There were many people in my house. But there was not one person who saw me.
The Kisaragi heiress. Being perfect was my only value. Keep my back straight, smile correctly, answer correctly. I was a tool. A well-made, cold tool.
If I smiled the wrong way, my tutor's eyes grew stern. If I missed a single note on the piano, my mother's brow moved, ever so slightly. No one scolded me. They were only quietly disappointed. That quiet cut deeper than any reprimand.
And so I became ice. If I felt nothing, nothing could hurt me. That was what I believed.
At some point, the nights grew long. It became painful for morning to come. Another perfect day would begin. Another day of remaining correct, without being seen by anyone.
One night, I had quietly made up my mind.
The morning no longer needed to come.
The room was dark, and there was only the sound of the clock. Inside my fine bedding, there was nothing anywhere in the world holding me back. My fingertips were cold.
For no reason, I touched the screen in my hand. Beneath an article I had not even read, a small advertisement had appeared.
Packed with stories that make you look forward to tomorrow.
It was something I did not have even one of. That, I think, is why my finger stopped.
When I touched it, the screen changed to a small web novel site lined with free novels. Story Tree. In the list of new arrivals, where freshly updated works were lined up, long titles ran all the way to the edge of the screen, packed tight.
Among them, there was only one short title.
A Star in the Mud.
It was a work no one had read. Only its shortness stayed, strangely, in my eyes.
A miserable person, still miserable, dragging their feet toward tomorrow all the same. Just live, it said. A clumsy, earthy story that kept saying nothing but that. It was not refined writing. But every one of its awkward lines was like words wrung out from the mud.
Within it, there was one line.
If there is even one reason to wait for tomorrow, a person can make it through the night
I could not move before that line. The perfect heiress, in a dark room, was crying without a sound for the sake of a single line. It felt as though what I had kept frozen for so long was melting with an audible crack.
If there is even one reason to wait for tomorrow.
—Then. If just one is enough. Might I have one, too? Would this person write again tomorrow? Even though no one was reading?
There was no answer anywhere.
—For now, just one day.
I would wait just one day, and then think about it. That was all I decided.
And so, I greeted the morning. I do not remember well how I spent that day. All I remember is that after the sun went down, I could no longer stay in my room.
I would wait just one day. That was what I had decided. But when night came, I could see clearly how thin that promise was. It was a single line. A single line by someone I had never met. What was I trying to wait for, with something like that?
I left my room. The elevator moved not down, but up. Beyond the very top floor. I opened a door no one usually came to.
The sound of the wind filled my ears. The city lights spread out far below. I did not think they were beautiful, nor frightening. I only thought they were far away.
Let me put an end to everything. With that thought, I stepped toward the dark.
It was the very moment I understood that it was ending. For some reason, that line shone before my eyes.
—If there is even one reason to wait for tomorrow, a person can make it through the night
I looked at the screen in my hand. It had become midnight. It would not be too late, even after I had seen that story through. So I thought, and I waited.
Two minutes after midnight.
A new chapter of A Star in the Mud had been updated.
I held my breath. The sound of the wind grew distant. I read it right there. My fingers were numb with cold, and the screen would hardly move.
This person had written again tonight. Even though no one was reading. At the same time as yesterday, they had released one more piece of words into the world. Live, it said. It was as if they were saying it to me.
That could not be. This person did not even know that I was standing there. And yet, without knowing, this person pulled me back. And at the same time, I came to have a reason to wait for tomorrow, too.
Whether this person would write again, at 12:02 a.m. tomorrow. I wanted to see it through. For that reason alone, I went back toward the door. All I was able to bring back with me was the time, 12:02 a.m. That was all. At that point, I did not yet call you my god.
The next night. And the night after that. 12:02 a.m. never once betrayed me.
From that night on, I stopped counting my demerits. My mother's brow still moved, the same as ever. Nothing had decreased. I simply no longer felt like writing them down.
The diary ended there.
Instead, I opened a new notebook. On the first page, I wrote the date and the time.
12:02 a.m.
That was all it was. And yet, the moment I wrote it, tears overflowed again. They were different tears from before.
Demerits. Demerits. Demerits. The more I counted, the smaller I became. And yet, on this page, there was not a single demerit.
I picked up a pen not to reduce, but to wait. It was the first time in my life.
I laid my face on that page and cried. The ink bled. Even when I wiped it, the mark did not disappear.
The times of the updates. The corrected typos. The foreshadowing hidden in the story. I copied all of it down. Only while I was copying did the morning stop frightening me.
One volume became two. Then three. How many times did I refill the ink in my fountain pen? Just as you hardened your fingers typing at the keyboard every night, I hardened mine copying you down.
A person I had never met, whose voice I had never heard. The thickness of the notebooks was exactly the number of nights that person had kept me alive.
At some point, I came to think of you as a god. The time I brought back from the rooftop that night had, before I knew it, become that name.
My god of midnight.
Those three years, when the PVs were in the single digits. The single read that was always there, on every chapter you updated at 12:02 a.m. each night.
PV 1
That one.
The box for writing comments, the place to give stars, were within reach of my fingers. But I could not do it. To leave a mark, one needs a name. If I left a name, you would find me. When remaining an unseen tool was the only way I knew how to live.
...No. It was not that I was afraid.
If I left even a single mark, you might start writing for me. Picturing my face, writing the kind of stories I might like. I did not want that.
To keep your stories as your stories, I erased myself.
Besides—one does not send comments to a god. One only prays.
And so every last one of my words flowed into these notebooks. Not into your comments section, but beside that one line I had copied out hundreds of times.
All I could leave with you was a single read, without a voice.
The reader who read your world first of all—was me.
You kept on writing, never knowing that you had saved my life.