Once June arrived, the weather grew even hotter—just like the current boom in China's manga industry.
The six major magazines were unmatched in name recognition, but that didn't mean mid- and small-tier magazines had no future.
Readers' tastes were all over the place.
The Big Six focused heavily on commercial value and hot-blooded battle shonen. Romance and emotional stories were relatively rare there.
That gap was exactly why emotion-focused weeklies like Sakura Weekly could carve out a place and grow.
Even though it was only distributed in a few provinces around Shanghai, and each issue sold "only" around 800,000 copies, within its distribution area Sakura Weekly was almost as well-known as the Big Six.
And for new series, even though serialization officially started next Friday the 13th, the latest issue, released on the 6th, was already heavily promoting the two upcoming debuts.
Most notably, the color cover pages that Xia Jing and Yan Qiushuang had each drawn for their respective series.
On the 5 Centimeters per Second color spread: cherry blossoms fill the sky over a railway, a girl in a knee-length skirt holding an umbrella and smiling, and a boy out of breath from running downhill, their eyes meeting across the tracks.
With petals swirling all around, a strong sense of youth poured out of the image, and the five bold characters for "5 Centimeters per Second" were perfectly integrated into the composition.
The tagline on the color page:
[Do you know what five centimeters per second means?]
The cover for Love Like Fireworks was a big group shot of its cast—a crowd of clearly designed characters in a crisp, stylish school setting. One glance told you it was a school romance.
Among Sakura Weekly's fanbase in the Shanghai region, some hardcore readers saw the two-page preview spread at the back of this issue and immediately lit up on the magazine's official forum:
[5 Centimeters per Second… what a strange title. Is this replacing Love Should Happen After School now that it's been axed? Aoba? Never heard of them—must be a newbie. But this art style is amazing, so soft and full of youth. I love it already.]
[And Love Like Fireworks is starting at the same time… that's Yan Qiushuang-sensei's first new work in a year. Any Yan fans here, remember to vote for it after you read it. Don't let it lose to some newbie's manga.]
[Feels like Sakura Weekly is going downhill. All the new series this year have been boring. The only one I still enjoy is Tales of Sorrow from last year. The rest are just… meh. And Tales of Sorrow is clearly in its late stage already, probably not much runway left. Can the chief editor please bring in something fresh? I seriously can't find anything good to read.]
[Too much school romance will do that to you.]
[5 Centimeters per Second doesn't look like a school romance. The leads aren't even wearing uniforms, and that old-fashioned city rail crossing gives off major retro vibes. Pretty sure this is a 'period romance.']
[I'll at least check it out for the art. Hope it surprises me.]
[Why didn't Voices in the Clouds get axed, but Love Should Happen After School did? I can't accept that. The latter was much better.]
[Voices in the Clouds' latest volume still sold twenty thousand copies week one. Love Should Happen After School couldn't even break ten thousand, and it ranked dead last in the polls six weeks straight. Stop coping…]
…
In the massive manga market, two new series starting up was a tiny event. A handful of hardcore fans might discuss it, but their chatter quickly got buried under the flood of other posts online.
Aside from someone like Xia Jing, who was the creator himself, most of Sakura Weekly's loyal readers remained skeptical about this newbie series, 5 Centimeters per Second.
They had some expectations—but nothing overwhelming.
Very quickly, a week went by…
Early Wednesday morning, in major bookstores across Shanghai and neighboring provinces, the newest issue of Sakura Weekly was stacked in prominent spots.
Priced at ¥13, with 18 manga series per issue, it was a hefty brick of a magazine.
Each chapter was over 20 pages, and with more than a dozen ongoing series, the total page count approached 400—over 200 sheets of paper thick.
For busy office workers, it wasn't guaranteed they could finish the whole thing in a week.
But that didn't apply to someone like Cai Yi.
Half a month ago, she'd been dumped. Last week, unable to handle the emotional blow, she quit her job. Now she was in full collapse mode, with zero sign of recovery.
And for her, the only real cures for heartbreak were good food and good manga.
