After that weird, awkward face-slapping talk with his dad, David had a typical college day until Professor Mark's lecture.
At first, everything was normal, and the lecture was proceeding as any other lecture by professor Mark, boring but very informative.
The only difference being today, he seemed to be going a bit faster than usual, but David didn't think much of it.
It was until he dropped a bombshell at the end of his topic, with roughly thirty or forty minutes for the lecture to end.
Mark - "All right, we are done with today's topic. Now we shall be reviewing how your manga is going."
What Mark said immediately caused a widespread discussion among the class as it was a complete surprise, and no one was ready for it.
Mark - "Quite down, everyone. If you have any questions, I can answer them individually."
Mason (Teacher's Pet) raised his hand to ask a doubt that arose in his mind.
Mark - "Ah, yes, Mason."
Mason stood up from his seat and asked in front of everyone in the auditorium, "Uh, sir, shouldn't this be in a seminar where there are fewer students? Instead of during a lecture?"
Sitting next to Mason, another teacher's pet, Jack couldn't help but say aloud, "Are you questioning the teacher's decision in front of everyone? Have you lost it?"
Anyone with even a bit of knowledge of Jack and Mason's character could quickly determine that Jack was trying to win Mark's favor and cut out his competition.
David, in his mind, couldn't help but say, "Damn, the world is a cut-throat competition at every point of life."
Mark quickly responded, "No, Jack, I feel Mason's doubt is valid."
Mark caught Jack and the entire class waiting to see Mason scolded fully off guard.
Mark then clarified Mason's doubt, "You see. I will not review every single person's manga in this lecture as that would take far too long."
"After all, there are over one hundred students in this lecture room as it combines the entire year one. As my module is compulsory."
"What we will review in this lecture will be the top 10 Manga with the highest collection."
Mason once again raised his hand to ask another doubt.
Mark - "Yes, Mason, what else do you wanna ask."
Mason - "I wanted to ask how this top 10 will be formulated?"
Mark replied, "Another excellent question. Anyone wants to guess the answer?"
A few students attempted to answer, but no one was able to answer correctly.
Mark - "Come on, it is very simple. With the digitalization of manga, there is now accurate software that compares different mangas and finds out which is better."
"Okay, I will show it to you guys. Just give me a moment."
Professor Mark headed to his brown desk and started connecting his laptop to the projector.
Meanwhile, David, who wanted to be lowkey about his Manga as he didn't think it was good, was sweating like crazy.
David even started indulging himself in delusions, "Come on, there are so many people in this lecture."
"There must be ten people here who have a better collection than me, right."
"Yes, there must be. I am just a trash mangaka who is trying to commit insurance fraud. There is no way people who put in so much work are worse than me."
As David constantly had wild thoughts flowing through his mind, Mark finally pulled up the software in the auditorium's projector.
Mark then showed off the software's features and stated that it was ranked second in usefulness by the National Editor Association.
Mark - "So, as you can see, it is pretty much like excel, but all you have to do is input a manga name list. Then it will automatically find the information about the Manga entered."
"Further, you can sort the Manga by different columns like views, collections, comments, etc."
"It also finds various figures like viewer conversion rate on its own."
Richard, a student attending the lecture, raised his hand to ask a doubt.
Mark - "I see someone raising their hands. Please go on."
Richard - "I wanted to ask, so does an editor use this to give recommendations or promotional support to mangaka?"
Mark - "Good question. What's your name?"
Richard - "It's Richard."
Mark - "Well, Richard, this software is indeed used for giving out big pushes to a Manga, but it wouldn't be completely fair then, right?"
"That way, a new Mangaka like you without a major audience will suffer, right."
"So there are other factors to consider, like what is the Mangaka background, is the work collection true? What was the last promotion the Manga had? How successful was that?"
"As I said, there are multiple factors that impact decisions. This all makes an editor's job very tedious."
"If you want to know more, you can ask me after class or join the editor's course at the university."
"For now, I think we should start with the discussion of the top 10 as we are running out of time."
Richard - "Okay, sir."
Mark copy pasted the list of Manga from another doc into the software, and it soon started collecting the various data about the Mangas.
The data was soon input on sheet 1, but it looked very cluttered.
Mark then opened another sheet and wrote a command that allowed only the top 10 to be transferred over.
Mark - "Hmm, this would be too easy. Let me create some suspense. Give me a moment."
David, in his seat, searching for his Manga name in sheet 2, couldn't help but cry in his mind, "Why do you have to do this? "
"What is the point of creating suspense? Are you trying to give me heart attack due to stress?"
Mark disconnected the sharing of his laptop and started putting the top 10 by collection list into a PowerPoint presentation.
Mark loaded the ppt slide and said, "Okay, we are ready. The slide will show each manga name from bottom to top."
"All you have to do is stand up when I call your name and talk about the premise, and your future plan is for the manga."
Author Note: An actual Manga course does not exist fully, even in Japan, so all of this has been built by me.