Chapter 267 - 267: Nayotake: I Have a Selfish Request I Hope Shizuku Will Allow

The very next day, after school let out, Tsushima Kagami walked home together with Yukinoshita Shizuku and found

Gaston and Kobayashi Tomoaki standing uninvited at his front door, waiting for him.

The moment the two men spotted him coming back, their eyes lit up with the particular greed of hunters who'd spotted their prey.

"Kagami, you're finally back."

"Why are you two standing out here?"

Tsushima Kagami stared at them, utterly baffled — one of them should have flown home by now, and the other should have been sitting in his editor-in-chief's office.

"Oh, come on — we're waiting to see the rest of Snow Country, obviously."

"You two are being way too impatient."

Tsushima Kagami sighed and dug out his keys to unlock the door.

Yukinoshita Shizuku had already fetched a pair of guest slippers to welcome the two men inside.

Gaston, who'd barely stepped through the door, didn't even get a chance to marvel that a great author like Tsushima Kagami still lived in such a modest little house before he started clamoring.

"Mr. Tsushima, hurry up and bring out the rest of Snow Country!"

Kobayashi Tomoaki's footsteps were already following Kagami into the entryway.

"Gaston's right. We can't wait any longer."

It was obvious the two of them were dying to see what came next in Snow Country.

"Fine. Shizuka, would you make some tea for our guests?"

Tsushima Kagami glanced over at Yukinoshita Shizuku.

Yukinoshita Shizuku smiled and headed off to the kitchen counter to prepare hot tea and snacks for the guests.

Only then did Tsushima Kagami turn to look at the two men.

"Follow me."

Tsushima Kagami led the pair into his bedroom and pulled out the half-finished manuscript.

Before long, Yukinoshita Shizuku came in carrying a tray of freshly brewed tea and a few snacks for everyone.

Then she sat down beside Tsushima Kagami as well.

She knew that once the men started talking literature, she wouldn't be able to get a word in edgewise.

But she didn't want to leave, either — she wanted to hear for herself just what kind of story Kagami had written this time, one that could leave even a Frenchman like Gaston so utterly captivated.

The room itself was small, and it wasn't really meant for entertaining guests to begin with.

Gaston and Kobayashi Tomoaki ended up sitting shoulder to shoulder right on Tsushima Kagami's bed.

Each of them grabbed one side of the manuscript pages, and almost in the same instant, both bent their heads down to read.

Curious, Yukinoshita Shizuku craned her neck and started reading along with them.

By the time they finished, both men were completely swept up in the tangled emotions of Shimamura, Kyoko, and Komako, and in the beauty of the prose and imagery.

Gaston didn't lift his head for a long while after finishing, as if he were still lost in the emotional entanglement of the three characters.

After a good long while, he slowly lowered the pages.

"This Komako... why would she do that?"

"She clearly could have chosen a different way to live."

Kobayashi Tomoaki, meanwhile, had flipped straight through to the end in one go, only to find the story cutting off abruptly halfway through — he was obviously nowhere near satisfied.

"Wait, it just... stops here? Kagami, what happens next?"

"I haven't finished writing it yet."

Tsushima Kagami spread out the half-finished stack of pages.

In an instant, the two editors transformed into rabid fans demanding an update.

Gaston even went so far as to change his return flight, declaring he wasn't going home until Kagami finished the manuscript and let him read it in full.

Right there on the spot, Gaston pulled out his phone and called the airline.

After a rapid-fire burst of French, he turned to Tsushima Kagami with a perfectly straight face.

"I've moved my flight to next Wednesday. You have five days."

"Are you out of your mind?"

Tsushima Kagami nearly shot up out of his chair.

Kobayashi Tomoaki clapped his hands in delight.

"Excellent, Gaston. Let's keep an eye on him together."

"A man like Kagami just doesn't move unless you push him."

From that moment on, Tsushima Kagami's home turned into a miniature editorial office.

Every evening, right when Kagami got home from school, Kobayashi Tomoaki and Gaston would ring the doorbell like clockwork, arms full of convenience-store rice balls and coffee.

Eventually they just appointed themselves Kagami's live-in caretakers, stealing Yukinoshita Shizuku's cooking and dish-washing duties out from under her.

Every now and then they'd even pitch in to help her clean.

Once there was nothing left to do, they'd sprawl in the living room watching TV, reading manga, or playing video games.

Meanwhile, Tsushima Kagami got banished to his bedroom to grind out the manuscript.

Under the two men's shameless, taffy-sticky nagging, Kagami had no choice but to stop slacking off.

