But she wasn’t as unlucky as she always said. Someday she would get married to someone, and live a fairly happy life. Well, if this world lasted forever, that is. In the end, stories had saved her, too. “Light” stories brought her rest from the toils of her everyday life, and her mind was simple enough to ensure that she unconsciously obeyed the “heavy” stories.
The stories were her master.
Suddenly, that thought came to me. But when the thought became language, at the same time, I felt myself feeling doubt. If this world was completely real, and the things in my mind were a delusion, then the idea that stories were a virus, and that I, the only man aware of this, had a special role to play, was no different than arrogant madness.
In the end, I had no choice but to believe that I would know at the end of my journey whether what I was doing was right or not. I managed to get in touch with the editing production company that Yoshie had introduced me to. All I had to do was ask if the person Yoshie had mentioned was still there, so a single call was sufficient.
The answer was simple.
“The person you’re referring to did work here, yes. But they quit last year,” the CEO of the company told me directly.
I asked the name.
“Um... the name was... XXXX... No, Soga.”
The first name the CEO gave me was a pen name. Surprisingly, it matched the pen name that Junko had given me, too. And her name was Soga, too... I tried to hide the excitement in my voice, as I simply asked them to call me if they had any work, and then hung up. It was the same person who’d altered the course of each of our lives, and that person was the Law of Identity. The whole thing began to seem much more real.
The CEO had given me the address. Now I just had to go there.
Between Yokohama station and old Takashimacho station, I found it: a room in a condo building. The surrounding area was strange: neither residential nor commercial. Just rows of paved, but empty, lots and trees planted to hide the empty spaces under the bridges. I was only a few minutes from the hustle and bustle of Yokohama, but it felt strange, like it was inside a void. The condo building was a big one, and fancy too, but it felt strangely run-down. I felt the strange lack of light and eerie emptiness that you always feel in places where it’s not safe.
I looked at the name outside the door.
It didn’t say “Soga”. Maybe this wasn’t the right place, but it was worth a try. Even if someone else lived here now, if she’d moved somewhere close, they might be able to tell me where her mail was forwarded to. I rang the bell and asked for “Soga.” The door opened, and someone I knew well came out.
“You finally made it!”
It was Fujiko. Of course, in this world she had a different name. She was pretty, with long black hair, but that was the only thing she’d retained from her fictional counterpart. She was married, and not even my type, but I always felt nervous around her.
When it was just the two of us, the people around us would often stare out of curiosity. But everything else about her was normal, and she was far friendlier than she looked. She was an unsuccessful horoscope writer, married to a public servant. She and I often talked because of our jobs.
“You? Live here?” I asked, so shocked I couldn’t even form a coherent sentence.
“You’re here about Soga, right? Come in.”
Fujiko slipped on her sandals and opened wide the door. I could see a wooden table, a shelf for dishes, and white wallpaper behind her. Nothing out of the ordinary. But this didn’t seem like where she lived with her husband. From the number of dishes and the slippers on the floor, however, it was clear this room belonged to a single person.
“I’ve got a lot of questions, but...”
I said, and Fujiko pointed at me with a dazzling smile.
“Your memories came back, right? Wow, that was incredible, wasn’t it?”
“You mean, of Constant Magical Academy?”
I said, stammeringly.
“Right! That was amazing! Like a fantasy book!”
She was so excited she forgot to tell me to sit down. I’d finally hit the jackpot. I was feeling a little dizzy.
“I’d thought it turned into something a little more serious,” I said, a little sadly.
That calmed her down a bit, but since there was no one in this world who remembered her, she had a lot she wanted to say. So we started to talk about old times, to help bring back my memories and to make sure that hers were correct. Her memories and mine matched.
What was strange was that both of us had our own personalities here, and it seemed to us like the whole thing had been a dream. Even as we spoke about our old world, our personalities remained the same as they were. I didn’t forget that I was an author, and Fujiko remained a friendly fortune-teller, instead of dreaming of world conquest.
“It’s strange thinking that those people were us, isn’t it?” Fujiko said.
“But there’s no other way to explain why we both remember the same things.”
“I never read them before, but I’ll check out your novels.”
“You didn’t read them?”
My shoulders slumped.
“...If I did, I would’ve doubted my memories.”
“That’s true. At first, when I was writing, I didn’t really know what I was doing myself.”
“So, about Soga...” Fujiko began.”
“That’s it. Soga lives here, right?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, lowering her voice.
“Why are you making that face?”
“Oh, I was told to keep it a secret.”
“A secret?”
“Well... my memories came back a little sooner than yours. You know how sometimes you can do fortune telling based on your past life? I was doing that when I remembered.”
“And how did you reach Soga?”
“Well, the first thing I did was doubt my memories. I mean, the ones from before 1990.”
“Yeah. Those were all fake memories that we were implanted with.”
“I went thinking back through those memories, my first memories from when I arrived in this world. And Soga was there.”
“I see. So I was on the right track too. Both Junko and Yoshie got into this line of work because of Soga.”
“But you’re different from the rest of us.”
“I am?”
“Yup. She only sent you a letter, she says.”
“A letter?”
“Yeah. She said... she couldn’t meet you in person.”
“Why?”
“Hmm... she explained it to me, but I didn’t really understand it,” Fujiko said. “I think it’s because Akuto sees the world through your eyes. So you can’t be allowed to meet the Law of Identity.”
For some reason, she sounded like she was apologizing. I began to get worried.
“But I can still talk to her, just not in person, right?”
“You can talk to her online, she says.”
Fujiko brought over a memo pad that was next to the dish shelf. It had a string of letters that looked like an internet phone address.