“Have you ever talked to someone?” Said the man who had walked into the office.

The receptionist said that she had.

“No. I’m not finished yet.”

The receptionist nodded.

“Have you ever talked to someone, and felt a sudden feeling that the ground had been swept from your feet? That the sky was no longer above your head and the world as you knew it was an image so real that it had to be fake? Have you ever talked to someone and felt that the morals and experience and feelings that you gathered over the countless seconds and decades and years and minutes and hours have been and are completely pointless? Everything and everyone you knew weren’t what you think it was but was something completely different to how you thought and conceived everything and everyone. This person that you just had a conversation with changes your perception of reality. This person implants a feeling, like a cold mug of coffee on a wet, damp morning that had been left on the table for all night, deep inside your head. You finally think that you understand, understand life, and logic, and emotions. You finally feel that you’ve grasped life. And then, the person comes and makes you feel that all that you have is wrong.”

The man paused for a moment as his mobile rang. When he failed to find it, he continued.

“The days we live in isn’t like a straight line. It’s more like a straight line on a scrunched up piece of paper, in a bin, on fire. It’s a mixture of the extraordinary and the mundane, the emotional and robotic, activeness and immobility, of infinite complexities and contradictions and countless empty corridors that are meant to lead somewhere but don’t. And it’s burning at the same time. All of these feeling that we have are trapped inside us and we have no idea what it is. We give such a simple name. Life.”

The man had found his mobile but it had now stopped ringing.

“So imagine one’s horror when they feel that it’s incorrect. All of it. The candlelight inside you vanishes when you talk to this person, the person that insists that everything is inaccurate. It’s not a feeling of falling down a dark hole. It’s the feeling you get when you’re reading books in the middle of the night in some shorts and a T-shirt and you’ve just got out of the bath three hours ago so there’s a breezy feeling that you just can’t get rid of. You can’t get make it disappear but at the same time you don’t even recognize it’s there because you can’t acknowledge it’s existence.

And then, all of a sudden, in that exact moment when you aren’t bound by the chains of understanding and morals, you feel free; more free than anything in all of creation. You can do anything in that split moment. Eat waffles for the rest of your life or liberate a small village from an empire. Fly or dig to the other side of the ground. You can even finish reading the book that you’re suck at on page one-hundred and thirty seven.”

The man put his mobile back in his pocket.

“But then, it ends. All of it. You hit yourself in the face for being an utter idiot and you anchor yourself back to supposed reality. And then you have some tea. That’s all you can do. Drink tea and continue your life, feeling a little odd and unhappy, but comfortable.”

“Is that it? Drink tea?” Asked the receptionist.

“Yeah.” Said the man. “So how about it? Want to have some tomorrow lunch-time with me?”

Sierra Summer sat stiffly in front of the editor’s desk. Every time he turned to the next page of her first manga, her heart rate increased. The things she had heard about editors from her English teacher and councilor didn’t help her composure.

“One time, an editor looked at my title, threw the manuscript away, and told me to leave.”

“Editors? Mine got to the last chapter and shredded it. Sure you wanna try publishing?”

With these thoughts mingling in her head, complimenting each other, sending her mind into despair, Sierra forced herself to remain silent. She wanted to blurt out questions like, “How is it so far?” or, “You didn’t notice that ink spill I saw on the way here, did you?”

Maybe not that last one. The ink spill was small, and even looked like part of the picture. Surely the editor could overlook it. Or would he take it as a sign of inefficiency?

He was on the last chapter. If Sierra hadn’t forgotten to take off her mittens, she would have bitten half her fingernails off. Her entire attention was on the editor’s face, seeing if he would smile or frown even once. It had been the same since her arrival. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him or the pile of finished pages in front of him even once.

One last page fell onto the “finished” pile. Sierra didn’t want to make eye contact right now, but she forced herself to.

“Mr. Swan! You’re shaking! Are you all right?”

Hastily, Sierra stood up. The editor’s face was pale, like he was sick. After a moment, he looked forward at Sierra, motioning for her to sit.

“It wasn’t perfect,” was the first thing he said. “You drew a lot of big scenes with about twenty vanishing points and thirty people. Inevitably, the word bubbles got cluttered and I lost focus on the characters. Putting too much detail into your backgrounds was a mistake. Simplify them—you’re writing manga, not repainting the Sistine Chapel.

“I’m sorry. I’ll work on that.”

“That’s not all. You started the story too early. Instead of sixty-four pages, it could have easily been forty. Start it as late as possible. Also . . . I did notice that you tend to spend more effort drawing the boys than the girls. That might get you good marks with a female editor or someone publishing romance, but how do you expect overly-sparkly bishonen to sell to an audience asking for thrillers?”

It was a much lighter response than Sierra had expected. She still cringed a little. So it turned out she wasn’t some kind of prodigy, contrary to her sister’s overenthusiastic comments.

“Listen, Sierra. I could go on for hours listing the flaws, but that would be useless.”

“So I’m no good, then . . .” Sierra trailed off and took her manga from the desk. “Excuse me, then. I’ll come back after I’ve practiced more.”

She stood up and pushed the chair in. Mr. Swan sighed and caught her hand. “Where do you think you’re going? You haven’t even heard the reasons why I’m accepting your work.”

Without a word, Sierra set the pages back on the desk, pulled out the chair, and plopped down in it again.

“Sierra, this manga scared the crap out of me. You asked if I was okay when I finished.”

“Are you? You still look a bit pale.”

“How old are you, Sierra?”

“Ah--! That’s one of those questions I’m supposed to lie about, isn’t it? Because editors treat you differently when they find out your age?”

“If you were gonna lie, don’t come out and ask me that. No, I won’t treat you any differently. How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

The editor took a pen from his desk and began writing on a sheet of lined paper. Sierra tried to see what he wrote, but from her angle it was impossible. “Mr. Swan, what’s going on?”

“You’re fourteen years old, you wrote about characters within three years of your age in either direction, and you managed to get me attached to them. The reason I was pale was because of the ending. You ending was the best I’ve seen in twenty years of reading mediocre endings.”

Sierra took out the last page from the pile. She stared in disbelief. This wasn’t the last page! It was page sixty-four, but she had written eighty-six. Silently, she returned it to the pile. She had somehow forgotten the ending at home.

“Aside from overly-sparkly boys, the art is very nice—quite admirable for your age. You’ve obviously practiced a lot. The story it on a level of its own. Like I said, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than eighty percent of published comic books, manga or not. I really like that you’ve broken as many manga clichés as possible. The structure is more like a good movie than a manga—which is good. Manga’s got some very annoying traditions that I’ve wanted to see eliminated for a long time, and you’ve done it.”

“Um . . . what clichés did I break?”

Without hesitation, Mr. Swan answered, “Number one: school uniforms have long skirts for once. Number two: your characters actually use gestures instead of standing straight up while talking. Number three: characters don’t talk or have flashbacks during a fight scene. Number four: the aggressive characters don’t go chibi and punch or kick their best friends over little things. Number five: the story isn’t linear or predictable. Happy?”

With her mouth hanging slightly open, Sierra nodded.

“Work this piece until it’s perfect. I’ll keep in touch through e-mail and send you some things I’d like to see done. Ah, one more thing.”

“One more?”

One last piece of great advice? Encouragement? Another flaw? A reconsideration!?

“Clean up your ink spills.”