Night fell, and Tokyo's neon signs flickered on one after another.
In an izakaya on the back street behind the Maruzen Marunouchi Bookstore, the wooden door slid open with a bright jingle of its bell.
Kosaka Akane greeted the proprietress like the regular she was and asked for the private room at the back.
"I am absolutely dead on my feet today."
She dropped into a seat and set her bag down beside her.
"It's been ages since I've seen a crowd like that."
Sayuri took off her coat, hung it up, and answered with a smile.
"But you had a great time, didn't you, Kosaka-senpai?"
"Fun is fun, but my legs are genuinely killing me."
"Right? We were the ones standing in that line, after all."
Machida Sonoko rubbed her calves.
"The two of us queued for almost two hours. You lot had it easy, sitting there waiting for us."
Since they were both senpai, and since they really had done all the heavy lifting, the other girls only laughed and let it pass.
But Sayuri, who was closest to them and had never once known when to back down, pressed on.
"Holding the seats mattered too, you know."
"Otherwise there wouldn't have been anywhere to sit at all."
"Besides, you two were the ones who fought over who got to queue and told us to go grab a table first."
"Well, that's true enough."
"We just wanted to see what kind of people were buying Kagami-kun's book."
Machida Sonoko rapped Sayuri on the forehead, then looked around at everyone with a grin.
"So? What was the verdict?" Yukinoshita Shizuku asked, curious.
She'd known there would be a crowd; there had still been a line outside when she arrived.
But she had missed the peak, and she wanted to know what the height of Tsushima Kagami's so-called phenomenon of a sales day had actually looked like.
"Every kind of person you can imagine."
Kosaka Akane held up a finger and ticked them off.
"Men and women, young and old, the whole spectrum."
"Office workers in suits, students with school bags, housewives who look like they've never touched literary fiction in their lives, and plenty of guys who were obviously manga otaku."
"I even heard some of them saying things like, 'Xuanyaye really does have a lot to answer for.'"
Shizuka Hiratsuka was lifting her drink at that moment and nearly choked on it.
Then she glanced awkwardly around the table.
She dabbed her mouth with a napkin and laughed, embarrassed.
"He really does have a lot to answer for."
Everyone shared a knowing laugh at that.
Machida Sonoko spread her hands and went on.
"They bought The Sound of Waves anyway. And they tore the wrapping off right there in the store and started reading. When they hit the diving-women section you could hear them muttering, 'Yep, that's Xuanyaye all right.'"
"Otaku will be otaku. That's the only part they care about," Sayuri said, laughing too.
Yukinoshita Shizuku sat in the corner, her juice untouched, her fingers tracing lightly over the cover of her copy of The Sound of Waves.
"Shizuku, what are you thinking about?" Shimizu Nayotake asked, tilting her head.
"Nothing."
Yukinoshita Shizuku came back to herself and smiled faintly.
"Only that Kagami was able to write a book like this. I'm happy for him."
"Listen to her."
Seika Ijichi leaned in from the other side.
"Why do you sound like somebody's mother?"
The table erupted.
Yukinoshita Shizuku didn't rise to it. She only lifted her glass and took a small sip, the smile at the corners of her eyes impossible to hide.
Just then the door of the private room slid open and Tsushima Kagami walked in.
He was still in the dark grey coat he'd worn all day, his hair mussed by the wind, a trace of exhaustion on his face.
"Sorry I'm late."
He crossed to Yukinoshita Shizuku, and she helped him out of his coat and hung it up as naturally as breathing.
Only then did he settle in at her side.
"Mr. Kobayashi was pushing to lock down the signing schedule, and Kodansha's people were there too. There was no getting out of it."
"A signing?"
Sayuri's eyes lit up.
"It's finally happening?"
Every head at the table turned toward him.
In all the years since he'd made his name, Tsushima Kagami had never once held a signing.
Complete unknowns held signings all the time.
For a heavyweight like him to keep putting one off was, by any measure, indefensible.
"Probably," he said, rubbing his temple.
"Mr. Kobayashi says it has to happen this time. He also says the venue needs to be twice the size of the last one or it won't hold everyone."
"Isn't that a good thing?"
"Then how come you don't look happy about it, senpai?"
"Because senpai's a lazybones, obviously."
Tsushima Kagami looked at Hiroi Kikuri and PA-ko, took a sip of Yukinoshita Shizuku's juice, and smiled.
"Kikuri and PA-ko. I should have known."