He powered through and finished Snow Country in full, at breakneck speed.

For those last few days, Tsushima Kagami practically locked himself in his study.

Every time Yukinoshita Shizuku brought food in, she'd see his back hunched over the desk, pen flying, his eyes bloodshot but burning with the kind of exhilaration that comes from being nearly at the finish line.

When the very last period landed on the page, Tsushima Kagami set his pen down and let out a long, deep breath.

He felt utterly hollowed out, and before he knew it, he'd slumped against the back of his chair and drifted off to sleep.

Kobayashi Tomoaki happily gathered the manuscript and rushed back that same night to start revisions, while Gaston, thoroughly satisfied, flew home to France.

At the airport, Tsushima Kagami, Yukinoshita Shizuku, and Kobayashi Tomoaki all came to see Gaston off.

Just before he left, Gaston turned to Tsushima Kagami and said,

"Thank you for bringing Komako into this world. I love her so much — I think she'll live on in the hearts of French readers for a very, very long time."

Around this same time, news of Tsushima Kagami finishing yet another new work had already reached Professor Kosaka.

He'd happened to hear it while chatting casually with Kosaka Akane.

It turned out that during the recent stretch when Kagami had been hounded into finishing the manuscript, he'd kept writing whenever he had spare moments in the Manga Research Club.

Kosaka Akane and Machida Sonoko, who dropped by the club on days without class, had noticed, and Akane had mentioned it to her grandfather.

Professor Kosaka promptly invited Tsushima Kagami over, and at the same time notified his old friends Professor Takeuchi and Professor Matsushita.

And that was how today's tea gathering came to be.

Today's study was the largest washitsu in the Kosaka family estate, one whole wall facing the garden made entirely of floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors.

Beyond the window lay an exquisite karesansui garden.

Ripples raked into the white sand spread outward in ring after ring, a few weathered blue stones scattered artfully among them, and a gnarled five-needle pine leaned its branches out at an angle, as if reaching to poke its way right into the room.

Kosaka Akane knelt on the tatami, cupping a tea tray in both hands, and served her grandfather first, then Professor Takeuchi, then Professor Matsushita, and finally Tsushima Kagami.

Her movements were textbook-perfect — clearly the product of rigorous etiquette training.

With each cup she set down, she gave a small bow of the head and murmured, "Please, enjoy."

Once Kosaka Akane had dutifully refreshed the tea and sweets for the three professors and for Tsushima Kagami,

Kagami noticed, as he took his cup, that her fingertip brushed lightly against his.

He glanced up at her, and Kosaka Akane blinked rapidly a few times.

Kagami gave a faint smile back, then lifted the cup and took a sip of gyokuro — fragrant and sweet, with a long, lingering aftertaste.

Kosaka Akane withdrew to sit with Machida Sonoko and Sayuri.

The two of them had also been summoned by Akane today.

All three girls held printed copies of the manuscript in their hands.

Machida Sonoko wore a simple linen blouse today, her hair falling loose over her shoulders, giving her a more demure air than usual.

Sayuri, by contrast, wore a T-shirt printed with a cartoon cat, hugging her copy of the manuscript to her chest while her feet swung idly back and forth under the table.

The three professors, meanwhile, remained absorbed in the manuscripts in their hands.

Ever since laying eyes on the opening three lines of Snow Country, the trio had been struck by an unmistakably powerful jolt.

Professor Kosaka was the first to finish reading those opening three sentences; his finger stopped on the page, unmoving for a long while.

His brow furrowed slightly, his lips moving as though murmuring something to himself — as if reciting the words silently, or savoring some indescribable lingering resonance.

Professor Takeuchi's reaction was more direct — she read the opening three lines a second time.

When she finished, she let out a soft "ah," a sound woven through with both surprise and admiration.

Professor Matsushita's face stayed impassive as he kept turning pages, but his breathing grew deeper and slower, as if he were bracing himself against some tremor stirred up by the words.

Even before Kagami had explained what real place Snow Country was modeled on, the three seasoned scholars had already caught the antique, classical flavor woven through it, and found themselves enchanted.

Professor Takeuchi in particular — in her youth she'd been obsessed with the history of the Warring States period, and had even submitted a number of short stories set in that era for publication.

In her younger days, Professor Takeuchi had been known for her delicate prose and far-reaching sense of atmosphere.

Her short stories had been published multiple times in literary journals; even after she'd turned to academic research, she'd retained an almost instinctive sensitivity to the beauty of language.

