The Fateful Encounter

The date: January 7. The place: The fourth-floor elevator lobby at Gift Publishing. Once again, Kenjiro Toki was waiting on someone for an edit meeting, and about ten minutes after the appointed time, the man appeared behind the doors. It was Setsuna Ena, aka Puriketsu, a small-statured young man with his hair dyed a variety of colors.

“Hey-yoo… Pfftt! Hey, what happened to you, KenKen?!”

Setsuna immediately cracked up upon seeing Toki’s face…or, to be more exact, his head. He had shaved off all his hair, stopping by a barber shop this morning before work to have the deed done.

“…I’m refocusing on my work,” Toki muttered back, blushing a little.

Yesterday, during his editorial meeting with Kiso, the writer had suggested three methods of taking responsibility: seppuku, chopping off his little finger, or shaving his head. The first two didn’t seem too plausible to Toki, but shaving, at least, was doable. So he did it. He knew it’d serve no purpose to Itsuki and the anime staff, but he wanted to step up and prove he was drawing the line with himself. He hadn’t taken all his hair off since middle school and his editing coworkers all laughed at him, but he really did feel like he had a new outlook on life.

“Huh. Well, it looks good on ya. But aren’t you cold?”

“…Yes,” he meekly replied. Going completely bald in January wasn’t for the faint of heart.

“Hey, y’know, I was over at Hashima’s place just now. You sure screwed the pooch this time, huh, KenKen?”

“Oof…”

Setsuna was as casual about this as he might have been about the weather, but it felt like a knife in Toki’s heart.

“Oh, did you shave your head out of, like, shame or something? Ha-ha-ha! I didn’t know they still did that anymore.”

“Sh-shut up!”

That merciless laughter struck a match with Toki. He coughed, gathering himself.

“…Well, enough about me. The writer’s waiting for you.”

With that, Toki guided Setsuna to the meeting room.

Inside, waiting for them, was a man in a business suit and glasses, looking ready to attend a boardroom meeting.

“Sorry to keep you, Mr. Yanagase.”

Makoto Yanagase was thirty years old and fresh from winning a runner-up prize at the 15th GF Bunko New Writers Contest for his epic yarn The Goddess Must Be Punished! I’ll Save the World for You, So Just Show Me Your Ass!

“Nice to meet you. My name’s Yanagase.”

Yanagase walked up to Setsuna, politely greeted him, and presented him with a business card.

“Oh, uh, thanks. Puriketsu here. Sorry, I don’t have a card, so…”

“No need to worry,” Yanagase sincerely replied, not offended by Setsuna’s casual rudeness one bit.

Once they were done, they sat across from each other, Toki taking a seat next to his author. Makoto Yanagase and Puriketsu—novelist and illustrator—were meeting for the first time today.

The Goddess Must Be Punished!, Yanagase’s debut novel, was an adventure set in a fantasy world with strong comedic elements, but its most notable feature was how the hero could gain his fighting powers from his companion, the goddess Cittia, by spanking her ass in just the right way. This description, by itself, probably doesn’t provide much context, but that’s really how the book went, so there’s no other way to put it—basically, it was a freewheeling adventure combined with the very niche fetish of spanking.

Ever since he read the first submission, Toki thought, “Puriketsu’s the only possible choice to illustrate this.” Frankly, he wasn’t that enthusiastic about calling for Puriketsu’s services, given how much of a pain he was to work with on Itsuki’s Genesis Sisters of the New World and the recently-canceled SILLIES. Still, nobody recognized the artist’s abilities more than Toki, and not many people could’ve portrayed the world of The Goddess Must Be Punished! better than he. When he brought him up with Yanagase, the author raved over his work (“I don’t think there’s a more charming ass-drawer in the world”), so he decided to throw caution to the wind and reach out to Puriketsu.

“So, yeah, I read your novel, Yanagase.”

Yanagase grew visibly tense. When Setsuna had been asked to illustrate a new series called The Goddess Must Be Punished!, the artist casually replied “Sure thing” to him—but he didn’t know what Setsuna thought of the book yet. The contract still wasn’t signed, and given Setsuna’s quirky personality, there was every chance he’d say “Never mind, it doesn’t work for me.”

But:

“It was sooooooooo good!”

Yanagase’s eyes widened.

Setsuna was all smiles with a twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know much about spanking, so at first, it was like—y’know, why do you have to slap this pretty ass so much? I didn’t really get it. But you aren’t just slapping it! It’s the heart of it that’s important, right?”

“Right… You’re exactly right…!”

Yanagase’s voice shook out of sheer emotion, excitement written all over his face.

“Something people often misunderstand is that spanking isn’t just slapping someone’s rear end to make them feel good. The sound, the sensation, the path of the hand or whip in the air, the way the butt cheeks jiggle, the way they turn red, the ecstatic panting, the screams infused with pleasure and pain, the beads of sweat flying into the air, the love juices dripping down, the excited breaths, the words exchanged… It’s a total work of art, an act that blends each aspect together into a single composite! True beauty in spanking only happens when the spanker deeply understands his partner, and the spank-ee deeply trusts her companion! Spanking is a heart-to-heart conversation, a clash of love against love!”

“Um, M-Mr. Yanagase, can you relax a little, please?” a restrained Toki asked. Snapping out of it, Yanagase, pushed up his glasses with a finger and returned to his mild-mannered demeanor.

