92 The Eriri was Down

Though it still had an egg-shaped head, this time it was a beautiful egg.

The moment he began drawing, Hojou Kyousuke already knew how to make this egg-shaped head three-dimensional.

The final drawing of the "vaccine person" might resemble a basic character model from an animation engine, but at least now it looked like it had some personality.

The light emanating from the energy ball, the fiery trail it left behind—now Kyousuke could even depict the layers of energy dispersion.

The collapsed buildings in the distance were another matter.

Even though the buildings all looked the same, the way they fell and the direction of the debris perfectly matched the principles of mechanics and reality.

You could almost visualize the explosion just by looking at the scene.

Before Kyousuke could continue drawing, Eriri snatched the phone from his hands.

"What is this?!"

After the initial shock, her bright blue eyes were lost in a daze.

Since childhood, Eriri had been praised for her rare artistic talent.

She debuted as a doujin artist when she was in her second year of middle school.

Eriri thought she was impressive, but now, seeing this, she realized there was someone even more extraordinary.

She wanted to ask Kyousuke how old he was, but then thought better of it.

Age wasn't the key issue here—the incredible rate of progress was.

She had witnessed firsthand how, just a short while ago, Kyousuke was drawing manga that looked like scribbles a child would make.

But now, in just a few minutes, he had produced something that even she found impressive.

Though it still had some rough edges—the buildings and characters had little detail, and they looked like 3D models—Eriri was certain that, with a little study, Kyousuke could match her level in no time.

And Eriri was convinced of something else too: the abstract art Kyousuke had just created wasn't a fluke.

He had unlocked his artistic skill in that very instant, just like a character in a game acquiring a new ability. And it was a high-level skill at that.

Destruction.

Eriri opened her phone and called her mother, eager to go home.

"Hello, Mom, where are you?"

"…"

"I'll just take a taxi home myself. Don't worry, I'll be fine. See you."

Kyousuke stared at Eriri, dumbfounded, as he watched her pout slightly and reveal a tiny sharp fang.

Why had she been talking normally one moment, and then suddenly wanted to go home?

"The driver at home had an accident."

"He's fine, but the car's temporarily out of commission. Could you take me outside and help me get a taxi?" Eriri said, her face expressionless.

She was clearly feeling her confidence take a hit.

"What's wrong with you?" Kyousuke asked.

Not listening to her, Kyousuke stayed where he was.

"What's wrong? Do you even realize how ridiculous what you just did was?!" Eriri's voice was slightly raised in excitement.

"The drawing I did is clearly way worse than yours!"

Kyousuke couldn't understand. His own drawing, though better than before, was still awful, right?

"It was just a tiny detail! With a little bit of work, it could be exactly like mine!" Eriri responded with an intensity that was hard to miss.

"No way."

Kyousuke grabbed his phone and looked at the "vaccine person" he had drawn.

It was certainly better than the original, but compared to the animated version, this was unrecognizable.

He vaguely remembered that the animated version had blue skin, with veins bulging out.

He had even tried to draw those, but found it impossible.

Those details required artistic training. His drawing was still lacking a lot.

"No way?" Eriri placed her hands on the floor and leaned in, taking his phone.

Her fingers moved quickly across the screen.

The missing details were filled in rapidly: veins on the forehead, a fierce look in the eyes, the facial muscles moving when the mouth opened, exaggerated chest and abdominal muscles, the sharp light and shadows on the claws…

Even the distant buildings were transformed.

The black smoke from the explosion, trees, power poles, the cyclist caught in the blast, the dark clouds in the sky…

Kyousuke stared in shock.

Using the same basic memo app, his crude doodle was swiftly transformed into a polished piece that could have been in a manga magazine.

This was a waste of time.

Forget manga, I should just give up.

"Alright, I get it. I'll give up on drawing manga," he said.

"What?" Eriri, completely immersed in the world of art, didn't quite catch what he said.

"I said, I'll give up on drawing," he repeated.

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

Eriri, her head full of confusion, stared at Kyousuke. Was he mocking her?

"I've come to understand the gap between myself and true artists. This isn't something someone like me, without any talent, can ever achieve."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look at this drawing! If you can keep up this rate of progress, with a bit of systematic learning, you could debut as a professional artist."

"And you already have such great writing, you could create a manga by yourself. You wouldn't even need to go through the doujin route like I did."

"Your drawing talent is completely superior to mine!" Though she hated to admit it, Eriri said this with excitement.

"Huh?" Now it was Kyousuke's turn to be confused.

He knew his own limits—just like with singing, his talent in drawing was practically nonexistent. In fact, calling it "nonexistent" might be too generous.

What Eriri said might apply to normal people, but he had reached his own limit.

Even if he studied further, even if his knowledge of science and art deepened, he would never reach the level of a professional artist.

"You must have misunderstood."

"I don't have any drawing talent like you think."

"That drawing I did was the best I could do. And it wasn't really drawing—it was more like 'sketching.' I used geometry and biology to create something like a human anatomy chart."

"It's related to manga, but not quite in the way you're thinking."

"Geometry? Human anatomy chart?"

Hearing this, Eriri grabbed her phone and pulled up the original photo of Kyousuke's raw sketch, the one before she edited it.

"This..."

She hadn't thought of it this way before, but now that she looked, Eriri immediately realized that Kyousuke's "monster" looked just like the diagrams in "science" textbooks, or the basic anatomy sketches she had learned from.

And the buildings—those were just slightly more complex rectangular prisms, not much different from the simple perspective drawings she had done when she first learned about it.

"Can someone really do something like this?"

Using math and biology knowledge to draw…

Eriri, who had always been average in her grades, found it hard to believe.

Even the top students at her school couldn't do something like this.