"Hey, Ren. Let's just call it quits, okay?" Yuna said, in the connecting corridor after school.
The evening sun made her curled brown hair shine. My childhood friend of ten years. The girl who had always been beside me, on the walk home from elementary school, at the junior high sports festival. I still hadn't swallowed what she meant.
"...Call what quits?"
"You're so slow."
Yuna laughed. It was a laugh I didn't recognize.
From behind her came Shota, the transfer student, walking over. A well-kept mushroom cut, a school uniform worn with practiced ease. Yuna wound her arm around his with a familiar motion.
"I've decided to go out with Shota."
Lightly, just like that. As if she were telling me what was for lunch, Yuna said it.
Ten years. For me, it had been ten years. But for her, apparently, it was something this light.
There were a few kids from other classes in the connecting corridor too. They had all stopped to watch us. As if this awkward air were entertaining.
I couldn't say anything.
"You're not even mad? Well, that's so you, Ren."
Yuna went on, fiddling with her phone, as though it didn't matter at all. Her fingertips kept sliding across the screen. As if I weren't even in the corner of her vision anymore.
Shota draped an arm lightly around Yuna's shoulders and looked at me. It was a relaxed smile, like he was sizing me up.
"Hey, so. Are you still writing novels or whatever?"
My heart went cold.
That was something I shouldn't have told anyone. Only Yuna—once, a long time ago, I had confided in her. Because I thought she wouldn't laugh at my dream.
"You try so hard every night, and nobody reads it, right? Like you'd ever have readers."
Someone giggled.
"How long are you gonna keep chasing that cringey dream of being a novelist?"
Cringey.
The word tore through the air and stuck right in the center of me.
Shota shrugged, utterly at ease. A few of the people around us couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing. The snickering spread through the connecting corridor like ripples.
"I mean, face reality. Shota's family is, like, amazing. ...We live in different worlds, Ren."
That was all Yuna said before she walked off side by side with Shota.
I couldn't say a single word back.
I had plenty of comebacks in my head. That I had a reason to write even if no one read it, that numbers weren't everything. That writing was the shape my life took.
But my mouth wouldn't move. Deep in my throat, the words all jammed and stopped.
Because—it was true that no one read my work.
Cringey. Maybe so. A guy who keeps writing stories no one reads for three years probably does deserve to be laughed at.
That night, it started to rain.
Pouring rain, the kind that hammers at the window. In my six-mat room, I sat hugging my knees. I couldn't bring myself to open my laptop.
"Heartbreak" didn't fit. It felt like something more miserable, something deeper at the root, had been snapped in two. My dream, my love, ten years—all of it together, with a single word.
Cringe. Cringe. Cringe.
Deep in my ears, that word and the snickering wouldn't stop ringing.
Wasn't it enough already? I could just quit. Then no one would laugh at me. I wouldn't have to be a miserable guy chasing a cringey dream.
My fingers start to reach toward the laptop, and stop. Start to reach, and stop again.
But—I think.
If I stopped posting tonight. What would happen to that "one" at 12:02 a.m.?
The one person waiting for my story. That person whose face I didn't even know might end up staring at a screen with no update, on this night alone.
That, I couldn't stand.
I wiped my wet cheeks on my sleeve and opened the laptop. Midnight. With trembling fingers, I pressed the post button.
The latest chapter of A Star in the Mud went quietly out into the world. Out to a place where, tonight too, no one was waiting—supposedly.
I refreshed the dashboard right away. It was a motion I had repeated every night for three years.
12:02 a.m.
Among the row of zeros, tonight too, a single "1" lit up.
I didn't know their face, or their name. Even so, no matter what kind of night it was, this person was never late. 12:02 a.m., without a second's deviation. Even on a night like this, when I had been laughed at and called cringe—that one person still read my story, the same as always.
...It's not zero.
"...But it's one."
My cheeks still wet, I gave a small laugh. As long as this one was here, I could still be a writer. I was glad I hadn't quit. I could feel that from the bottom of my heart.
That this would be—the last "normal night" before my whole world was turned upside down. At the time, I hadn't the faintest idea.