"You two saw right through me."
"Apparently Shinchosha and Kodansha want to co-host it across two days."
"Over a thousand books to sign, all told."
"Just thinking about it wears me out."
"Well, you are the great literary master Tsushima Kagami," Kosaka Akane said, smiling.
Tsushima Kagami looked at her, expressionless.
"If you want to mock me, senpai, just say so."
"Who's mocking you?"
Kosaka Akane was the picture of innocence.
"I meant every word. Do you know what The Sound of Waves sold today—"
"First-day sales of The Sound of Waves: over twelve hundred copies at a single store."
The room went quiet for a beat.
"Twelve hundred copies?"
Machida Sonoko sucked in a breath.
"In one day?"
"At one store. And that's with the restock never arriving all afternoon."
"Otherwise it probably would have been double that."
"Oh, and the newest issue of Shincho sold out completely too."
Kosaka Akane made a point of stressing that last part.
They had all known his book would be a hit, but hearing hard numbers turned something abstract into something sharp and concrete.
And they all understood what those numbers meant.
A single-volume release had to move at least five thousand copies before the publisher broke even.
Plenty of published authors couldn't manage that in a whole year.
If Tsushima Kagami moved over a thousand at one store in one day, how many were the bookstores large and small across the rest of the country selling between them?
Everyone broke into applause for him.
This time The Sound of Waves was wholesome and healing, and it was certain to break his own sales records all over again.
The man himself showed nothing. He simply picked up the menu and started flipping through it.
"Let's order. I'm hungry."
"Your reaction is way too flat!" Sayuri protested.
"So what am I supposed to do?"
Tsushima Kagami looked up at her.
"Leap out of my seat and cheer?"
"At least look a little pleased."
"I am pleased."
As the dishes started arriving, they ate and talked.
The conversation kept circling back to the day's spectacle.
Machida Sonoko gave a vivid account of the crush of people in the store, and Sayuri filled in the readers' reactions, especially what people had said about the scene where the two of them look at each other across the bonfire.
"Do you know what?"
Sayuri set down her chopsticks and looked at him seriously.
"A lot of people said that passage was unbelievably beautiful. Neither of them is wearing a stitch, and it doesn't feel the least bit indecent. If anything it feels holy."
Tsushima Kagami picked up a piece of fried chicken, chewed, swallowed, and only then answered, unhurried.
"Isn't that perfectly normal?"
"Normal, my foot."
Shizuka Hiratsuka cut in.
"You're a doujinshi artist. Holiness is not what your readers expect out of you."
"What's wrong with drawing doujinshi?"
Tsushima Kagami shot her a look.
"Does drawing doujinshi obligate a man to be lewd?"
As he said it, an artist named Endo Okito came to mind.
That man's linework was exquisite past describing.
Everyone who saw it called it beautiful, and not one of them felt so much as a flicker of desire.
On top of that his plots were weak and his storyboards a mess, borderline unreadable.
Which was why nobody called him Endo Okito anymore. They called him Endo, who can't get anybody off.
Though if the man stuck to illustration alone, he'd be the very best of the best.
Someday Kagami might imitate that style himself and give everyone a taste of something new.
"Fine, fine, who'd dare say otherwise?"
Shizuka Hiratsuka waved a hand, laughing.
"You are the reigning number one of pure love, after all."
At those words every girl at the table, mid-chew and mid-sentence, looked up, and their eyes swung onto Tsushima Kagami all at once.
A prickle of sweat ran down his back.
"Ahaha."
"Everyone eat up. Why are you all staring at me?"
Tsushima Kagami dropped his gaze and started shoveling food into his mouth.
They watched him squirm.
And then, in perfect unison, they all pressed their lips into the same small smile.
Then they looked at one another.
Something passed between them in those glances, silent and completely understood.
Finally every eye in the room settled on Yukinoshita Shizuku.
She froze.
Then ducked her head, looking a little guilty herself.
And kept piling food into Tsushima Kagami's bowl.
Every face around the table took on a look of total comprehension.
Kosaka Akane gave Sayuri a meaningful glance.
And Sayuri, as though changing the subject, launched into a string of other amusing stories.
The whole table dissolved into laughter.
When the laughter finally died away, Yukinoshita Shizuku spoke up.
"Kagami."
"You said once that you wanted to write a book that would make people feel it's good to be alive."
She looked at him, her gaze soft.
