March 4. Monday.
I asked Riku, who had his head buried in his classroom desk.
“Riku. Don’t tell me you stayed up all night.”
“Huh? Oh... yeah...”
Riku answered in a dying voice, then staggered upright.
He slumped back against the chair, then slowly opened his mouth.
“I was working, and it got fun. Oh, when should I give the laptop back?”
“Keep using it until movie production is over. I wasn’t using it anyway, so you can take your time.”
“Why do you have so many devices you aren’t using, Touji? Is it because you’re a professional thing?”
“It’s because I’m a professional thing.”
After exchanging what sounded like a secret code phrase, Riku grinned and stretched.
Then he said,
“How about you, Touji?”
My assigned roles in the movie production group were surprisingly numerous, but even so, there was one place where I would be especially active.
The scenario.
The rough draft of the youth mystery scenario was more or less finished.
However, there were still many details that needed to be carved down. Mainly the dialogue and stage directions.
Well, action instructions were an area that could be changed on-site. I did not need to obsess over them too much.
Even so, if I thought through the direction in advance, things would flow more smoothly on-site in various ways.
Because of that, lately I had become an old man whittling away at a scenario, and Riku was probably asking about the progress of that work.
I answered briefly.
“It’s coming out about as well as I want.”
“That’s good.”
Rattle. The classroom door opened.
The homeroom teacher entered through the front door, checked attendance by eye, and made a short declaration.
“Just don’t get too loud.”
At present, my exact status was that of a middle-school student about to enter high school.
Therefore, I had to keep going to middle school until the graduation ceremony, and since it was March 4, I had to fulfill my duties as a middle-school student.
But how many duties could possibly be placed on third-year middle-school students right before graduation?
At this point, they should be grateful we even showed up.
Maybe the school knew that too. Starting today, shortened classes were in effect. Classes ended early enough for us to eat lunch at home.
On top of that, every class was self-study, so in practical terms, it was not very different from having already graduated.
With free time appearing for the first time in a while, I opened my bag to study for the entrance exams I had been neglecting lately, then froze.
Had I bought a new workbook?
When I took it out and checked, sure enough, there were only workbooks I had already finished.
I must have been busy lately in one way or another. I was even making mistakes like this.
I clicked my tongue.
That meant my time was floating loose, which was the situation I hated most.
You could say that if I hated having time float loose, I should just work on the scenario or write my new work.
It was not a bad idea.
I had no intention of acting smug just because I wrote for a living, but I understood the value of time well.
Writing openly in front of other people.
Wasting time instead of hiding that I was a writer.
If I were given those two options, I would choose the former without hesitation.
However, the reason I did not write novels at school was not because I did not want others to discover my identity, or because I did not want to get strange looks.
It was purely because it was too noisy to concentrate.
So no matter how much time I had left over, working on the scenario or writing a new work at school was impossible.
But that did not mean I could actually sit there blankly.
So I decided to do something that required less concentration.
At the same time, it was a meaningful action I had continued doing steadily.
What was that?
—It’s funny how Sen Kyoya failed at everything after .
└If writing only stuff this boring counts as talent, then I guess it really is talent lol.
What else? Ego searching.
I entered several search terms into Japan’s most widely used social media platform.
Not only Sen Kyoya and , but also the titles of my works, abbreviations for those works, and the names of the protagonists. The names of supporting characters too. I spread the search terms wide like casting a net.
—The farther Sen Kyoya’s works go, the less I can tell what he even wants to do.
└He’s obsessed with unusual concepts, so the actual stories aren’t fun.
—He succeeded with , but it feels like he doesn’t know why he succeeded? Just write , , and one by one lol.
└His talent ran dry. Though I don’t even know if he had talent in the first place.
Hm.
[33. Maybe the author regrets it too? Like, why did I ever start writing?]
[34. >>33 There really is nothing stupider than an ordinary person throwing themselves into the arts or sports.]
Hm-hm.
[57. Wouldn’t it be better if he quit writing instead of wasting trees mass-producing garbage? Sen Kyoya’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t know his own level.]
[58. >>57 Agreed. He’s got a serious case of art disease. Probably the type of author who doesn’t care about readers at all.]
Hm-hm-hm.
As I was peacefully exploring the internet world by category again today, I suddenly sensed someone nearby and raised my head.
Riku was in front of me.
When our eyes met, Riku muttered softly.
“What is wrong with these people? They’re saying way too much.”
“People always say harsh things. You only found that out now?”
“No. What did you even do to deserve this, Touji...?”
It seemed the thick, sticky internet world was still too early for Riku, the clear and pure super-popular kid.
