ART STYLE: full-colour modern anime illustration. Clean thin ink outlines, soft cel shading with one shadow tone, natural warm colour grading. This is ONE COMIC PAGE: crisp black panel borders, clean white gutters 3-4px wide, panels exactly as laid out below.

THE CHARACTER: the woman in every panel is the person in the attached reference sheet — same face, same hair, same outfit. The sheet shows her face in close-up (left) and her complete outfit head to toe (right). Face: oval face, dark almond-shaped eyes, a small beauty mark under one eye exactly where it is in the sheet (the eye on the viewer's left in the sheet's close-up), pearl stud earrings, long dark wavy hair with a centre part. Her outfit in every panel is exactly the one in the sheet's full-body half — do not change it.

CAMERA DISTANCE IS FIXED BY HER HEIGHT IN EACH PANEL. Follow the stated percentages exactly. In wide panels she must stay SMALL: do not enlarge her, do not move her to the foreground, do not place her centre-stage. Being small and hard to see in wide panels is intended.

LAYOUT (top to bottom): a full-width panel about 38% of page height; then a row of two panels side by side about 30% of page height; then a full-width panel about 32% of page height. The camera moves closer to her with every panel.

PANEL 1 — EXTREME WIDE, full-width top tier: high angle across a canal at dusk. Old three-storey houses with glowing windows line both banks; a stone arched bridge in the centre. She walks across the bridge left to right, alone, rolling a small suitcase — her figure is ONLY ABOUT 8% OF THE PANEL HEIGHT. Sunset glow behind the rooftops, reflections on the water, streetlamps just coming on.

PANEL 2 — WIDE, middle row left: street level in a narrow cobbled lane with café chairs and string lights. She is in the far half of the lane, full body, ONLY ABOUT 30% OF PANEL HEIGHT — the lane, buildings and lights fill most of the panel. Three-quarter view toward camera, hand on the suitcase handle, looking up at the buildings.

PANEL 3 — MEDIUM, middle row right: waist up, ABOUT 70% OF PANEL HEIGHT, turning from profile toward three-quarter as she stops in front of an old bakery window; warm window light across her face.

PANEL 4 — CLOSE-UP, full-width bottom tier: face and shoulders, face ABOUT 50% OF PANEL HEIGHT, front three-quarter, warm light from the window, a faint reflection of the shop glass over her. A small bittersweet smile, eyes slightly lowered. Beauty mark and pearl stud clearly readable.

LETTERING — follow exactly:
- Speech balloons: clean white oval, thin even black outline, short tail touching the speaker's head.
- Captions: small rectangular box, cream fill, thin black outline, top-left of its panel.
- Uppercase English, crisp and spelled exactly as written below, fully inside its balloon or box with clear margin.
- EXACTLY these 3 text elements on the whole page and nothing else: no sound effects, no signage text, no page numbers.
  • Panel 1 caption: "SIX YEARS."
  • Panel 3 balloon from her: "IT HASN'T CHANGED AT ALL."
  • Panel 4 balloon from her: "...BUT I HAVE."

MOOD: quiet homecoming. Warm amber and violet dusk.

AVOID: a different hairstyle or hair colour, the beauty mark on the right side or missing, missing earrings, a different jacket colour, any other person who looks like her, photorealism, 3D render, watermarks, signatures, garbled or misspelled text, text outside a balloon, extra fingers, deformed hands.