Starting from Their Seventeen Years Old

The next day, inside the Manga Research Club room.

Machida Sonoko was walking Sayuri through bass technique step by step while keeping an eye on Kosaka Akane's guitar practice progress.

Tsushima Kagami, meanwhile, had completely tuned out the sound of the three girls practicing their instruments, Machida Sonoko's occasional scolding of Sayuri, and all the banter flying around between them. He sat at his usual seat, brush in hand, staring at a blank sheet of white paper and wrestling with which Eternal Loli title to draw for this new issue.

The various artists in the Eternal Loli series had been putting out work for years, and the catalog had grown quite extensive.

Among them, the artist known as Sumiyao-sensei stood in a class entirely his own — if the entire Eternal Loli genre were a measuring cup filled to ten parts, Sumiyao alone would account for eight. Calling him the backbone of the whole genre wouldn't be an exaggeration.

The titles most people had seen, whether intentionally or not, were probably his Eternal Loli 6 and Eternal Loli 8.

Volume 6's zombie loli was an especially wild concept — she had cultivated herself to pursue immortality by turning her own body into a living corpse. Then, once she finally found the true method of eternal life, she had her disciple channel pure yang essence into her to transform back from an undead husk into a living person.

Immortality cultivation... pretty wild, right?

—

Note — "Shadow-walker": an alternate term for a corporeal undead. Art by Sumiyao.

—

That said, as much as he appreciated the zombie loli from that volume, Tsushima Kagami had an even softer spot for the Taisui character design from Eternal Cycle by the artist Heiqing Langjun, who had made their debut in that work.

—

Taisui flesh — eat it and live forever / Vol. 7, Part One

—

Though honestly, that one was in a league of its own.

Volume 8, on the other hand, was an incredibly classic story of the kind: no matter how many lifetimes the red dust of the mortal world cycles through, I will wait only for your return.

The female lead was a member of a ghost clan, yet she fell in love with a human warrior who had come to slay her. Fate intervened in the cruelest way — it turned out the hero had known her in a previous life, and had died in battle protecting her. He had sworn an oath that if he was ever reborn, he would grow stronger and stand guard over her. The heroine, for her part, had told him: in your next life, find any excuse you like, and let's just be together.

In every reincarnation, the hero would remember her — and find her again among the countless faces of the world.

—

Are you satisfied with this life?

—

Both were wonderful pure-love doujins.

Sumiyao-sensei also had an Eternal Loli title whose plot bore a striking resemblance to the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The heroine was essentially a gender-swapped Benjamin — long-lived, but aging in reverse, her appearance gradually shifting from adult back to child, spending longer and longer stretches asleep.

The story ended on a deliberately open note, with the hero's whispered "good night" to her — a mirror of the "good morning" from the very beginning.

But one could only imagine that the heroine, in the end, was no different from Benjamin — inevitably reverting to an infant, dying in her beloved's arms.

—

Eternal self — forever entwined / The theme of love / Art by Sumiyao

—

And of course, it had to be said that Sumiyao-sensei had also drawn a great many fan comics — all of them excellent reads.

So which one should he pick?

Lost in thought, Tsushima Kagami suddenly found another title surfacing in his mind — a story about an elf loli mother.

Specifically, it was Kanison Ebio-sensei's work: 義母エルフに愛されすぎて冒険に出られません! — My Stepmother Is an Elf Who Loves Me Too Much to Let Me Go on an Adventure!

This was also, as it happened, the source of a certain famous emoticon all over the forums.

The plot was also delightfully absurd.

Basically, the hero gets sent to a fantasy world by a goddess — and ends up transformed into a baby. He gets picked up by an elf mother, who raises him as her own.

Once the child grows up and begins to feel the goddess's call to go out and save the world, he tries to set off on his journey — only to be stopped again and again by his lonely elf mother, who uses every trick in the book to keep him home, thoroughly wrecking the goddess's business plan in the process.

—

"You're going... where???"

"You're abandoning Mama?"

Luliya — Race: Elf

"It's fine! O Goddess, go pick someone else for the next world!"

"Wrong choice — Hmm!"