"Is The Sound of Waves that book?"
Everyone stopped again and turned to him.
Only Shimizu Nayotake, seated beside Shizuku, quietly lowered her hand from the table and slipped it into the shoulder bag whose four corners had gone pale with wear.
There was a copy of The Sound of Waves inside it too.
When she got back to the hospital that night, she meant to read it through again with her mother.
Tsushima Kagami looked around at them, then let his eyes drop to the plate in front of him.
"Probably."
"Probably?"
"Because I have no idea how it feels to anybody else."
He picked up his glass and swirled it, watching the juice tilt inside.
"All I can do is write what I want to write. Whether it makes anyone feel that being alive is good…"
He paused, then drained the glass in one swallow.
"That's for the readers to decide."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Anyone who reads Kagami's The Sound of Waves will believe life can get better."
"Because Kagami really is helping people."
Shimizu Nayotake said it out of nowhere.
Kosaka Akane laughed then too.
"That's true. Kagami's charitable foundation is properly up and running now."
The charity Mrs. Yukinoshita had founded at his request with the royalties from No Longer Human had until recently been a patchwork operation, staffed by people borrowed from the Kosaka family.
Now that her own project had finally wrapped and the payment had cleared, she had taken the foundation back in hand, and it had found its footing.
Having said it, Kosaka Akane clapped a hand over her mouth.
Then she looked at Shimizu Nayotake, sitting beside Shizuku.
She'd forgotten. Tsushima Kagami had been keeping all of this from Shimizu Nayotake.
But then she noticed that Shimizu Nayotake hadn't reacted in the slightest.
Her expression was the same as ever.
Akane glanced at Tsushima Kagami, then back at Shimizu Nayotake.
Shimizu Nayotake only smiled faintly and said nothing.
And Tsushima Kagami gave a small nod, meaning she had known for a long time.
The truth was that ever since the day Shimizu Nayotake overheard the others' plan in the manga club room,
she had been going back and forth over whether to tell him she already knew.
But she was afraid that saying it would cost him face.
Even though he was certainly not that sort of person.
He had worn himself out over all of it for her sake, after all. How could she not spare a thought for how he would feel?
And so the longer she put it off, the more she worried that speaking up now would make him think she'd been toying with him.
Which made it harder and harder to say at all.
But going on deceiving him didn't sit right with her either.
So while she agonized over it alone, Tsushima Kagami saw straight through her.
In the end she simply let it out.
He hadn't seemed particularly surprised by it.
But she left it there and asked nothing more.
She had never been a girl who liked asking why.
"It's going all right, I suppose."
Tsushima Kagami only gave a mild smile.
No Longer Human's sales had leveled off lately, but every fresh burst of publicity drove another wave of them.
Which kept the organization sitting on a comfortable cash flow.
For the moment its aid was limited to heart conditions.
In time he planned to open it up to other illnesses as well.
"That answer is such a pose."
Shizuka Hiratsuka broke the silence.
Tsushima Kagami nearly choked on his drink.
"You're obviously thrilled, and you insist on acting like you couldn't care less," she said, laughing.
"When are you going to grow out of that habit?"
Tsushima Kagami blinked and looked around at them all.
"Am I posing?"
They all nodded, grinning.
"I am not posing."
"You are."
"I'm not."
"Look at yourself right now. You're sulking like a grade-schooler."
Watching him bicker back and forth with the rest of them, Yukinoshita Shizuku raised a hand to cover her mouth and laughed softly.
Outside the window, Tokyo's night view glittered with neon beneath the dark.
It was late by the time the party broke up.
Kosaka Akane played her usual role of the dependable senpai, sending everyone home one by one in her family's car.
Which left only Tsushima Kagami and Yukinoshita Shizuku walking home side by side.
The night had turned cool, and the street was nearly empty.
Now and then a taxi swept past, trailing a soft rush of sound.
"You've been unusually quiet today."
Tsushima Kagami glanced at the girl beside him.
She turned her head to look at him.
"You noticed?"
"I'm not blind."
She smiled and didn't answer right away.
They walked in silence for a stretch before she spoke.
"I was thinking about what you'll turn into."
Tsushima Kagami frowned.
"Meaning?"
"Today's sales, all those professors' comments, the people lining up for the book. That's only the beginning."
They reached a crosswalk and stopped at the red light.
Yukinoshita Shizuku looked at the road ahead.
"More people will pay attention to you. More interviews, more events, more expectations."
