and she is a graduate student studying literature at the same university as Aiko Iwase. Her editor believes that her good looks will help her sales, however, she is distrustful of men, and regularly rejects Nakai's advances. However, she gradually opens up, and is quite warm and friendly to those she trusts. After Hideout Door is cancelled, Aoki resolves to return to shōjo, although she is later convinced to stay on working for Shōnen Jump. She works on the serialized series The Time of Green Leaves, and she does her own drawings with assistance from Shinta Fukuda. She and Hiramaru gradually develop a relationship, which eventually leads to them getting engaged. Her favorite manga is Kimi ni Todoke. Koji Makaino is a musician who aspires to be a manga artist. His work "Colorfusical" placed second in the Tezuka Awards and is a finalist in the Gold Future Cup. He reveals in the news that he is the musician known as "Koogy" in order to get more votes, but fails to land a series. At the Jump corporate party, he is the featured entertainer where he announces a partnership with Aoki when she considers moving to Jump Square, but this too is short-lived. Kazuya Hiramaru Portrayed by: Hirofumi Arai (film), Yuu Fukuzawa (play) is introduced as a 26-year-old manga artist who quit his office job to draw manga after he picked up Shōnen Jump one day for the first time in his life and decided that drawing manga would be far less troublesome than office work. His first work, Otter No. 11 receives an honorable mention and becomes serialized around the same time as Mashiro and Takagi's work, though he has no experience or background knowledge with manga. Hiramaru is easily overwhelmed and finds it hard to deal with the stress of writing manga, having initially believed that being a manga artist would be an easy job. He sometimes hides in the other manga artists' studios. His editor manages to persuade him to continue by offering to help him get closer to Kō Aoki, as he is attracted to her; his attempts, however, usually end badly, but in chapter 114 he finally asks Aoki out. Due to his success, he has been called a manga genius possibly on the level of Eiji Nizuma, especially considering his inexperience and relative lack of interest in writing manga. His manga's successful stories stem from