LENA
For the next few months, Paz Media was the talk of the town.
Or, more accurately and more fortuitously, it was the talk of the entire internet.
The traffic to our website had increased of a whopping four hundred percent.
Everyone loved fanfiction, apparently. There were Ishikawa fans all over the world that were as starved as I was for a conclusion to the manga.
I couldn’t deny that part of me was happy about the buzz, even though I had been reluctant at first. It’s always exciting when someone appreciates what you do.
Paz Media’s Facebook page, my page, and Amos’ all skyrocketed in number of likes, and we found ourselves gaining quite a few readers.
As more fans started getting word about the free Aiko fanfiction published on our site, the media took note. Buzzfeed and HuffPost articles followed, and suddenly I found my name tagged and retweeted more times than I really cared for.
I was just waiting for the backlash and impending doom.
These days, everyone had a problem with everything.
Everyone had an opinion about everything.
I was just waiting for the moment someone would rip both me and Amos to shreds. Strangely enough, besides a few snarky comments from some of our peers, it didn’t happen.
Paz Media, in the meanwhile, was making bank off this marketing strategy. My sales of Switch reached record numbers.
Once again, my boss had been right. Damn him.
When I agreed to do this, I had specific requests. I demanded I be the one leading the project. It had been a risk, because more than anything I was afraid of the backlash and didn’t want my career to be tarnished by it.
Still, it seemed stupid to let the guy I had a crush on take charge. I wasn’t going to be second-in-command, especially not for something I had started before Amos meddled in my business.
However, I had been naïve. I thought publishing fanfiction to the website was the end of it. I never could have imagined what came next.
The Japanese publisher was equally desperate to give Aiko an ending, and after months of our names floating around the web, they contacted Marty about bringing us on board to work alongside Ishikawa to finish the manga.
It was the most unbelievable thing I had ever heard.
I refused to believe it. I just couldn’t fathom it.
“Why are you going along with this, Marty? You know just as much as I do that it sounds insane,” I rebuked.
“Do you realize what this means for our company, Lena?”
“Your company.”
“Yours, too. It’s the place where you work. Do you know how much traffic on the site has increased since we started posting your fanfiction?”
“No American—no Westerner is allowed to draw manga. It’s like a huge taboo. You know as well as I do how much it’s frowned upon. We’re going to get murdered by our peers.”
“Or they are all going to think you’re insane for passing up one of the biggest opportunities of your life,” he said with a shrug. The corner of his mouth tilted up, giving me what he probably intended as a reassuring smile. How could he be so calm? He knew as much as I did that this situation was borderline sci-fi.
“Why is Ishikawa even going along with this? How is she okay with any of it? She hasn’t published one page of Aiko in the last eight years, and they’ve obviously been waiting for her to get back to work. If they wanted her to finish the manga so bad, why didn’t they hire Japanese artists to finish it?”
“I don’t know what the terms are. Maybe she hadn’t signed off on the rights that allowed them to use other people to tell her story. I have no idea. As crazy as this sounds, I honestly don’t care. How many times does something like this happen?” he asked, looking at me expectantly.
“Never. It has never happened before.”
“Exactly, which is why we can’t say no. It’s a huge deal. Just think about what it would mean for us, for Paz Media.”
“You said that already. Are you going to get a publishing exclusive out of it?” He hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, but it couldn’t be only publicity he was after.
“Of course. The previous publisher’s rights expired long ago, and they didn’t renew the deal because there were no new installments. At the time, it would have been stupid for them to renew a contract they couldn’t make money off of.”
“What about the previous volumes? Are they going to let you republish them? That would mean huge sales. You would make a profit off of anyone who’s looking to buy the complete series, not to mention all the kids who weren’t even born when Ishikawa started publishing Aiko.”
“I can’t say no to this, Lena. As much as you think I’m trying to turn your life upside down, I honestly believe this will be a great opportunity for you. How many people can say they get to work side by side with their idol?”
“Those who do are usually sorely disappointed. What if she’s not as great as I thought all these years? After all, she left her fans high and dry for almost a decade. I know she’s been sick, but if it had been me, I would have found a way to make it work and keep going, hiring someone who could recreate my style and respect my vision.”
“I know,” he said softly. “We don’t know why she did that. I do know it’s not easy to let go, especially when it’s your baby.”
“Speaking of, what about my baby? What’s going to happen to Switch? Are we putting it on hiatus now because of this?”
“I have no other choice, Lena. If you do this, the company will be safe for the next five years, at least. The sales coming from this manga alone would surpass those of all the comics we’ve ever printed and sold combined.”
“It’s not fair that I have to put my project aside for this,” I grumbled.
“Maybe you’ll be able to work on it while you’re there. I’m open to different options. The fact remains that this is too good of an opportunity to pass up,” he said firmly.
I shook my head in disbelief and stared at the pattern of the carpet in his office.
“You know I haven’t been back to Japan since…”
“I know,” he said somberly. “And you know what I think about that. You should have gone back a long time ago to make peace with things. It’s been ten years. Besides, you’re missing out. We had an amazing time when we went for our honeymoon. Violet fell in love with Tokyo. She can’t wait to go back.”
I glared at him. Our situations were far from similar.
“Marty, you can say whatever you want, but I will never be able to make peace with it.”
“It’s the only thing you can do. Shit happens. It was an accident, and you have to stop blaming yourself.”
“And I will have to work with Amos. Have you thought about that?”