"And then?"
"And then you'll be busier."
She stopped walking and turned to face him.
"Too busy to eat, maybe. Too busy for a very, very long time to sit in an izakaya with everyone the way you did tonight."
He stopped too and turned to face her.
The streetlight fell over them both, stretching their shadows long across the pavement.
"What are you worried about?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku looked at him, her lips moved, and in the end she said only one thing.
"Nothing."
He watched her for a few seconds, then reached out and flicked her forehead.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Stop overthinking it."
Tsushima Kagami shoved his hand back into his coat pocket and started walking again.
"However busy things get, there'll always be time to eat."
"Is that a promise?"
"Weren't you the one who said you didn't need promises?"
The moment he finished saying it, a look of pure bliss spread across his face.
"Why aren't you dodging?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku lifted her head and looked at him.
"Too gentle. There's no need to dodge."
She slid her foot off his shoe.
"Hmph."
Then, seeing the signal turn green, she started across.
"It counts."
Tsushima Kagami caught up with her.
"It counts, all right?"
She faltered a step, then stopped, and fell in beside him under the streetlamps.
She stole a glance at his profile.
The lamplight softened the line of his face, and the corners of his mouth were turned faintly up.
Yukinoshita Shizuku smiled too.
They walked on shoulder to shoulder, and neither of them spoke again.
The wind came in from far off, carrying the gentlest breath of the city.
They got home.
The steam in the bathroom hadn't cleared yet, thick with the scent of citrus.
Tsushima Kagami shut off the shower, water sliding down the line of his shoulder.
The bathroom wasn't large. With the two of them standing in it, it was exactly right.
An inch bigger and it would have felt empty, an inch smaller and it would have felt cramped.
Strangely, though, he had never once felt boxed in.
Perhaps because Yukinoshita Shizuku always fit herself against his side at precisely the right angle, as though she had been born to stand there.
In the days since, bathing together had become an understanding neither of them needed to name.
He had been the one to suggest it first.
One night he knocked on the bathroom door and asked through the steam whether she wanted help washing her back.
She was quiet in there for a few seconds, then pulled the door open and handed him the towel.
Her face gave nothing away, but the tips of her ears were red enough to bleed.
They had already done everything there was to do long before that.
And still bathing together felt like the first time all over again.
By now she had learned to press the towel into his hand before he even reached for it.
Then she'd turn around, baring a stretch of pale nape, and say it as casually as anything.
"My back, please."
Tsushima Kagami took the bath sponge, squeezed on the body wash, and worked up a practiced lather.
Her long hair was pinned up on top of her head; a few loose strands clung to the side of her neck, and beads of water traced the hollow of her spine downward.
His hands moved lightly, easily, with long habit behind them.
The sponge passed over Yukinoshita Shizuku's shoulder blades, circled the small of her back, tended to every inch.
"Here too."
She caught his hand and pressed it just below her left ribs.
He laughed and put a little more weight into his fingertips, working in slow circles.
Her body gave a small shiver, then went still again.
Neither of them spoke.
There was only the drip of water in the bathroom, and now and then the faint whisper of skin brushing skin.
They sank into that comfortable silence, the kind of ease only people who have lived together a long time ever manage.
Tsushima Kagami thought of a passage in The Sound of Waves about intimacy.
Editor Kobayashi had said to him at the time,
"Too restrained. Love like this doesn't exist in real life."
He'd disagreed then. He believed that pure accord of spirit was the highest form of romance.
It was only a novel, after all.
But standing here now, it struck him that maybe Editor Kobayashi had been right.
The way the two of them were at this very moment.
Yukinoshita Shizuku turned around all at once to face him.
The sponge slid across her chest, leaving a white trail of foam from her collarbone down to the center of her sternum.
Her eyes were startlingly bright through the steam, fixed straight on him.
"What is it?"
Tsushima Kagami stopped, curious.
She didn't answer.
She raised her hand and rested a fingertip lightly over his heart, feeling the strong beat under it.
Then she leaned in and buried her face in the hollow of his neck.
Her wet hair brushed his jaw.
Cool. Ticklish.
He went still for a heartbeat, then put his arms around her waist.
Her waist was very slender, her skin slick as silk.
He could feel her heartbeat braided into his own until he couldn't tell whose was whose.
"Ambushing me again?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku gave a small laugh against him, lips at his collarbone, breath warm.
"Am I not allowed?"
