The Last Cry in Hades
The Last Cry in Hades
As Haruto and Ui walked back from the café, Makina Kaizu and Ashley Ono were relaxing at a bar not far from Ashley’s accounting office. They were seated on two adjacent bar stools, Kaizu nursing a whiskey and Ashley enjoying some sake.
“…I wasn’t expecting you there, Makina.” She gave a small sigh, sipping her Juyondai. She was a regular here—it was the kind of small, slightly hip place you’d see in a Haruki Murakami novel, but it also boasted an appreciable sake collection. The manager knew her, so she didn’t have to show ID to drink anymore.
“…Neither was I,” Kaizu said with a grin. He was tackling a Chivas Regal Mizunara edition on the rocks. If you sample just a bit of it on your tongue, the spicy aroma and soft sweetness—something blended for the Japanese market—spread out over the inside of your mouth. Kaizu almost never drank, not even at parties, but he wasn’t about to hit a bar with a woman and just have a soda.
“You know,” he moaned, “that was supposed to be my big chance to get to know that new writer with the tits. You wrecked my chances.”
Ashley gave him a sarcastic smile. “Oh? Was that who you were after? You’d normally never have the guts to go to a mixer like that if I wasn’t around.”
“…That’s not truuue.” He reproachfully groaned. “You gunning for Fuwa?”
She turned away from him. Kaizu sighed.
“…He’s handsome, he’s a good guy, and he’s got money, but he’s not used to women at all. He’s way too good a catch to have an old biddy like you toying with him. Give him a break.”
Ashley glared back at him, unimpressed. “You’re calling me old…? Chihiro was treating you like a retiree.”
“We’re both old and decrepit in his eyes. We’ve lived twice as long as him.”
“Hey, he’s seventeen and I’m thirty-three. That’s not twice as long.”
“It’s close enough.”
Then Ashley raised her eyebrows. “Come to think of it, Chihiro did ask me once if I ever got served whale meat in my school lunches…”
“Yeah, see? That’s not much different from the age of gluing Gundam model parts together.”
Ashley, unable to fire back, finished her cup of sake and took one of the pieces of pickled daikon radish topped with cream cheese from the plate between them. Kaizu followed her lead, chasing the crunchy pickle with a quick lap of whiskey. This was a pretty simple appetizer, a specialty of Akita Prefecture up in northern Japan; more of a snack than a prepared “dish,” but it worked well with both types of alcohol.
Cream cheese and sake are a surprisingly good match, while the smoky taste of the daikon compliments a good whiskey just fine. Sake matches well with anything pickled, of course, and cream cheese has long been known as a go-to with whiskey—so putting them together, and combining those two sour flavors, creates an exquisite harmony. The crunch of the radish adds a nice accent as well, making it the perfect snack no matter what your poison is.
“Pheww,” breathed Ashley as she emptied her cup. “Time is a cruel mistress, isn’t she? Chihiro is so smart, but even he thinks everything that happened before he was born is all part of some nebulous ‘past.’”
“…Yeah,” Kaizu muttered, looking at the ice floating in his glass. “…Three years, though, huh?”
“…Yeah.” Ashley nodded.
Makina Kaizu and Ashley Ono first met about seven years earlier, via a mutual friend. The three of them drank together at this bar regularly. They last met around three years ago—at that mutual friend’s funeral. Since their relationship was entirely through this third woman, and since Kaizu was too mistrustful of people to let someone else do his taxes for him, they had no reason to see each other again.
This mutual friend’s pen name was Kasuka Sekigahara. She was a novelist who won the Grand Prize in the 1st GF Bunko New Writers Contest, the same one that Kaizu was a runner-up in. Kaizu was twenty-three then, Kasuka nineteen. She came to know Ashley because Ashley had just opened her office, and Kasuka happened to live nearby and needed some tax help. Being a pair of single self-employed women, they soon hit it off well enough to hang out together, and Kasuka’s references gave Ashley a stable of writers, manga artists, illustrators, and other publishing-industry types to accept work from. It wasn’t long before she developed a reputation as a specialist in the field.
Kasuka Sekigahara was just a bit under five feet tall, slim and compact. She was more cute than beautiful and had an intimidating neutral expression, making her seem colder than she intended. Her standout feature was her waist-length black hair—and the darker gothic-Lolita clothing she liked.
