"It seems this week's chapter is still just another part of the daily storyline, with no major climax."
After finishing Chapter 11, Leo shook his head.
He was a devoted fan of the Porter.
Ever since Your Name, he had fallen in love with the Porter's work—admiring both the art style and the captivating plots.
In Leo's eyes, every one of the Porter's comics was meticulously crafted, akin to masterpieces.
Even in earlier series like Madoka Magica or Katekyō Hitman Reborn!, where the pacing was slow at the start and didn't immediately grab attention, Leo had faith that the Porter would eventually deliver something satisfying.
Having gone through several slow-burn series before, Leo felt even more confident in Steins;Gate.
After all, this time the Porter himself had warned that it would be a slow-paced story, and he had even promised that the early chapters would be difficult to understand, offering an entire set of Picca merchandise as a prize to anyone who could decipher the full meaning.
That prize was extremely valuable. Over the years, the Porter had produced countless pieces of merchandise for his works, so the fact that he dared to offer this as a reward showed his confidence.
And just as the Porter had predicted, no one had managed to come up with the perfect answer yet.
This only heightened Leo's anticipation for what was to come in Steins;Gate.
After breezing through the slice-of-life aspects of Chapter 11, Leo casually opened Chapter 12.
The time machine had been successfully completed, but after everything that had happened, Rintarou decided it was too risky to experiment further, so they planned to turn it over to the proper authorities for testing.
Once again, the story maintained its usual pace—calm and uneventful, typical of a sci-fi daily life setting. To Leo, this chapter didn't seem any more exciting than what he'd come to expect.
Unlike other slice-of-life stories, which often had comedic or heartwarming moments, Steins;Gate didn't really offer much of that. Instead, it occasionally threw in mysterious or unsettling plot points.
Leo knew these oddities were probably foreshadowing important events, but until they paid off, they didn't offer much immediate satisfaction.
Still, as Leo continued reading, his expression began to shift.
At the party celebrating the success of the time machine, everyone seemed to be in high spirits. But suddenly, the part-time warrior, Suzuha, asked, "Are you still hacking into SERN?"
Upon hearing that the lab was still connected to SERN's network, Suzuha grew panicked and rushed out.
This left the group at the party bewildered.
But Leo's gut told him that something big was about to happen.
After reading so many of the Porter's works, he could sense when things were about to take a dark turn.
And that feeling only grew stronger when Yuli mentioned that her pocket watch had stopped working.
Sure enough!
With a sudden "boom" in one of the panels, the door was kicked open.
A group of masked individuals barged in, guns in hand. Among them was Moeka, who walked in slowly, holding a handgun.
"The time machine will be confiscated by SERN," Moeka said, her face expressionless. Then, after a pause, she raised her gun and pointed it at the group. "Rintarou, Kurisu, Daru—you three will come with me."
"What about Yuli?" Rintarou asked instinctively.
"We don't need her," Moeka replied.
As she said this, Moeka pointed her gun at Yuli.
"No way..."
Leo couldn't believe it. Could Moeka really be about to kill Yuli?
Nervously, he turned the page.
The first panel showed the cold barrel of the gun, followed by the flash of a bullet being fired.
Bang!
With her eyes wide open in shock, Yuli slowly collapsed to the ground.
"What??"
Leo stared at the page, mouth agape.
Even though he had suspected it might happen, seeing it unfold left him stunned. Yuli… was dead?
Unable to fully process what had just happened, Leo quickly flipped through the remaining pages—only to find that the chapter had ended.
"Damn it! Why does it always end at the worst possible moment?!"
Frustrated, Leo slammed his hand down on the table. He absolutely hated cliffhangers like this!
…
"Hey, did you hear? The Porter's new manga just dropped a bombshell!"
"Which new series? Has the Porter been working on something else?"
"Yeah, Steins;Gate! Haven't you been reading it?"
"Ugh, no. I gave up on it. The story was just too slow and boring."
"Well, Chapter 12 just dropped, and things are heating up now. The Porter did say from the start that the story would take time to build up."
"Man, I don't know. I'm getting real tired of the Porter killing off main characters. He always goes after the fan-favorites, too. I swear he reads the online comments and adjusts the story to mess with us."
"I can't believe I was so naive. After all the lighthearted comics like Konosuba and Gintama, I thought the Porter had finally moved on from those dark, edgy stories. But no! He went and did it again with Steins;Gate!"
"Come on, Gintama wasn't all comedy. Did you forget about the whole Mitsuba arc? The Porter just can't resist pulling the rug out from under us!"
"Yeah, Mitsuba was a dead giveaway that the Porter still had some twisted tendencies."
"Today, the Porter once again earns his title as a 'warrior of love and suffering'!"
"Seriously, does the Porter get a kick out of making us miserable?"
Online, discussions about the Porter's latest chapter were blowing up.
For a while now, there had been fewer complaints about the Porter, thanks to the run of lighthearted, comedic manga. But after today's release of Chapter 12, those complaints were flooding back.
Even though the story had been slow and uneventful up to this point, readers had still grown attached to certain characters. Among them, Yuli—being the cute and lovable girl who brought a sense of warmth to the lab—was seen as a mascot by fans. Her sudden death had shocked and angered many.
It was as if fans were suddenly reminded of the dark times when the Porter's emotionally devastating works had dominated their thoughts.
While the Porter had recently been creating fun and upbeat stories, people hadn't forgotten that this was the man who had made Madoka Magica, a series that completely upended the genre of magical girl shows and introduced the infamous "three-episode rule."
After all, the Porter was always capable of pulling off these kinds of shocking twists.
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