Blackstar.
Template:Book Blackstar. is a short story that is part of an anthology of short stories based on the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan series. It was written by Ryo Yoshigami (吉上 亮, Yoshigami Ryō) and published by Shueisha. Blackstar. was included with the August 2017 issue of Ultra Jump to coincide with the eighth episode release of the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan series. It was then compiled in a collection with four other stories, which released for sale on June 19, 2018.
Summary
Rohan Kishibe is sitting at a café, drawing meaningless lines in his sketchbook on his day off. He has a visitor at his table, who stares at the lines that Rohan is drawing. The man has white skin, blue eyes, wears a suit, and has a muscular appearance reminiscent of an NFL player. The lines that originally seemed meaningless now formed the face of a person as if it were a portrait. Rohan didn't intend to draw a human face, as he actually only drew lines and dots. In gestalt psychology, this phenomenon is referred to as the Law of Prägnanz, in which humans have a psychological tendency to find something meaningful in an irregular pattern of dots and lines. Humans perceive the invisible as visible, and this law is said to explain most photos of "ghosts". Whenever Rohan draws manga, he always questions if his lines have any meaning. Manga artists must not draw meaningless things, because things without meaning have no reality. The man acknowledges Rohan's claim but rebuts that this rule doesn't apply in all cases, and sometimes people see things that they shouldn't. Rohan is shocked and asks whether the man is an editor of an occult magazine. However, the man states that he's an agent like he told Rohan earlier, and gives him a business card. Rohan learns that his name is Agent Gabriel (エージェント・ガブリエル, Ējento Gaburieru).
A week ago, the man contacted Rohan claiming to be an agent from an American foundation and had a request for him. It wasn't unusual for Rohan to get requests from overseas since he was a popular manga artist but Gabriel's request was different. Rohan admits that Gabriel is a determined guy to come all the way from America to Japan for the sake of commissioning a portrait. Gabriel thanks him but Rohan states it wasn't a compliment. Gabriel apologizes, bowing his head. Rohan feels that the nature of his request and his behavior is suspicious, but doesn't feel any sense of danger from him. Rather, Gabriel gives off the impression of a thick boulder towering over him, making Rohan feel as if he was being protected from some kind of threat.
Although Rohan is confident that his sketches are comparable to Picasso, he feels that Gabriel's offer of $500,000 for a single sketch is too excessive. Gabriel responds that his foundation determined that Rohan's sketch is worth exactly that much, because he is the only person in the world who can draw a portrait of the Spaghetti Man (スパゲッティ・マン, Supagetti Man).
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