I am the Entertainment Tycoon Chapter 987: Reading Clandestinely

Shizaki, Iwa State, Sakura Abode Country.

Shizaki was a bustling, mid-sized coastal hub nestled on the western edge of the country. Standing proudly as the second-largest municipality in Iwa State, it played home to roughly 1.5 million residents. In a hyper-developed nation like the Sakura Abode Country, a city of this scale lacked absolutely nothing in terms of modern infrastructure and technological luxury. The only real differentiator from massive metropolises like Elffire City was the absence of a few specialized corporate headquarters and high-end entertainment industries.

Yet, pop culture always found a way to bridge the geographic gap.

Inside the lively cafeteria of one of Shizaki’s local junior high schools, a trio of thirteen-year-old friends sat huddled over a corner lunch table. They were locked in an intense, animated debate over something of monumental importance to their daily lives.

"Come on, Akibara!" Yoshino, a freckled boy, practically shouted over the ambient noise of the lunchroom. "There is no way you haven’t finished it by now!"

"Hey, it’s my turn, back off!" Akibara, a boy adjusting a thick pair of glasses, retorted defiantly. "I won our wager fair and square, Yoshino! You have to wait!"

"But you’ve been hoarding Nakata’s copy of the Naruto manga for three whole days!" Yoshino shot back, leaning across the table with a fierce glare. "There’s no way you read that slowly. Volume Eight isn’t even that thick! What’s taking you so long?"

Akibara’s face instantly flushed a bright shade of crimson. He opened his mouth but found himself completely trapped; if he argued back, he would essentially be admitting to the entire table that he was a slow reader.

Nakata, the third member of the trio and the actual architect of the dispute, let out a soft sigh before stepping in to mediate. He didn’t want his friends starting a full-blown cafeteria riot over his property. "Come on, Akibara, hand it over to Yoshino. I promised I’d lend it to both of you equally this week."

Faced with the direct decree of the manga’s rightful owner, Akibara knew he had lost his leverage. With a defeated, dramatic slouch of his shoulders, he reached into his school backpack, pulled out the pristine graphic novel, and slid it across the table.

Yoshino’s eyes lit up like a pair of high-beams as he eagerly scooped up the book, admiring the cover art. The illustration featured the iconic, spiky-haired ninja in his classic orange jumpsuit holding a weapon, flanked by a menacing crimson silhouette looming in the background.

"Oh man, thank you, Nakata!" Yoshino beamed, his irritation vanishing in a flash. "I’ve been dying to sink my teeth into this ever since it dropped at the beginning of the month!"

The moment he slipped the volume safely into his bag, a dark cloud settled back over his face as he remembered his tragic circumstances. "My parents are being so incredibly toxic right now. Just because I bombed the last mock exam, they completely axed my monthly allowance and confiscated my savings jar! I couldn’t even buy a single jump magazine if I wanted to."

"Tell me about it!" Akibara chimed in, adjusting his glasses with a deeply bitter nod. "I didn’t even do that bad compared to the class average, and my mom grounded me until I can recover my grades at the end of the term. Total overkill."

Nakata listened to his friends wallow in self-pity and wisely chose to keep his mouth shut. He had zero desire to be ganged up on, but internally, his mind was running a completely different commentary. Hah! You two literally failed every single placement test last month. If I were your parents, I wouldn’t have just cut your allowance; I would have thrown in some physical discipline to wake you up.

Outwardly, however, Nakata put on a perfectly sympathetic face. "Yeah, absolutely. Your parents are totally unfair to punish you just because of those completely horrible, subterranean grades."

Akibara and Yoshino stopped complaining mid-sentence, their eyes narrowing into suspicious slits as they slowly turned their focus onto him.

"Yoshino," Akibara said slowly, never breaking eye contact with Nakata. "I don’t know why, but I get the distinct impression that Nakata is lowkey badmouthing our intelligence right now just because he didn’t flunk his tests."

"You’re definitely not imagining things," the freckled boy agreed, crossing his arms. "I felt the exact same sting."

"Hey, hey! That’s a completely false accusation!" Nakata panicked slightly, raising his hands defensively with a nervous laugh. "I’m a saint here! I’m just genuinely happy to help my best friends stay up to date with the latest Naruto hype. We’re a team, right?"

Akibara and Yoshino stared at him for a long, dramatic moment, weighing their options. Ultimately, they decided to grant him absolute mercy. After all, the boy held the keys to the kingdom, and if they pushed him too far, he could easily revoke their access to the legendary Chunin Exams storyline.

