I posted the first chapter of the new serial at midnight on the dot.
The Silver Princess and the Tale of Dawn. A story about a silver-haired princess in another world, and a humble storyteller. I won't say who I modeled her on.
When I press the post button, it shows up on the screen a little later. 12:02 a.m. My rhythm, unchanged for three years.
"Have you posted it?" Kisaragi asked from behind me, as if holding her breath.
"Yeah. It just went up."
The rustle of fabric. The sound of her opening her tablet. The sense of her beginning to read that chapter on Story Tree from the very first line, devouring it. As if she had been waiting for this moment for three years.
My finger on the view count field, I couldn't move.
Since coming to this room, I had not looked at it once.
It was a motion I had repeated every night for three years. That one spot, where my fingers should have gone on their own, I had been going out of my way to avoid.
That rainy night. Behind her as she pressed her fingertips to the floor in the middle of my six-mat room, three years of all my update times had been copied out, without a second's deviation. What had run down my spine then, I had shaken my head and chased away. No way. There couldn't be a coincidence like that.
I thought I had chased it away, but it had been stuck in the back of my throat the whole time.
As long as I didn't look, it could stay a no way. For that reason, I had avoided confirming the thing that had held me up for three years.
I took a breath and refreshed the screen.
PV 1
12:02 a.m.
The one that had not missed a single time in three years was lit there tonight, too.
Slowly, I turned around.
Kisaragi was reading my first line, the tablet's light on her face. Her lashes trembled minutely each time they followed the words. Her face looked as if nothing existed in this world but my writing and her.
Two minutes after posting. In this room, behind my back.
"How many PVs is it now?"
When she finished reading, Kisaragi looked up and asked. The same quiet voice as always.
Without answering, I turned the screen toward her.
PV 1
Kisaragi's breathing stopped.
"—So it really is you."
My voice wouldn't come out right.
"For three years. Every night, at 12:02 a.m. That one, the only one lit up on a screen of zeros no one read. ...That was you."
It was a long silence.
Kisaragi gently held the tablet to her chest and lowered her eyes. And then, the same way she had on that rainy night, she quietly straightened her posture.
"...Yes."
A single word.
"It is me."
The person I had been writing for, the one and only, for three years without knowing their face or name, is now sitting behind my back. As a human being with body warmth, who cools my tea to sixty degrees before serving it.
"Why didn't you ever give me any reaction?"
The words spilled out on their own.
"If you'd left even one comment. I would've—"
"If I had written a comment," Kisaragi said, her eyes still lowered.
"I would have been found."
I didn't understand what she meant. There shouldn't have been anything bad about being found. I'm just a guy with single-digit PVs.
She said nothing more. She only shifted her hold on the tablet against her chest, a little tighter.
The next day. The shelf at the back of the study.
In that shelf, which I'd casually opened while looking for reference material—leather-bound notebooks stood lined up in a long row.
Not one or two.
The dates on the spines spanned three years. Starting from the day I posted my very first chapter on Story Tree.
I pulled one out and opened it.
The titles of every chapter I'd written. The dates they were posted. The update times, down to the second. The same late-night times, hundreds of them, lined up like clockwork. Beside them, a history of typo corrections. Chapter 103, line 3, "collapsed" changed to "crumpled." Date— Down to small fixes that I myself had forgotten.
Pages of analysis. Relationship charts. Tiny handwriting filled the margins completely. As if begrudging even a single line of empty space.
I looked over the shelf. This volume was only a tiny part of it. Every single spine was filled in with the same density.
My fingers trembled.
This was neither comments nor records. It was the weight of three years of time.
It was the true identity of the "one" who had been behind my back last night.
"—Kisaragi."
At my voice, she turned around. When she saw the notebook in my hands, the color drained from her face.
Her gaze quickly traced the area around my fingers. As if checking which page of which volume I had open.
"...Which volume is that?"
Her voice was slightly stiff. When I couldn't quite grasp what she meant, she rephrased it.
"The very first page of the very oldest volume. ...Have you looked at that?"
I looked at what I was holding. The one I had pulled out was from around the middle of the shelf. Not the very oldest one, at the very end.
"No. ...This is one from the middle."
The tension drained, just a little, from Kisaragi's shoulders. It was far too faint a loosening to call relief.
"I see."
She said nothing more. She only cast a glance, for an instant, at the very oldest volume at the very end of the shelf, as if guarding it.
I knew now who the "one" at 12:02 a.m. was.
But why that one had never missed a single time in three years—I still didn't know what was written on the very first page of that notebook.