I quietly said goodbye to my childhood friend.
It wasn't payback. I just didn't have anything left to give her.
"Ren, please. You're all I have left now."
Yuna said it with tears spilling down her face.
"From now on, I'll really read your novels, Ren. I'll be your number-one reader. So—"
I heard her out, all the way to the end.
Three years ago, that one line might have sent me floating all over again. If Yuna would read my stuff, that alone would be enough. There was a time when I had thought that, for a long while.
But it was too late now.
"Yuna."
I said her name quietly.
"Three years ago, when I showed you my manuscript. Do you remember what you said?"
Yuna's shoulders gave a jolt.
"You said it was cringe. 'Who would even read this.' ...Back then, you didn't read a single line. You didn't even try."
I wasn't blaming her. I was just confirming the facts.
"It's the same now. What you want to read isn't my story now that I'm number one. It's the number. Number one."
Yuna couldn't say anything back.
I went on. I didn't raise my voice.
"I want to write for someone who actually reads my stories, even if it's just one person. Not for numbers, not for rankings. For that one person who's kept alive by a line I wrote."
Another tear fell from Yuna's eyes.
I looked straight into them and said it.
"So—there's no story left that I want you to read."
They weren't words of payback. There was no anger in them, and no grudge.
They were just words of goodbye.
Yuna stared at me for a while. Then she gave a small nod. It was the face of someone who had finally given something up.
I bowed my head and left the entrance hall.
The winter wind was colder than I expected. I didn't look back. I think that was the right thing. Payback doesn't create anything. All I had done was make it clear who I wanted to write for.
Three years ago, when those words broke me, I really had been miserable. But without that misery, I might not have kept writing. And if I hadn't kept writing, I would never have met that "one" at 12:02 a.m.
So I couldn't bring myself to resent Yuna.
It was just that my stories wouldn't open for her anymore. That was all it was.
That night, I went home to the tower condo.
Koyomi welcomed me back the way she always did. The temperature of the tea in my teacup, the fingerless gloves, everything was the same as always.
"Welcome home, my god."
I was about to turn to my manuscript—and then my hands stopped.
The thick leather-bound notebook sitting in the corner of the desk. The scripture notebook that recorded every one of my chapters, every update time, every typo correction.
And the words Koyomi had let slip at some point.
If that story had not existed, I would not be here now. Literally, I would not be.
There really was a person who had made it through a night that no voice could reach, on a single line of mine. In the courtyard, Koyomi had said so, and cried.
Until now, I had been afraid to look into the bottom of those words.
What kind of night it had been, the night she went through all alone. How my story had slipped into that night. If I truly came to know that, I would be taking on the whole weight of this person. There would be nowhere left to run.
So I had gone all this time without asking. I had kept it at a distance, untouched, as words of faith.
But that was cowardly of me.
Koyomi had made my stories her lifeline. She had bowed her head for me in front of the whole school. She had sheathed the blade of her grudge at a single word from me. She was always taking on all of me.
And yet I was the only one looking away from the deepest part of her.
I had only just decided I wouldn't run anymore. The same way I had decided not to run from Yuna.
"Koyomi."
I put down my pen and turned toward her.
"That night, when you say my story saved you. ...Will you tell me about it, properly?"
Koyomi's gray eyes slowly went wide.
Somewhere deep in them, I felt as if a door that had been shut for a long time gave a faint creak.