One-Shot Manga

Kritvik Bhatt

“Anyway, manga volumes are too expensive.”

Both of us were walking beside each other when she said that, her eyes on the manga volume in her hands which we just got signed.

The sun was still shining brightly over the whole ground. The place was, obviously, filled with people walking here and there, laughing and having fun, man. On our right were the sheds and on our left was the entry gate—about ten steps wide.

“Damn yeah, man,” I replied as I turned my head to my right at her. “For some reason, every single volume is more than six hundred.”

“Whatever.” She turned her head to the front and moved her hands down, her book in her right hand. “You see, the signed things of famous people get auctioned at really high prices. I’d earn hundreds easily after some decades.”

I smiled. “It’s only after they die, man. She’s still alive.”

She smiled back. “Let’s go kill her then!”

I turned my head to the front again and commented, “I knew you’d say some stuff like that, man.”

“Like, I’d need to wait at least twenty years!” She commented. “I don’t really think I can preserve this book for so long, you see.”

“Obviously, man.”

“Whatever,” She said. “Anyway, what do we do next?”

“Huh? You just said we should get matching t-shirts.”

“Yeah,” Her eyes widened and she turned her head to me. “Let’s go find some stalls for clothes then.”

“Man, I guess we should just discover this place for some time. We’d get one when we get the chance to, but let’s see other stuff too.”

“Okay,” She turned her head to the front. “We have plenty of time anyway, you see. Let’s just see things.”

I nodded, “Hmm.”

Her eyes suddenly widened and her lips opened. She again nudged me. As I turned my head to her, she pointed her right arm straight at the front. I turned my head to the front, and, for some reason, there was a wide shed at the end of the other little booths and stuff, a couple dozen steps away from us. It had a huge entrance where several people were walking in and out at once, and the entrance revealed little about what was inside other than a poster some steps away inside.

“Well, we should go there. It’s really hot anyway.”

“No doubt,” I replied as we continued to walk toward it.

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.

“What do you think would be there?” I asked her as we walked.

“I don’t really know, you see. And, I don’t think it’d be really interesting, you see. But it’s really hot and I wanna get inside that because I feel like there should be ACs inside.”

“No doubt, it’s too sunny today for some reason, man,” I replied. I then turned to her. “But we need to go back by evening, and we got to explore all this stuff before then. We’d obviously need to come out beneath this sun again.”

“Well, I just want to catch some breath here, you see. Searching for Jenshin manga has tired me a little,” She replied as she turned her head to me. “And, like, we gotta explore that area too anyway. So let’s do it now.”

I smiled and turned my head to the front.

For some reason, there were a large number of people walking in and out from that entrance randomly. We both, obviously, had to get inside that crowd of people and touch some people a little to get inside. But, after some struggling between the people, we walked a couple of steps into that swarm, and suddenly, a little breeze of AC hit both of our faces.

Sana smiled. “I said it’d have AC.”

I smiled. “Damn, you can predict the future.”

“It’s cool that they have something like this in the middle of JenCon, you see. Now, I’m more excited for this.”

“You were not even excited in the first place for this, man.”

“Like, yeah, but somewhere, I was kinda curious, you see,” She said as we both struggled to walk each inch toward the entrance.

We continued to push and twist as we walked through some people who were walking out and some who overtook us in a hurry, for some reason. Finally, after that mess, we both turned to our right and continued to walk in. Both of us turned our eyes right and left, looking at our surroundings.

Inside that air-conditioned room, there were sharp blue and white lights on top, with the interior themed black and blue. It seemed like a gamers’ or a streamers’ room—but quite bigger and filled with people, obviously. And even though there were still a lot of people inside, it was not as suffocating as before, for some reason. But, it was damn crowded and was filled with the indistinct chatters and laughs of people.

On our left was a model of an anime girl—made of wax or some stuff like that, maybe. She had white clothes and blue hair. Beside her, as we walked further inside, was a computer system where a guy in a black t-shirt and pants had his dark red headphones on and was playing with a dark green controller in his hands. On his left—our left, too—there was a great computer screen where he was playing some role-playing game where at night, a three-dimensional anime character stood in front of some more characters, and there were some dialogues at the dialogue box down, for some reason. Maybe he was in the middle of some storyline. “It’s Jenshin,” Sana commented with a smile as she looked at it.

I smiled too. “Huh? It surely got some great visuals.”

“You never saw it?”

“I have seen its graphics and stuff, but I never saw these characters interact or some action going on, for some reason.”

