My PVs, which until yesterday were a blessing if they hit double digits in a day, had turned into six digits when I woke up in the morning.
With my head still half-asleep, I looked at the laptop screen again and again. I counted the digits with my finger.
PV 248193
I wasn't seeing things. Numbers were crashing like an avalanche into the dashboard that used to be lined with zeros. Every time I refreshed, the last digits spun around and climbed.
"...Is this thing broken?"
"It is not broken."
Kisaragi's voice came from behind me.
Before I'd noticed, she was holding a steaming mug and peering at the screen over my shoulder. In the morning light, the Ice Princess looked just a little proud of herself.
"Last night, the advertisements went out all at once. Stations, trains, the internet from one end to the other. Right now, your name is the most-seen name in this country."
That day passed without any sense of reality.
At school, everyone was talking about "Fuyuno Yui." In the hallways, in the classrooms. The author of that new work, the anonymous author no one can identify, they say the book deal was decided on the spot.
Right next to me, a classmate was passionately discussing a story I'd written, without realizing it was me. That anonymous author's definitely a grown-up. You'd have to have lived a few lifetimes to write something that heavy.
I held back a laugh. That "grown-up who'd lived a few lifetimes" was just a high school student flipping through a vocabulary book right beside them.
It was a strange, indescribable feeling.
In the classroom, Kisaragi was the usual Ice Princess. She didn't even let me into her field of view. She sat in her seat by the window with a perfectly blank expression. No one knew that she was the girl at "Fuyuno Yui's" side.
At school, we were strangers. That tightrope walk, at least, didn't collapse today either.
Night. When I got back to the tower condo, Kisaragi held out a sheet of paper summarizing the day's numbers.
PVs, bookmarks, ratings, the first print run for the book. Every figure was dizzyingly large.
"These are incredible numbers, my god. This many people in this country are waiting for your story."
She looked truly happy.
I looked at the sheet in silence for a while.
And then I said honestly, "...It doesn't really feel real."
Kisaragi's eyes widened, just slightly.
"Six digits, seven digits. The numbers are so big I can't see any faces. I don't know what kind of night each one of them is reading this on."
This wasn't arrogance, or modesty either.
For three years, I'd written for just one person. That one at 12:02 a.m. I hadn't known their face or their name, and yet, somehow, I'd been able to picture that person's nights clearly.
But behind a six-digit number, not a single face came to mind.
"I know it's a luxury problem. But to me, these numbers still don't look like people reading my stories."
As soon as I said it, I thought, Oh, no.
Saying something to dampen it, to her, after she'd gone to so much trouble for me.
But Kisaragi didn't get angry.
Far from it—her gray eyes slowly grew moist.
"...You really are still yourself, are you not."
She murmured that and topped off my teacup with tea that was still warm. With the same motion as always, not a hair's difference, right down to the angle.
That night, on a whim, I opened the comments section.
The comments section for the new work—the one that had been scattered all over this country with the full might of a conglomerate. Words were pouring in there like a flood.
Onto the screen of a guy who, until yesterday, hadn't gotten a single comment in three years, hundreds of comments were now piling up.
I read every one of them, one by one.
It was good. I want to know what happens next. I love that character. Short ones, long ones. Some people had even copied one of my lines word for word and typed that this was the part they loved.
I thought these were honest words. At the very least, these people had read my story and typed them.
And yet.
What seeped up from the bottom of my chest wasn't joy. It was guilt.
How had these people found their way to my story?
At stations. On trains. On the internet from one end to the other. Last night, Kisaragi's family had scattered my name all over this country with money and power. At the end of that circuit, these people had opened my story.
—If that was the case.
What had called these hundreds of words here wasn't what I'd written. It was the Kisaragi family's wealth.
The moment I thought that, the screenful of It was good drifted far away.
Even so, I pressed the reply button. I typed Thank you so much. Then I read the next one and replied again. One at a time. I couldn't reply to words I hadn't read. So I read as many as I could, and replied as much as I could write.
But the fingers typing those thank-yous felt somehow like someone else's.
I probably wasn't the one who should be saying thank you. Because I wasn't the one who'd brought these people here.
...It wasn't that I wasn't happy. I just couldn't bring myself to believe I'd called these words here with my own strength.
The numbers come crashing down. Reply, and replies come back. And still, the one place I'd most wanted to bring a light to remained pitch dark.
—Just then.
In the darkness, Kisaragi's phone vibrated softly.
She glanced at the screen, and her expression smoothly vanished. The ice had returned.
"...What is it?"
"It is nothing."
She set the phone down face-down.
"It seems there is someone rather nosy. ...Someone who wants to know who you really are."
Her voice had taken on that coldness again.
Numbers are light. The stronger they get, the farther they reach.
But the stronger the light, the deeper the shadow that falls at its feet. At that point, I still hadn't really looked at the shadow.
Maybe I'd been dazzled by the numbers crashing in.