Right now, reading Snow Country's passages about the dusk light, about the reflection in the mirror, she felt for a moment as though she'd been carried straight back to those nights long ago, bent over her own desk, writing.

That feeling of forgetting the entire world and existing only in the presence of words — she hadn't felt it in years.

The three professors read through most of the story in one sitting before exhaustion finally forced them to stop and rest.

Professor Kosaka was the first to set his pages down.

He pushed his reading glasses up onto his forehead and closed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to settle his emotions.

Professor Takeuchi followed close behind, letting out a soft breath.

Professor Matsushita read a few more pages before reluctantly laying the manuscript face-down on his knee.

After each of them had taken a sip of hot tea, their gazes finally turned, burning, toward Tsushima Kagami, who was — for some reason — now sitting off to the side with Kosaka Akane and the other two girls.

Tsushima Kagami was eating one of the sweets the Kosaka household had prepared while chatting quietly with Kosaka Akane, Machida Sonoko, and Sayuri.

He held a piece of sakura mochi in his hand, nibbling at it in small bites.

That gaze was so intense that, right in the middle of laughing and chatting with the three girls, Kagami suddenly felt the back of his neck grow hot.

He turned around instinctively and found himself looking straight into three pairs of staring eyes.

"What's wrong? Why are you all looking at me like that?"

A bit of glutinous rice powder from the sakura mochi still clung to the corner of Tsushima Kagami's mouth, and he looked nothing like a great author or literary giant just then.

Off to the side, Kosaka Akane and the other two girls were quietly stifling giggles.

Because right now, they thought, Tsushima Kagami looked especially adorable.

He'd just written prose that left three seasoned professors shaken to their core, and here he was, completely oblivious, chewing away with total seriousness over whether the sakura mochi tasted good.

This young man never stopped delivering endless, unending surprises.

Professor Kosaka's eyes were full of astonishment.

He'd known Tsushima Kagami for a while now and had thought he was used to Kagami's constant flow of unexpected new work.

But this time, the impact of Snow Country had far exceeded anything he'd prepared himself for.

It was like snowmelt seeping into the soil — without you even noticing, it had soaked all the way through.

Professor Takeuchi's eyes were full of complicated feeling.

She thought of herself at Kagami's age, tirelessly working the pen; she thought of nights spent revising a single sentence over and over until dawn; she thought of the thrill of seeing her first short story printed in a magazine.

Then, looking at the young man before her, a tangled swirl of emotion welled up inside her.

Part of her wanted to applaud him. Part of her wanted to sigh for herself.

Professor Matsushita's eyes held a purely academic excitement.

In his mind, he'd already begun dissecting Snow Country's narrative structure, its prose style, its system of imagery.

He could hardly wait to pull out a notebook and start writing pages of analysis right then and there.

By this point, the quality and sheer output Tsushima Kagami was producing could no longer be described with words like talent, ability, or genius.

If pressed, Professor Matsushita of Waseda University had once put it this way:

"If it were possible, I'd want to switch to surgical medicine, crack open Tsushima Kagami's skull, and check whether the man's actually an alien."

He'd said this once during an internal seminar at Waseda's Faculty of Letters.

At the time, Professor Matsushita had been using Kagami's No Longer Human as a case study, and the remark had simply slipped out mid-lecture.

The professors in attendance had all burst out laughing — but once the laughter died down, they'd looked at one another and realized no one could actually refute it.

Because Tsushima Kagami's writing speed and quality genuinely exceeded their understanding of what a "genius" was even capable of.

One full novel a month, every single one maintaining an extremely high literary standard, and still somehow breaking new ground with each one.

This wasn't a question of talent anymore. It was, frankly... inhuman.

Professor Kosaka laughed and said that Kagami clearly had a new work in progress again, yet hadn't told them a thing about it — which really did hurt the feelings of us old fogies, he added.

Tsushima Kagami could tell the three of them weren't actually scolding him — they simply wished he'd share the joys and struggles of his creative process with them sooner.

Kagami glanced at Kosaka Akane and said, with a smile, that he'd figured he'd wait until it was finished and let the three of them offer feedback then.

"So how exactly did Akane find out before it was even done, and go tell Professor Kosaka about it?"

At that, Kosaka Akane's face flushed red, and she suddenly felt as though she'd done something like tattling behind someone's back.

She lowered her head, twisting her hands together on her knees, and mumbled quietly,

"It's just... I was talking with Grandpa and it slipped out by accident."

