At 13 years of age, Angelica Akahoshi was the youngest person ever awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for Literature.

To the manga-loving Japanese public, the fact that her award-winning book was a graphic novel only added to the intense curiosity suddenly directed at this cute but reclusive girl with the literary brains, imagination and artistic skills to win this annual award for the best first novel in Japanese.

That she'd kicked the collective butts of writers two and three times her age only heightened that curiosity and made perfect fodder for the tabloids and TV gossip shows. Perfect, too, for boosting the troubled adolescent's already considerable fortune and adding to it the immeasurable burden of fame.