When I read that, i felt like I’d been struck by lightning. After that, I stopped hiding my ability and began letting it affect at least a small corner of the world.
✦ ✦ ✦
However, as I feared, my decision to expose
✦ ✦ ✦
my powers did not turn out well. Not that I regret what I did, but it seems the world is determined to eradicate foreign elements like myself. I have become the enemy of modern society. I knew
✦ ✦ ✦
that I would.
✦ ✦ ✦
So here at the end, I thought i should thank you. lfl had not read your books, I would have remained isolated, living my life with a strange sense of awareness. I never really cared for that.
✦ ✦ ✦
Why are we born?
✦ ✦ ✦
I prefer to borrow another writer’s words to answer that question...we are born for love and revolution.
✦ ✦ ✦
I have no idea if you would have approved
✦ ✦ ✦
of my actions. But it is an undeniable fact that your words supported me. For that reason alone I am deeply grateful, so grateful that I find myself writing this letter. Thank you.
✦ ✦ ✦
There seems little point in writing more than this. I shall take my leave now. Good-bye. I pray that you will be in good health and writing for many years to come.
✦ ✦ ✦
Sincerely yours.
✦ ✦ ✦
The content alone was odd enough, but even more surprising was that Seiichi had a good idea who this anonymous letter was from.
✦ ✦ ✦
Once before, when he had been writing a script for a manga (which had been canceled due to lack of popularity) he had received a fan letter from a boy, and he recognized the handwriting. But the earlier letter had had the boy’s name and address.
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiichi quickly went through his file boxes until he found the boy’s letter, making sure. It was clearly the same handwriting. There was nothing particularly odd about the first letter, just a few simple words of encouragement.
✦ ✦ ✦
What does it mean? He'll be murdered...?
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiichi found the letter fascinating. No matter how unusual his readers tried to make themselves sound in their letters, he could always determine the source of their ideas. But this one felt different. The writer simply wanted to send him this message-nothing more.
✦ ✦ ✦
Deciding he had to know more about the writer, he called his consistently idle friend Sakakibara Gen.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Gen, are you free?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Basically. I pretty much always am...you know that. What, got something you need me to check up on?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yeah. Something strange. I need it as fast as possible.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Okay, leave it to me.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Gen was a martial artist, but he had stopped teach-ing due to deteriorating relations around his dojo. It left him free to work part-time collecting information for Seiichi. He helped out often enough to earn credit in Seiichi’s books, but he insisted he wasn’t the type for publicity and refused to allow Seiichi to use his name.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Please,” Seiichi said, hanging up after filling Gen in on the details.
✦ ✦ ✦
For a while he sat in silence, thinking.
✦ ✦ ✦
An enemy of society...
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiichi himself had used that phrase, somewhere in his writings. That’s what bothered him most of all.
✦ ✦ ✦
began, three days later, putting down a picture of a boy on Seiichi’s table.
✦ ✦ ✦
".........!"
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiichi had feared as much, but it was still a shock.
✦ ✦ ✦
“He died a month ago. And the stamp on the
✦ ✦ ✦
letter is the day after.”
✦ ✦ ✦
"The day after...?"
✦ ✦ ✦
The letter had gone through the publisher, so this was a normal time lag. If it had come faster, he couldn’t help but wonder if he could have done something.
✦ ✦ ✦
But Gen shook his head. “You’d never have made it in time. He’d been missing for three days before he mailed the letter.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Missing? So he was up to something?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Well...” Gen shrugged, “To tell the truth, I don’t believe a word of it.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Wh-what? What does that mean?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“No, it really might be nothing. He doesn’t seem to have caused much of a fuss, and he doesn’t seem to have hurt anyone.”
✦ ✦ ✦
From what Gen had uncovered, that boy’s
✦ ✦ ✦
friends had all recently started getting very good grades. “And not because he’d been tutoring them or anything. They say all he did was give them a couple of pointers or rub their head. And it was more than just their grades that had improved. One of them was in an amateur band, and suddenly he started composing really distinctive songs-they all displayed similar improvements in cognitive abilities.”
✦ ✦ ✦
"...really? So. . .if it were me, my novels could’ve gotten better?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yeah, basically. And if he’d come to me I
✦ ✦ ✦
might’ve learned how to get along with other people.
✦ ✦ ✦
Basically, it sounds like he had a knack for taking whatever skills people were struggling with and helping them make a breakthrough. The young kids I talked to were almost in tears over his loss. ‘Why did he have to die?”’