Once smartphone adoption reached saturation and social media attained a position similar to air, social media would also become the exclusive territory of popular kids, but right now, smartphone adoption was still in its early stage.
Internet spaces were our spaces alone.
Who was “we”?
If I went into detail, it would sound like I was saying something bad, so I will not dig too deeply into that.
I skimmed my smartphone screen indifferently and opened my mouth.
“I wrote novels.”
“You’re saying people can insult you just because you wrote novels?”
“Correction. I wrote novels and took money for them.”
And what did he mean, insult? Among the evaluations attached to me, these were on the mild side.
Want me to show you what real insults look like?
Anyway.
I was not in a position to represent all writers, so I would talk purely from my own perspective.
The way I saw it, a professional writer had to write while accounting for the possibility of being insulted from the very beginning.
Because readers had the right to insult the writer.
By the same token, writers had the right not to like readers who insulted them, but the point I wanted to make was this.
A professional writer was not allowed to get angry at readers who insulted them.
That was the weight of being a professional.
I am not saying insults are a good act. Obviously, it is better not to do it. The world is love and peace, after all.
But I also could not find a reason why one absolutely must not do it.
Do not do it because it looks bad to others. Aside from cliché words that leaned on that kind of public perception, I simply could not think of a reason.
And if someone insulted something, would there not be some cause?
Although most criticisms often had nothing to do with the actual cause of the problem, and sometimes misunderstandings piled up so much that they were thinking about it completely wrong.
Even so, if a reader took issue with something, that meant they had felt something.
Then would it not be enough for me to analyze the cause?
At least, I thought having that ability gave a professional writer an advantage.
That was why, even after taking over this life, I had continued to cultivate the habit of checking readers’ reactions closely.
In my former life, web-fiction serialization had been my main battlefield, so I only needed to read real-time comments, but this was a publishing environment.
Unless I searched like this myself, there was no way to know readers’ reactions.
I continued speaking slowly.
“I attacked readers’ hearts with my writing, so readers have the right to attack my heart too.”
“Then it hurts you, Touji.”
“They’re attacking me so it hurts. Obviously it hurts. What are you talking about?”
Though I had already finished preparing myself and understanding it, so hearing criticism did not hurt all that much. It only stung, like getting an injection.
Because of that, rather than myself, I tended to worry more about other readers who would be startled when they saw words attacking me.
Like Riku was startled now.
I lifted a finger and explained.
“Riku. Think of the worst movie you’ve ever seen. Got it? To those people, that movie is the novel I wrote. Everyone’s tastes are different. It’s a natural phenomenon.”
“I wouldn’t talk like that even about that kind of movie.”
“People have different temperaments too.”
Besides, some of the criticism diagnosed my condition quite accurately.
Here was the interesting part. Surprisingly, accurate criticism did not help that much.
Because there was a strong possibility that it was already a problem I had recognized.
Still, it did not help much, but it did help.
Recognizing a problem again was more useful than one might think.
Leaving aside the fact that recognizing a problem and fixing it were two different issues.
At my words, Riku scratched his head, then sighed quietly.
“Touji, you really are unusual.”
“Riku. You know what?”
“What?”
“I know too.”
I answered with a smile, then soon started fiddling with my smartphone. I was going to continue ego searching.
Immediately afterward, Riku opened his mouth.
“Touji. You said criticism is a reader’s natural right, right?”
“That’s what I’ve been talking about this whole time. Did you doze off, Riku?”
“Then what’s that?”
“What is?”
I stared at Riku, who was saying something incomprehensible, with a frown.
Then Riku pointed at my smartphone and whispered.
“Why.”
“Yeah.”
“Why... are you taking screenshots of readers’ social media?”
Aha.
So that was what he meant.
Repeating what I had been doing, I answered.
“I’m taking screenshots so I can use them. What, did you think I was bored?”
“What are you using them for? A lawsuit?”
“For my writing. Seriously, get it together, Riku.”
“No. Forget the screenshots, why are you digging through readers’ social media? Are you a stalker?”
“I need to read the other person’s way of thinking to understand their tastes. That’s how I can analyze criticism correctly.”
I had said something extremely obvious, but Riku opened his mouth as if horrified.
I shook my head.
Sigh.
For us, this was a basic implant, but for Riku the popular kid, it seemed too early.
Who was “us”?
If I went into detail, it would sound like I was saying something bad, so—omitted.
—Sen Kyoya’s novels are all exactly my taste. No. More than that, every single one is a life-defining work for me. Maybe I’ve lived until now just to read Sen Kyoya’s novels.
After reading the post that appeared in my ego search carefully, I turned off my smartphone.
It was about time.
I should check the scenario.