After he explained his recent situation clearly and provided his mobile number, things with his parents were temporarily settled.
When he made the call, only his mother, Mochizuki Kazuko, was home, so he ultimately couldn't speak with his father, Mochizuki Masao.
However, this was actually good news for him.
Because, judging from the memories of the Original Owner, things with Mochizuki Kazuko had always been fine; the conflict back then had mainly been with Mochizuki Masao.
The last time the Original Owner called home, he had only spoken with Mochizuki Kazuko as well.
As for when Mochizuki Kazuko asked 'When are you coming home?', he could only use 'I've been quite busy lately' as an excuse to brush it off for now.
It wasn't entirely an excuse, though, because he was indeed quite busy lately—busy setting up his own manga studio.
Although he had no experience in setting up a studio, thanks to the help of Hisashi, he found the execution to be easier than he had imagined.
Setting up a studio can be simply divided into three parts: renting a place, purchasing equipment, and recruiting assistants.
As for recruiting assistants, Hisashi said he could help take care of it.
According to Hisashi's introduction, a typical manga artist employs three assistants, generally divided by function into a chief assistant, a background assistant, and a toning/screentone assistant.
Among them, the chief assistant is a more experienced senior assistant who can mimic the author's line style, help with inking, and take charge of some core scenes.
Furthermore, the chief assistant is responsible for resolving simpler issues encountered by other assistants, ensuring that only the most important matters are brought to the author, so the author isn't frequently interrupted during the creative process.
"But to mimic your line style, Teacher Mochizuki..."
Regarding this issue, Hisashi couldn't help but frown, looking quite troubled.
Honestly speaking, not to mention perfectly imitating Akira's lines, even if someone could mimic them to eighty percent accuracy, he would rather recommend that person find a writer and debut as a manga artist themselves instead of working as an assistant.
Such a requirement is somewhat harsh for a manga assistant.
Fortunately, Akira smiled upon hearing this and said:
"I can handle the line art part myself; as long as they can help me with the other parts, that's fine."
After all, even a lazy pig like Takeuchi Takashi draws his own line art, so surely he couldn't be unable to draw his own line art.
Of course, whether the later Takeuchi Takashi was still drawing line art personally or just using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V on old faces is hard to say.
Back to the main topic.
Hearing him say this, Hisashi felt relieved and smiled, saying:
"If that's the case, it's easy to handle. I will notify you once I find suitable candidates."
"Alright, thank you for the trouble."
After handing the task of recruiting assistants to Hisashi, he only needed to be responsible for renting a place and purchasing equipment.
A manga studio is more than just a studio; considering the pressure of serialization, most manga artists also live directly inside the studio.
Even under high-pressure situations, manga assistants might stay overnight in the studio, pulling all-nighters.
Considering both financial and spatial factors, most rookie manga artists choose a 2LDK apartment of around 55 square meters as their studio.
However, when you need to fit four workstations, a pile of necessary equipment and materials, and seat four people, a 55-square-meter place is barely sufficient, with the room's utilization pushed to the limit.
Fortunately, he is different from the average rookie manga artist; as a key talent nurtured by Shonen Jump, his financial situation is much better than that of a beginner.
Therefore, for him, it would obviously be better to choose a larger place.
In this era where the internet is not well-developed, if you want to rent an apartment, you have to run around everywhere, go to real estate agencies or check listings at building entrances, or find an agent to take you around.
And for those with limited financial means like the Original Owner, they might need to run to several more places, weighing the cost-performance ratio before they can barely find a place that will suffice.
However, with ample funds now, at least the options are vast.
It only took him one day to successfully find a satisfactory apartment located in Minato Ward.
Minato Ward is located in the southeast of Tokyo, adjacent to Tokyo Bay, and gathers many foreign embassies; it is one of Tokyo's'six city-center wards' and is undoubtedly a wealthy district.
The building is located in Konan, Minato Ward, near the JR Yamanote Line's Shinagawa Station. It is a 25-story luxury apartment complex built in 1993. The unit he favored is a 75-square-meter 3LDK corner unit with an ocean view on the 10th floor, where one can see the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Bay from the balcony.
Beyond the view, what he valued most was the apartment's layout.
The living room and the master bedroom are at opposite ends of the apartment, with two guest rooms sandwiched in between, physically separating the master bedroom from the living room, which well ensures his privacy when he is in the master bedroom.
The balcony of the master bedroom and the living room's balcony are also partitioned off, allowing him to have a small balcony of his own.
Additionally, the house his grandparents lived in during his previous life was over 70 square meters, and after inspecting this place in person, he found that even excluding the balcony area which is included for free, the perceived space of this apartment is a size larger than his grandparents' house.
The person who invented common area allocation must really deserve to die, right?
Back to the topic.
Although this apartment has many advantages, the rent has correspondingly reached a level of as high as 200,000 yen per month, which is four times the monthly rent of his previous apartment!
And the average monthly salary of a Japanese office worker these days is only around 300,000 yen.
One can only say it's worthy of being a wealthy district; this rent is truly not something an average person can afford, and if his situation weren't quite special, he probably wouldn't be able to afford it either.
After signing for this apartment, the rent plus various upfront fees wiped out over 800,000 yen, causing the money he had just received to shrink by nearly half, which was quite painful.
But regardless, the first step was finally successfully completed; the next step is to procure furniture and all kinds of necessary equipment and tools.
---
『Rin』: "Have you found a place yet?"
『Akira』: "Yeah, it's settled. It's near Shinagawa Station in Minato Ward. I'm going to start buying furniture and equipment tomorrow."
...
Recently, after he bought a mobile phone, his way of communicating with Rin changed from occasionally chatting on the phone at night to chatting via email.
This method of communication is a quite novel experience for Rin, and she seems to have been having quite a lot of fun with it lately.
Although this was also his first time chatting via email, the actual experience felt similar to a high-latency version of online chatting, which counts as returning to his comfort zone.
『Rin』: "What a coincidence! I happen to live near Shinagawa Station too! The address is..."
"...Huh?!"
Seeing the message sent by her, Akira widened his eyes slightly in surprise, feeling somewhat incredulous.
Isn't this the address of the building where he just rented his new place!?
Is it really such a coincidence?
What kind of light novel plot development is this?
『Akira』: "...In that case, although it's very incredible, we might be neighbors for a while. So, please take care of me from now on (smile)."
『Rin』: "—!!!"
Fully understanding her shock from the three exclamation marks, Akira couldn't help but smile knowingly.
...No, wait a second.
He suddenly realized in hindsight that since she also lives in that building, doesn't that mean...
He seems to have caught a whiff of a rich woman.