When it came to the skill of taking care of others, Miyauchi Hikage could be considered an expert.
Moreover, for the sake of efficiency, he had secretly used a bit of Ripple power.
After quickly combing Shiina Mashiro's hair and feeling the smoothness of her strands, Miyauchi Hikage asked if any new requests had appeared in her diary today.
To be honest, he was still a little nervous.
Because yesterday, Shiina Mashiro had received a special request.
[Tell the other girls who possess a diary about Miyauchi Hikage's true identity.]
For every girl she told and gained their trust, she would receive 100 Reading Value points and one lottery ticket.
It could be said that if Shiina Mashiro had the inclination, she could earn several thousand Reading Value points and twenty lottery tickets in a single day.
But both he and the entity behind the diary knew that Shiina Mashiro would absolutely never do such a thing.
This request was purely the diary's way of deliberately messing with him.
That entity was probably intentionally creating this kind of request to screw with his mentality, making him feel a sense of indebtedness towards Shiina Mashiro, who couldn't complete it.
In fact, the diary's plan was indeed effective.
Shiina Mashiro had directly rejected the request last night. If Miyauchi Hikage felt no emotional fluctuation after learning about this, then he would be a pure scumbag.
At this moment, upon hearing Miyauchi Hikage's inquiry, Shiina Mashiro also took out her diary.
Miyauchi Hikage had never seen what the other girls' diaries looked like, so he didn't know.
But he had held and inspected Shiina Mashiro's diary more than once.
Apart from his own diary entries from the past month and over twenty questions from different girls, the rest was all manga drawn by Shiina Mashiro using the diary.
After Shiina Mashiro unlocked the level 2 permission, she gained the ability to draw in the diary with her thoughts, increasing her drawing speed several dozen times over.
It could be said that as long as Shiina Mashiro had a concrete image in her mind, she could easily complete the creation of an entire manga volume in a single day.
However, before coming to Japan, the manga she created was indeed just like her original work's counterpart: it only had exquisite art but was completely devoid of any emotion.
Even though she had diligently drawn hundreds of pages of various types of manga in the diary, they were all stories as bland as water, with nothing worth seeing.
It was only after coming to Japan, identifying his identity through her intuition, and then obtaining the consent of Kasumigaoka Utaha and the others, that she quickly drew out the story of Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend.
Under the personal guidance of Miyauchi Hikage, this "strongest director in the field of cringe videos," the subtle expressions that Shiina Mashiro had found difficult to grasp and had no real feel for before quickly became much more lively.
It was to the point that even Kato Megumi, upon seeing herself in the manga, would marvel at how the "self" in the manga, despite looking just as expressionless, could still allow readers to clearly distinguish the emotion being conveyed.
As for Eriri, after seeing the classic scene of the male and female protagonists meeting on a slope drawn by Shiina Mashiro, she seemed to have been so devastated that she entered a state of complete seclusion.
Flipping through the manga they had collaborated on, Miyauchi Hikage also gave some simple explanations for some places where the emotional expression was lacking.
As the first diary holder, after obtaining the diaries of other girls, one could see the contents of all the diaries and the information of their holders.
He had also tested it. Although he was currently holding Shiina Mashiro's diary, due to the shielding rule, in the eyes of others, he was simply holding Shiina Mashiro's art drafts and giving comments.
Shiina Mashiro listened earnestly. For the parts she felt Miyauchi Hikage was right about, she would directly use her thoughts to modify the images in the diary to make them more reasonable.
As for the parts she felt were unreasonable...
Miyauchi Hikage, in most cases, could also make Shiina Mashiro find them reasonable through various examples.
The only thing Miyauchi Hikage had failed to persuade her on to this day was that besides the character settings, the male protagonist in Shiina Mashiro's version of Saekano had almost no trace of Aki Tomoya.
His appearance, build, and even his state when working were almost completely copied from Miyauchi Hikage.