"Of course you're allowed."
Tsushima Kagami tightened his arms.
Once they had scrubbed each other's backs and rinsed the foam away, they climbed together into the tub, which was tiny and somehow not crowded at all, just right.
Enjoying the slickness of skin and the ease of a long soak.
They stayed in the water a while longer, until their fingertips wrinkled and the bath began to cool.
Tsushima Kagami had just pulled on his lounge pants and was toweling his hair.
Yukinoshita Shizuku stood beside the bed wrapped in a white bath towel, her hair still dripping.
"Dry your hair, or you'll catch a cold."
Tsushima Kagami said it without looking up.
She didn't move.
He was about to repeat himself when he saw her hands come up and take hold of the towel's edge.
Slowly, inch by inch, she drew it open, like a curtain being pulled back on a stage.
The towel slipped and pooled at her feet.
She simply stood there, holding nothing back, under his gaze.
The flush of the bath still lingered on her skin, and the drops falling from her hair rolled down the curves of her body.
"Kagami," Yukinoshita Shizuku said.
He stopped drying his hair, the towel draped over his shoulder, and looked at her.
She lifted her chin a little, the corner of her mouth curving up.
Something sly and something shy flickered through her eyes at once, and then she opened her arms.
Just like Hatsue in The Sound of Waves, she called the line out to him.
"Jump across, Kagami."
For a moment he could only stare.
He knew perfectly well where the scene came from.
In The Sound of Waves, Shinji and Hatsue stand bare before each other in the abandoned watchtower after the storm, andHatsue opens her arms to the young man and calls out that line."
It is the purest declaration of love the book has.
No admixture of desire in it, only the courage and the trust that flare up when two souls stand bare before each other.
He hadn't expected Yukinoshita Shizuku to be lying in wait for him with this.
Reading The Sound of Waves that afternoon had presumably handed her a whole new game to try.
She wasn't usually like this.
Tsushima Kagami looked into her eyes.
There was a tremor in them, almost too faint to catch, as though she were afraid he would refuse and equally afraid he would accept.
A fairly faithful reproduction, that. Women really are born actresses.
He laughed.
"All right."
Then he undid his own towel and tossed it aside.
Bare before her, as she was before him.
He took two steps toward her, and then jumped, lightly.
Yukinoshita Shizuku caught him.
Or rather, they caught each other.
Their bodies collided with a soft, muffled thud.
Tsushima Kagami's arms clamped shut and gathered her whole body against him.
Her hands locked around his waist, fingertips digging into the muscle of his back as if she were afraid he might run.
The instant their skin met, warmth surged in from a hundred points at once, like being swallowed by a gentle tide.
"Where did all this come from?"
Tsushima Kagami asked it low, his lips against the curve of her ear.
Yukinoshita Shizuku kept her face in his shoulder, the tip of her nose brushing the skin below his collarbone.
"I just wanted to see… whether it would be the way you wrote it in the book."
"Which way?"
"Feeling arises, and stops at propriety."
"Only pure love, no desire."
"And now?"
There was laughter in his voice.
"How is it?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku lifted her head from his shoulder, her eyes curving into two crescents.
Her cheeks were faintly pink, whether from the leftover heat of the bath or from something else entirely.
She looked up at him, clear-eyed and mischievous, like a cat that had stolen a fish.
"So it turns out… you can't trust what's written in books."
Her lashes fluttered. She dropped her voice low and deliberately drew out the end of the sentence.
"Because… you're pressing against me."
His instinct was to argue, but his body was more honest than words.
Any defense would have been hollow.
So he laughed instead, tightened his arms, and pulled her flush against him.
"You're one to talk."
His voice dropped, tender in a way that carried a warning.
"You've gone and gotten wet on me again."
Yukinoshita Shizuku's face flamed, red spreading all the way to the tips of her ears.
She pressed her lips together, saying nothing, and buried her face in his chest again.
But her finger went on drawing circles across his back.
Tsushima Kagami bent his head, his lips grazing her temple, then her brow, and finally coming to rest at the corner of her eye.
He felt her lashes sweep lightly across his mouth.
"Again?"
She didn't answer, but the arms around his waist tightened a fraction.
It could have been consent, or it could have been don't ask.
He scooped her up crosswise. She gave a small cry and caught his neck on instinct.
He carried her toward the bed.
"Ring, ring, ring…"
The phone.
Tsushima Kagami started to set her down so he could answer it.