“What are you talking about? You two work great together.” He winked.
The bastard winked at me.
“I don’t know if you really are that stupid or if you’re on a mission to irritate the crap out of me today. Yes, we work well together”—I said using air quotes—“but must I remind you that you forced me to work with him in the first place? And don’t give me that look. I know you know.”
“What do I know?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with entirely too much mischief.
“I’m not going to say it out loud.”
“Yeah, I know you two have…history.”
“We don’t have history, you fucking moron.”
“Oh, I disagree. Everyone still talks about that party at my house two years ago.”
“Oh, you too huh? You and your wife are a match made in heaven. I’m leaving.”
“Lena, don’t. I’m sorry. Sit.”
I stood by the door and considered leaving for a moment, but then turned around to stare at my best friend. I folded my arms, waiting for him to apologize.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I don’t want to piss you off, but…I see it, you know.”
“See what?” I asked indignantly as my heart started racing in my chest at the thought of Amos…at the thought of that damn kiss.
“This…electricity between the two of you. I saw it that night in my house. I saw your eyes alive in a way that I’ve seen a very few times—maybe just when we published the first volume of Switch,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he were thinking to himself.
“Everyone was drunk that night, Marty, me included. That’s what you saw in my eyes—drunkenness.”
He shook his head and gave me a long look. “I know what I saw, and I have seen it recently, too. You’re different around him. We’re not teenagers, Lena. You can say you like him. It’s not going to be the end of the world.”
“Whatever,” I said with a shrug. “It doesn’t matter if I like him or not. He has a girlfriend.”
“He does?” Marty asked, surprised.
“Marty! She was at your wedding. Don’t you remember?”
“My wedding was a blur,” he said with a sigh. “I only remember parts of it, like Violet coming down the aisle,” he said with a dreamy look.
“Is that supposed to butter me up?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“No, sorry…I got sidetracked. So, Amos? That was his girlfriend? I thought she was just a date,” he asked, scrunching up his nose in surprise, making a face. I knew why he was doing that—because it didn’t add up that Amos was with someone like Olivia.
“They’ve been together more than a year, I think,” I grumbled. I was on the verge of losing my patience with him. “Are you done now, McFly?” I asked him.
“You want to know what I think?” he asked pensively.
“No, I don’t want to know what you think,” I replied.
“You two…you two should be together,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, not you too! Love has definitely destroyed all of your remaining brain cells. I’m leaving.”
“Lena, wait.” He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I promise I won’t talk about this anymore. I honestly thought there was something going on between you two. I thought this trip might be good for you guys. I had no idea.”
I looked down and nodded, my jaw taut. For some reason, maybe because I loved him like a brother, I decided to let Marty off the hook.
“Easy mistake to make, I suppose. I’m still not happy about having to travel to Tokyo and having to work with him, but I’ll do what I have to. I’m not going to hold a grudge for much longer, rest easy. I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“So, we’re good?” he asked.
“We’re good,” I lied, giving him the best fake smile I could manage. None of what I was about to face sat well with me. Inside, I was absolutely terrified of everything that was about to happen.
I walked back to my cubicle, still wishing deep in my bones that it was nothing but a prank. I kept wishing it wasn’t really happening, that I wouldn’t really have to go to Tokyo and work with the one artist I admired the most. Yes, it was thrilling—terrifyingly so.
I knew nothing about her, though. The world didn’t know much about her besides her comics and her art. She was very private, and even with all the social media platforms we had at our disposal these days, she kept to herself. She’d never even had an official Facebook page or Twitter account. She would hardly communicate to her Japanese fans, much less with the rest of the world, but good God was she brilliant.
Over the course of her career, she’d created her own style. Her manga and her characters had a unique look that you could recognize in a sea of lookalikes.
She was one of the very first to utilize Photoshop and use real photographs as backgrounds for her layouts. Her characters lived in the same city, the same metropolis a lot of her readers lived in. Her heroines and heroes had the same struggles many of the teens and twenty-somethings moving to Tokyo faced.
It was all true: life in the big city wasn’t easy.
Tokyo could be both astonishingly beautiful and downright terrifying.
I knew all about that.
AMOS
“Do you want to kill me, yet?” I asked her as I took a seat across from her.
“Oh, believe me, I’ve wanted to kill you for a while, now,” she deadpanned, and I laughed. It always took me by surprise that she could be so witty every single time we had an exchange. I hadn’t been in her good graces for months now, and I missed the time when we could sort of have a conversation without throwing jabs at each other—although mainly, she was the one throwing them at me.
I missed her, and I often wondered if I should tell her Olivia and I were done.
It had been months.
At first, I knew it was too soon. Then, she was pissed at me for telling Marty about our secret fanfiction project…and now we were supposed to go to Japan together.
Part of me believed if I told her now, it would be detrimental, but the impatient, impulsive side of me was tired of waiting in the wings.
“Also, I suppose this wasn’t really your fault after all. How could you have known the Japanese publisher would want us on board, am I right?” She exhaled.
“I’m at the point where I can’t tell anymore when you’re mocking and when you’re being serious.”
“I’ll never tell,” the golden-haired vixen replied, and I bit my bottom lip to hold back a laugh. I looked away, but when I looked back at her, I found her staring at my lips.
A new hope blossomed in my chest.
Lena Andrews still wanted me. It was only a matter of time before I could convince her to abandon her ivory tower.