina doesn't have much artistic talent, she can still help with some of the more mechanical and manual tasks.

For example, tasks like blackening hair and shadows, or applying halftone dots, tearing halftone dots, or adding speech bubbles are things that most people can learn quickly with just a little practice.

This also helped Eri Aragaki reduce some unnecessary work.

However, the artwork she was responsible for still made up the majority of her workload, so Eri Aragaki had to work incredibly hard.

Natsume Akane was somewhat at a loss; under these circumstances, it was definitely impossible to call out Aragaki Eri.

Just as she was hesitating, suddenly!

"elder sister!"

She heard what sounded like a heavy object falling to the ground first, followed by Erina's anxious shouts, and then the phone seemed to be put down.

"What happened?! Erina? What happened to Eri?"

She immediately shouted anxiously on the other end of the phone.