At that moment, Professor Matsushita, sitting nearby, chimed in with praise of his own — they'd already heard that Kagami had signed a contract with Europe's Éditions Gallimard.

Professor Matsushita set down his teacup, folded his hands over his knees, and spoke in the tone of a senior addressing a junior — equal parts admiration and gentle warning.

"Kagami, you already understand Éditions Gallimard's standing in Europe."

"The fact that they'd come all the way to Tokyo to sign with you personally is proof enough that your work is now good enough to stand in dialogue with Europe and America's top-tier authors."

No wonder both this new Snow Country and the previous The Sound of Waves showed him beginning to draw on quite a few Western literary techniques.

It seemed Kagami had already set his sights on breaking into the European and American markets.

Years of studying Western literature had given Professor Matsushita an instinct telling him that, as long as Éditions Gallimard didn't skimp on promotion,

with the influence of such a venerable publishing house behind it, Snow Country would undoubtedly become a sensation even in the West.

It might even become the most influential piece of Japanese literature in Europe and America.

Given enough time, even a Nobel Prize in Literature wasn't out of the question.

Japanese authors had, of course, won the Nobel Prize in Literature before this.

But those works had never really sold well on the commercial markets of Europe and America.

For that, they'd always drawn a certain amount of criticism.

He understood the temperament of the Western literary market all too well.

And the kind of delicate, ineffable emotional expression steeped in Eastern aesthetics that ran through Snow Country was exactly what Western readers craved from Japanese literature.

It was foreign enough to feel exotic, yet moving enough to draw readers in.

Professor Takeuchi spoke up too, saying she could see that Kagami had thrown himself fully into this attempt to reach overseas readers.

She felt the whole work had a different style from his earlier writing — once again he'd boldly reinvented his prose style and his technique.

She had the distinct sense that his writing had, once more, been pushed up to a height that felt almost unreachable.

And she marveled that Tsushima Kagami kept managing to surpass even himself, again and again.

After all, in the literary world, most writers peak right at their debut.

Or else they pour everything they have into their first book or two, and after that their form starts to decline.

Professor Takeuchi found herself thinking of a writer she'd known in her youth.

His first novel had dazzled the entire literary world; everyone had assumed he'd become a giant of his generation.

But the second book, the third... each one fell further short than the last.

In the end, he'd faded into obscurity, indistinguishable from anyone else.

Stories like that were everywhere in the history of literature.

After hearing all this, Tsushima Kagami nodded, smiling in agreement.

"Maybe this Snow Country really is the highest-level piece of pure literature I'll ever produce in my lifetime."

He said it lightly, almost casually — but the air in the study seemed to freeze for an instant.

The three professors' hands, still holding their teacups, all stopped at once.

The idea that this could be his absolute peak — even though none of the three wanted to believe it,

after all, this young man was always excessively modest, only to shatter their expectations again and again.

But given the historical trajectory of literature and everything they'd read over the years, they suddenly found themselves feeling that it might, in fact, carry some real weight.

The three of them felt both a pang of regret and a flicker of anticipation.

What none of them realized, though, was that this time Tsushima Kagami was telling the plain truth.

Right now marked the beginning of a rapid decline for pure literature.

Once the twenty-first century arrived, there would be even less fertile ground left for pure literature to grow in at all.

Even though, in his previous life, some decent works of pure literature had still appeared in Japan after the turn of the century,

they'd almost all languished in obscurity — barely anyone even knew their titles.

If that was true even within Japan itself, there was no point even discussing breaking into overseas markets.

And Snow Country was, without a doubt, one of the towering peaks of modern Japanese pure literature.

As for the rest of those famous works, whichever ones he had the time and opportunity to bring over, he would; the ones he couldn't manage, he wouldn't force.

After all, by the twenty-first century, most people wouldn't even crack open a book anymore — so what was there left to discuss about pure literature?

So Kagami's plan was this: transplant as many of the internationally and domestically renowned pieces of pure literature he remembered from his past life as he could before the century's end, and then retire his pen altogether to avoid tarnishing his legacy in his later years.

He'd already achieved both fame and fortune — why keep working himself to exhaustion? From here on, it was time to indulge in his youth.

At the thought, the corner of his mouth curled up slightly.

This contradictory feeling was especially strong in Professor Kosaka's heart.

He lifted his teacup, then set it back down, then lifted it again — over and over.

In the end, he couldn't help stealing a glance at Tsushima Kagami's profile.

He thought: if this really was true, how lonely must this young man be?

Not even twenty years old yet, and already having written a work he'd never be able to surpass for the rest of his life.