The novel she submitted to the contest—her first work, she said—received rave reviews. Her second and third were just as good, and she truly deserved to be called a “genius” in her field. But unlike Nayuta Kani, who later won the same prize mainly by portraying the world she felt inside her, Kasuka was more the “entertainer” type who wanted to move people with her work—a rarity among geniuses.
Along those lines, she had a passion for analyzing and researching trends, but this didn’t mean she had much of a normal social life. When the die were rolled to create her character, all her points were put into novel-writing parameters—many geniuses could be considered outliers in various facets of their lives, and she was no exception. This led her to often talk and act in eccentric ways.
For example, around two years after her debut, Kasuka stormed into the apartment Kaizu lived in alone and announced:
“Makina, time for sex!”
“Wh-what are you talking about?!” Kaizu blushed in a bit of a panic as Kasuka boldly stood before him.
“I want to write a really sexy scene that’ll make all the readers get super horny, but sadly, I’m a virgin. So I want to try it out.”
“…Why me?”
“Cause I wouldn’t mind doing it with you. You’re the best male friend I have.”
Kaizu had mixed feelings about how offhand her reply was. At the time, he had a major hang-up about how much less talented he was than Kasuka. Her debut novel was a long-term success, enjoying multiple reprints, while Kaizu’s debut series never found its footing and got canceled after three volumes—and even the readers who bought it didn’t exactly heap him with praise.
Kasuka’s own debut series could’ve aimed for an anime adaptation if things had kept going, but she wrapped it up at Volume 4. The reason: “Because I’ve come up with a better idea.”
Meanwhile, after several proposals and rejections, Kaizu debuted his next series—and before he’d even finished writing his current volume, it was already slated for cancellation at Volume 3.
And Kasuka’s second series hit it big again. The readers agreed with her—the second series was better than the first one.
So here was Kaizu, who wanted a running series but couldn’t make one stick, and there was Kasuka, who ended a hit series even though there was zero guarantee her next one would sell. A man who couldn’t catch a break, and a woman who didn’t know failure. They had both debuted only two years earlier, but the difference between them couldn’t have been more evident. Not that those two years were even necessary to see it.
Kasuka had innocently called him her “best male friend,” but Kaizu could all but see the mental partition dividing them. If this was a novel, Kasuka would be the main protagonist, and he’d be a side character. He wouldn’t even be her foil, much less some kind of writing rival. Just a face in the crowd—or on the stage when they both won that award.
…But Kaizu, at this younger point in his life, hadn’t yet acquired the wisdom to accept these things as a part of life.
“…I’m sorry, but I got a girlfriend.”
Kasuka pouted at him. “Oh? Well, all right. I’ll try someone else.”
“Whoa whoa whoa! Who else would you go to?!”
“Mmm, I was thinking my editor.”
This editor was a guy named Satoshi Godo. He worked with Kaizu as well—supposedly in his early thirties but grizzled, chiseled, and looking every bit like a yakuza gangster. Kasuka, meanwhile, was a petite girl who looked younger than she was—high school, for sure.
Kaizu imagined the duo together—and instantly saw the dangers. Sure, Godo was a sensible man despite appearances. Kaizu doubted he’d ever entertain her stupid offer. But when he turned her down, Kasuka would doubtlessly find some other hoodlum instead, and that’d be even worse.
“…Ugh, all right! Geez!”
And so Kaizu and Kasuka shared a bed just once. It was interrupted several times with requests like “Hang on, let me take some pictures” and “Can you move your leg? I want a good look at what’s going on there” and so forth. It put the “unnngghh” in “unsatisfying.”
And then his girlfriend, whom he had dated since college, found out. It was all downhill from there.
Ashley Ono was often just as thrown by Kasuka’s eccentricities. For example, about half a year after they came to know each other, Kasuka had asked out of nowhere:
“Ashley, do you want to be a couple?”
“A… A couple? Oh, Kasuka, are you—? Did you, uh, did you have a thing for me for a long time, or…?”
“No, no, I’m not into girls.”
Ashley frowned at this abject denial. “So…what do you mean?”
“I’m thinking about writing an erotic novel starring a lesbian couple, so I need to do some research.”
“Ohhh, I see…”
That came as a relief. It wasn’t Ashley’s orientation, either. But it did give her reason to think. After losing two serious relationships with men, she was pretty pessimistic about love in general. If this was just kind of a playful pretend thing, it might help her heal a bit, perhaps.
