Oh! Is that…a Sunset Candy Apple?
The moment she saw it, Keiko knew that was what she was looking at. Sunset Candy Apples were a fictional food that appeared in one of her favorite books. In that story, the main character wanders into a strange town and buys one from a festival stall. It was a big red apple encased in caramel the color of the evening sky. That description had captured Keiko’s imagination. She wished she could try one herself, even if it was only once. Every time she reread the book, that desire to experience the same thing the characters did got even stronger.
But of course, that was a wish that would never come true. If only there were a way for her to visit the world inside that book… She was just going to taste bitter regret instead of those candy apples.
So when Keiko saw a real Sunset Candy Apple right in front of her, she just couldn’t help herself. Feeling a little awkward, she called out to the girl who was eating it.
“E-excuse me! Wh-where did you buy that…?”
Keiko hadn’t seen this girl around before; she was a stranger who just happened to be passing by. She wore a neon-pink hoodie, and her hair was completely silver. Her right eye was covered by an eye patch the same shade of pink as her jacket, with a crossed-through heart symbol on it. It made for an odd combination, this girl in her outfit full of bright, artificial colors, eating something as simple as an apple.
In the hand not holding the sweet treat, the girl in pink held the handle of a wheeled suitcase. When Keiko saw it, her heart gave another leap. The suitcase looked like something out of a story, too; it had such a cute, stylish design.
The girl had already taken several bites of the apple. She chewed, swallowed, and offered a friendly smile.
“You can get one from that store over there,” she said, gesturing to a nearby building.
Keiko thanked her, giving a little bow, and ran off toward the store.
✦ ✦ ✦
The inside of the store was wide, roomy, and only very dimly lit. Keiko didn’t see any products lined up anywhere. There weren’t any tables or chairs like you’d find in a café, either. Just what kind of place was this? She realized she’d charged right in without stopping to check.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ah, a customer. Welcome,” came a voice from somewhere near the back of the store.
Keiko squinted and saw a man standing by the back wall; he must have been an employee. He was wearing a hat with a wide brim and had a thick scarf wrapped around his neck, both of which cast shadows across his face. Between that and the low light, Keiko couldn’t make out his features at all.
Hesitantly, she stepped forward.
“Uh… I was wondering… Wh-what kind of store is this?”
“This is one of the world’s few operational Transcription Parlors.”
“Transcription?”
She’d heard that word before. It was when somebody wrote down what people were saying during recorded interviews and stuff, right? That was what transcription was, wasn’t it? So was this a place where people did that kind of work? That seemed like the most reasonable explanation.
But the man with the shadowy face wasn’t done talking. He took a step closer to Keiko and pulled out some kind of highlighter pen.
“If you buy one of our Transcription Markers, you can come here to enjoy transcription activities any time you like.”
“I… What?”
Keiko didn’t get it. Was transcription really something you “enjoyed”? And what did this marker have to do with it?
As she stood there wondering, the man took a remote control from the wall and pressed a button on it. The wall suddenly lit up, and Keiko’s eyes went wide with shock when she saw what was there. What she’d thought was a regular wall was actually made up of lots and lots of books, all tightly lined up without a single space between them. The whole wall was one gigantic bookcase!
That wasn’t the only surprising thing about it. The books were all different sizes. The smaller ones were the same as you’d get in any other store, but the big ones were really big. The biggest one towered above Keiko’s head—it was the same size as the door she’d come in through. It was the largest book she’d ever seen, and there were several more just as huge sitting next to it.
“Wh-why are the books so big?!” she asked.
“Because the text is so small in normal-size books,” the man replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
But no matter what he said, there was no reason for any book to be that big, was there? Still feeling bewildered, Keiko glanced at the titles of the giant books. She recognized one of them—she’d read it lots of times over the last few years. It was the same book the Sunset Candy Apples appeared in.
“Oh! That book!”
Keiko pointed to it in surprise. The store employee nodded dutifully, pulled it off the shelf, and brought it over. He carried the enormous book to the middle of the room and laid it on the floor, all without showing any kind of strain or effort. It must have been a lot lighter than it looked. Next, he opened it and pressed another button on his remote control to switch on the light above them.
Despite the book’s abnormal size, the inside wasn’t anything too strange. Glancing at the oversize text, Keiko recognized several familiar sentences. It was the same story she knew and loved so well.
“The Sunset Candy Apples that appear in this book are a popular choice for transcription,” the shadowy man told her.
“Huh? Wait… Do you mean…?!”
“Allow me to demonstrate. I just have to find a page that still has some words on it…”
The store employee started turning the book’s pages. They were so big, each one made a low swish sound, creating enough of a breeze that Keiko could feel it on her face.
She gazed down at the book, her bangs fluttering. It was then that she noticed something unusual. Here and there throughout the book, parts of the text had become faded. Before she could think about why that was, the man stopped at a certain page. On it was a passage describing the Sunset Candy Apple.
“I will now transcribe this one for you,” he said, taking the cap off the marker.
He used it to draw a line through the words Sunset Candy Apple, dragging it across the page with a sharp squeeeak. When he was done, the line of color left behind suddenly expanded until it covered the words completely.
And then…the words rose up and floated right off the page.
“…?!”
The strange phenomenon didn’t stop there. First, the color from the marker floated away and disappeared. Then the words started transforming into something that wasn’t words. They rearranged themselves and turned into a real Sunset Candy Apple, just like the one Keiko had seen that girl eating earlier.
“When transcribing food, it’s better to make it a more substantial size, don’t you think?” the man in the hat and scarf said. “Here you go. Consider this a free sample.”
He then handed the apple to Keiko.
She took it and stared in amazement. There was no doubt about it—this was a Sunset Candy Apple. But at the same time, it was still the words Sunset Candy Apple. What a weird sensation.
Then again, reading and writing was weird, now that she thought about it. Words weren’t the actual things they described; they were just symbols to help represent them. But whenever you read a word, you still imagined the object, person, or idea behind it. It usually wasn’t something vague, either, but a clear, well-defined image. In a way, reading was like experiencing a powerful hallucination.