She nodded as she turned her head to the front. There were more computers where about a dozen of guys sat in a square and were fighting each other in the game, maybe, with their characters that were just breathing fire, water, and other stuff on the screen.

We turned our heads to our left and looked at them playing with their computer systems and controllers.

It was just the corner and we then turned left, walking further inside.

“It’s the gaming section, maybe,” I commented as I looked at more screens and videos playing on them.

“It’s all so cool, K!” She excitedly said as she looked around herself. “These gamers have thousands of people following them online, and they’re really famous!”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah!” She replied with an excited grin, her eyes still wandering everywhere. “I have heard about many of them, you see.”

She then turned her head frontward and noticed a crowd—surrounding something, maybe. But, there were no computers or stuff on the other side of the people, obviously, and it just seemed like an empty space between the tech stuff. The whole crowd was silently glaring at the front, for some reason. Sana frowned as she noticed them. “Like, what’s going on there?”

Suddenly, that whole crowd rose into a huge, “WHOOOOOAAA!”

I turned my head to that crowd and smiled. “Damn, man. I don’t know.”

“Well, let’s find out,” She replied as we continued to walk toward that crowd.

As we stopped and stood behind all those people, we got to know that we were just too short, for some reason. Those huge teens and young adults had our visions covered, man.

“Damn,” I said as I moved both my hands out of my pockets and stood up on my toes for a second. “I can’t see a thing, man.”

She too raised her body on her toes, and then came back to her normal height. “Same.” She worriedly looked at me.

I turned my head to her and kept my hands on my waist. “What now?”

“What now?” She repeated. “Like, we should try to get inside.”

“What’s… one thousand minus seven, eh?” A damn creepily-deep voice spread through the speaker and both of us suddenly turned to the crowd, from where that voice had come.

“WHOOOOOAAA!” Everyone shouted at once and erupted into thunder of claps—some even whistling.

Her eyes opened wide. “This is the cosplay competition!” She suddenly turned to me and told me.

“Damn, they need to speak some famous lines of these characters they’re cosplaying too?”

“Yeah. You gotta look and act like that character, you see,” She told me. She turned to the crowd again and said, “I wanna see some cosplayers too.”

“Then let’s try to get inside, maybe.”

“Yeah,” She said as she started to walk in.

I too started to follow her back and walk behind her in between all those guys and girls who stood and smiled and chatted and shouted.

“If it were me, I would have… absolutely… fucking his ass up for ya, girl. But… now that we’re not together… you know what, I can…” A guy said from over the speaker as both of us were pushing people here and there. Two guys even walked backward from our right, for some reason, and some more were walking here and there, obviously.

“WHOOOOAAA! Damn!” Again, the crowd broke into huge applause and people were shouting and whistling and clapping.

We soon arrived at the center, in the middle of a lot of people, and there were only a couple more in front of us. But we could see the platform raised some inches up, with a guy in some traditional Japanese black clothes, a sword, and drawings of some red marks on her face. He then turned to his right—our left—as he was taking off the mike from his neck. Another man in a black t-shirt and dark blue denim jeans walked to him and took the mike from him.

There were a couple of Japanese people sitting on the left of the platform. They were scribbling something on the papers on the table in front of them.

The cosplayer turned back and started to walk behind the platform, where others were standing in a variety of costumes.

The guy who took the mike then turned backward and said, “Truly a masterpiece of a cosplay, Jeevan!” He was not shouting on the mike, and maybe that’s why we couldn’t hear him from behind. He then turned to the audience and said, “Well, after this truly dark and edgy performance, we might need something lighter and wholesome, right? And, that’s why, I’m calling you candidate two-seventy-four, Kritikaaaa Chaddhaaaa!”

“Yooo!” Everyone shouted and started to clap as a girl walked frontward from behind and waved her right hand at the audience and smiled. She had a cute smile, for some reason, and she looked just like a normal Japanese schoolgirl in that dark bluish uniform. She turned to the guy, took the mike in her hands, and started to place it across her head for a couple of seconds.

A couple of judges that sat on the left edge of the stage with a table and papers and stuff on it had a short chat meanwhile with each other and then turned to the front.

That girl took a deep breath, which echoed around from her mike, and then opened her eyes, frowning. “AAAAAAAA BAKA!” She shouted on the mike and flung her arm open, her back bent backward and her head tilted upward. Suddenly, for some reason, she tripped backward. “Ow!”

“Ahahahaha…” There was a little laughter.

“FUKKO!” She shouted, saying ‘fuck’ in a Japanese accent.

“Ahahahaa.”

I chuckled too as I looked at her, my hands inside the pockets of my pants.