This is a short story I created for the Tezuka contest made international for the 100th anniversary.*

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The rules were : create a story completed in one issue that is original up to 55 pages. Any genre allowed

Spoil : I didn't win a prize, but it was a great experience!

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Hopefully you will like it, take your time to read it, each information is quite important! After reading the One shot, I invite you to read my notes about this story down below. It will surely answer your questions !

*Weekly Shonen Jump  contest with well-known judges : this time Eiichiro Oda, Akira Toriyama, Kohei Horikoshi, Kazue Kato, Takehiko Inoue and Tezuka Productions.

READ RIGHT TO LEFT  (JAP)

To begin with, the narration is not completely like I wanted as the constraint was 55 pages.

I did exactly 55 pages (double pages counting as 2).

If I could, I would have added at least 1 more page just before Cley wakes up, after the flashback: a page where we see Keyli getting paid by villagers chaining the darkan Thiel. Then we see her regretting her action while looking at the forest (next thing you know, she meets Cley), so the reader can understand what happened while Cley was sleeping, in an easier way.

Here, the reader must guess this scene with only these words "they chained your darkan in the village" and "Thiel protected me" on page 38 + make the link with the fact that Keyli was paid to know the location of Cley at the beginning of the story. A little too subtle for the Weekly Shonen Jump I think, or even in a general way.

Actually, each information has an importance to understand all the links between the events.

The Fysclias are the reason why the Darkans attack the village for example: they eat Fysclias to feed their fire, but the villagers use a lot of these (to make a longer fire in winter). Consequently, there is no more enough fysclias at the end and the Darkans eat on another fuel: wood from houses.

People hate darkans due to the negative legend about them, and hate Cley because they didn't witness darkans (they didn't know they existed at the beginning of the story) + the mother screamed "your fault" when Cley's dad arrived (they didn't hear "it's not...")

It's a problem when you imagine a scene like an anime, readers don't necessarily do the same  (taking into account the sound etc), the pages constraint was really hard for this story. To be honest, I could have done an entire volume for this story.

If you forget an element, you have questions.That's the problem with this One Shot in my opinion, even if of course I'm happy of my work. Maybe I should have made a simpler story, but I love to develop a universe too much!

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Thanks for reading