Because of Haruto's game matches with Reina, what should have been a simple one-hour manuscript review often got dragged out to two hours. More than once, they only left Yukino's apartment after wasting time battling it out on the console.
And lately, Haruto could no longer crush her effortlessly with one hand.
That sharp little gremlin had learned the controls, and the moment she got comfortable with the game's flow, her growth became absurd. If Haruto let his guard down for even a second, she would sniff out a crack and pin him briefly, forcing him to take it seriously.
Still…
She had not beaten him even once.
Not yet.
Haruto had nearly ten years of arcade experience behind him, while she only got to touch the game on the handful of days she came to Yukino's place to submit manuscripts.
The gap in experience was simply too wide.
"But even so," Reina said calmly, her hand tightening slightly, "since the very first installment until now, my numbers have been completely crushed by Blue Spring Ride. Ratings, votes, support totals, everything. I have not even gotten a single chance to overtake it."
She stayed clear-headed even when Yukino praised her.
The more Yukino described her as impressive, the more impressive it made Haruto look, because he was the one pressing her down so relentlessly.
Her voice sounded light and serene, but inside she felt awful.
No one was good at everything.
There were countless things she could never compete in. If it came to raising pigs, doing farm work, or managing crops, she could work her whole life and still not catch up to people who had grown up with that world in their hands. But she did not care about those fields. She had no emotional attachment to them. Losing there did not sting.
Only this did.
Novels.
Because of the strict way she had been raised, she had not been allowed many hobbies. The only thing she truly loved was reading fiction, and occasionally watching anime when she could squeeze time out of her schedule.
And because she loved it so much, she had finally gathered the courage to hide it from her family and submit her work, becoming a serialized author.
Yet in the one industry she cared about most, the moment she debuted, she was met with the same opponent again and again. The same age. The same school. Haruto.
They had submitted on the same day, been signed under the same editor, and ended up serialized in the same magazine. A perfectly fair competitive environment.
And she had been losing ever since.
Reina's gaze flickered toward Haruto.
This was someone she would never have paid attention to at school. Just an ordinary student, the kind who blended into the crowd.
And yet he was suppressing her in every category.
Maybe this was what fate had arranged for her. A rival placed directly in front of her. A mountain she was meant to climb. A whetstone meant to sharpen her.
Her desire to win had already mutated into something heavier.
Something obsessive.
She even dreamed of beating him, whether it was in game matches, or in the rankings.
Haruto thought Reina was the real genius.
Reina thought Haruto was the rival destiny had assigned her, the peak she had to surpass.
As for Yukino, she only felt like she had stumbled onto two treasures. And even geniuses needed a professional editor to point them toward the right career path.
Akira wanting these two to represent Crimson Maple Literature in the "Ascent of New Gods" selection looked rash at first glance.
But the more Yukino thought about it, the more she felt it made sense. Two young authors with this kind of potential should not be confined to one region.
Their stage should be all of Japan.
If they could truly take part in "The Ascent of New Gods," and make an appearance in front of readers nationwide, it would be an enormous boost to their careers as authors.
"After your current series ends," Yukino said slowly, "don't waste time. You should pour everything into planning your next work. You need to secure your popularity and even strengthen it. And you should aim for one thing."
She looked between them.
"Get your next novel serialized in Crimson Maple."
The "Ascent of New Gods" seed spots in their region were chosen based on a combination of factors: a rookie author's serialization results in major regional magazines, tankōbon sales, and other overall performance metrics.
Historically speaking, the rookies selected to compete in "The Ascent of New Gods" had all, within two years of debuting, earned serialization credits in top flagship publications like Crimson Maple or Blue Sky.
It was simple logic.
If a whole region only got three seed slots across two years, why would anyone choose you unless you had that level of potential?
Sure, even those selected authors often ranked in the lower half of the magazine. Some even scraped the very bottom, because they were still inexperienced.
But they were scraping the bottom of magazines that sold seven hundred thousand, eight hundred thousand, sometimes close to nine hundred thousand copies per issue.
In the eyes of most people in the industry, being the weakest in a top-tier magazine still carried more weight than being number one in a smaller one.
Even if Haruto topped Fleeting Blossoms, many editors would still rank that achievement half a tier below barely surviving in Crimson Maple.
Because most of the series in Fleeting Blossoms were, bluntly, works that had failed to secure a slot in Crimson Maple.
So even if you dominated Fleeting Blossoms, you were still just the tallest person in a shorter crowd.
"Huh?" Haruto blinked.
Why was Yukino suddenly talking about aiming for Crimson Maple with their next work?