So she gave Kasuka the okay without thinking too deeply about it, but:
“Okay, so I want you to call me ‘Mistress’ from now on.”
“Huh?”
“I’m picturing a couple in an all-girls school. One of them’s older than the other, and she has the younger girl call her Mistress.”
“…All right, uh…Mistress. Does that work?”
It was, to be frank, embarrassing enough to give Ashley a heart attack.
Outside of that, however, being ersatz lovers with Kasuka was a lot more comfortable than she’d thought it’d be. She got used to the “Mistress” thing pretty quickly; Kasuka lived with her at her office, and Ashley cooked for her, held hands, went on dates—the whole bit. They shared similar tastes in fashion and had broadly similar bodies, so they also knew each other’s erogenous zones.
Maybe…it wouldn’t be so bad to live with her for good.
This kind of domestic pseudo-lesbian lifestyle had proven addictive for Ashley. But it ended abruptly.
“All right, I guess it’s about time we split up.”
Kasuka’s girls’ love novel was another great success for her, even capturing readers who knew nothing of the genre, but as always, she wrapped up the series in Volume 4. On the day she finished the manuscript for that volume, she went up to Ashley and announced she was ending things.
“Is—is there any need to split up just because the series is done?” Ashley asked, panicking and pleading with her to change her mind. “It’s been a lot of fun, and…um, didn’t it feel good, what we just did, Mistress?”
The naked Kasuka gave her a childish smile. “Yeah. It’s been fun, and that was good. You’ve helped me make a lot of readers happy. But I’m satisfied now.”
It was Kasuka’s many readers versus the temporary lover cultivated for the sake of a novel for those readers. In Kasuka’s mind, it was clear which was more important.
So they split up and went back to being friends. For Ashley, their relationship was one of the happiest times of her life, but also a period she didn’t want anybody else to know about. The “Mistress” part in particular she wished she could take back, but this was right when she came to know Kaizu. This new, unknown friend of Kasuka’s got her so jealous that whenever the three of them were together, Ashley stuck to her like glue, calling her “Mistress, Mistress” to no end.
Once they split up, Ashley stopped cooking completely and slacked off on the other household chores as well. That was the beginning of her generally sloppy habits. The only thing she kept from that era with Kasuka was the girlish canopy double bed in the bedroom, believing it would be a waste to dispose of it.
One of Kasuka Sekigahara’s greatest hits was a series called A Sister’s All You Need! It became one in part because it came at the pinnacle of her writing talents but mostly because it was the first of her series to make it to Volume 5 and beyond. When you’re a light novelist, having a continuing series is your lifeline, because every new volume means new orders for the previous ones and more chances to catch readers’ eyes, securing sales across all the novels.
When your work’s under consideration for an anime or other types of media, whether the series is ongoing or not is a major factor toward receiving a nod. A “media mix” strategy like this is usually focused on not just the anime or manga alone, but on energizing sales across the whole franchise. No matter how much of a hit the series is, if it’s already been finished and there’s no future shot in the arm to give the franchise, there’s not much upside to deploying across multiple media (with some exceptions, of course). This was why Kasuka, despite her consistent string of hits, had never seen an anime adaptation of her work.
A Sister’s All You Need! featured a teenage boy and the little sister who secretly saw him as a love interest. The series also featured a large cast of supporting characters, and that naturally meant a lot more content to work with. And the moment Kasuka confided to her editor Godo that she’d “probably need at least until Volume 10 to reach the conclusion,” he immediately launched a multimedia campaign. In shockingly quick time, an anime, video game, and comic version were approved. And while Kasuka’s schedule ballooned between her writing obligations and involvement in the game and anime, Kaizu had continued to toil away at his writing, dreaming of catching up to Kasuka someday—and now he was a stable, mid-tier novelist.
While all this was happening, Kaizu and Kasuka ran into each other at the editorial office and had a few drinks at a Belgian beer bar, enjoying small talk over mussels in wine sauce. Kasuka was a fan of imported beer, often giving him recommendations.
“…Have you lost weight, Kasuka?”
Kasuka looked a bit surprised at the question, then looked down at her chest. “You think so? Oh great… If I get any smaller, I’m gonna turn into Ashley…”
“That’s kind of rude to her,” Kaizu said with a laugh.
