"Moshi moshi~"
Hayashi picked up his phone. The caller ID read "Ayumi Ito."
After all, she was practically the only person who ever called him.
"Aoyama-sensei! Congratulations! The popularity survey results for 'Edgerunners' just came in, and you've reached 12th place! You're currently ranked first among all four entries in the Newcomer Grand Prix!"
Ayumi's excited voice crackled through the speaker.
Hayashi rolled over on his bed, his tone sounding lazy and disinterested. "Ah... that really is great news."
He was currently preoccupied with flipping through a volume of a serialized manga he'd picked up.
Across the line, Ayumi sighed. From a strictly verbal standpoint, his response sounded enthusiastic enough. However, the actual tone of his voice made it painfully obvious to anyone listening that he couldn't care less.
She knew him well enough by now to realize that Hayashi hadn't actually taken the news to heart.
Ayumi felt a bit helpless, but having worked with him for a few months now, she had come to accept that Hayashi was simply... well, eccentric.
"Ito-san, since it's such good news, why don't we celebrate this weekend?"
Hayashi suddenly suggested after a moment of thought.
In reality, he was just using the occasion as an excuse to invite Ayumi over for another shared meal.
But more importantly, Ayumi was an exceptionally well-behaved guest.
During their last meal at his place, she had actually insisted on doing all the dishes and cleaning the pots himself.
For a lazy guy like Hayashi, who hated nothing more than post-meal cleanup, she was the absolute dream guest!
He was the kind of person who would much rather pay for a meal than put in the manual labor of cleaning up after it.
While he might be enthusiastic about the actual cooking process, mindless chores like washing dishes were something he actively tried to avoid.
In his past life, he'd solved this problem by purchasing a high-end dishwasher. However, in this current world, dishwashers didn't seem to have become common household appliances yet.
"Wait, what?"
Ayumi was caught off guard by the sudden invitation, but she quickly nodded. "Oh... well, alright then."
"Also, because the popularity of 'Edgerunners' is climbing so fast and we've been getting a lot of positive reader feedback, the magazine wants to include a series of short written interviews for you to answer in the next issue," she added.
"It's nothing too formal or time-consuming. It's just a few simple questions from the fans. I'll mail the list to you, and you can just fill in the answers whenever you have a free moment."
"I see..."
Hayashi didn't have any objections. "Sure, that sounds like a small enough task."
"Thank you, Sensei. I won't bother you any longer then."
"It's no bother at all."
...
As a serialized manga, it was impossible for 'Edgerunners' to achieve viral fame overnight.
Generally speaking, the reach of a serialized manga was significantly smaller than that of an anime adaptation or a high-budget video game.
However, the first few chapters of 'Edgerunners' had already begun to draw the attention of a specific subset of the population: hardcore sci-fi fans. Its "Cyberpunk" aesthetic, a concept that was entirely new to this world, and its bold, imaginative world-building were starting to generate genuine buzz.
In a QQ group call "The Metropolis Sci-Fi Enthusiasts: Group 1..."
This was one of the largest communities for sci-fi lovers in The Metropolis, boasting nearly 2,000 members. While old members occasionally left, new blood was constantly trickling in, keeping the population stable.
Even during standard working hours, the group was constantly buzzing with activity from members who were slacking off at their jobs.
