Midnight on the dot. I press the post button.
If I used scheduled posting, I wouldn't have to stay up like this. Set the time in advance, and the latest chapter goes up on its own even while I sleep. Even this old site has that much of a feature.
I know that, and I don't use it.
Even for a story no one is waiting for, I wanted to give it that last push out into the world with my own finger. For that one instant when the date changes, I feel like I can still properly be the writer of this story.
There's a crack in the lid of my old laptop. Still, I've written with this thing for three years.
In the corner of the screen, an hourglass-like icon spins for just a moment and quickly vanishes. The latest chapter of my serial—A Star in the Mud—goes quietly out into the world.
Goes out, I say, but no one is waiting for it.
I check the view count. Today's chapter is still at zero PVs. Yesterday's, two. The day before's, one.
Three years of writing, and these are the numbers.
Nothing to brag about to friends. If anything, it's the last thing I'd want them to know. A high school kid writing a novel with single-digit PVs every night is nothing but a joke. So I've kept this habit to myself the whole time, never telling anyone.
Normally, anyone would have broken long ago. In fact, every writer who started around the same time as me disappeared. Before even half a year was out, their updates stopped, and their accounts vanished along with them. If the numbers don't grow, people can't keep writing. That's just how things are in this world.
Near the top of the rankings are stories about being overpowered in another world, and the satisfying ones they call comeuppance stories. They gather tens of thousands of PVs, get book deals, and glitter. What I write is none of those.
Stories that do nothing but wholeheartedly affirm people who live on even if they have to crawl through the mud.
Nothing flashy. No cheat powers. A miserable person, still miserable, dragging their feet toward tomorrow anyway. Saying only "Live," over and over. That's the only kind of story I can write. It's the only thing I want to write.
If there is even one reason to wait for tomorrow, a person can make it through the night
I reread a line I wrote myself.
It's a strange thing to say about something I wrote, but I don't dislike this line. Someone who thought the night would never end clings to one reason and survives until morning anyway. I feel like I write for moments like that.
—Or so I tell myself.
Pretty full of myself, for someone no one reads.
I gave myself a wry smile and drank the cold tea in my teacup.
The numbers are honest. Single-digit PVs. Bookmarks that never move. In three years, the comments section hasn't gotten a single comment.
From the world's point of view, this is what you'd call "time to quit." After three years of going nowhere, the smart call is to accept you have no talent and give up. Yuna told me that a lot, too. How long are you going to keep doing that? In that exasperated voice of hers.
I know. I know, and still I can't stop my fingers.
There's just one reason.
I refresh the view count screen one more time. My fingertips move on their own. It was a motion I had repeated every night for three years.
The PV count on today's chapter was no longer zero.
PV 1
12:02 a.m.
My fingertips grow just a little warmer.
It's always like this. No matter what I post, no matter how clumsy, two minutes after the date changes—at exactly 12:02 a.m.—the PVs always go up by one, and only one.
There's someone out there.
I don't know their face or their name. They don't leave comments. They don't give stars or bookmark anything. But whenever I post a chapter, that one person, at least, always reads it. Just one person in the whole world.
I still remember the first time I saw that "1," three years ago. In a dashboard lined with zeros, that single number lit up all on its own. That night, I felt saved. It had reached someone.
It's not zero.
"...But it's one."
I murmur it to that one.
Even if no one is watching, there's at least one person here. That alone is enough for me to press the post button at midnight again tomorrow. To me, that one had the weight of the whole world.
No matter what kind of night it is, this person is never late. 12:02 a.m. Without a second's deviation.
In three years, not once have they missed.
Come to think of it, that might be a little frightening. Every night, like clockwork, at the same time, just one person.
Today, too, that one is here.
Sometimes I wonder what kind of person they are. A man, or a woman. Around my age, or much older. What it is in my clumsy, muddy stories that they like.
Imagining doesn't get me an answer. But just because that person existed, my nights properly had meaning.
Thinking that, I closed the screen, and went to sleep, deciding that the strange stir deep in my chest was just fatigue.