One morning, a thick stack of documents was sitting on the living room table.
On the cover, the Kisaragi Group logo. Beneath it, printed, was the title of my work. The Silver Princess and the Tale of Dawn.
"What's this?"
When I asked, Kisaragi set a teacup down in front of me and said quietly, "A proposal. For bringing your work out into the world."
I turned the pages.
An advertising plan. Bookstore placement. Media exposure. A projected schedule for a book deal. The numbers were in another league entirely. The scale of what was laid out there would easily beat three years' worth of my PVs on the first day alone.
The sheer mass of a conglomerate.
My hands stopped turning the pages. The numbers written here were beyond my understanding. The advertising budget alone—a sum I couldn't earn in a lifetime—had been entered as if it were nothing. Face-up display tables in bookstores. Special sections. An absurd amount of resources was about to be poured into a story born on my laptop with the cracked lid.
"Hold on." I put the documents down. "I never asked for any of this."
"I am aware."
Kisaragi nodded.
"You do not want numbers. If even one person reads you, that is enough. ...I understand that. I have heard you say it many times."
"Then—"
"But."
Her voice grew quietly stronger.
"There are still so many people in this world who would be saved by your words. Tonight, too, somewhere, someone who cannot wait for the dawn. Your lines are not reaching them. That is—wrong, I believe."
I looked into her eyes.
What I found there was faith. A straight, unwavering faith that could almost pass for madness.
"You write for a single reader. That is fine. Please stay exactly as you are," Kisaragi said. "Gathering the numbers is my job. If you can only save one person at a time, then I will bring that 'one' before you tens of thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times."
With the full might of a conglomerate.
A story nobody had read, which had started in my six-mat room.
"You have a name that ties a frozen heart to tomorrow," she said, speaking my pen name. "And yet the reach of that tie is far too narrow. I will spread it across the whole world."
A chill went through me. And at the same time, my chest trembled.
She meant it. She intended to move an entire conglomerate for the sake of my work.
I couldn't honestly call it happiness. I hadn't been writing because I wanted numbers. I'd never wished for going viral, or for a book deal. As long as it reached one person, that had been enough.
But there was a core to Kisaragi's words that I couldn't deny. Tonight, too, somewhere, there was someone unable to make it through the night. My lines weren't reaching that someone. And that—surely, that was the very thing I had wanted most to write.
That evening, I heard a voice on the phone in the study.
Kisaragi was talking to someone.
It wasn't the plain "I" she used at home. Nor was it the formal "I" she used at school. It was a colder, sharper voice—the voice of someone who gave orders.
"—Yes. Mobilize every division. Publishing, advertising, bookstores. Top priority. ...There will be no ceiling on the budget."
I caught my breath.
She was telling the person on the other end of the line:
"I will be the one to bring it into the world."
It was the voice of the Ice Princess.
"To every night in this country—I will deliver the words of my god."
The call ended.
In the hushed study, I understood.
There was no going back now.
Somewhere I couldn't see, something enormous had quietly begun to move. To drag my story, the one nobody had read, by force into the center of the world.
I remembered the stillness of that six-mat room. Those nights when I'd kept writing even though no one read me.
That stillness was about to end.
Kisaragi was going to drag me out into the light. Her faith had gained a staggering power called a conglomerate, and it had started to move. I didn't feel like I could stop it.
A storm was coming.
Only that premonition remained in my chest, cold.