According to Shiina Mashiro's explanation, she was not familiar with other men, nor was she familiar with Aki Tomoya.
The other male supporting characters in the manga could be based on other people in her class, but for the male protagonist's image, she wanted to create it based on someone she was more familiar with.
Regarding this, Miyauchi Hikage had tried to dissuade her for a long time but couldn't change Shiina Mashiro's mind.
Miyauchi Hikage could only give up on trying to persuade her further.
Fine. For now, he would be the male protagonist who would surely be called a scumbag by many readers in the future.
On a side note, although the appearances of Kasumigaoka Utaha and Eriri in the manga had been adjusted, their character settings were still very similar. It was basically at a level where someone familiar with them might not recognize them at a glance, but could still guess with a few more looks.
As for the image of "Kato Megumi," it was a new image that fused the appearances of both Kato Megumi and Shiina Mashiro herself.
One could only say that Shiina Mashiro was still a bit better than Kasumigaoka Utaha; she wouldn't subconsciously create the image she identified with in her work as a loser.
"I've already contacted a few manga magazine editors for you, but we'll probably still have to go the newcomer's award route. After all, if you want to become a professional mangaka, this is a necessary process. Winning a newcomer's award can also provide you with a lot of popularity."
After confirming that there were no problems with Shiina Mashiro's manga creation, Miyauchi Hikage flipped to the latest part of the diary and saw the new requests that had refreshed for Shiina Mashiro today.
The difficulty was not too high.
One was what Miyauchi Hikage had just mentioned: get the Saekano manga to successfully pass the newcomer's award and officially debut as a mangaka.
However, the rewards for completing the task would naturally differ depending on the ranking she achieved.
If the task failed, Shiina Mashiro would be unable to eat baumkuchen in any way for one month after the failure.
To be honest, this penalty was indeed quite severe for Shiina Mashiro.
But for a Shiina Mashiro who had eliminated her own shortcomings and could maximize her strengths, unless capital was used to suppress her, Miyauchi Hikage really couldn't imagine the possibility of her failing.
But capital?
Shinomiya Kaguya, the biggest capitalist in Japan, had always wanted to win over the girls in the group.
The other was a long-term task somewhat similar to Umaru's housekeeping task.
However, the content of the task was related to him again.
"Have Miyauchi Hikage choose your daily change of clothes. Receive corresponding Reading Value points based on the outfit's rating. (Maximum of 10 Reading Value points per week)."
Seeing this request, Miyauchi Hikage couldn't help but scratch his hair.
With Shiina Mashiro's personality, she definitely wouldn't have any objections.
Was this asking him to play a Shiina Mashiro-exclusive version of Miracle Nikki?
However, this request was a long-term one anyway, so Miyauchi Hikage didn't have any particular thoughts on it.
He would just see how many Reading Value points the diary would give for designating her school uniform every day.
After all, Mahiru and Hikari were watching from the side. He didn't want his gossip being spread around the village by the loose-lipped Hikari when he went back to Asahigaoka in a few days.
As for the third request, it was a bit more interesting.
A B-rank request.
Go to a supposedly haunted area in Tokyo to perform an exorcism.
Miyauchi Hikage carefully examined this request and then handed it to Shiina Mashiro.
"Besides Shinomiya Kaguya's A+-rank investigation request, you should be the first person in the group to receive this kind of exorcism request."
Shiina Mashiro looked at the new request in her diary, blinked her eyes lightly, then took out her phone and began to look through the chat history.
Although it was still early, because everyone had just unlocked new functions and some requests refreshed daily, the discussion in the chat group was quite active at the moment.
After confirming, she nodded.
Miyauchi Hikage rubbed his chin and began to ponder.
Hinami Aoi received a request related to `[BLANK]` because she had been utterly crushed by `[BLANK]` in a game before, to the point where it had almost become an obsession for her.
