Chapter 1: Chainsaw Man for a Second Chance

“The exam is over. Please put down your writing instruments and turn your test booklets and answer sheets face down.”

Just as he awoke from a daze, a somewhat stern voice reached his ears.

The blood-red haze before his eyes dissipated, the pain in his chest vanished, and his vision gradually cleared.

Sakamoto Ken assessed his current situation.

February 2015.

The Kanzaki Academy of Art entrance exams. The scene right after the final liberal arts subject test had concluded.

Thanks to the experiences of those past few years, he was able to expertly control his expression, stopping himself from laughing out loud on the spot.

Sakamoto Ken let out a long breath, stood up, and walked toward the classroom door.

Thank goodness, I’ve been given another chance to start over.

This time, I will absolutely not step into that abyss again!

Walking out of the classroom, Sakamoto Ken suddenly heard a girl’s voice.

“Ken! How did you do on the test?”

Sakamoto Ken had an almost instinctual, physical reaction to the voice and quickly dodged to the side.

His eyes widened as he stared in terror at the girl before him.

Natsume Mio?!

The girl wore a familiar JK school uniform, a bag slung over her shoulder. She had shoulder-length hair and a slightly airheaded look. Anyone judging by her face alone would come to the same conclusions:
Cute, gentle, a Yamato nadeshiko.

But only Sakamoto Ken knew just how insane this girl would later become…

“It was so-so, I guess.”

Sakamoto Ken tossed out the sentence, turned, and walked briskly toward the school building’s exit.

“Eh? Ken, wait!” the girl hurriedly chased after him.

But Sakamoto Ken didn’t stop; he quickened his pace.

And so, the boy rushed forward with his head down, while the JK schoolgirl chased after him, panting.

Don’t be fooled by the girl’s dazed appearance; she was deceptively athletic. A 5th-dan kendo practitioner, her physical stamina was superb, and she could run damn fast.

“Ken, Ken! I, I have something to tell you… Hey, d-don’t run away!”

Reaching the school gate, Sakamoto Ken glanced back. To avoid being caught, he directly hailed a passing taxi.

“To the address across from Adachi Ward Tachibanabata West Elementary. Quickly, please.”

After getting in the car and giving the address, he looked through the window at the girl standing by the roadside with a bewildered expression. Only then did Sakamoto Ken pat his chest and let out a sigh of relief.

He knew what Natsume Mio wanted to tell him.

For the past three years, he had insisted on prioritizing his studies, which was the only reason Natsume Mio had held back until now.

If he had been just a little slower, what would have awaited him was Natsume Mio’s public confession.

However, after the taxi started moving, he somewhat regretted his decision.

It was a habit from the later stages of his previous life; a certain young lady had given him so much pocket money that he’d stopped caring about the cost of a taxi.

At this point in time, he was just a prospective high school graduate living alone on the meager salary from his convenience store part-time job.

He was even shouldering the debts left by his gambling-addict old man, with a pro-bono lawyer currently helping him fight a lawsuit to get them discharged.

The tuition for the Kanzaki Academy of Art, where he was about to enroll, was not cheap.

Sakamoto Ken pulled his wallet out of his shoulder bag and took a look.

“Um, driver-san, just to Nippori Station is fine…”

The old driver glanced back at Sakamoto Ken, his brow furrowed slightly, but he didn’t say much and just kept driving silently.

Two minutes later, the taxi came to a steady stop on the roadside in front of Nippori Station.

After all, it was a journey of less than two kilometers.

Sakamoto Ken fished a 500-yen coin and a 100-yen coin from his wallet and handed them to the old driver.

“Thank you…”

Sakamoto Ken opened the door, got out, and blended into the stream of people on the sidewalk.

Although first giving a distant destination and then suddenly changing his mind would seem confusing to the driver…

…how was saving face more important than a 5,000-yen taxi fare?

Taking the train from Nippori Station and transferring to a bus would only cost a little over 300 yen with a student pass.

Standing in the swaying train car, Sakamoto Ken looked out the window at the city.

Ten years, and Tokyo has barely changed at all.

In any case, being reborn was a good thing.

Recalling his previous life, he had entered the art department of Kanzaki Academy of Art with outstanding grades. In the years that followed, he would meet them one after another…

Sakamoto Ken admitted that he might have once been a scumbag.

But you can’t blame me for that.

After all, that previous life was the first time he had ever been reborn in Tokyo.

Tokyo, eh? Back in middle school, he used to search online for keywords like “Japanese and Korean fine [premium works] online” to find Japanese films to watch.

Rebirth, layered with exotic foreign flavor—a double dose of stimulation. He had treated reality like a gal-game.

As a result, the women of Tokyo made him pay a heavy price…

…

Returning to the old apartment he rented.