"Is every man out there a mama's boy?"

"Surely there's at least one normal person—"

—

Well, technically — a long-lived elf loli who's also a mama counts as an Eternal Loli too, doesn't she?

Ugh, this was such a headache. Which one was he supposed to go with?

The three girls had been watching Tsushima Kagami sitting there in silence — now deep in thought, now visibly agonizing — and eventually all three stopped their practice and walked over to him.

"Kagami, what are you worrying about?"

Hearing the three of them ask, Tsushima Kagami finally looked up.

"Trying to figure out what to draw for the new issue at Akane's new circle."

"It's rare to see you struggling like this, Kagami."

"You never usually seem to hit any kind of creative block."

"Didn't think the day would come when you'd have no idea what to draw."

Machida Sonoko chimed in with a laugh.

"Oh, the opposite, actually — there's too much I want to draw. I'm just agonizing over which one to do first."

Machida Sonoko's teasing smile froze slightly at that.

"In that case — what if you thought about something lighter for a bit, just to clear your head?" Sayuri offered.

"Maybe that'd help you figure out which one to start with?"

Kosaka Akane looked over too.

"Sayuri, what kind of 'lighter thing' could you possibly have in mind?" she said. "You're not looking for an excuse to slack off and stop practicing, are you?"

"I — I am not!"

"Oh? Then what's your suggestion?"

Kosaka Akane raised an eyebrow, looking every bit like she'd already seen right through Sayuri's scheme to use Tsushima Kagami as a convenient excuse to goof off.

Sayuri knitted her pretty brows together and put on an expression of deep concentration.

All three of them watched her curiously, wondering what brilliant idea she could possibly come up with.

Coming up empty, Sayuri licked her finger, held it up on either side of her forehead, closed her eyes, and started spinning in circles like Ikkyuu doing his think-spin.

After a moment, Sayuri suddenly snapped her eyes open and looked straight at Tsushima Kagami.

"Oh! That's it!"

"Since we're doing a band performance at the culture festival — shouldn't we have our own band uniforms?"

"Dummy, of course we'd just wear our school uniforms!" Kosaka Akane gave Sayuri a light bop on the back of the head.

"But we've already got a proper band going — wouldn't it be a shame not to wear custom uniforms at least once?"

Kosaka Akane thought about it and then gave a small nod.

Machida Sonoko glanced over at Tsushima Kagami, who had already picked up his pen and started drawing something.

"Kagami, does that mean you've figured out what to draw?"

"No — I just figured out what our band uniforms should look like."

All three of them perked up at that and crowded around to see.

"Is that a sailor uniform?"

"That looks like a school uniform too?"

"Seems a little cuter than ours, though?"

What Tsushima Kagami was drawing was the school uniform from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya — though he had deliberately lengthened the skirt.

The reason being that Private Ousai High School had originally been formed by merging the main campus with a separate Catholic school and a girls' school. That history meant the school's dress code had stayed fairly conservative — even the summer skirt uniform ran below the knee, in a longer, modest cut.

And just to be safe — better add a pair of safety shorts underneath, too.

Tsushima Kagami finished the simplified sketch of the modified Haruhi uniform and held it up for the three of them to see.

"Shouldn't band uniforms be a bit more... rock?" Sayuri asked curiously. "Aren't we modeling ourselves after Seika and her rock girl band?"

Kosaka Akane and Machida Sonoko both nodded — they hadn't expected Tsushima Kagami's design to be anything but rebellious, yet not only was it completely un-rock, it was basically a school uniform.

"Huh?"

"What's that yellow headband thing?"

"Is that a hair accessory to go with it?"

Machida Sonoko had noticed that next to the uniform sketch there was also a headband drawn — with two butterfly ribbon tails on either side.

"Ah, that?"

"That's the soul of the whole outfit."

The three girls looked at him blankly.

"So Kagami, are you going to wear the sailor uniform and perform with us?"

"I mean, I wouldn't say it's completely out of the question."

"But I had something more fitting in mind for myself."

"Kagami, that's so sneaky — designing a completely separate outfit just for yourself!"

---

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