{King of the Force: "Cretaceous Park 2 premieres on the 1st of next month. Anyone want to be my plus-one?"}
{Scammed Simp: "Wait, Force! You actually managed to snag premiere tickets?! Holy crap!"}
{Black Hole Gravity: "He's just showing off to make us jealous. Bastard!"}
{King of the Force: "Hahaha! I spent three months preparing just to win that ticket lottery."}
{Politech Senior: "Honestly, there's no need to go that far. Premiere tickets are practically impossible to get. I just settled for the second day."}
{Exhausted Joe: "Man, I'm so jealous. I heard the response in North America for Cretaceous Park 2 has been incredible. It's supposed to be just as good as the first one."}
{Scammed Simp: "Mainly I'm just in it for the special effects. It's the same production team as the first movie, so the plot should be solid. I just want to see how much the VFX have improved over the last three years."}
{Black Hole Gravity: "I wish we had VFX studios on the same level as Hollywood. Local sci-fi movies... man, the CGI is usually painful to look at."}
{King of the Force: "Bullshit. Local sci-fi sucks because of the scripts, not the CGI. We just don't have any truly great sci-fi stories to adapt."}
{Exhausted Joe: "That's true. I feel like most of the 'sci-fi' works in the Federation are actually just Xianxia stories wearing a sci-fi skin. It's always just Cultivation with a few lasers thrown in."}
{Exhausted Joe: "God, I even saw one recently where the protagonist could literally survive in the vacuum of space with nothing but their physical body."}
{Politech Senior: "Exactly. There's almost zero hard sci-fi out there. It's all just reskinned Fantasy or Xianxia. But actually, I came across something pretty interesting recently."}
{Politech Senior: "It's a manga that's currently being serialized. It's called 'Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners'."}
{Black Hole Gravity: "A manga? Pass."}
{Scammed Simp: "That's a hell of a long title. And it's a manga? Are you sure it's not just another reskinned space-opera fantasy for kids?"}
{King of the Force: "Hey, hey! What do you have against space operas? What did Star Wars ever do to you?"}
{Politech Senior: "No, it's totally different from a space opera. It's set in a future city, and the world-building is actually incredibly hard-core and innovative."}
{Politech Senior: "Neural Links, Cybernetic Augmentations, Virtual Braindances... the imagination behind it is incredible. I honestly don't think even the studios in Europe or the US have come up with anything this wild."}
{Exhausted Joe: "Cybernetics? That's just cyborgs, right? Nothing particularly new about that."}
{Politech Senior: "You have to read it to understand. The way they handle cybernetics is totally different from your typical cyborg story. And the whole Neural Link concept is... it's really something else."}
{Imperial Marine: "I think I saw that one recently at a magazine stand. It seemed pretty decent."}
{Scammed Simp: "Fine, I'll give it a look. What magazine is it in?"}
{Politech Senior: "Manga World GoGo. It's a newcomer's work, but so far, it's been really impressive."}
{Scammed Simp: "I'll go check it out. But Senior, if you're lying to me, you're dead meat."}
{Exhausted Joe: "+1"}
{King of the Force: "+2"}
{Black Hole Gravity: "+10086"}
...
Minoru Tanaka took a sip of his milk tea and stretched his arms above his head.
"Minoru, are you finished with the Metropolisle you were assigned?"
His supervisor walked over and asked.
Minoru's fingers blurred across the keyboard as he expertly Tabbed back to his code editor. "Almost there! I'll have the final commit pushed by tonight."
"Good."
The supervisor didn't suspect a thing and hurried away to check on someone else.
Minoru finally let out a sigh of relief.
He was a stereotypical IT guy. From a young age, he'd been obsessed with technology and engineering. He'd pursued a degree in Computer Science and had become a professional programmer immediately after graduation.
Naturally, his personal interest leaned heavily toward science fiction--specifically, hard sci-fi.
A work like 'Edgerunners,' which featured a relatively grounded and technical setting, was exactly the kind of thing that appealed to him.
That was why he'd decided to give it a little shout-out in the group chat.
"In the latest chapter, they introduced the title 'Edgerunners'... but what the hell is 'Cyberpunk' supposed to mean?"
He wondered to himself, murmuring the word under his breath.
(End of Chapter)
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
T/N: Sci-Fi Fermentation (科幻发酵) - The process of a niche genre gaining popularity through word-of-mouth among enthusiasts.
T/N: Cretaceous Park (白垩纪公园) - A localized equivalent for 'Jurassic Park'.
T/N: Imperial Marine - A screen name (likely reference to 'Imperial Second-Class Soldier' / Star Wars).
T/N: +10086 - A common local internet slang for "strong agreement" (or simply "too many to count").
T/N: Cyberpunk - The English word is used in the text as an alien and intriguing concept.