A 50-year-old building, a one-room apartment, with a shared bathroom and bath for the entire floor.

Sakamoto Ken casually tossed his bag onto the tatami mat, sat down, and fell into deep thought.

His mind was a bit of a mess. Sakamoto Ken took out a pen and paper and wrote down three names.

Mikazuki Haruna.

Natsume Mio.

Hoshihara Ai.

These three had left him with unforgettable, bone-deep memories.

Love was something you only yearned for in your first playthrough. Now, he was tired of it.

Returning to 2015, Sakamoto Ken’s first thought was to make money.

After all, the trigger for the Shuraba [battle royale] in his previous life was poverty.

Parents deceased, no sister, no house. He was all alone in a bustling metropolis like Tokyo, where all the glitz and glamour had nothing to do with him.

Sakamoto Ken’s line of thinking was simple: as long as he had a huge sum in his bank account, it would be impossible to step into that Shuraba again.

Taking a step back.

Even if he did step into a Shuraba, his bank balance would be his confidence, allowing him to take the upper hand with perfect justification.

At the very least… he wouldn’t have to be a kept man or anything.

Living off a woman was nice, but it was dangerous!

You never know what kind of crazy ideas are brewing in a rich young lady’s head!

Sakamoto Ken was an art student. Back then, to scrape together the tuition for Kanzaki Academy of Art, he had been constantly drawing manga.

However, he didn’t know much about the manga industry at the time. The work he created was published by a small, obscure publisher and was far from being a big hit, only barely managing to avoid cancellation.

It was because of this that he paid special attention to his few readers and attended an offline gathering.

At that gathering, he met the leader of his fan club, Mikazuki Haruna…

Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to call her his number one anti-fan.

Coincidentally, Mikazuki Haruna was also a student at Kanzaki Academy of Art, in the art department, a year above him.

But things were different now. Sakamoto Ken had the complete memories of his past life in his mind.

He walked over to the bookshelf in his room. Shonen JUMP, Weekly Shonen Magazine, Weekly Shonen Sunday…

It was crammed full of all sorts of manga magazines.

He picked up an issue of Weekly Shonen Magazine. The cover art was Attack on Titan.

This was a work that began serialization in ’09, published its first volume in ’10, and was adapted into an anime in ’13. It quickly swept the market after its release, and now in 2015, it was at the peak of its popularity.

This month was also when the final volume of Naruto was being released. The bottom shelf had originally held the complete collection of the first 71 volumes of Naruto, but he had sold them all for cash. Only a solitary Volume 72 remained.

If old magazines weren’t so hard to sell, he definitely would have sold the ones he’d already read too.

The existence of these magazines and manga proved that he had been reborn in the same world, not a parallel one.

Or at least in the realm of manga, nothing had changed.

He picked up his phone and searched the web for a few other names he was familiar with.

Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Chainsaw Man…

Here in 2015, all searches came up empty.

Closing his eyes in meditation, Sakamoto Ken confirmed the cheat ability his rebirth had brought him.

Everything he had experienced in his past life, everything he had seen and heard, every single detail—as long as he recalled it carefully, it would appear in his mind with perfect clarity.

That included the various manga he had read.

The paneling, the characters, the scenes… he could replicate them perfectly!

It was just a pity he hadn’t paid attention to the investment market back then; otherwise, he could have just jumped into the stock market and gotten rich easily.

But it doesn’t matter. As long as I draw these manga ahead of time…

He wasn’t aiming to become a financial tycoon. He just needed to earn a few hundred million in royalties and enjoy a peaceful life.

Sakamoto Ken was a man of action; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to juggle them for so long in his previous life.

He pulled out an old manuscript from his drawer, one he had already started and was planning to submit soon.

Miss Sniper, and Pantyhose!

The story of a loser high school protagonist who ends up living with an assassin young lady.

Pure virgin fantasy!

A trashy work that relied entirely on lewd borderline content!

No wonder it didn’t get popular in his past life.

He threw it directly into the trash can.

He would not walk that wicked path again.

This time, it’s the royal road!

He closed his eyes and thought for a moment, recalling the manga he had read in their entirety.

Perhaps because the protagonist’s situation was so similar to his own right now, a name surfaced in his mind…

He spread a new sheet of manuscript paper on the desk and picked up his pen.

【Chainsaw Man】

【Chopping trees, that’s probably 60,000 yen a month.】

【The kidney I sold before, that got me 1.2 million.】

【Right eye, 300,000.】

【How much did I get for selling one of my balls again?】

【I think it was less than 100,000…】

【The remaining debt is… 38,040,000 yen.】

【Woof!】

【Pochita, I know. Let’s go kill it!】

(End of Chapter)