What, then, would he fill the rest of his long years with?

The three professors nodded thoughtfully, then picked up the manuscript again and kept reading.

Professor Kosaka didn't continue reading forward, though — instead he went back to the iconic opening three lines of Snow Country.

"This opening..."

"There's something that just feels different about it. Has this kind of writing appeared before?"

Professor Kosaka turned to ask Professor Matsushita, who was sitting nearby reading further along.

Interrupted mid-read, Professor Matsushita flipped back to the beginning and thought carefully, recalling everything he could.

In the end he shook his head and answered,

"I've never seen anything like it."

His tone was completely certain.

As one of the foremost authorities on Western modern literature in Japan, he had probably read more novels than most people read words in an entire lifetime.

If even he had never seen it before, that essentially confirmed it — this was a genuinely new writing technique.

At this point Professor Takeuchi spoke up as well, mentioning the passage where Shimamura watches the dusk scenery and the girl through the mirror.

"That flickering, indistinct, hazy sense of beauty in that scene reminded me of yūgen, in aesthetics."

"Has any of you ever seen this kind of descriptive technique before?"

Professor Takeuchi gestured with both hands, trying to put the feeling into words.

It wasn't direct description, and it wasn't objective narration either.

It was a subjective image, seen through a medium — the mirror.

And that reflected image kept shifting and flowing along with the train's movement and the changing light.

She'd never seen anything written quite like that in any work of literature.

Up until now, the three professors had been fully absorbed in the story itself; now that the conversation had turned to this,

all three of them froze at once, then lifted their heads and looked at Tsushima Kagami with something close to disbelief.

"Kagami, it's not that I can say for certain I've never seen it, so it must not exist somewhere."

"But between the three of us, we've studied any literary school with genuine distinction."

"And this technique of yours — this is the first time any of us has ever seen anything like it."

"Don't tell me you invented this yourself?"

Professor Kosaka's voice carried a note of real excitement.

He realized he might be witnessing a moment that would go down in literary history.

An entirely new literary school, about to be born!

Tsushima Kagami just smiled and shook his head.

"If even the three of you — who've thoroughly studied the history of both Eastern and Western literature — have never seen it before,"

"then I suppose it probably is something I came up with on my own."

Hearing this, the three of them couldn't get over how calm and modest Kagami remained even now.

He was clearly on the verge of founding an entirely new literary school!

And this new school was nothing like his earlier Decadent School.

If the Decadent School had been an innovation at the level of stylistic core, then Snow Country wasn't just a stylistic innovation — it was a whole new school built on an entirely new writing technique!

Beside them, Kosaka Akane clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.

"Kagami, are you starting a whole new literary school again?"

She knew perfectly well how talented Kagami was, but founding a new literary school — in her mind, that was the kind of thing only towering giants of literary history managed to do.

Yet here was Tsushima Kagami, seemingly casually tossing off a brand-new literary school as if it were nothing, wearing an expression of total indifference the whole time.

Sayuri gasped in astonishment too.

"I don't really get it, but I understand that Kagami's written something amazing again!"

Machida Sonoko rapped Sayuri on the head, annoyed.

"I literally tutored you on literary history not long ago — how do you still not get it?"

Sayuri clutched her head and protested weakly.

"Hey, I got what you taught me about literary history, okay! It's just that Kagami's books are so deep!"

"Alright, let's keep reading. We'll finish this section of the manuscript first before we talk about all this."

Professor Kosaka spoke up. He wasn't the type to interrupt frequently while reading.

That was something only beginners did.

A truly good reader should first read a whole work through in full immersion,

let it ferment in the mind for a while, and only then move on to rational analysis and discussion.

Once the three professors had said their piece, they turned back to the manuscript, and Sayuri and the others quickly quieted down so as not to disturb them.

The study fell silent once more.

Out in the karesansui garden, light and shadow drifted slowly across the sand.

A sparrow perched on a branch of the five-needle pine, cocked its head to look at the people inside for a moment, then flapped its wings and flew off.

The further the three professors read, the more they found themselves holding their breath, their hearts pounding faster, each of them growing ever more certain of what they were thinking.

Professor Kosaka's fingers began to tremble slightly.

He'd spent his whole life teaching, and had thought he was past the point of getting genuinely excited over anything.

But right now, holding this stack of pages, he felt as though he'd been transported back to twenty years old — that student who'd once been utterly shaken the first time he read Snow Country.

Once again, here was a work destined to found an entirely new literary school — no wonder Kagami had said this might be the peak of his literary career.

