Chapter 209: Very Polite

Chapter 209: Chapter 209: Very Polite

Saito Kenji had been polite for thirteen years. On the morning of the thirteenth of December, in a small book-lined office in Iidabashi, he found that he couldn’t remember how to stop.

He arrived at 8:55, five minutes early, as he always did. He had his coat over his arm and a box of the yuzu cakes Nakajima liked from the shop near the station, as he did every Friday. He knocked on the editor-in-chief’s door, waited the customary two seconds, and went in.

Nakajima Tōru was sitting behind his desk in his cardigan with the leather buttons. Beside him, in the chair where Saito usually sat for their Friday meeting, sat a lawyer Saito didn’t recognize, an older woman with a briefcase on her knees.

On the desk, laid out in a neat row, were eight contracts.

Saito stopped just inside the door.

He knew them. He had last seen most of them across white tablecloths, under soft restaurant lighting, beside glasses of wine he had chosen. He knew them the way he knew the pages of every book he had edited, by their weight, by the shape of the type on the first page, and by which corner was slightly dog-eared from being folded into a jacket pocket at a restaurant in Kagurazaka. He had brought every one of them to a dinner. He had sat across from eight young artists, ordered the wine, and told each of them it was standard.

Each contract had been opened to its final page, Schedule C.

"Good morning, Nakajima-sensei," Saito said pleasantly. He set the box of yuzu cakes down on the corner of the desk, where it always went. "I’ve brought—"

"Sit down, Saito-kun," said Nakajima.

He sat down.

He didn’t take the chair across the desk. There was only one, and the lawyer was in it. He sat on the low stool by the bookshelf where junior editors sat when they were being told something. He hadn’t sat on it in five years.

Nakajima didn’t say anything for a long time. He looked at Saito across the eight contracts with an expression Saito had never seen on his face before. It wasn’t anger. It was the expression of a man looking at a book he had loved and finding someone else’s handwriting in the margins.

"Kōyō Media Planning," said Nakajima at last.

"Yes, sensei."

"I didn’t know it existed until ten days ago." Nakajima laid his hand flat on Kuroda’s contract, on top of the pile. "Twenty-two years, Saito-kun. Three creators and a borrowed photocopier. You knew that. You’ve heard me tell it a dozen times at the year-end party." He looked at the row of open pages. "We negotiate adaptations with the creator in the room. That was the whole point. That was why I started this line." He paused. "You sat across from eight of my creators at dinner and handed them away."

Saito didn’t answer immediately.

He had prepared for this conversation. He had prepared for it, in a way, for five years. He had thought it through at three in the morning in his apartment in Ichigaya. He had considered what he would say, and how he would phrase it, and which version of the truth would leave the least damage to everyone, himself included.

He found now that he couldn’t remember any of it.

"They were very good contracts," he said instead. It was the only true thing he could find. "Apart from Schedule C. Better royalties than anywhere else in Tokyo. Kuroda-sensei is in three countries because of a contract I wrote." He looked at the row of pages. "I believed that, sensei. I still do."

"And Schedule C?"

Saito was quiet for a long moment.

"Schedule C was the price," he said at last. "For being allowed to write the rest."

The lawyer in the chair wrote something down. Nakajima didn’t move.

"The price to whom?"

Saito looked at the box of yuzu cakes on the corner of the desk.

"You know to whom," he said quietly. "You’ve known since last week. I could see it in how you said good morning on Monday."

He told them some of it. He didn’t tell them all of it, and he wasn’t sure, afterward, why he told them anything.

He had been twenty-four, a junior associate at Theseus Partners, when a woman in a grey suit had explained to him how the industry worked. Creators were poor and publishers were frightened, and nobody had enough money to make anything last. Somebody had to gather it, quietly, before the people with real money from abroad did it badly. Partnerships, participation, and nominated partners were the only way to build something that would outlast a single series.

He had believed her. For a long time, he had believed it the way Ishikawa Kōji believed it. Then, slowly, without his noticing, he stopped believing it and kept doing it anyway, because it was what he was good at, and he had nothing else.

"She asked me to come to Iidabashi," he said. "Five years ago. She said you were the best small publisher in Tokyo and that you’d never sell. She said if your creators ever became valuable, someone should make sure their adaptations went to the right people." He was quiet for a moment. "I didn’t argue. I was very good at not arguing."

"And Hakata?" Nakajima asked quietly. "In June?"

Saito looked at the floor.

"I won’t talk about Hakata," he said. "Not here. Not without my own lawyer." He looked up. "That isn’t an admission. It’s only a sentence I’ve heard a great many people say, and I’ve finally understood why they say it."

Nakajima looked at him for a very long time.

Then he picked up a single sheet of paper from the desk and held it out. It was already printed and dated, with the publisher’s letterhead at the top.

"Your resignation," he said. "Effective today. You can sign it, or I can terminate your employment, and the reasons will be on the record." He paused. "I’d rather you signed it. Not for your sake. For the eight creators. They’ll have enough to read this month."

Saito took the sheet of paper. He read it twice, the way Hirose read contracts, and the way he had told every young artist at every dinner that they didn’t need to.

There was nothing hidden in it.

He signed it with the pen Nakajima held out. His hand, he noticed, was perfectly steady. It had always been steady. That had been the problem. Then he stood up from the junior editor’s stool, put on his coat, and stopped at the door.

"The yuzu cakes," he said. "They’re from the shop by the station. The one you like." He looked at the box on the corner of the desk. "Please don’t throw them away. It isn’t their fault."

He went out, closing the door behind him as quietly as he had always closed it, so that nobody in the corridor would look up.

His phone rang on the platform at Iidabashi Station at 9:52, while he was waiting for a train he hadn’t decided on.

It was an international number.

He knew it before he answered. He had known it for thirteen years.

"Kenji-kun," said Ishimura Reiko. Her voice was calm and warm and very close, as though she were standing beside him on the platform. "I hear you had a difficult morning."

He didn’t answer.

"The court’s order," she said. "The June expenses. They need to be produced by the nineteenth." A pause. "I’ve arranged for the accounts to be reviewed. There’ll be a claim for a trip to Hakata on the sixteenth, for a client meeting about property. A very ordinary meeting, with a property client, and nothing to do with any manga." Her voice was very gentle. "You’ll be asked to confirm it. That’s all. You only need to say it was property."

The train came into the platform. The doors opened. People got off and on around him.

Saito Kenji stood very still with the phone against his ear and didn’t get on.

"Kenji-kun?" said Ishimura Reiko. "You’ll confirm it, won’t you?"

The doors closed. The train pulled away.

"I’ll think about it," said Saito, and hung up.

He stood alone on the emptying platform for a long time. Below him, a barge moved slowly along the grey canal, the same one Kuroda had watched from the railing ten days earlier, though Saito didn’t know that. Then, very slowly, he took out his diary, the small black one he had carried for thirteen years, and opened it to the sixteenth of June.

Hakata. Café near station, 11:00. Morikawa S. Bring envelope. Apologize for the noise.

[Saito Kenji — Resigned (Iidabashi), Dec 13. Statement: "Schedule C was the price for being allowed to write the rest." Declined to discuss Hakata without counsel.]

[Ishimura Reiko (by phone, international): Instructed Saito to confirm a falsified "property client" purpose for June 16 expense claim.]

[Saito’s diary (June 16): "Hakata. Café near station, 11:00. Morikawa S. Bring envelope. Apologize for the noise."]