“But… Yeah, I’ve been super busy lately, so I’ve just been kind of eating whatever’s handy… Maybe I am a little slimmer.” She smiled her childish, fetching smile. “But I’m having so much fun right now! Once the series airs on TV, there’s going to be millions of people looking at my work, you know? All those people enjoying my stuff… I can’t wait for the anime to begin!”
“……”
Kaizu considered grousing about how great it must be to actually have a demand for one’s work, but her eyes were sparkling with so much pure, innocent hope that he couldn’t.
“Speaking of fun,” she continued, “I had something neat happen today.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of the contest entries is this really crazy piece. It’s called The Sister Apocalypse, and I can’t even begin to describe it.”
As one of GF Bunko’s biggest stars, Kasuka Sekigahara had naturally been obliged to join the New Writers Contest judging panel the past few years.
“It’s rare for you to give praise like that, Kasuka,” said Kaizu. He was right. Kasuka kept up with recent hit releases for research purposes, but for the most part, her reaction was “I can write better than this” (and she was usually right, which was the painful part). Even with Kaizu’s work, her summation was “I like you, Makina, but your writing is just boring.” She took a similarly no-holds-barred approach to her contest evaluations and notes to the writer.
“Praise?” Kasuka replied, curious. “I’m not praising it. There’s a ton of issues with it. It’s just this long masturbatory essay, really. But there’s this inscrutable kind of force behind it. I’m thinking the author is either a true genius or a total f—k. I’d love to see him debut and mature, either way. If he does, hopefully I can write him a praise quote or two for the ads.”
That new author, Itsuki Hashima, ran into Kasuka at the after-party for the 10th GF Bunko New Writers Contest. She and Kaizu were chatting over beers when Godo, now editor in chief, and another editor brought him in—this kid, in his collared school uniform, the innocence of youth still left on his face. He wore a red ribbon on his chest, indicating he was a prizewinner, and on it was his name.
“Hashima,” Godo said, “this is Kasuka Sekigahara.”
“Um, nice to meet you! It’s an honor!”
Itsuki’s eyes shone, overpowering his nervousness as he met the novelist he adored. He bowed, his voice cracking as he spoke.
“…Oh. Hashima?” Godo, stifling a laugh (which only made him look more threatening), tried to get Itsuki’s attention. “That’s Makina Kaizu. Ms. Sekigahara is right here.”
“Huhhh?!”
Itsuki froze in his bow, face turning red. He had bowed to the wrong person—and when he looked up at their respective name tags, he turned pale.
“I, I, I, I, I apologize!!” He scrutinized Kasuka’s face. “I—I didn’t know you were a woman, Ms. Sekigahara!!”
Kasuka just laughed, not showing any offense. Her age and gender weren’t revealed to the public, and she enjoyed seeing people’s reactions when they first met her. Itsuki’s ranked pretty high on her list.
“Ha-ha-ha! Are you surprised?”
“Um, uh, thank you so much for accepting my novel! I’m a huge fan of A Sister’s All You Need! I wanted to be a novelist because I looked up to you! I watched every episode of the anime multiple times! It’s so good! I love it!”
Kasuka proudly wrinkled her nose at this torrent of praise. “Oh, do you? Well, I’m glad you know good content when you see it!”
“Sekigahara,” Godo interrupted, “do you mind if I introduce someone else?”
“Mm? Oh. Sure.”
A man in a business suit stepped up. He had come here with Itsuki, and Godo and Kasuka knew him. It was Kenjiro Toki, a college student who had worked part-time at editorial the past two years. He did excellent work, and Godo took him under his wing and got him involved with editing. He was an editor in all but name by now.
“Kenjiro Toki here’s officially been hired on by our company. He’ll be part of the GF editorial team starting this April. I’m officially Hashima’s editor at the moment, but I’m gonna have KenKen handle the revisions for this round of winners.”
“I hope you’ll keep giving me your support, Mr. Kaizu and Ms. Sekigahara!”
Kasuka smiled at the serious-minded Toki as he bowed. “You finally made it, huh, KenKen? Congratulations. But you’re still in school, huh? I thought you were full-time at GF long ago.”
“N-no, uh, I still have a lot to learn…”
“Oh, don’t be so modest,” she said as she patted his shoulder.
Kaizu sighed. “Well, you’re graduating soon. And Hashima here… Are you in high school?”
“Your first year… You’re basically a kid… The idea of all these young, talented people pouring into the industry is so distressing… It may be about time to pack it up…”
He played it off as a joke, even if it was about three-fifths true. Kasuka gave it a belly laugh.
