Gaston was the first to come back to himself.
He slowly straightened up, his eyes still fixed on those two lines of text.
His lips moved faintly, as if silently savoring the taste of each character.
Kokkyō no nagai tonneru wo nukeru to yukiguni de atta.
He let out a soft, sudden laugh, then looked over at Kobayashi Tomoaki.
"Mr. Kobayashi."
"Mind if I smoke?"
Kobayashi Tomoaki didn't answer.
He was still staring at the manuscript page, utterly motionless.
Gaston waited a moment, watching as Kobayashi Tomoaki seemed unable to pull himself out of the text.
So he simply reached into his jacket's inner pocket, pulled out a pack of Gitanes, put one between his lips, and fished out a lighter.
With a click, a flame leapt up.
The small flame finally drew Kobayashi Tomoaki's attention back.
He glanced at Gaston. Normally he'd have said no smoking in the office.
But this time he just nodded, and let his gaze drift back to the manuscript.
Gaston took a deep drag, smoke curling slowly out of his nostrils and dissolving into the air.
He narrowed his eyes, peering back through the thin haze at those lines of text.
He tried translating the words on the page into French himself.
"Le train sortit du long tunnel. Au loin, la neige couvrait tout."
When he finished reading it aloud, he shook his head.
"No. That's not it."
He took another drag, as if using the nicotine to help organize his thoughts.
The original said, 'Through the tunnel, and it was the snow country.' His own attempt had become: 'The train emerged from the long tunnel, and in the distance, snow covered everything.'
He'd added a subject, dropped 'Yoru no soko ga shiroku natta' entirely, and swapped 'the signal station' for 'the distance.'
He was helping the reader understand. Helping the reader imagine.
But Mr. Tsushima... hadn't helped the reader with anything at all.
He'd simply set the image down and left it there.
Had the train come out of the tunnel?
Unsaid.
Who was watching?
Also unsaid.
Was it a stretch of snow country, or a single snow country?
Still unsaid.
Gaston stubbed his cigarette out in a teacup, a faint hiss rising from it.
Then the second line: 'Yoru no soko ga shiroku natta.'
Did night have a bottom?
How could night 'turn white'?
And yet, as you read, an image formed naturally in your mind.
You're standing at the bottom of the night, looking up, and the sky is black.
But the snow beneath your feet casts the whole night sky white.
The prose was elegant and beautiful, its imagery rich with a sense of empty space.
He turned to Tsushima Kagami, something almost reverent in his eyes.
In forty characters, there was a tunnel, snow, night, a signal station, a train.
There was space, light, temperature, sound.
And an 'I.'
An 'I' that never once appeared.
Who passed through the tunnel?
'I' did.
Who saw the bottom of night turn white?
'I' did.
Who stopped at the signal station?
'I' again.
And yet 'I' never once showed up.
Not a single 'watashi wa' in the whole passage.
Gaston laid out, for both Kobayashi Tomoaki and Tsushima Kagami, everything he felt about this brief forty-character opening.
He drew a deep breath and spoke, his tone full of admiration.
"So this is Japanese literature."
"Hiding the subject. Hiding the emotion. Burying everything beneath that thin layer of snow."
"And then leaving the reader to dig out the meaning buried within, on their own."
Kobayashi Tomoaki hadn't said a word this whole time.
He'd simply listened to Gaston's analysis.
It was as if someone had taken the vague, wordless feeling he'd always sensed and put it into the most precise language imaginable.
And that someone was a Frenchman, no less.
Having finished that long speech, Gaston sank back into the sofa as if the effort had drained him, then picked up his wine glass and took a long swallow.
He glanced at Kobayashi Tomoaki, and finding him still silent, tilted his head.
"Mr. Kobayashi?"
"What do you think?"
Kobayashi Tomoaki was quiet for a long moment before he finally spoke.
"What catches my attention most..."
Kobayashi Tomoaki went on slowly.
"...is 'Shingōjo ni kisha ga tomatta.'"
"Oh?"
Gaston raised an eyebrow.
"The first two lines — 'Kokkyō no nagai tonneru wo nukeru to yukiguni de atta' and 'Yoru no soko ga shiroku natta' — both describe a kind of 'state.'"
"A shift in space, a change in light — like a painting slowly unfurling."
"The subject is invisible, or rather — the subject is the entire world."
"And then, in the third line, a subject finally appears: 'kisha' — the train."
"A concrete, steam-puffing train, stopped beside a concrete signal station."
He paused, as if savoring his own words.
"From the infinite to the finite. From the abstract to the concrete. From the space between heaven and earth to a room you can actually walk into."
"That sense of contraction..."
Kobayashi Tomoaki found, at this point, that words suddenly failed him.
His fingers tightened and loosened around the stem of his wine glass, as if trying to catch hold of something.
"That sense of contraction — it's like the functional harmony of Western classical music, chord group after chord group building, moving from growing dissonance toward eventual resolution into consonance."
He'd finally found an imperfect metaphor.