Only to find that Yukinoshita Shizuku had latched on like a koala and had no intention whatsoever of letting go.
So he had no choice but to walk out to the living room with her still hanging off him and pick up the phone.
One look at the number, and he raised an eyebrow at the girl attached to his front.
It was his mother.
The moment she heard that, Yukinoshita Shizuku sprang off him and stood at attention beside him, prim and proper.
"Answer it, quick."
Then she leaned her ear in toward the receiver.
Tsushima Kagami picked up.
"Hello, Mother."
His voice had returned to its usual steadiness.
Mrs. Yukinoshita's gentle voice came through the line, with a trace of fatigue behind it from a long day's work.
She started with small talk, asking how he and Shizuku had been feeling.
Whether they were eating on time. The temperature swings between morning and night in Tokyo, so dress warmly.
The fixed segment that opened every one of their calls.
He answered each question in turn, brief and respectful.
Then Mrs. Yukinoshita changed course and got to the point.
"Someone from the Agency for Cultural Affairs contacted me today."
"They want to lead production on a public-service film, and they asked for you by name to write the screenplay."
"The Agency for Cultural Affairs?"
Tsushima Kagami repeated it, his mind already moving fast.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs was an organ under Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Though the reorganization hadn't happened yet, of course. For now it was still simply the Ministry of Education.
It handled the administration of matters relating to culture and the arts.
To be named by the Agency meant this was no longer a purely commercial collaboration.
It was a public cultural project carrying an official endorsement.
"That's right," Mrs. Yukinoshita went on.
"They said our public-welfare organization in Tokyo could come on board under its own name as well."
"Position, terms, all of it has been settled. You won't be shortchanged."
"What they're missing is a script. Everything else is more or less ready."
"If you're willing, they'll shoot exactly what you write."
Mrs. Yukinoshita paused, then said slowly,
"Kagami, you don't have to answer right away."
"Agency projects come with a great many rules and restrictions. If you'd rather not take it, I'll decline for you."
Mrs. Yukinoshita was always like this.
She never forced him into anything. The choice was always left with him.
But she never hid her own read on a situation either.
If she thought something would do him good, she laid the advantages and disadvantages out plainly in front of him and let him decide for himself.
"What do you think, Mother?"
Tsushima Kagami asked.
Two seconds of quiet on the line, then a soft sigh from Mrs. Yukinoshita with a smile behind it.
"I think… it's a good opportunity."
"A public-service film led by the Agency for Cultural Affairs won't lack for publicity."
"If you genuinely want to grow the organization in Tokyo, working with the Agency this once would do enormous good for our relief association and for you personally."
"Then I'll take it."
Tsushima Kagami barely hesitated.
"You don't want to think it over?"
"No need."
"Reply for me, please. Tell them I'll cooperate fully."
Mrs. Yukinoshita made a soft sound of assent on the other end.
"Then it's settled."
"As for the details, they're holding a banquet next week. I'll go with you."
"All right."
"Oh, and… is Shizuku next to you?"
Tsushima Kagami turned his head to look at the girl draped over his shoulder.
She was listening with her ears pricked, and the moment she caught his glance,
Yukinoshita Shizuku waved her hands frantically.
Tsushima Kagami smiled.
"She is."
Yukinoshita Shizuku bit his shoulder in indignation.
"Let me have a word with her, then."
He handed the phone over, and she took it and put it to her ear.
Tsushima Kagami used the chance to sit down on the edge of the bed, and heard her say, in a voice impossibly meek,
"Hello, Mama."
A few sentences in, Yukinoshita Shizuku shoved him out of her room.
Then she lay back down on the bed, wrapped herself in the covers, and chatted with her mother about ordinary things.
A week later.
Chinzanso sits on a rise in Mejirodai, Bunkyo Ward, one of the rare pockets of quiet inside the noise of the city.
The grounds are vast, and the strolling pond garden is planted thick with old trees. They say the ones over a century old alone number in the hundreds.
Tsushima Kagami stood at the entrance and looked up at the old estate.
He was wearing a dark grey three-piece suit that Mrs. Yukinoshita had specially had sent up from Kyoto the week before.
The fabric was fine worsted wool, the cut close, the shoulder line clean. The tie was a steady navy, held by a silver clip.
He rarely dressed this formally, and when he adjusted his cuffs in the car's mirror, the man reflected there looked almost like a stranger.
"Ready?"