“What are you talking about, Makina?! We’re still just getting started!”
“Maybe you are,” he replied with a grin.
…But that was the last night he saw her honestly happy.
Itsuki Hashima’s blanket praise for the Sister’s All You Need! anime was no fluke. After debuting in October, the series became a proven sensation—high-quality direction, a well-adapted script, expert production, a passionate performance from a proven voice cast, and music that energized the whole thing. It ended with a bang after twelve episodes, and the disc sets flew off store shelves.
The novel series was already GF Bunko’s best-selling franchise, but the anime tripled their sales figures, putting it in the top echelon of the entire light novel industry. No matter how you sliced it, the anime was a great success.
…Perhaps too much of one.
Sales of the Sister’s All You Need! novels might have tripled, but far more than three times the number of people kept tabs on the brand. And the more well-known a series becomes, the heavier the backlash for it and its creator.
Whenever a new volume was released, spoilers would immediately spread across the Internet, popping up on your Twitter timeline when you least expected it. This meant even people who had never heard of the series before were familiar with the beats of the plot. Since her debut, Kasuka had never hesitated to play with font sizes, typography, and emoticons in her work; now, pages of particularly egregious examples of this were getting scanned and posted online, added to image sites with tags like “Why I stopped reading light novels lmao.”
To Kasuka, who strove constantly to make her work that little bit more interesting and affect the emotions of her readers, it was like seeing her own child being tortured in broad daylight. It hurt. It felt as if her soul was being passed around and mercilessly abused. But Kasuka Sekigahara kept writing. She didn’t reveal her feelings to Kaizu, other writers, her editor, or any of the people involved with the myriad adaptations of her work—in fact, she acted brighter and more carefree than ever.
Only with Ashley Ono, her sole friend outside the business, could she honestly reveal her weaker side.
“…You look exhausted.”
“Yeah… It’s been a slog.”
They were at their usual bar, Ashley with some sake, Kasuka with a sugary cocktail.
“…I guess even a bestseller like you can get hurt by the comment section, huh? I’m honestly a little surprised.”
“Of course I can.” Kasuka weakly smiled. “Nobody can hear cruel words meant to hurt them and not get negatively affected by it. And I’m a novelist—this whole job’s based on the assumption that words have real meaning and power.”
“I see,” Ashley murmured. “But you kinda dish it out, too, don’t you? Which series was it? One of the ones that placed in the contest. When I read your comments, I felt a little bad for the author.”
Kasuka scowled, but she looked a bit guilty. “…That was probably Chevalier of the New World. That was… Like, the one I read just before that was so off-the-wall and entertaining, but this was so textbook and calculated. It snuffed out all the enthusiasm from before…but I kind of regret doing that now.”
Ashley smiled sympathetically. She could tell Kasuka meant it.
“Right? Because I wouldn’t have blamed the guy if he sucker-punched you at the after-party.”
“Yeah… I did meet him there, actually. Nice guy. And hot. He even thanked me for the criticism and everything, and he sounded sincere. I don’t know what he thought of me on the inside, but I think he’s gonna have a career.”
“Hmm…?” Ashley mused. “Well, if you’re going to vilify someone, as they say, it’s at least kinder if they get a chance to fire back.”
Kasuka’s expression clouded again.
“It’s totally mean for someone to throw stones at you from a safe zone you can’t reach them from…but can’t you just chalk that up as the ‘tax’ for being famous?”
“Ashley…”
When Ashley saw the profound sadness in her eyes, she immediately regretted saying it. “…Sorry. That’s the business side of me talking. Forget about it. Nobody should be allowed to take a tax from you that doesn’t exist in modern society.”
“Totally. If someone wanted me to pay a ‘famous’ tax, they better lawyer up first.”
Ashley laughed. “And if they’re gonna enact that, they should put up an ‘anonymous’ tax, for people who use that as a shield to do anything they want. It’d be unfair otherwise.”
Kasuka laughed back. “That’s a great idea. I guess this is why you’re the accountant.”
“…But that’s how the Internet works. It’s biased against people like you. At the very least, shouldn’t you stop looking at it for now?”
“I know that’s the smart thing to do, but…” She smiled lightly. “But all my dear, dear readers, the people who love my work… I see what they write in the surveys, and in the physical mail they send me. They all say things like, ‘No matter what they say on the Net, I love your books,’ or ‘Don’t let the Internet get you down, Sekigahara,’ and so on. You know? I can’t turn away from the world my own readers are looking at. I have to see what kind of crap’s being said about me…or else…I can’t fight it.”