It seemed he hadn't been exaggerating at all — a work of this magnitude, appearing even at the tail end of the twentieth century.

He wasn't sure whether that was a stroke of luck for their era, or a misfortune.

The lucky part was that, at the twilight of pure literature's century, a work like this had still managed to emerge.

The unfortunate part was that everyone understood pure literature in the coming century would find almost no soil left to grow in — a work like this would be nearly impossible to see again.

It was a historical inevitability. Literature, after all, is shaped by its era.

The coming century would undoubtedly belong to the internet and mass entertainment.

Professor Matsushita set down his pages and let out a long sigh.

He'd spent his whole life studying literature; no one understood better than he did just how much an era shapes its literature.

The nineteenth century had been the golden age of the novel; the twentieth, a flourishing of modernism.

As for the twenty-first... from the signs already emerging, he could see a not-particularly-optimistic future ahead.

In an era like that, would anyone still be able to sit still and read something like Snow Country?

Would anyone still be able to write something like this?

He didn't know.

All he knew was that the pages in his hands might well be the final swan song of an entire era.

All three professors understood this, on some level, and their gazes toward Tsushima Kagami grew even more complicated.

After a long, thoughtful pause, Professor Kosaka finally spoke.

"This entirely new writing technique — if I understand it correctly, it's describing the objective world through subjective sensation?"

Sure enough, the three professors had immediately grasped the essence of what would come to be called the New Sensation School.

Tsushima Kagami confirmed it outright.

"That's exactly it. Grasping the external world through subjective sensation."

"Using imagination to construct a new reality, then expressing it through novel prose and vocabulary."

He said it casually, as though he were simply explaining a simple concept.

But to Kosaka Akane and the others, it went right over their heads.

Subjective sensation?

A new reality?

Novel vocabulary?

Every single word made sense on its own, but strung together, none of it added up to anything they could grasp.

Kosaka Akane, Sonoko, and Sayuri were all thoroughly lost.

The three professors nodded thoughtfully.

"So it's about depicting the inner world of the human mind, rather than surface reality?"

"So this new school of writing — Kagami, what are you planning to call it?"

"Let's just call it the New Sensation School."

Tsushima Kagami didn't bother being coy about it, answering straightforwardly.

"The New Sensation School..."

The three professors turned the name of this brand-new school over in their minds, and even having come this far in the discussion, they still could hardly believe it.

Just what kind of monster of a writer was this young man?

It had only been this long, and already he was founding an entirely new literary school!

Professor Kosaka silently did the math in his head.

From the day he'd first met Tsushima Kagami to now, barely a year had passed.

In that single year, Kagami had published No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, Kokoro, and The Sound of Waves — every one of them a work destined to leave its mark on literary history.

And now, here he was with Snow Country.

And on top of that, he'd used it as the foundation for an entirely new literary school called the New Sensation School.

Professor Kosaka suddenly found himself thinking that Professor Matsushita's earlier joke about "cracking open his skull to check if he's an alien" might not have been much of a joke after all.

"So where exactly is this Snow Country of yours supposed to be, Kagami?"

Professor Takeuchi suddenly remembered to ask.

Even though she'd been utterly absorbed in the atmosphere and aesthetics while reading, once she set the manuscript down, the first thing on her mind was where, exactly, this place — rendered so beautifully, and so tinged with sorrow — actually was.

"Oh, I know that one!"

Sayuri suddenly raised her hand, entirely unfazed at speaking up in front of the three professors.

"It's Yuzawa, in Niigata Prefecture — Echigo-Yuzawa."

"We all went there together with Kagami over spring break!"

"Right, Kagami?"

Sayuri looked at Tsushima Kagami with smug satisfaction, chin held high, delighted to finally have an answer she could give.

Tsushima Kagami nodded, smiling.

"The snow country described in this book is really just an imaginary, fictional world."

"But if you're asking about its inspiration, then it's just like Sayuri said — it came from the trip we all took together to Yuzawa over spring break."

As he spoke, the scene of that spring-break trip surfaced in his mind.

A snowbound hot spring town, orange lights coming on in the dusk, white mountain ridges seen through the train window, and footprints of varying depth left in the snow.

That was when he'd decided that once they got back, he'd write Snow Country.

"So that's how it was."

The three professors all nodded.

At that point, Kosaka Akane stood up.

"Alright, it's getting dark out — we should probably start dinner soon."

The three professors glanced out the window as well.

They realized that at some point, without them noticing, the karesansui garden outside had already been swallowed by dusk.