Mrs. Yukinoshita's voice came from behind him.
Tsushima Kagami turned around.
She had worn a kurotomesode today, the highest formal grade of kimono, the kind worn only for occasions like this.
Over the black ground, from shoulder to hem, ran a fine pattern of silver orchid grass and white cranes, understated and unmistakably luxurious.
Her hair was swept up high, baring a length of slender nape, and her skin was pale enough that her real age was impossible to guess.
Mrs. Yukinoshita came over and reached up to straighten his tie knot.
"There's no need to be nervous later."
She lowered her hand and looked at him calmly.
"Just stay beside me, Kagami. I'll handle the important people."
Tsushima Kagami nodded.
He understood what she meant.
At an event like this she was a buffer, and a translator.
She turned the adults' circumlocutions, that business language dense with subtext, into something he could actually follow.
It cost her a tremendous amount of energy.
And she had known for a long time that what Tsushima Kagami hated most in the world was socializing.
The two of them walked into Chinzanso side by side.
The banquet hall was a great tatami room, divided into pleasing sections by shoji screens.
In one corner hung a scroll bearing four characters — 和敬清寂 (harmony, respect, purity, tranquility).
The kaiseki appetizers had already been laid out along the low rectangular tables, the lacquerware glowing dully under the lights.
The guests arrived one after another.
First came the president of Toho, a man in his fifties.
When he smiled his eyes narrowed to slits, and he seemed very amiable.
But Tsushima Kagami noticed that his gaze never once left the reactions of the people around him.
He came over and exchanged a few pleasantries with Mrs. Yukinoshita.
Then he turned to Tsushima Kagami and offered his card with both hands.
"Tsushima-sensei. Your reputation precedes you."
His voice was loud and warm.
"I've read every one of your works. To meet you in person is the honor of a lifetime."
Tsushima Kagami accepted the card with both hands and bowed slightly.
"You're too kind. The honor is mine."
It was the stock phrase Mrs. Yukinoshita had taught him.
Neither servile nor arrogant, neither cold nor overeager.
Modest to exactly the right degree, without tipping over into insincerity.
The presidents of Toei and Shochiku arrived in turn, and the pattern of the pleasantries scarcely varied.
First an expression of admiration for his work, then the probe: we hope for a chance to work together.
And finally the sign-off: please look kindly on us going forward.
Tsushima Kagami handled them one after another, the correct smile never leaving his face.
But inside his head he was rapidly filing away every name, every title, every quirk of speech.
Mrs. Yukinoshita stayed at his side throughout, and whenever a conversation ran past the limits of his experience,
she picked up the thread without seeming to do anything at all.
When someone floated too blunt an offer of collaboration, she would smile and say that our Kagami is still young and has a great deal left to learn.
It turned the probe aside and left the other party's dignity entirely intact.
Watching from beside her, admiration welled up in him all over again.
Every sentence in these contests between adults was carefully calculated, and every smile pointed somewhere.
He might carry an adult's soul, but in his last life he'd been an antisocial slacker.
Straight out of school and straight back into a school to work, with essentially no experience dealing with important people.
The most powerful figure at his school had been a principal who'd been his own homeroom teacher back in high school and a friend besides. Not a scrap of pressure there.
And now here he was, like a child who had only just learned to walk, led by the hand by Mrs. Yukinoshita,
inching along a steel cable strung between skyscrapers.
The dinner began in courtesies and ended in them.
The kaiseki was exquisite, and Tsushima Kagami barely tasted any of it.
Only when the last of the sweets had been cleared and the tea was brought out
did the Commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs clear his throat and get down to business.
"Thank you all for taking the time to be here today."
The Commissioner was a man in his sixties, his hair gone grey, his voice hoarse but by no means weak.
"I've asked you all here to talk about the public-service film."
His assistant passed a document forward and set it in the middle of the low table.
Tsushima Kagami glanced at it. The cover was printed with the words "Production Committee."
Below that ran a list of company names.
Toho, Toei, Shochiku, along with several publicity firms and other supporting sponsors.
"The Agency has been preparing this project for over half a year now," the Commissioner continued.
"The theme is public awareness of leukemia."
"Our aim is simple. We want to use film to help more people understand the disease."
"To understand the real circumstances of patients and their families, and to move society toward paying attention to them and supporting them."
He paused and looked around at everyone seated there.
"The funding is now in place."
"The production committee has been formed, and all three chains, Toho, Toei and Shochiku, are willing to give it prime screening slots."