“…Spanking is a major movement in Western countries, with most couples performing it regularly,¹ but it’s hard to say it has attained a solid footing in Japan as of yet. Through this novel, I want to spread the charms of spanking across the nation—and if I’m going to make that happen, I’ll need your strength, Puriketsu. I need the beautiful reddened rumps of Cittia and the other heroines you’ll draw!”

“It would be an honor, sir!” Setsuna grinned, childlike, as he took two sheets out from his bag. “I did a couple of test runs on the Cittia character, but what do you think?”

He handed the illustrations over, and Yanagase’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. One was a full-body study of Cittia—a truly divine presence in the way she carried herself, but still with an air of kindness and vulnerability. It was a perfect match for her character in the text.

“This… This is it. This is the goddess, Lady Cittia…!”

There were tears welling in Yanagase’s eyes. Each light novel writer had their own favorite moments in their careers, but if you polled them all, “the moment you see artwork for your characters” would probably be in the top two. For a rookie writer who has never experienced it before, the sheer emotion is even more intense.

But the second sheet was even more amazing. It was a close-up of her rear end, taking up the full dimensions of the paper—realistic, but retaining the art style of the first sample. Raw and vivid, but with a kind of elegance, it was truly an ass beautiful enough to belong to a goddess. It wasn’t decorated or adorned in any way, but to Toki, he could almost see the halo of divine light crowning her hallowed cheeks.

“Ohhhhh…! Lady Cittia… So noble… Noble… Noble, noble, noble noble noble noble noooooooble…!”

Now Yanagase was shedding profuse amounts of tears, like a devout worshipper visited by a real goddess. Toki worried he’d start praying to this icon on the spot.

“Puriketsu,” he asked, “have you…gotten better at your art lately?”

The first character design was wonderful, featuring that classic Puriketsu level of quality, but the ass shot was even more astounding. Toki hadn’t seen his art since the final volume of SILLIES, released last September, but his work had clearly evolved since then. It was one thing if an amateur learned how to draw decently in three months, but he never heard of a professional of Puriketsu’s level advancing like this.

“Heh-heh-heh… Don’cha think?” Setsuna smiled, a bit proud of himself.

“Did you, um, do something? Because this level of improvement is unheard of.”

“Well, actually…I’ve finally managed to bear witness to the Ass of the Millennium.”

“The millennium…?”

As he then explained to the puzzled Toki, Setsuna had run into a beautiful woman with said millennial ass last March. He had spent the rest of the year trying to find her again, and he finally succeeded in October, successfully gaining a glimpse of the top half of her butt. The eye-opening experience awakened Setsuna to the point that the asses he drew shone more brightly than ever before.

“But I only saw half of her ass, so I want her to show me the rest sometime. I feel like I could become truly complete then, y’know?”

“Complete…?” Toki asked, swallowing nervously. Setsuna was wowing him enough already, but there’s even more room to grow?

Who the hell are you, Frieza?

Toki had no idea who this mystery woman was, but he wished he could give Setsuna her full ass to view. Maybe the editorial team could offer a reward for anyone who tracks her down—they’d have to seriously discuss that later. Any professional editor, after all, wouldn’t hesitate to pull down a woman’s panties if it resulted in an outstanding book.

“Do you remember who this girl was, Puriketsu?”

“Hmm… Anything unrelated to her ass is a bit fuzzy, but I think I can picture her, yeah.”

“In that case,” Toki said, “why don’t you try sketching her? I could have editorial help you search.”

“You could?! Whoa! Okay, lemme try real quick!”

Setsuna whipped out his sketchbook and a mechanical pencil, and began drawing the sketch while muttering things like “Hmm, I think she was kinda like this…” under his breath. After ten or so minutes:

“Okay, done! This is the girl! I’m sure of it!”

“Here, lemme see—huh …?!”

When he saw the artwork, Toki scrunched his eyebrows. She had short hair, large eyes, and thin eyebrows. She looked a little miffed, but she had handsome, almost androgynous looks, maybe even letting her pass as a boy…

…Um, isn’t this Chihiro?

The girl Setsuna just drew was the spitting image of Chihiro Hashima, Itsuki’s half brother and a kid Toki was familiar with.

“What d’you think?” Setsuna asked.

“Ah… Ahh, yeah, um…” Toki hemmed and hawed for a bit before resolving himself to ask. “Hey, uh, Puriketsu, just to play devil’s advocate… Are you sure this was a girl?”

Setsuna gave him an odd look for a moment. Then he relaxed.

“Yeah, dude! No doubt about that, sir! Like, no way would I mistake a dude’s ass for a girl’s! She had girl’s panties on and everything!”

“Oh, I see…”

If they were definitely panties, she all but had to be a girl.

—No, but…seriously, it couldn’t be anyone else…

Another bead of cold sweat went down Toki’s head. His instincts told him he was on the cusp of an extremely important discovery. If this were a suspense film, he’d get killed by some assassin as soon as he tried to tell the protagonist about it.

“What’s up, KenKen?” Setsuna asked, looking perplexed.

“N-no, nothing! But…hmm, this girl has the Ass of the Millennium, huh? Well, I have no idea where to begin looking, but I’ll keep an eye out, too, okay?”

Toki tried his best to hide his agitation. It made him sound terribly unnatural, but Setsuna didn’t seem to be concerned. “Great! Thanks a lot!” he replied with a smile.