I'll start with the conclusion. Before morning homeroom even began, my secret had spread all over the school.
The moment I opened the classroom door with numb fingers, I could tell from the air. The people who normally didn't even let me into their field of view all turned toward me at once. The murmur drew back, and the next instant it swelled as if a dam had burst.
"Seriously, him?" "Fuyuno Yui is that Akizuki?"
Several phones lay face-down on the desks. On a screen I caught a glimpse of, my new serial was displayed. The Silver Princess and the Tale of Dawn. Number one in the overall rankings on the web novel site Story Tree.
Its author was apparently a second-year at this school.—I learned later that a post saying so had made the rounds last night.
Just walking to my seat, my feet nearly tangled.
For three years, I'd written without telling anyone. By day, a dull high school student; only at night, me, spinning stories. That second face was something I was never supposed to show anyone.
I hadn't thought it would be peeled away so easily.
By lunch break, I'd already become a different creature.
"Akizuki, you were actually amazing all along, huh."
A girl I'd never once spoken to came up and talked to me with a smile. A guy who'd always walked past my desk as if avoiding garbage threw an arm around my shoulders.
"Hey, sign something for me, would you? While it's still early."
Back then, I might have been over the moon. Now I just felt cold.
What these people were looking at was the number "first place." Not the stories I'd written. They hadn't read a single line.
For the first time, I saw up close the moment people changed their attitude because of a number. And I was remembering just one thing.
When my PVs were in single digits. When no one read me. Even so, every night, at 12:02 a.m., there was just a single read.
That "one" was nowhere in this commotion.
—No.
It was here. In this classroom.
Even when the number hit thirty thousand, the only one I'd truly been writing for was that "one." And I already knew that it was sitting in the quietest spot in this commotion.
When I thought that, my head strangely cooled.
"Akizuki, when's your next signing?" "You're getting a book deal, right? The royalties, that's insane."
Every word that flowed into my ears was about the numbers stuck to me, not about my stories. These people didn't know that for three years I'd written without a break, on rainy days and on days I had a cold. They didn't even want to know.
Until yesterday, I might as well not have existed in this classroom. Today, everyone was looking. But it wasn't me they were looking at.
I was standing in the same place, and yet it was as if I were in a completely different world.
"Hey, you listening? Akizuki."
I wasn't. I gave a vague smile and let my eyes escape.
On the other side of the classroom. In the farthest seat by the window, Koyomi was just quietly closing a paperback.
After school, someone was lying in wait for me at the shoe lockers.
A different group from the ones who'd come sidling up earlier—the group that was always laughing loudly. At the center was Shota. That handsome transfer student Yuna had dumped me for.
"Well, if it isn't the great Fuyuno Yui."
Shota clapped his hands theatrically. The people around him burst out laughing.
"Man, I've gotta hand it to you. A novel some bottom-tier otaku was writing on the sly, becoming a hit by accident, huh. Didn't you get some dirt on a conglomerate and make them advertise it for you or something? Not talent, but the power of money, right?"
I couldn't say anything back. The power of money. Half of it was true. If the Kisaragi Group hadn't moved, my stories would still be stuck in single digits.
"Come on, be honest. Aren't you getting full of yourself just 'cause you got a little famous?"
One of his hangers-on egged him on. Shota held him back with a hand and peered down into my face. His sweet features looked coldly twisted, just this once.
"Plain guys like this, when they go viral by accident, they get the wrong idea. I read a bit of that stuff you write, you know. That's not something a normal person reads."
You didn't even read it, I thought. But I couldn't say it.
But—I thought.
Money couldn't buy that "one" at 12:02 a.m.
"Clamming up, huh? Boring."
Shota snorted and passed by, deliberately bumping my shoulder. His hangers-on followed behind.
A cold wind blew in through the wide-open entrance hall. I couldn't move for a while in front of the shoe lockers.
From tomorrow, what kind of face was I supposed to wear at this school? The ones who flipped and came sidling up, and the ones who sneered that it was the power of money. What I'd written hadn't reached either of them.
The storm had only just begun.
And I didn't know yet.
That in the middle of this commotion, the quietest and most dangerous thing of all was about to start moving.
That silver in the farthest seat by the window.