Seeing that his friends dropped their fists, Nakata heaved a quiet sigh of relief. He made a mental note to mock them much more cleverly next time, ensuring his sarcasm would fly right over their heads.

The rest of the school day went by at an agonizingly slow pace. For Yoshino, it seemed like each remaining class was taking literal eons to pass. The geography teacher’s lecture on national rail efficiency felt like white noise, and the math equations on the blackboard looked completely meaningless. The boy was dying to finally go home, throw his school bag onto his bed, and lose himself completely in the newly acquired Naruto manga.

Every time his eyes wandered to the zipper of his backpack, he could picture the orange jumpsuit on the cover. He needed to know what happened next in the high-stakes battle of the Chunin Exams, and no boring school lecture was going to keep his mind grounded in reality for long.

When the final bell of the afternoon unleashed its high-pitched chime, it signaled an immediate jailbreak. Before the echo of the ring could even fade, Yoshino had already thrown his notebook into his bag, zipped it shut with a frantic pull, and vanished through the classroom doorway.

He didn’t wait for Nakata or Akibara. He just shouted a farewell and left. He didn’t care about the gentle drizzle outside. He simply ran.

Sprinting through the courtyard and tearing down the neat cobblestone sidewalks of Shizaki, the thirteen-year-old was a blur of pure determination. His school bag thudded rhythmically against his back, the weight of Volume Eight acting as a physical anchor for his excitement. He leaped over puddles, cut corners through manicured green parks, and raced past local commuters, his lungs burning but his pace never slackening.

Ten minutes later, Yoshino burst through the front door of his family’s home, completely out of breath.

"I’m home!" he gasped to an empty hallway.Adhering to strict instinct, he kicked his sneakers off at the genkan, and put on slippers. Although he was dying to read the manga, he first needed to make sure he wasn’t caught by his parents.

It was only after making sure he was alone at the house that he flew up the stairs to his bedroom and slammed the door shut. He tossed his backpack onto his desk, unzipped it, and pulled out the prize.

Sitting cross-legged on his bed, he opened the first page, and the entire real world instantly dissolved.

The pacing of Volume Eight was relentless. As his fingers flew from page to page, Yoshino’s facial expressions mirrored the absolute, high-stakes chaos of the Chunin Exams. His eyes absorbed the story that started with Team 7 (Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura) still recovering from their brutal encounter with Orochimaru. Sasuke was heavily struggling against the excruciating pain of the Curse Mark branded onto his neck.

"Wow..." Yoshino whispered out loud, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edges of the manga.

The emotional peaks of the Chapter hit him like a physical blow. Yoshino held his breath as the panels detailed a tense, sudden ambush by the Rain Village ninjas, only for Naruto and Sasuke to execute a flawless, high-speed interception to save a mysterious older genin named Kabuto Yakushi. The tactical synergy between the teammates was drawn with such explosive kinetic energy that Yoshino could practically feel the slipstream of the kunai whistling past the frames.

As the narrative progressed, Kabuto officially aligned himself with Team 7, offering his experience to help them navigate the treacherous, final stretch of the Forest of Death toward the central tower. Yoshino’s heart hammered against his ribs when the group suddenly found themselves trapped in a dizzying maze of illusions cast by the relentless Rain Genin. The visual pacing was masterful; The author-san had layered the ink washes to perfectly convey a suffocating sense of paranoia. But when Naruto and Sasuke deduced the enemy’s trickery, turning the tables in a spectacular counterattack, Yoshino found himself silently punching the air in the quiet sanctuary of his room.

They defeated the illusionists, secured the final missing Heaven scroll to complete their set, and crossed the threshold of the central tower to officially pass the grueling Second Phase of the Chunin Exams.

Yoshino read with a fierce, ravenous focus, completely oblivious to the passage of time or his parents’ unfair grounding orders. By the time he flipped to the final, agonizing cliffhanger page—which teased the start of the sudden, unannounced Preliminary 1-on-1 Tournament matches—he was left staring at the artwork in a state of absolute, awe-struck shock.

"The author-san is a literal god," In his novice mind, Yoshino breathed, slowly closing the manga cover with trembling hands as he had just heard the front door opening.

He couldn’t let his parents catch him reading a manga, so he decided to read the rest after they went to sleep later that night. So, before they could arrive in his room, he sat at his desk to show them he was studying and doing his homework.

His allowance was gone, his savings were confiscated, and he was stuck in his room—but looking down at the manga, Yoshino knew none of it mattered. He was completely trapped in the ninja world; he couldn’t wait to read the rest of the volume later that night!