How many people had ever made a woman cry?
For the record, I had.
And I did not mean Yukimura standing in front of me.
Was it from making a girlfriend cry?
No.
I would simply explain that it happened back when I was still working part-time jobs, before I started writing in earnest. Age-wise, I would have been around my first year of college.
And with that, I would end my turn.
Men could be divided into two broad categories.
Those who felt guilty when a woman cried, and those who did not.
For reference, I belonged to the latter.
I had felt nothing the last time I made a woman cry either.
Honestly, if the fault lay with the other person, a few tears were hardly going to make me feel guilty.
This situation was similar.
Yukimura had criticized my acting, and I had criticized Yukimura’s story.
It went both ways.
So there was no need for me to feel sorry just because Yukimura was crying.
Still, perhaps Yoshihiro’s efforts had successfully socialized me.
Words of comfort came out anyway.
“Are you okay?”
Yukimura was as strong-willed as she looked.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, but that was all. She did not break down sobbing.
After wiping them away, Yukimura quietly nodded.
The faint flush on her face made it clear she was embarrassed.
I understood.
If I cried just because someone called my writing garbage, I would want to jump off a rooftop afterward.
Creators tended to like putting on airs.
They did not want the other person to know their words had gotten to them.
Especially when those words pointed out a weakness.
Even if they cried, they wanted to do it alone in their room. No one wanted to shed tears in front of others and expose a vulnerability.
That was even more true for creators, who revealed their inner selves in one form or another.
They were already masturbating in public. Exposing their weaknesses on top of that would practically be a strip show.
Seriously.
Silence fell between Yukimura and me once again.
This time, unlike before, it was the uncomfortable kind.
I was uncomfortable because I wanted to leave, and Yukimura was uncomfortable because she was embarrassed.
What was I supposed to do with this?
Sniff.
Yukimura sniffled, then looked straight at me.
And spoke.
“I’m not trying to become a writer. I’m trying to become an actress.”
“That seems right.”
“It’s not that I have no interest in stories, but they’re not my specialty.”
“That also seems right.”
An aspiring actress.
It suited her.
More specifically, she looked the part.
But then had Yukimura cried over being told her story was bad even though she had never seriously studied writing?
Her reaction was the complete opposite of mine. I had not cared at all when she said my acting was bad.
I felt nothing when someone criticized a field I was not serious about.
Was it simply a difference in personality?
Or maybe a difference in age.
Perhaps I had been like that too when I was more sensitive.
Or perhaps not.
“Got it?”
“I understand.”
The correct answer here was to let it go without argument.
And I understood what she was actually trying to say.
This was not the full extent of how serious you were, right?
Understood perfectly.
Then show me how serious you really are on the big screen someday.
And with that, I would be—
“Where are you going?”
“To exercise.”
“Wait a second.”
After calming herself with a deep breath, Yukimura held out her hand.
I stared down at it for a moment, then took it.
“What are you doing?”
“Shaking hands.”
“Not that. Give me your number and messenger ID.”
“Why do you need my contact information?”
So this was another way to ask for someone’s contact information.
I had learned something new.
Yukimura frowned at my reaction.
“Obviously, I’m going to send you another video. Watch it and give me your thoughts again.”
“You’re quite persistent.”
“I hear that a lot.”
I ran simulations of what would happen if I refused to give her my messenger ID, and what would happen if I gave her a fake one.
Then I obediently gave her the real thing.
It was the fastest way to end this.
[Yukimura Mai]
Testing.
A message arrived.
Apparently, she was checking whether the ID I had given her was real.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
“I saw it.”
“I’ll send you the video when I get home, so wait for it.”
With that, Yukimura left.
I stood there blankly watching her retreating figure, then put my earphones back in.
Finally over.
Time to finish my run.
***
The restaurant Saito took me to was an Italian place near the family home.
“Mr. Saito. Over here.”
The woman Saito was going to marry had a refined, intellectual air.
Her name was Mochizuki Yuna. She was a family-law attorney, which gave me a very strange feeling considering Saito’s past behavior.
Hoping he would avoid getting divorced this time, I glanced at the girl sitting beside Yuna.
Noticing my gaze, Yuna took the girl’s hand.
“Shiori. You should say hello.”
“…Hello.”
The girl’s name was Mochizuki Shiori.
Yuna’s daughter.
Golden hair fell across her forehead.
Blue eyes peered cautiously at me from between the strands, and her introverted nature was already obvious.