Only now did everyone realize the sky outside had gone completely dark.

They'd all been reading since the morning.

They hadn't even stopped for lunch — just tea and sweets, straight through until now.

Professor Kosaka stood up too, looking around at everyone with a relaxed smile.

"Well, us old fogies have had our fill of spiritual nourishment — I suppose it's about time for some actual food."

With that, he led the way out.

The rest of the group filed out of the study after him.

They walked together down the long corridor toward the dining room.

With Tsushima Kagami's new work now complete, Shinchosha understood that this time was different from all the times before —

not only did they need to achieve sales in Japan far surpassing anything in the company's history, they also needed to coordinate with Éditions Gallimard over in Europe to make sure both Tsushima Kagami's and Shinchosha's names landed with full impact.

So this time, promotion kicked off far earlier than usual, in an all-out frenzy.

They even brought out the internet — a medium they'd always previously looked down on — running full promotional pushes across every portal site large and small.

Kobayashi Tomoaki practically lived at the publishing house during this stretch.

His days consisted of nothing but phone calls, emails, meetings, checking sales data, and more phone calls.

He was the first one in the office every morning and the last to leave every night, his eyes burning with that particular, almost obsessive fire unique to editors.

And so, in the midst of all this, Tsushima Kagami's school life sped along until it was suddenly July — the day before Snow Country's release.

Tokyo in July was already thick with summer heat.

Cicadas sang without pause among the leaves of the roadside trees, heat shimmering visibly off the asphalt.

The girls had all switched into light summer uniforms, and the boys had rolled their shirt sleeves up to the elbow.

At the University of Tokyo Hospital,

Shimizu Nayotake's mother had finally undergone her surgery successfully a while back.

And today, she'd received her recovery assessment from the head of the First Department of Surgery and her attending physician.

In another week, she'd be able to check out.

In the white-walled hospital room, sunlight streamed through the blinds, cutting parallel bars of light across the floor.

Mrs. Shimizu sat half-propped up in bed, her color much better than before.

There was even a faint touch of pink in her cheeks now.

Standing at the bedside, the attending physician held a test report and explained a few medical terms with a smile.

But the gist of it was clear enough: the surgery had gone very well, her recovery was progressing nicely, and she'd be able to go through discharge procedures in a week.

"That's wonderful, Nayotake."

Yukinoshita Shizuku, who had come along with Tsushima Kagami to visit Nayotake's mother today, was overjoyed to hear the news.

She stood on the other side of the hospital bed and excitedly took hold of Shimizu Nayotake's hand.

Her eyes were nearly overflowing with happiness for her friend.

"Congratulations, Auntie Shimizu."

Tsushima Kagami, standing nearby, offered his congratulations as well, to the mother lying in the hospital bed.

He was carrying a basket of fruit, bought at the fruit shop by the hospital entrance on the way over.

A basket of fresh grapes and a few Fuji apples. He set the basket down on the bedside table.

"It's all thanks to you, Kagami."

Mrs. Shimizu said with a smile.

In the time since, Nayotake had told her mother that the charitable assistance they'd received had actually come from a foundation Tsushima Kagami had personally established.

Mrs. Shimizu hadn't been especially surprised, since she'd already suspected as much.

After all, Kagami had wanted to help her and Nayotake from the very beginning.

He'd even offered, more than once, to simply cover their surgical costs directly.

But a debt of that magnitude, Mrs. Shimizu felt, was one she and her daughter could never possibly repay, and so she'd turned down Kagami's offer.

Not long after, Kagami had come to them with a public-welfare assistance application form.

It had gone through quickly and smoothly.

Mrs. Shimizu, who'd applied for countless similar programs before and been rejected every time, understood well enough that nothing falls from the sky for free.

Otherwise, she and Nayotake would have qualified for assistance long ago.

So when she put it all together, the only person she could think of with both the means and the motive to help them was Tsushima Kagami himself.

She hadn't wanted to be a burden, and yet somehow the burden just kept growing.

At this point, all Mrs. Shimizu could think to do was avoid causing Kagami any more trouble and focus on getting properly treated — she genuinely couldn't think of any way to repay him.

It weighed on her constantly.

"Honestly, I feel a lot better than I did before I was admitted."

"I feel like I could be discharged today."

"But the doctor insists I stay another week for observation."

Mrs. Shimizu shook her head helplessly as she spoke.

Tsushima Kagami laughed when he heard this.

"At this point, there's no use fussing over whether you get discharged a day earlier or a day later — your health matters most."

