At the bookstore we split up to our preferred sections. Riona stopped at the literary new-releases shelf; I headed for the LN and manga floor.
I grabbed the LN I’d been looking for. While circulating, a manga adaptation caught my eye and I stopped.
“This series got a manga?”
It was the manga of a recent hit LN about a protagonist fighting supernatural creatures — a series that had been adapted to anime not long ago.
Web-novel-platform hits commonly get manga’d around the same time they get LN’d these days, but historically that wasn’t the case.
I’d read the original and watched the anime, so I wanted to collect the manga too. Apparently only two volumes were out. As I was thinking that, Riona came over with a paperback.
“Found you.”
“How.”
“Limited number of places you’d be.”
“I could’ve been in the reference book section.”
“Possible at the same odds as snow in summer.”
Riona, cool face, was teasing me. Like Reona, she really enjoys this.
“What’s that?”
“This.”
“February 29 — the movie running right now, right?”
“Yes, the novel.”
A heartbreak-themed work named after the same-titled love-loss song. My classmates’ couples had been crying at it; I hadn’t seen it. Live-action is not really my thing, so probably I’d skip unless it got animated.
“Riona reads stuff like this?”
“Surprised?”
“Yeah, Reona I’d buy, but Riona — not the image.”
“I’ve always liked fiction. Romance, mystery, sci-fi — wide reading.”
“Versatile.”
Riona was knowledgeable about anime and manga too — apparently she likes narratives generally. I’d been mentally modeling her as the reads academic monographs type, which was wrong.
“I’m done shopping — pay and head out?”
“Maybe there’s a section you haven’t checked, want to confirm?”
“What section?”
“That one.”
She pointed. A curtained-off area. Adult section.
“Riona, what is your image of me?”
“Healthy teenage boy — different?”
“Well, I am a healthy teenage boy, but…”
Did Riona think a healthy teenage boy is the kind who walks into adult-section curtains in school uniform? That’s not the public image of healthy.
“If you had walked in there, there would have been a penalty.”
“Penalty is terrifying. I had no intention of going in.”
I bought ero-mangs digitally anyway — after the Reona-and-Riona-discover-the-stash incident, exclusively digital.
“For now, special exception: I’ll trust you.”
“There is no ‘for now’ — I wasn’t going to go in.”
If Riona hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have noticed the section at all. This was almost an entrapment.
“Done with errands — let’s go to your house, Ryouya.”
“Of course you’re still coming over.”
“Your house is second home.”
Reona was already locked in for gratin tonight. The Tsurugis had thoroughly colonized our place. They could literally move in and my family would just accept it. Concerning.
———
The manga Ryouya saw was based on Bakemonogatari. I, the author, was surprised it got a manga, since I’d assumed it never would.
We’re 15 stars away from 1000 before the February print release — please consider rating ★1000 if you haven’t. Hitting 1000 stars improves Kakuyomu’s search visibility, which improves the chance of a volume-three continuation.