"I will cut that company off."
Koyomi said that, with a single word as a conglomerate heiress, she could erase the company owned by the father of Shota, who'd laughed at my masterpiece.
And she said it in the quietest of voices.
The next night. Koyomi brought out that gray file and put it on the desk again.
"There is no need to wait for the routine audit. We need only stop renewing the contract from our side. Reasons can be manufactured in any number."
I looked up from my manuscript.
"Koyomi. Do you understand what you're saying?"
"I understand."
Koyomi smiled. Only with her mouth, her eyes still sub-zero.
"That person laughed at your story, my god, in front of a crowd. Called it worthless. Said not one single person had read it.—I do not want a person like that left in this world."
A chill went down my spine.
I knew this was Koyomi's possessiveness. She didn't go sub-zero toward me. Only toward those who insulted my stories. And yet she didn't restrict my freedom by so much as a finger. Wherever I went, whoever I met, Koyomi never stopped me. She didn't even lock the door.
Only the people who laughed at what I'd written, she would never, ever forgive.
That was how this person loved. Warped, straight, and frightening.
"You mean you want to teach Shota a lesson?"
"No."
Koyomi shook her head.
"I have no interest in Shota himself. I will only quietly pull out what is holding up the ground beneath his feet. Before he even knows what he is losing."
What frightened me was that there wasn't a single shred of shouting or roughness in Koyomi's words.
If Koyomi had gone bright red in the face and screamed I can't forgive this, I would still have had some way to calm her down. But she was trying to erase people's livelihoods with the same stillness she used to correct typos in my manuscripts. It wasn't that her emotions were running high. She'd made up her mind long ago.
"Koyomi. That's going too far."
"Too far, is it?"
Koyomi tilted her head, puzzled. Her face said she truly didn't understand.
"For me, a person who laughed at you, my god, carrying on with his life just as before is far more unbearable."
I was at a loss for words.
Koyomi's slender finger slid across the gray documents. Tracing the company name written there, the contract deadline, the amounts. With that same care she used when correcting typos in my manuscripts.
I thought, This is frightening.
But more than that, I felt like I'd caught a small glimpse of what lay at the bottom of this person.
"Koyomi. Why would you go that far?"
Koyomi's finger stopped.
There was a silence for a while.
"...I do not think you would understand, my god."
Koyomi looked down. Her silver hair hid her cheek.
"Not someone who thinks that story is just a story. Not someone who can think of it as a way to kill time, or something to laugh at.—They would never understand."
Her voice grew a little hoarse.
"If that story had not existed, I would not be here now. Literally, I would not be."
Koyomi said only that and closed her mouth.
Perhaps she thought she'd said too much; she immediately turned her gaze back to the gray documents. But the words, once spilled, had already sunk quietly into the air of the room.
I caught my breath.
Koyomi had used her plain, unguarded "I." The "I" that slipped out at home when her guard was down. The mask the Ice Princess never let crack at school always fell away, only when she said words like these.
I would not be, Koyomi had said. Not here, now.
At the bottom of those words lay something deep and dark that I didn't know yet. Those nights at 12:02 a.m. when she'd been reading my stories. What kind of nights had she been getting through?
She didn't say anything more. Koyomi never told me what came after. But from that one remark alone, I clearly felt that at the bottom of her ice there was a deep, dark night I didn't know.
My stories weren't a way to kill time for her. They had been a lifeline. That was exactly why she couldn't forgive anyone who laughed at them.
Koyomi raised her face. Her sub-zero eyes had returned to normal.
"Tomorrow, I will speak with the person in charge."
With that, Koyomi reached for her phone.
Just before her finger touched the screen.
Before I knew it, I'd grabbed her wrist.