Especially romance manga in Sakura Weekly—that was her emotional battery pack during this "post-breakup" period.
Dressed neatly and stylishly early in the morning, Cai Yi headed straight to the bookstore—which was already fairly crowded.
She walked in and went straight for the Sakura Weekly rack.
In front of her, thick, plastic-wrapped issues lined the shelves. The cover was dominated by characters from the two new series.
On the left, cherry blossoms swirling over the railway and the two leads facing each other.
On the right, the sharp, energetic ensemble cast of a campus romance.
"Hope they're both good," Cai Yi murmured, taking a deep breath.
She brought a copy to the register, paid, then headed out and turned left into a nearby café. She ordered a coffee and a slice of cake for breakfast, went up to the second floor, and sat in her favorite window-side corner.
Then she tore open the plastic wrap on the new issue.
Flipping past the table of contents, the very first series was her favorite romantic comedy in the magazine:
High-Score Love—
A series that had held the number-one spot in the reader poll for eighteen straight weeks, the fifth ongoing hit by fan-favorite mangaka Yu Shulei.
At this point, it was essentially the flagship romance of Sakura Weekly.
Of course, every romance eventually ran into a problem: once the leads got together, it became much harder to write something compelling.
Post-confession, post-dating drama was the hardest to nail and the least inherently exciting.
Ten minutes later, after finishing the latest chapter, Cai Yi felt… slightly disappointed.
It wasn't bad—just not as good as she'd hoped. It had lost that early "youthful buzz."
She immediately flipped to Tales of Sorrow, drawn by genius high school girl "Shui Xi."
She got lost in that chapter for a while, then finally exhaled slowly.
Unlike High-Score Love, Tales of Sorrow had actually picked up pace in its later stage. There was no sign of forced padding, and the reading experience was clearly better.
Only then did she turn her attention to this issue's brand-new series.
"5 Centimeters per Second, huh…" she murmured.
Drawn in by the art style, she used the table of contents to flip straight to its first installment.
It opened on a color page of falling cherry blossoms and narration.
[You know, they say it's five centimeters per second.]
[What is?]
[The speed at which cherry blossoms fall—five centimeters per second.]
This…
Hitting the title in the first line, huh?
Sipping her coffee, Cai Yi's interest was piqued.
Lines like this often meant nothing, objectively. They didn't necessarily help you understand the plot at all.
But… they read smoothly and sounded poetic out loud.
The author must be a sensitive woman, she thought.
[Akari, you sure know a lot.]
[Hey, don't you think… it's almost like it's snowing?]
In the panel, the girl spread her hand open and let cherry blossoms slide through the gaps between her fingers.
Oh, yes. This kind of "seemingly meaningless" dialogue.
For some people, the opening lines of 5 Centimeters per Second would probably feel baffling.
But for someone like Cai Yi, it was exactly her thing.
The girl sprinted down the slope; the boy chased hard behind her. After she crossed the tracks, the crossing gate came down, trapping them on opposite sides.
The tracks looked like a border between two worlds, separating them. And the girl, Akari, lifted her red umbrella, blocking the falling petals as she smiled at the boy on the other side—her smile even more beautiful than the cherry blossoms.
[It'd be so nice… if we could watch the cherry blossoms together again next year.]
Same story, different art and storyboarding—and the feeling it gave the reader was completely different.
There was still room for Xia Jing to refine his linework, but with his fused-soul state, his ability to capture emotion in his characters' faces was top-tier.
The lines were relatively simple, but even without knowing anything about the plot yet, Cai Yi felt a twinge of sadness looking at that scene.
She didn't even know why. She just felt that this boy and girl smiling at each other across the tracks were somehow… sad.
To help readers follow the story, Xia Jing had included timestamps inside the panels.
After the opening color page, the art shifted to black and white, and the melancholy deepened.
The narrative moved into Akari's letters to Takaki—her inner monologue in text form.
[Thinking about it, I like Shanghai's humid summers too—the asphalt that feels like it could melt. The last time I saw you was at the graduation ceremony. Takaki… do you still remember me now?]