So after obtaining the diary, becoming stronger than before and the unshakable number one in that game, she inwardly wanted to meet `[BLANK]` again, which was why this request was generated for her.
As for Shinomiya Kaguya, it should be because she wanted to enter the hidden world and had been investigating that shrine.
At the same time, because she had interfered in Miko's plotline and recruited the God-Mother of Shitamachi, who had a certain connection to that shrine, Miko's main plotline was transferred to Shinomiya Kaguya.
These two high-level requests could both be considered to have a clear origin.
But for Shiina Mashiro, she just wanted to draw manga peacefully right now and had almost no interest in things like ghosts and spirits.
Did she receive this request because her Ripple training had reached a level where she could perform exorcisms, or was the diary deliberately giving her free points, considering her current situation?
After all, his Pure Yang Body was right here. How many spirits in this world weren't afraid of him?
As long as he undid his seal and accompanied Shiina Mashiro to that place for a stroll, and at most activated his Ripple, she would probably be able to complete this request.
However, Miyauchi Hikage suddenly thought of a certain kind-hearted Grade 1 Sorcerer.
Didn't Nanami Kento say that he should tell him in advance where he was going to film his next video?
"But isn't doing this a bit dishonorable," Miyauchi Hikage muttered, deciding it was better to go to the place mentioned in the request to take a look himself first.
If that place was suitable for filming a video, then he would ask Nanami Kento to come over and help.
He would find an opportunity to give him a red envelope as thanks later.
Miyauchi Hikage studied this request for a while and then told Shiina Mashiro his thoughts.
Shiina Mashiro naturally had no objections; everything revolved around Miyauchi Hikage.
After that, Miyauchi Hikage also spent some time studying the new functions unlocked after other diaries reached level 3 permission.
He had to say, having an insider was really comfortable. Many functions that seemed insignificant could be found to hide many threats upon closer examination.
Just like that new map function.
It seemed to be for the purpose of better reminding those girls where there was danger.
But in Miyauchi Hikage's eyes, this function was completely targeted at himself.
Don't be fooled by the fact that it only displays character names and potential danger information.
It also provides a simple assessment of the strength displayed by surrounding people or spirits.
Under normal circumstances, nearby ordinary people are displayed as white dots on the map. The white dots are about the size of a grain of rice. Physically fit people would be slightly larger and rounder, while frail women would be smaller.
And according to the map function's description, spirits or other dangerous existences should be displayed in red.
Of course, red markers were currently nowhere to be seen.
In short, on this map, the stronger an existence was, the larger the white or red dot displayed on the map would be.
Among the girls around him:
Miyauchi Hikari and Shiina Mahiru were about the same size. After all, Hikari grew up in the countryside, and her physique was better than that of an average boy.
As for Mahiru, she had just started practicing Ripple and was currently in a period of improvement, so the sizes displayed on the map function were naturally not much different.
Shiina Mashiro was much more obvious.
Her figure was a full two times larger than Hikari's, indicating that her current Ripple training had already brought about a great improvement to her constitution.
Miyauchi Hikage rubbed his nose, then secretly undid a bit of his seal.
Originally, on the map, he looked only a couple of sizes larger than a normal adult male. But instantly, his figure on the map swelled by double, becoming even larger than Shiina Mashiro's.
He quickly reapplied the seal and muttered to himself.
"I just want to lie low and develop quietly. Why does the diary keep updating with so many functions targeted at me?"
It seemed he couldn't let Jerry come back directly. He would have to seal its state first before allowing it to return to Beika Town.
Otherwise, who knew how large that guy Jerry would appear on those girls' maps.
"But Jerry can also see Kuroneko's diary. It should be a little prepared after realizing this."
Thinking this, Miyauchi Hikage pondered for a moment and then had Shiina Mashiro find an opportunity to tell the other girls about this matter, to let them know.
Through this function, he might also be able to determine Shiina Mashiro's strength and status among the girls in the group, which could play a role in the weight of her words in the chat group in the future.