Coming of Age

By Venona Keyes

Akiyoshi ‘Aero’ Kurokuma, author of the wildly popular manga, Ecos, lost his assistant when his best friend retired. After Aero collapses from exhaustion four years later, he is forced to run a contest for an assistant. Placing impossible rules on the contest, Aero is sure no one can win. But a winner emerges: a young man from America, Daniel Beck. The first time he lays eyes on Daniel, Aero realizes he’ll have a hard time hiding his attraction. Daniel is a perfect assistant, but it doesn’t help Aero see past the twenty-year age difference between them. It will take all of Daniel's charm and the prayers offered at the shrine to make Aero take a chance on the romance they both want.

A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2014 Advent Calendar package "Celebrate!".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632167637

Book preview

Coming of Age

STROKE. SCRATCH. Erase. Rustle. Breathe. Erase. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

Fountain pen over paper.

Removing pencil marks from the page.

The comforting rhythm of a manga studio.

The hand gliding over the page to create his wildly popular weekly manga, Ecos.

These sounds soothed Akiyoshi Aero Kurokuma. Ecos was the name of the main character of the shonen manga who made the ordinary extraordinary and had been doing so for the last sixteen years. Aero had breathed life into Ecos. In some sense Aero lived through the character. Aero understood Ecos. What Aero Kurokuma didn’t quite understand was his only assistant, a gaijin, sitting on the floor hunched over the two-page spread of the manga’s future story line. How this blond, blue-eyed, gangly American came to work for him as an assistant was still as mysterious as why he had allowed the situation to happen. Maybe it was the lifelong passion that he and the boy shared. Aero Kurokuma needed to remind himself that his assistant was indeed, at nineteen, still much younger than he was.

Aero’s mind drifted to the time his traditional family had turned their backs on him, their eldest son, when he’d told them he wanted to become a manga artist instead of taking the reins of the family business. The family bristled at the idea that their son would be a common comic artist. He had no interest in the family’s lucrative fish import and export business. He would not commit to an omiai—an arranged marriage. He eschewed the traditional dress his wealthy family embraced. And more than anything, he hated the traditions he was always forced to participate in—especially Oshogatsu, the New Year celebration. He had discarded his family name, much as they had discarded him, and created a new persona.

The irony that, in spite of all this, he preferred old-school materials to the newer drawing instruments or computer-based drawing programs was not lost on him. He loved the feel of the pen in his hand and the sounds of the studio.

His manga had made him a worldwide sensation. Still, his family never contacted him, even after he became famous and wealthy. At least they weren’t being hypocritical. Or maybe it was just their stubborn Japanese pride. He didn’t think about it much anymore. He knew he’d never understand them. The only family he had now—the only family that mattered—was his best friend, Sota Takahashi, and that was enough for Aero.

SOTA HAD been Aero’s first and only assistant. Most mangaka had two or three assistants, but for Aero, that only muddied the process of creating his manga. Aero