"You're right, Kagami. I suppose I was just being impatient."

Yukinoshita Shizuku chimed in with a smile.

"Nayotake, come by our place for dinner tonight to celebrate, and then stay over and sleep with me afterward."

"Kagami's got to be at the publishing house tonight with Mr. Kobayashi getting things ready for tomorrow's book release, so he'll probably be home late — I'll be so bored all by myself."

Hearing this, Shimizu Nayotake hesitated, glancing over at Tsushima Kagami.

Tsushima Kagami smiled as well.

"Sorry to trouble you, Nayotake, keeping Shizuka company tonight. I really haven't had time these past few days."

Nayotake looked over at her mother again.

Mrs. Shimizu smiled too.

"Don't you worry about me. If it weren't for the doctor's orders, I'd have been discharged already — go on and keep Shizuka company."

Nayotake finally nodded.

Tsushima Kagami noticed that Nayotake's expression had seemed distant and unfocused all day.

It was as though something weighed on her, and she'd been wavering over whether to say it out loud.

Kagami knew that Nayotake always liked to lock her worries up inside herself.

Even to him, she wouldn't say anything.

The only one who might be able to coax it out of her was Shizuka, her closest friend.

That night,

after finishing dinner, Yukinoshita Shizuku and Nayotake bathed early and headed back to the bedroom.

In the bedroom, Nayotake had just finished drying Shizuka's hair and was now brushing it out with a comb.

Nayotake stood behind Yukinoshita Shizuku, a wooden comb in hand,

working section by section through her long hair.

Yukinoshita Shizuku's hair was black and glossy, gleaming like satin under the bedroom lights.

The comb slid from root to tip, gliding smoothly every time without a single snag.

Yukinoshita Shizuku watched herself and Nayotake in the mirror and smiled.

"It's been a while since we slept over together like this, Nayotake."

In the mirror, Nayotake's head was bowed, focused on combing her hair.

A gentle smile hung at the corner of her mouth.

Nayotake only smiled and let out a soft hum of agreement.

Yukinoshita Shizuku went on.

"Oh, right — once Auntie Shimizu is discharged, you'll be about ready to check in for your own surgery, won't you?"

In her mind, since Mrs. Shimizu's surgery had succeeded, it was only natural that Nayotake's would come next.

Mother and daughter would each have their surgery in turn, and then both would be able to live healthy lives — everything was heading in the best possible direction.

But when Nayotake heard Shizuka's words, the hand brushing through her hair trembled, just slightly, without meaning to.

If Yukinoshita Shizuku hadn't been watching her movements the whole time in the mirror, she never would have noticed.

But she did notice.

She turned around to look at Shimizu Nayotake.

"What's wrong, Nayotake? You've seemed distracted all day."

Yukinoshita Shizuku's voice was gentle, laced with concern and a touch of unease for her friend.

She rarely saw Nayotake like this.

In her mind, Nayotake had always been that quiet, steady, reassuring presence.

Before Nayotake could even answer, Yukinoshita Shizuku pressed on.

"I know — you must be worried about your upcoming surgery."

As she said this, Yukinoshita Shizuku took both of Nayotake's hands in hers and started to reassure her.

"Don't worry, Nayotake. Auntie Shimizu's surgery went perfectly, and your surgery will be performed by the very same professor. There's nothing to worry about — it's sure to go smoothly."

If she herself had to face a major surgery like that, she knew she'd be terrified out of her mind too.

She didn't want Nayotake to be afraid, so she tried to cover her friend's fear with her own confidence.

It was the most direct way of comforting her she could think of.

Hearing this, Shimizu Nayotake gave a faint smile.

"Thank you, Shizuka."

There was the faintest strain in that smile.

Yukinoshita Shizuku spoke earnestly.

"We're good friends, aren't we?"

"So you can tell me anything, okay? Don't keep it all locked up inside."

Looking into Yukinoshita Shizuku's sincere eyes, a flicker of hesitation and guilt crossed Shimizu Nayotake's face.

At last, Shimizu Nayotake slowly knelt down in front of Yukinoshita Shizuku.

She slipped her hands free from Shizuka's grasp,

then immediately took hold of Yukinoshita Shizuku's hands again, gripping them tightly.

As if only by doing so could she summon the courage to say what she needed to say.

Yukinoshita Shizuku hadn't expected Nayotake to suddenly act like this.

Before she could get a word out, Shimizu Nayotake's voice, tinged with pleading, reached her ear.

"I'm sorry. I have a selfish request, and I'm hoping I can get your permission for it."

____

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