Yuna was an ordinary Japanese woman, so had Shiori inherited those traits from her biological father?
There was a strong scent of complicated family history here.
Since Shiori used Yuna’s surname, it was possible to guess that things had ended badly with her biological father, but…
This was not a subject I particularly wanted to dig into.
I stopped thinking about it.
Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I took a sip of water.
Then Yuna spoke to me.
“I heard you live in a rather unusual way, Touji.”
I looked at Saito.
He raised both hands slightly to indicate that he had not said much.
Even if this was a remarriage, it did not diminish the fact that they were becoming husband and wife.
So it was perfectly natural for him to explain the family situation to the woman he intended to marry.
Spouses were people who lived together in the same home, which meant there were many things they needed to disclose to each other beforehand.
I answered calmly.
“I rented an apartment near the high school I’ll be attending. I’m planning to commute from there.”
“Oh, I heard that much. I meant that you work separately, don’t you? What kind of work do you do?”
I looked at Saito again.
This time, the meaning behind my gaze was slightly different.
Perhaps he understood, because Saito shrugged.
“It’s your work, right? It would be a little strange for me to go around telling people all the details.”
Saito’s second good quality.
An ordinary parent would have told Yuna that I was a writer, but Saito had not.
And this was not some random person he had met on the street. She was the woman he was going to marry.
Honestly, telling her would have been more natural.
This was all because Saito treated me as an equal individual.
He treated me so equally that he had abandoned more than half of his role as a parent, but still.
I did not go around announcing that I was a writer.
As a result, very few people knew.
A handful of fellow writers, Yoshihiro and a few people at the publishing company, and Saito.
That was about everyone who knew I wrote for a living.
At one point, the publisher had proposed publicly revealing my identity.
They wanted to use the fact that I was only an elementary school student writing novels as a selling point.
As you could probably guess from how few people knew, the plan fell apart quickly.
I rejected the proposal immediately.
Why had I turned it down so decisively?
There had been several reasons, but none of them mattered much now.
So I would simply say this.
Had I known my next four works would fail in a row, I might as well have made some money as a genius elementary-school novelist.
Anyway.
I did not go around telling people I was a writer, but I was not so committed to secrecy that I would refuse to answer when asked.
At the very least, I was willing to tell the woman Saito was marrying.
“I write novels.”
“Novels?”
Yuna looked slightly surprised.
She had probably heard that I supported myself. Saito was not the sort of person who hid his shortcomings.
If I could make a living from writing novels, that meant they sold reasonably well.
The fact that a high-school student wrote such novels appeared to surprise her considerably.
And this was already high school.
Had I fully exploited my age back in elementary school, I could have retired from life by now—
No, that was a joke too.
Even if I had revealed myself back then, how much difference could it really have made?
At most, I would have earned four times as much as I did now.
…That was a large difference, was it not?
Had I fully exploited my age back in elementary school, I could have retired from life by now—
Clap.
Yuna brought her hands together.
“Oh my. Shiori loves novels too. Don’t you, Shiori?”
“…”
Startled, Shiori looked at me with wavering eyes.
She seemed to struggle with communicating with people.
In my former life, the whole situation could have been summarized with, “You’re an introvert, aren’t you?”
Still, Shiori was fortunate.
This was around the time the term socially awkward was starting to become popular in Japan.
Otherwise, she might have been written off as a complete shut-in.
“Shiori?”
“…I like novels.”
At Yuna’s gentle prompting, Shiori gathered her courage and voiced her opinion.
She had gone to the trouble of finding that courage.
It was only right that I help her.
I asked kindly,
“What kind of novels do you like, Shiori?”
“Recently, I thought was the most interesting…”
“That one is good. It uses its narrative devices well.”
I had read recently too.
That answer alone told me what kind of novels Shiori liked.
She probably was not particularly fond of light novels.
Maybe not.
I read this and that and everything else, so Shiori could be the same kind of reader.
Usually, though, people were not.
“…Narrative devices?”
“I mean it draws you in well.”
What I really wanted to say was that it was good at brainwashing the reader, but I held back because that obviously would not sound like praise.
It was one of the highest compliments I could give.
Most people simply did not understand that.
“I see…”
Shiori made a complicated sound.
It was the reaction of someone thinking, I understand what you mean, but why mention that when there are so many other good things about it?
I was used to that response.
I drank a glass of water and said,
“Should we get going?”