"From the subdominant, to the dominant, to the dominant seventh, and finally resolving back to the tonic."
Gaston listened and nodded emphatically.
"You're exactly right, Mr. Kobayashi."
"And what's more, this contraction never feels abrupt — it feels utterly natural."
"Because at the end of the tunnel there's snow, the snow turns the night white, within that white light stands a signal station, and before the signal station a train has stopped."
"It looks like a chain of cause and effect."
"But it isn't the logical causality people usually mean — it's a causality of poetry."
"Each word invites you into the next, and you never even notice you've been invited."
"That's true — but there's one more thing you seem to have missed, Mr. Gaston."
Kobayashi Tomoaki said, looking at Gaston.
Gaston blinked.
"What is it?"
Kobayashi Tomoaki turned to face him.
"Kokkyō."
Curiosity flickered across Gaston's face.
Kobayashi Tomoaki glanced over at Tsushima Kagami, who had set down his pen and was taking a curious sip of wine, brow furrowing.
Then he tapped his index finger lightly on the word 'kokkyō' on the manuscript page.
"'Kokkyō.'"
He repeated it.
"Not 'mountain.' Not 'pass.' Not 'prefectural border.'"
"But 'kokkyō' — a national border."
He looked up at Tsushima Kagami.
Tsushima Kagami had already set down the wine and picked up the bowl of tea, gone cold long ago.
He was drinking it in small sips, almost like rinsing his mouth.
"Kagami."
"When you wrote 'kokkyō,' what were you trying to say?"
Tsushima Kagami set down the tea bowl and looked up at Kobayashi Tomoaki.
The two of them exchanged a glance.
Tsushima Kagami didn't answer.
He just smiled, faintly.
But Kobayashi Tomoaki, as if he'd just confirmed something, smiled right back.
Gaston clearly picked up on it too — that this word 'kokkyō' might be the single most important part of the opening.
So he turned to the two of them.
"So what does this 'kokkyō' represent, then?"
Kobayashi Tomoaki smiled faintly too, then looked toward Tsushima Kagami.
"I'll let Kagami explain it himself."
Tsushima Kagami set down the tea bowl and turned to Gaston.
"Mr. Gaston, have you ever heard of Yuzawa, in Minamiuonuma District, Niigata Prefecture?"
Gaston frowned, seeming to think it over, then answered uncertainly.
"I've never been there myself, but I think my old university roommate — the one hosting me here these past few days — mentioned it once. Some kind of resort area with hot springs and skiing?"
He looked between Tsushima Kagami and Kobayashi Tomoaki.
Tsushima Kagami and Kobayashi Tomoaki chuckled and nodded.
Then Kobayashi Tomoaki suddenly spoke up.
"Since you love Japanese literature, Mr. Gaston, you must know how much the Japanese revere the old ways."
Gaston nodded lightly.
He knew that much of Japanese culture had originally been borrowed from its neighbor, yet under the influence of its own folklore, culture, and history, it had grown into something distinctly its own.
The Japanese even took pride in packaging it into dramas, films, anime, manga, and novels, exporting it to the world and shaping how people saw them.
Not only that — these past few days he'd watched, right in the middle of a modern city, plenty of people still stepping out in kimono as everyday wear.
It said everything about how deeply the Japanese cherished the old.
So what did any of that have to do with 'kokkyō'?
Gaston couldn't stand the two of them talking in riddles any longer.
So he said, bluntly.
"Mr. Tsushima, please, stop making me guess. Just tell me."
At that, Tsushima Kagami continued.
What 'kokkyō' referred to was the prefectural border between Niigata and Gunma.
Because in ancient times, that stretch of land belonged to Echigo Province on one side and Kōzuke Province on the other.
The Mikuni Mountains lay right along that border, which was why the word 'kokkyō' — 'national border' — was used.
The character for 'nation' was chosen deliberately, to give the line an antique flavor.
Kobayashi Tomoaki, hearing this, wore an expression of 'just as I thought,' and smiled knowingly.
Gaston, brow furrowed, murmured to himself, turning over Tsushima Kagami's explanation.
Then his frown eased, replaced by sudden understanding.
"Isn't this what they call drawing on classical allusion?"
Both Tsushima Kagami and Kobayashi Tomoaki nodded and smiled.
Having finally tasted the deeper meaning, Gaston felt as if enlightenment had struck him all at once, and clapped his hands together in satisfaction.
"So — what's this work going to be called?"
Only now did Gaston remember the novel still had no title.
He had no idea whether Tsushima Kagami had already decided on one.
Kobayashi Tomoaki looked over, curious too.
Tsushima Kagami, without hesitation, pointed at the two characters 'yuki' and 'guni' — snow and country — on the manuscript page.
"Snow Country."
Tsushima Kagami said it plainly.
"Brilliant!"
Both Gaston's and Kobayashi Tomoaki's eyes lit up — there could be no title more fitting, more evocative than this.
In his past life, Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country had swept through Japan and gone on to sell around the world.