The fierce will behind those words left Ashley with nothing to say. Kasuka wanted to fight—fight a foe as vague and undefined as it was enormous.
“…Well, I’m not a writer, so I can’t really understand how you feel. I can’t fight with you…but I’m always willing to have a drink with you. Besides, I have a lot of free time now that I’m single again.”
“…Thanks, Ashley.”
Ashley’s cheeks flushed a bit at Kasuka’s smile. And that night, for the first time in a while, they slept together.
Kaizu and Kasuka didn’t see Itsuki again until the after-party for the 11th GF Bunko New Writers Contest a year later.
“Um, Ms. Sekigahara… Things going okay? Um…with stuff?”
Even Itsuki knew about the remarkably obstinate online hate campaign against A Sister’s All You Need! This was his attempt at expressing his concern, but Kasuka greeted it with a smile.
“Ha-ha! Ah, that’s just the howling of a mob that’ll never do anything with their lives. Worrying about them is a waste of my time.”
“Y-yeah, true,” Itsuki replied, relieved.
“But, hey, Itsuki, your new series is doing pretty well, isn’t it?”
“It—it is! Thank you!”
Genesis Sisters of the New World, Itsuki Hashima’s first series following his debut publication, was turning into a decent hit, in no small part thanks to the power of ace illustrator Puriketsu.
“Now you’re part of the elites, huh?” Kasuka earnestly whispered, squinting at him. “Itsuki… Stay happy.”
“Successful authors have to stay happy,” she began, looking off into space. “You may think you’re successful, but then people who aren’t even your readers treat you like a sandbag—they throw stones at you, and you’re not allowed to fight back. The pressure breaks people’s hearts. It makes them disappear—and there’s no future for the job like that. Who would ever want to join an industry where you can’t be happy if you struggle for years and finally reach the top of the mountain? Who would want to work hard to achieve that? So that’s your job—to be happy. You can buy a house, or a fancy car, or loud clothes. You can eat five-star meals and drink premium wine. You can marry a famous voice actress. You can let fans fawn over you at events or autograph sessions. You can act like a ‘man of culture’ in interviews and lectures. And you can even try mouthing off at your editor, although that’s too risky for me to recommend. Maybe you could even stop working and just screw around for a while. As long as you’re happy, then no matter how vulgar your desires, feel free to pursue them. No matter who you are—writer, artist, singer, actor, athlete—anyone who’s already made it to the top needs to stay happy for those following behind them. That’s their job.”
“……”
Itsuki obediently listened to the whole speech. When she was done, Kasuka smiled broadly at him.
“What I’m saying is, don’t let anything break your heart. I’ve got high hopes for you, kid.”
“Y-yes, ma’am!”
She tousled his hair like a doting mother, her smile turning childlike.
And it was on the way home from that event that she collapsed, coughing up blood.
The next evening, Kaizu and Ashley came to the hospital to visit Kasuka, only to find her writing on a laptop she had brought in. The sight of a surprisingly healthy-looking Kasuka relieved them both.
She smiled at them, an almost unnaturally calm smile, and said:
“Well, I guess I’m gonna die.”
It was terminal pancreatic cancer—and at best, Kasuka Sekigahara had a year left.
Volume 12 of A Sister’s All You Need! marked a major turning point for the series, in preparation for the final conclusion in Volume 13. The large cast of characters all began to move under their own motivations, leading to turbulent developments that could’ve ended in any number of ways. The heroines were lashing out against one another, emotions on full display. The deeper, darker, more intense side of the story, heretofore hidden in the shadows of this so-far light, cutesy tale, thrust its way to the surface.
And this volume, written by Kasuka as she sat in a hospital bed, literally chipping away at her life to produce it, was greeted with more abuse than ever before.
“Who asked for it to get serious?”
“I have no idea what she’s trying to accomplish.”
“I don’t give a crap about the filler characters; just tell me which girl he’s gonna pick.”
“I burned my whole collection.”
“Here’s what you get when a talentless light novel author thinks she’s better than you.”
“I read the spoilers, and I was so disappointed I didn’t bother buying it.”