✦ ✦ ✦
“That is hard to believe. He was still in his teens, right? What was he, some sort of wannabe miracle worker?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Wannabe? Look, we have no way to prove it
✦ ✦ ✦
now, but it sounds like he was the real thing. And unlike most faith healers, he didn’t ask for money.
✦ ✦ ✦
Also, he only helped out his friends.”
✦ ✦ ✦
"...how did he die?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Fell down the stairs and hit his head, apparently.
✦ ✦ ✦
There were no witnesses...he was dead when they found him.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“So he went missing. . .and then was found dead at the bottom of the stairs?” Seiichi frowned. “And nobody thought that was strange?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Nope. His classmates and neighbors all say he was a creepy kid. Nobody knew what he was thinking most of the time, so they weren’t particularly suspicious. Only his friends made a fuss. They were the ones who talked to me. His death didn’t appear on anyone else’s radar. And his family moved away somewhere. . .Vanished without a trace.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Gen sighed.
✦ ✦ ✦
“No trouble at all. And yet, it was not enough trouble. . .which means trouble.”
✦ ✦ ✦
"........."
✦ ✦ ✦
“Seiichi, this is just another hunch...but this is bad news. If you get mixed up in this, anything can happen.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“I can’t write about it, then...” Seiichi sighed.
✦ ✦ ✦
They fell silent. Neither one of them could pursue this further. There was too little to work with.
✦ ✦ ✦
But one thing still bothered him.
✦ ✦ ✦
Why did that boy call himself an enemy of society?
✦ ✦ ✦
He still didn’t know.
✦ ✦ ✦
letters he’d received. He found quite a few rather similar samples.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I’m so thrilled. I think I can do now what I thought I never could.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“I’ve held back so long, but now I feel like I don’t need to anymore.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“I have newfound power thanks to you. I have the courage to take that first step.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Until now, he had been content to know he made his readers happy, and he’d been grateful for their letters, but now he saw a common nuance lurking behind their writings.
✦ ✦ ✦
They ’re all talking about what they can do, skills they didn ’t have before, things like that...
✦ ✦ ✦
But what did they actually mean?
✦ ✦ ✦
Belatedly, but with no better ideas, Seiichi sent letters back to them, asking how they were getting along.
✦ ✦ ✦
Almost all of them came back undelivered.
✦ ✦ ✦
Those that did elicit a response were always from the family. “. . .passed away two years ago. He was a big fan of your books...”
✦ ✦ ✦
"........."
✦ ✦ ✦
By this point, it was rather obvious. People who loved Kirima Seiichi’s books were either dying or going missing.
✦ ✦ ✦
What the hell is going on...?
✦ ✦ ✦
By this point he could not even talk to Gen, his best friend. Gen had such a powerful conscience that he would pay no heed to the danger involved. If there had been even a tiny clue about the first boy, he would definitely have followed up on it.
✦ ✦ ✦
But even he had said nothing good could come of getting involved in something like this.
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiichi could almost smell something major operating behind the scenes.
✦ ✦ ✦
"........."
✦ ✦ ✦
Thinking about it was making his stomach hurt.
✦ ✦ ✦
His nerves were fraying. Nagi noticed and had started asking if he was okay, looking worried.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Nah, it’s nothing.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You’re working too hard. You need to rest!” she wheedled, accusatively. Seiichi could feel himself calming down.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Nah, I’m fine. Really.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You are not! I’m serious, Dad!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ha ha, sorry, sorry.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Every time Nagi got mad at him, he thought, No matter what happens, I have to keep her out of it.
✦ ✦ ✦
He had no way of knowing what the future held, and had no Way of telling just what kind of destiny his daughter would eventually choose for herself.
✦ ✦ ✦
That she would become the Fire Witch was
✦ ✦ ✦
beyond the imagination of even a writer like Kirima Seiichi.
✦ ✦ ✦
Obviously, part of his drive to write was so he’d earn money and be able to raise Nagi, but above and beyond that, he simply felt like he had to write.
✦ ✦ ✦
He didn’t know why, but the way he wrote had changed.
✦ ✦ ✦
He stopped writing novels.
✦ ✦ ✦
He devoted all his efforts to the kind of Kirima Seiichi works that pleased people, books that had commercial value. Hardly anyone noticed the