The stronger the light grows, the deeper the shadow becomes.
As the book deal became a hot topic, a different kind of fever began to rise on the internet. The hunt for the true identity of the anonymous author Fuyuno Yui.
Age? Gender? Who on earth were they? Posts trying to expose the author's background increased day by day.
Some of it was plainly malicious. It's weird for a gritty story like that to sell, there's money moving behind the scenes anyway, it has to be a conglomerate doing stealth marketing—rumors like that, tinged with envy, began to spread as well.
Half of it was true. The conglomerate was, in fact, moving.
So I couldn't say anything back.
The voices praising my work and the voices tearing it down both grew louder on their own, in places I didn't know. My stories, which for three years had barely been seen by anyone, were now a target for people I'd never met to kill time with.
It was a strange thing. Numbers going up meant that not only allies but also people who sneered at me increased just as much.
That fever had reached school too.
At lunch break, in the classroom, Shota was talking smugly with his phone in one hand.
"You guys heard the rumor that Fuyuno Yui goes to our school? Apparently there are people narrowing it down from stuff like how the update times look like a student's, or how the bookstore rollout is prioritizing the local area."
The guys around him bit. Huh.
"For real? Who is it?"
"Word is it's some plain guy. A loner type nobody notices. ...Well, that's just my guess."
Shota said that and laughed. A gritty story like that selling this much, the world's going to hell. Bet they're piling up cash behind the scenes anyway.
This guy casually tossed off the claim that my stories had been bought with money. When he knew nothing about those nights I'd kept writing for three years, even though they reached no one.
Shota's eyes made an idle circuit of the classroom.
I felt like his gaze grazed my seat for an instant, and I quietly lowered my eyes.
My heart made an ugly sound.
I was afraid of my identity being exposed.
I hadn't been writing because I wanted to be famous. Without showing my name or my face, I'd written just thinking it would be enough if it reached that one person at 12:02 a.m.
If it got out that I was "Fuyuno Yui."
In this class, in the hallways, the way everyone looked at me would change. Some would laugh, That bottom-tier Akizuki? Others would come sidling up.
If that happened, I probably wouldn't be able to write in peace anymore.
What I was afraid of wasn't being famous. It was not being able to write. Not being able to bring words to someone's night.
That stillness of writing for the one person at 12:02 a.m., in the six-mat room, under the fluorescent light that was about to burn out. That had been where I wrote. If everyone's eyes gathered on me, that stillness would probably never come back.
I still hadn't been able to write replies to the three comments from yesterday. I didn't know with what kind of face to answer words that precious.
That night, at the tower condo, I told Koyomi what Shota had said.
Her manner changed.
Her hands stopped mid-dinner, and the ice smoothly returned to her face. Her gray eyes went cold, quiet, and still.
"Shota Mizuki, is it."
The temperature of her voice dropped sharply by a degree.
I'd seen Koyomi go sub-zero several times before now. It was always toward people who made light of my work.
Back in the classroom, Shota had called my story "gritty." He'd sneered that the buzz had been bought with money.
Koyomi probably couldn't forgive that.
"Koyomi. ...Don't do anything."
When I said that, she slowly pasted her smile back on.
"Of course. I will not do anything."
For some reason, that answer didn't reassure me in the slightest.
"It is only that—"
Koyomi gently set her teacup down on the table.
"That person simply has not noticed how precarious the ground beneath his feet is."
I couldn't quite grasp what she meant.
The ground beneath Shota's feet. Precarious.
The words second-tier subcontractor, which I'd heard at some point, brushed the corner of my mind.
Outside the window, the city lights were twinkling.
In the shadow of each one of those lights, right now, someone was searching for who I really was.
I could hear the net slowly drawing tighter.
It wasn't far off now.
The day this city would find out I was "Fuyuno Yui."