She could see people collating lists of grievances, posting them on threads and allowing other people—not even readers—to ridicule the series. There had been serious elements to the story before, as far back as Volume 1, and a decent amount of readers who picked up on those elements—readers who loved the characters’ human qualities, even when they didn’t match with what they personally wanted from them—did offer praise to Volume 12: “I liked the surprising developments,” they said, and “I hope everyone turns out happy in the end.” But they were drowned out by the overwhelming amount of negative shouting.
“…It is getting me down. Hearing that they want me to die really hurts right now…”
For the first time, Kasuka revealed her weaker side to Kaizu during a hospital visit.
“Being an author is asking for hardship, isn’t it…? If you want to depict a world and the people in it, you need to be a thousand times more delicate and emotive than the average person. You need a heart soft enough to be hurt by the smallest of things. But at the same time, you need a mind thick as steel, capable of withstanding unfair hatred that barely qualifies as criticism and cruelty that’d break other people’s hearts.”
“You need a thin skin and a thick one… Sounds impossible.”
Kaizu gave her a pained smile. The sight of Kasuka connected to a machine by a bunch of tubes almost made him want to cry.
She looked out the window. “The more sincere you are to your stories, to society, to people, the more they slip away from you,” she weakly spat out, more for his benefit than for hers. “The more you swear to them that they’re not all a bunch of stupid pigs, the more they fire back that light novels are just a bunch of slop for the sty anyway… I don’t even know if these people are still human.”
And later that night, she lost consciousness for two weeks.
The 12th GF Bunko New Writers Contest was held in December that year—a bit later than usual, since the judging was delayed. Kaizu had quickly taken over Kasuka’s seat at the judges’ table earlier that year. Kasuka wasn’t at the after-party, of course, but Itsuki was.
“Thanks for all your hard work, Kaizu.”
He was still in his school uniform. It’d be his last year in school, if Kaizu recalled correctly. He looked so young and inexperienced the first time they met, but now he looked and spoke like a seasoned author.
“Um, is Ms. Sekigahara doing all right?”
Within GF Bunko’s editorial department, only the editor in chief and his assistant knew about Kasuka’s condition. Among their author stable, the truth was known only by Kaizu and other people with close, personal connections to her.
“Mmm, well, I don’t think she’s quite a hundred percent, no…”
He was being vague. She was told she had a year left to live following last year’s after-party, and they were now past that limit. She was slipping in and out of consciousness these days. She could pass away at any moment.
But Itsuki didn’t know that.
“Well, I sure hope Sister Volume 13 comes out soon. Volume 12 was such a blockbuster; I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
A Sister’s All You Need! volumes had come out at a steady clip up to now, but despite Volume 13 being the announced final installment, there had been no word on it for ten months.
“…Kasuka would be glad to hear that,” Kaizu replied, playing it normal.
Itsuki smiled back. “Tell her I said so next time you see her, okay?”
The next day, Kaizu paid Kasuka a visit. She had just woken up, and when he came in, she turned her head on the pillow and smiled. Even talking looked painful, so Kaizu did the talking for her—about his life, about neat books he read, about the awards ceremony.
“I’m really not cut out for this judging stuff… All the winners looked at me during the show like, ‘Man, who the hell is this old weirdo?’”
Kasuka silently laughed.
“…Oh, Hashima told me to tell you that Volume 12 was really awesome, so he’s really looking forward to Volume 13… And I am, too, of course.”
“…Oh? Well… Why don’t we let him read it?” She pointed an unsteady finger toward a drawer in the hospital room.
“…That drawer?”
Kasuka lightly nodded. Kaizu pulled it out, revealing her notebook PC and a USB drive.
“…The file for Volume 13 is on the flash drive.”
“Huh…?!”
“I haven’t shown editorial yet. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have it published…but if there’s even one person who says he wants to read it, then I can’t hold it back…”
“Kasuka… You…”
Kasuka gave the bewildered Kaizu a mischievous smile.
“I love seeing you so surprised, Makina. I wish I could’ve seen it more.”
Revision work on Volume 13 began immediately after Kaizu delivered the flash drive to Satoshi Godo, and Kaizu himself pitched in on the effort.
Reading the unedited version was, to him, a punch in the stomach. The maelstrom of events in Volume 12 gave way to a far different atmosphere—a quiet retelling of events, with a literary tone, leading up to the final “graduation” phase of the story. There were a few livelier episodes, but they were wrapped up with a minimum of prose, making them seem somehow forlorn.