Beyond its portrayal of a beautiful love story, and its underlying meditation on the Eastern philosophy of 'nothingness,'
it had also boldly fused in Western techniques.
He'd made heavy use of stream-of-consciousness and other modern methods, letting the narrative drift between the real and the unreal.
It presented a literary mode utterly unlike the twisting plots and mounting suspense of Western novels, yet no less captivating.
It preserved the mono no aware undertone of Japanese aesthetics, while also letting readers feel, for the first time, the profound stillness of yūgen in written words.
And the very first line's antique word 'kokkyō' had seized readers' attention from the opening moment.
Having finally finished dissecting the layers beneath those few dozen characters, the two of them turned, without meaning to, toward Tsushima Kagami at the same time.
Tsushima Kagami sat sprawled in the wide leather swivel chair, his posture far too relaxed for someone who'd just been pressured into writing an opening.
Kobayashi Tomoaki waited a few seconds, and when Kagami said nothing, couldn't help speaking up.
"Kagami."
"Hm?"
"You don't have anything else to add?"
Only then did Tsushima Kagami glance at Kobayashi Tomoaki, then at Gaston.
He thought for a moment, then said with a smile.
"Don't you two think it's getting dark out?"
Kobayashi Tomoaki blinked, and reflexively turned to look out the window.
Sure enough, the western skyline had already taken on a thin wash of gold.
"So..."
Tsushima Kagami rose from his chair, gathering the manuscript pages and pushing them aside.
"Weren't we going to that izakaya?"
"I'm already a little hungry."
Gaston laughed at that.
"Mr. Tsushima, is this you inviting us to an izakaya?"
"It's not an invitation. It's a notice."
Tsushima Kagami picked up the jacket draped over the back of his chair.
"As the adults here, who just forced me to write the opening of a new novel — obviously, this meal's on you two."
"Fine."
Kobayashi Tomoaki laughed and picked up his own coat from the rack nearby.
Once he had it on, he straightened his collar.
Only then did he turn to face Tsushima Kagami and Gaston.
"One of you is a guest from far away. The other's a minor."
"I suppose I'll be the one paying, then."
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go."
Gaston led the way, his backpack hung with anime merchandise, a paper bag stuffed with more of it in hand.
His steps were light and brisk, like a student on a school trip.
"I heard there's a great izakaya nearby! Famous for their skewers and yuzu sake."
The three of them filed out of the editor-in-chief's office.
The moment the izakaya's door slid open, they were met with a mix of chatter and the clink of glasses.
Gaston practically charged in, pointing toward a table in the far corner the instant he stepped through the door.
"There! That one's open!"
Kobayashi Tomoaki followed behind, glancing back at Tsushima Kagami just as he was about to step in.
There was a faint smile on the young man's face too.
Kobayashi Tomoaki looked away and strode toward the table.
It was only then that something suddenly occurred to Kobayashi Tomoaki.
Today the contract had been signed, the new work agreed upon, the opening read.
But...
"Kagami."
Kobayashi Tomoaki looked over at Tsushima Kagami beside him.
"Hm?"
"What kind of story do you actually plan on writing?"
Tsushima Kagami sat down across from him, taking off his jacket and draping it over the empty chair beside him.
The owner brought over three glasses of ice water, and Gaston picked his up and drank down a large gulp.
Tsushima Kagami just turned his glass a couple of times in his hand.
Then, smiling, he kept them in suspense.
"Mr. Kobayashi, since you've read the opening — why not take a guess?"
Tsushima Kagami said, turning the question back on him with a smile.
Kobayashi Tomoaki blinked.
He had, indeed, read the opening and picked apart those sentences, and he felt he understood that sense of contraction — from the infinite to the finite, from heaven and earth down to the human world.
But.
How was he supposed to guess an entire novel's contents from a few dozen opening characters?
He wanted to know what came next more with every passing minute.
He recalled Kagami saying he already had a finished draft.
Maybe he should just shamelessly offer to walk Kagami home later, drop in as a guest, and help touch up the manuscript while he was at it?
Right as Kobayashi Tomoaki was still itching with curiosity,
the drinks they'd ordered arrived first.
Gaston raised his glass of cold beer and clinked it toward the other two.
"All right, Mr. Kobayashi — let's drink first."
Kobayashi Tomoaki looked at Gaston, exasperated by how carefree he was.
By rights, this French client should have been the one most anxious, most curious, about Tsushima Kagami's manuscript.
And yet the moment the contract was signed, he'd stopped asking about it entirely.
Was this supposed to be very French of him?
Tsushima Kagami picked up his own drink and clinked it against Gaston's with a clear ring.
Kobayashi Tomoaki looked at the two of them, sighed, and picked up his own glass too.
Fine, whatever.
The new work could wait until tomorrow, once the alcohol wore off.
Besides...
He drained the cold beer in his glass in one go, then set it down hard on the table.
Besides — this little fox wasn't going anywhere.
____
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