"The crew is essentially set as well. For director we intend to ask Director Ishii. His documentary Memories of Life won international awards, and his style is measured and restrained, which suits this material very well."
"The one thing we still lack is a script."
Every eye in the room turned to Tsushima Kagami.
The Commissioner looked at him too, and in his gaze there was appraisal, and expectation, and a thread of uncertainty.
Tsushima Kagami was very young, after all, and this was a public project that could not afford a misstep.
If several of the higher-ups at the Ministry hadn't named him specifically, the Commissioner would never have dared to invite the literary star of the moment.
"Mr. Tsushima."
Whatever reservations he held, the Commissioner's tone stayed as mild as a spring breeze.
"We believe you are capable of this."
"I watch The White Tower every week myself, after all."
"But a film script and a television script are not quite the same thing."
"If it isn't a good fit, we won't press you."
"So we would like to hear your thoughts."
Tsushima Kagami said nothing.
He didn't answer at once.
He was thinking.
Leukemia.
The instant that word dropped into his mind, a story surfaced with it.
No, not a story. A title.
Crying Out Love in the Center of the World.
It was Katayama Kyoichi's novel, about a man looking back on his first love in high school.
The heroine develops leukemia, and in the last stretch of her life the hero spends days with her that neither of them will ever forget.
At the end of the story, he carries her ashes to Australia, the place she had always wanted to go.
And there, at the center of the world, before the great rock of Uluru, he finishes saying goodbye to her.
It isn't a complicated story. You could even call it a very simple one.
But the reason it moved countless people is that it touches an eternal question.
When we face a loss that can never be undone, what can love actually do?
"Mr. Tsushima?"
Getting no answer, the Commissioner called his name again.
Tsushima Kagami came back to himself.
He raised his eyes, then bowed slightly.
"I believe I already have my inspiration."
"I'll give it everything I have."
He paused, then added,
"You'll have a complete script within a week."
The hall was quiet for a beat, and then a low murmur ran through it.
Producing a film script in a week would be a serious challenge even for a seasoned screenwriter.
Because he already had his answer.
Mrs. Yukinoshita turned her head to look at him. There was a question in her eyes, and worry, but more than either of those, there was trust.
It was nearly ten o'clock by the time the banquet ended.
Tsushima Kagami followed Mrs. Yukinoshita out of Chinzanso.
"Tired?"
Mrs. Yukinoshita asked.
Tsushima Kagami rubbed the space between his brows.
"More tiring than writing novels."
"I really do admire you, Mother, facing this sort of thing all the time."
Mrs. Yukinoshita gave a soft laugh.
The car was already waiting at the entrance.
The driver opened the doors for them, and the two of them got into the back seat.
The car drove on through the dark, heading home.
Downstairs, they went up one behind the other, and Tsushima Kagami took out his key and opened the door.
The living room light was still on.
Yukinoshita Shizuku was curled up on the sofa under a thin blanket.
The television was on with the volume turned all the way down, some variety show, a group of people laughing extravagantly on screen.
At the sound of the door she opened her eyes at once and sat up.
Mrs. Yukinoshita came in from the entryway, and mother and daughter exchanged a look.
Whatever passed between them took effect immediately. Yukinoshita Shizuku's expression turned several degrees more demure.
She stood up and took her mother's bag.
"Mama, I've made up your room, and I put an extra quilt on the bed."
"Good."
Once mother and daughter had both bathed,
Mrs. Yukinoshita stroked her daughter's hair, then looked over at Tsushima Kagami.
"Kagami, you should get some rest early too."
"The script can wait until tomorrow."
"Yes, Mother. Good night."
"Good night."
Mrs. Yukinoshita and Yukinoshita Shizuku went into the bedroom, and the door closed softly behind them.
Tsushima Kagami went to take a shower afterward.
Once he'd changed into pajamas, he didn't go straight to bed.
Instead he went to the desk and took out his fountain pen and his manuscript paper.
And wrote out the title first.
Crying Out Love in the Center of the World.
The novel had been adapted into both a television drama and a film in '04.
Of the two, the drama was probably the version more people had seen.
Each had its strengths and its weaknesses.
And now Tsushima Kagami dredged all of it up out of memory: the film, the drama, even the condensed recap videos he'd once watched in a single sitting.
This time he intended to fuse the drama and the film together, taking the best of each and shoring up what the other lacked.
____
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