…At first, Kaizu reasoned Kasuka no longer had the emotional strength to write long sentences. He soon realized he was wrong. The text was basic, simple in structure, but there was no disorder to the words. Everything was clear and well thought out. If you were a reader who seriously tackled the first twelve volumes and built a clear image of all the characters in your mind, you could extract a heavy tome’s worth of information out of every short description offered. It was that sort of style.
“…Kasuka… Even after all that, you…”
Even after all that, you’re still trying to believe in your readers?
This concluding volume seemed likely to alienate most people to an astonishing degree. It left a great deal of responsibility to its readers’ emotions. But it should still come across. He hoped it did. Please. It was an earnest, almost tactless expression of emotion in literary form—true love in each page.
Even after all the infinite hate that scarred her soul, even after being plunged into the abyss of despair time and time again, she never stopped loving her readers. This would be Kasuka Sekigahara’s final work, and also her final testament.
We need to carry it home. To the readers you love, and to the readers who love you.
Largely unable to move, Kasuka dictated corrections to be made while Godo and Kaizu updated the text onsite. The two of them took turns spending nights at the hospital, running into her room whenever she was awake and making whatever revisions they could before she slipped back out.
This continued for about a week. And when it was over, she fell asleep, looking relieved, and never woke up again—she passed three days later.
Thus, at the age of thirty-one, Kasuka Sekigahara, a novelist who loved humanity more than anyone else, closed the curtain on her life at 9:47 PM on December 24.
Her funeral was subdued, attended only by her family and a small handful of friends and relations. Among her friends, there were Kaizu, Ashley, and just a few others. Viewing Kasuka there, sleeping peacefully while surrounded by white flowers, Ashley audibly sobbed, wailing like a child, and everyone else was soon affected enough to do the same.
Kasuka.
Kaizu, standing next to her, turned his eyes toward Kasuka and spoke to her in his heart.
You always said a successful novelist has to be happy, that they need to show how happy they are to the people coming after them. But I’m not successful, and I’m not a genius like you. So I’ll show those people something else instead.
Even if I’m talentless, even if I wasn’t chosen by the times, even if I’m never the protagonist, I’m going to take care of myself. In heart and mind. And I’m gonna keep up my carefree existence in this business.
Even if I can’t make an international hit, even if I can’t create something genre-making and revolutionary, even if I can’t craft a masterpiece that changes people’s lives, I’m going to keep with the trends and never look back for a moment. I’m going to keep writing novels you can enjoy as a time killer. I’m going to live life as an average novelist. I may not be tremendously happy, but I’ll be happy enough. I’m going to keep showing those below me something you or other geniuses could never do—the sight of a guy without real money or talent living a life that’s enough.
This world isn’t some cruel, despotic hell where only a few of the chosen ones can ever be happy. I want to show them that our society is just like everyone else’s—so don’t be afraid of it. Don’t lose your way. Don’t let it hurt you.
So, for now:
“…Good night, Kasuka… You… You worked hard…!”
With a shaky voice, Kaizu said his goodbyes, large tears falling from his eyes. For Makina Kaizu, the long, endless battle he planned to stake his life on had just begun.
“…Three years, though, huh?”
“…Yeah.”
Kaizu and Ashley reflected on their time with Kasuka as they drank at the bar. It would, in fact, be almost three years since they lost her. Kaizu was still clinging on for dear life to this industry, and Ashley had gained many writer friends in her own business—including personal favorites Itsuki Hashima and Haruto Fuwa.
“Hey, Makina, are you free on the twenty-fourth this month?”
Kaizu gave her a serious look.
“…I’m sorry, Ashley,” he earnestly said. “I appreciate the thought, but I could never get it up thinking about you. I’m really sorry.”
“If you keep making jokes like that, I’m gonna chop that useless penis right off.”
Ashley looked up and gave Kaizu a swift kick in the shin.
“Oww!”
She sighed. “…I don’t need a withered old guy like you, either. I was talking about visiting Kasuka’s grave.”
The twenty-fourth would be the anniversary of her death. Kaizu and Ashley always visited the site on that day, but always separately, never making any particular plans to meet up. Since they here were now, they might as well go together.
They spent the next while talking about Kasuka—smiling, sometimes nearing the point of tears. The stories kept on coming. And for them, there would be no forgetting the girl who kept fighting the world until her final day—loving her story, loving her readers, loving the human race.
