In front of me is a person who has read my novel more deeply than its author.
It was a frightening sight, and also one that made me a little close to tears.
That night, Kisaragi had a thick leather-bound notebook resting on her lap. And also the oldest of the binders in which she had printed and bound all my chapters.
"My god. May I talk with you for a little while?"
When I nodded, she opened the binder to a certain page. The early part of A Star in the Mud. A chapter from when I had only just started writing.
That page must have been opened many times; its corners had gone soft and rounded. Several sticky notes were attached to it. Handwritten notes filled the margins. It had the smell of a book that had been read over and over.
"I—this chapter—"
Not the formal "I" she uses at school. It was her plain, unguarded "I," for when we were alone.
"This chapter is the one I love most."
With her finger, Kisaragi gently traced a single line.
"Here. The scene where the protagonist is hugging his knees, afraid of the night ending. You wrote this."
She read just that one line aloud.
If there is even one reason to wait for tomorrow, a person can make it through the night
Her voice was trembling, slightly.
"I have read this line again and again. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. More times than I could count."
"That many?"
"Yes."
Kisaragi opened her notebook and showed me. On those pages, this line had been copied out in her fountain-pen handwriting, densely, over and over. Along with dates. The same words, across page after page.
I was at a loss for words.
This wasn't a comment. It was a prayer.
"It may be that you wrote this line without much thought," Kisaragi said. "But someone in this world was truly saved by it."
She went on.
"It is not a flashy plot, or skillful prose. There is nothing showy about this story, not one thing. It only says, over and over, to live, even if you have to crawl. That is why it reached me. The plainer the words, the farther they reach, into the very darkest places."
She had read what I wrote more deeply than I had.
I've never thought my work was anything special.
Single-digit PVs. Bookmarks I could count on one hand. A book deal was something from another world. It's not that my writing is good, or that my stories are original. I just kept writing that you should live, even if you have to crawl.
So whenever Kisaragi says she was "saved," I never know what to do with myself.
"Something I wrote—" I started to say, then stopped.
I felt I shouldn't say that in front of her. If she said she was saved by it, then for me to deny it would be to deny her three years.
"...Thank you."
That was all I could say.
My work had become someone's lifeline. Something that grand, I still can't quite believe. But when I look into Kisaragi's eyes, I can't deny it. Her three years are not a lie. Sheer volume like this can't tell a lie.
Kisaragi smiled. With moist, gray eyes.
"I am the one who should be thanking you. Always."
"That night, too," Kisaragi murmured suddenly.
Her eyes still on the binder's page. She wasn't looking at me.
"That night, if that chapter had not been there. I would probably have—"
Her words broke off.
For an instant, the usual perfect calm peeled away from her profile. I felt I glimpsed something dark and deep sunk beneath the ice.
I was about to ask. That night—what night?
But Kisaragi had smoothly lifted her face and returned to her usual smile. The thing that had begun to peel away was already neatly covered over.
"...It is nothing. I will make some fresh tea."
She stood and vanished into the kitchen.
Left beside my hand, still open, was her notebook with that line copied out.
The same words, hundreds of times. As if they alone had been holding her to this world.
I still knew nothing of how much weight lay in it.