[Dear Takaki: Thank you for your letter. It's autumn now. I wore a sweater for the first time the day before yesterday…]
…
In just a few panels, with Akari's letter monologue and the boy's increasingly lonely expression, Cai Yi quickly understood:
The boy and girl who had shouted "let's watch the cherry blossoms together again next year" hadn't seen each other for a whole year since Akari transferred away.
The two of them exchanged letters about their daily lives.
And the more they wrote, the stronger their feelings grew. What had started as a distance of a few hundred kilometers was about to become thousands when Takaki himself transferred again.
That wasn't the kind of distance you could just casually close anymore.
So, before Takaki moved even farther away, they decided to see each other one last time.
[There's a huge cherry tree near my house. When spring comes, the petals fall at five centimeters per second. I keep thinking… how wonderful it would be if you were here with me to see it, Takaki. —Akari]
The plot moved slowly, but paired with the carefully drawn backgrounds and moody art, Cai Yi felt the loneliness in that panel of the girl sitting alone, writing.
Only one bird in the sky; under the sunset, she was the only person in the small town.
She was already fully immersed, feeling the story's sadness in her own chest.
The two of them, missing each other more and more, set a time to meet.
Takaki would take the train; Akari would wait at the station at seven p.m.
The manga never spelled it out, but Cai Yi could sense it: the reason they were so desperate to meet was because they both knew—
If they didn't see each other now, they might never get another chance in this lifetime.
A thousand kilometers of distance was a chasm even adults struggled with.
Let alone two middle schoolers.
"So this is the kind of story it is…" Cai Yi finally realized.
She had honestly never read a manga with this kind of tone.
It didn't feel like a manga so much as a piece of literary prose. The plot was simple: two kids who love each other from afar hoping to meet one last time before the boy moves even farther away.
But the way their feelings were portrayed was intricate and delicate. She was completely immersed in their inner worlds.
She turned the page, and the tone shifted.
The story jumped back in time.
It showed how Akari and Takaki first met, how they became friends after enduring classmates' pranks and ostracism, and how they gradually discovered they shared almost identical interests.
They'd promised to get into the same middle school together.
But everything shattered when Akari was forced to transfer by her family.
That night, Akari called Takaki to tell him she'd be leaving the city soon.
She had to be hoping for comfort—hoping she could see him once more before she left.
But instead, the boy sank even deeper into his own sadness and failed to do any of that. All he said, in a low voice, was:
[Enough. Don't say anymore…]
At that point, Cai Yi felt physically upset.
How could he be like that?!
Akari was being pushed to transfer—she had no choice. She called to apologize and say goodbye, and that was all she got?
She was angry, but she couldn't stop turning the pages.
The flashback ended. A year later, Takaki boarded the train to Akari's town.
But the heavy snow wrecked his carefully laid plans.
He had two transfers to make, and delays were something he hadn't accounted for.
He wrote everything he wanted to say to Akari over the past year—his apology for that night, his feelings—into a letter he planned to give her in person.
But while he was waiting at the transfer station, that letter slipped out of his pocket by accident and was carried away into the night by the fierce winter wind.
In that moment, the boy lowered his head, tears appearing at the corners of his eyes on the platform.
Not just because the letter was gone.
But because… he was late.
Their promised time, seven o'clock, had already passed.
It was now 8:15 p.m.
…
Cai Yi turned the page—
And realized there was nothing left.
That was where chapter one of 5 Centimeters per Second ended.
A heavy weight pressed against her chest. The frustration of being cut off at the most painful moment hit hard.
"Why do mangaka love doing this? What's so great about stopping right at the most crucial point?"
Was Akari still waiting for him?
If not, then he'd be leaving for a city thousands of kilometers away.
Was it possible that, because of this delayed train, the two of them would never meet again for the rest of their lives?
Thinking that, she felt sick.
Her heart hurt.
Just like when she'd gone through her breakup.
What was with this manga?
How could the very first chapter already be this sad?
This level of emotional pull… was this really a newbie mangaka?