Let’s write about the Baku. Let’s give it a new form.

  Really?

  How does your favorite food sound?

  Dumpling. Are we sure?

  You make the fillings from odds and ends left in the fridge.

  You’re making me hungry.

  Not so different from how a Baku is formed.

  Not so different after all.

  If the Baku was so vulnerable, how did it survive for two decades? How did it survive in a land where everyone ate gyozas? How did it locate a magical school hidden away in the far south? If Ran had already shot down the concept, why was he still trying so hard to make it work? Unless he could address the basic premise, he would never get this past Ran.

  How did the Baku’s form influence the story?

  For so long, he had struggled with the answer.

  An answer that must be in the books. His books.

  The books he traded his bat for. Now that he had fulfilled his end of the bargain, he must get them back. Without knowing whether they were safe and sound, Eizo could not write a word more.

  That was what he told himself.

  That’s my childhood in there, he would tell Ran if the editor refused to return the parcel.

  Why do you need them? He imagined Ran demanding in that surly tone of his.

  Knowing Ran’s persistence, he would have opened the box and gone through the books. He would have found the notes pinched between the pages. There was no point in hiding them anymore. All he could do was admit that he needed the notes to write his story. He had had the ideas a long time ago and had toyed with them before shelving them to focus on school and baseball. An all-too-familiar tale of a once-upon-a-time writer and the story that never left their hearts, one he had heard again and again. One that anyone would believe, because it just made sense to forgo a dream in favor of achievements that made you someone.

  He repeated them until they sank into the marrow of his bones.

  He’d had the idea for a long time.

  Those notes were his.

  He had written every word of them, and that was all Miyamoto Ran needed to know.

  * * *

  Shortly after dinner, Eizo heard footsteps and the electronic beep of a door unlocking next to his unit. It must be Ran.

  He jumped up at once and rushed out, not bothering to put on slippers. He managed to grab the edge of Ran’s door, wedging his fingers into the gap and holding on before it closed.

  “I need to talk to you,” Eizo called out.

  Ran didn’t seem surprised. Even knowing what Eizo could pull on him without fear of recourse, he didn’t turn around.

  “You have something of mine,” Eizo said.

  Ran didn’t respond. For a moment, Eizo wondered if the man standing in the doorway was Ran. From the back, he looked exactly like Ran, but the man he knew would have slammed the door shut with his foot before Eizo could even pry the door open. A thick air of silence clung to him.

  Eizo considered grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around to verify he was indeed the editor. But something inside told him that if he did that, he might break his hand. And that was the best-case scenario.

  This was what Misaki meant by monsoon season.

  Didn’t matter to Eizo—he just wanted to make this quick and painless. He’d apologize to Ran if needed, for the folly that had inconvenienced him for months. He could even buy another expensive tea for Ran. Eizo could live on little, but he needed his books back.

  “You have something of mine,” he repeated. “A package from Mrs. Yasuda.”

  “Come in,” Ran said.

  Eizo hadn’t expected to hear that, but he followed along. The door shut behind him with a quiet click, and it was just them in the doorway. The overhead light came on automatically, illuminating the dark apartment. It was then that he realized how close he was standing to Ran. He looked away and noticed a parcel beside the shoe bench. His parcel. He recognized the way Mrs. Yasuda sealed packages by folding tape at the corners. He was about to reach past Ran for it when the older man turned around, startling him.

  “Little Quill,” he said, emphasizing the second word. “Is that you?”

  Eizo felt the hair on the back of his arms stand. The way Ran spoke of his childhood nickname sounded like a threat on the cusp of turning real.

  “You said the package belongs to you.” Ran’s eyes were shrouded in shadow. “You must be Little Quill.”

  “It’s a little embarrassing, but it’s me.”

  “Why send it to me? You and Yasuda think it’s a joke?”

  “It was a mistake. I smudged the ink, so 6 became 5.”

  “What a coincidence,” Ran said. The chilliness of his words implied he didn’t believe Eizo. So be it. He just needed his books back.

  “I have horrible handwriting, alright?”

  “Since you were young?”

  “I wrote it in a hurry.”

  Ran turned toward the package. “Tell me what’s inside.”

  “Textbooks from Kujo Juku.”

  “How do you know what’s inside?”

  “Mrs. Yasuda told me.”

  “Mrs. Yasuda lives in Azabudai Hills?”

  “She works for my family.”

  “You live in Azabudai Hills.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why do you bother renting a unit here?”

  “I like the neighborhood.”

  “You like the neighborhood,” Ran repeated. He deliberated over the words, as though weighing their authenticity. His eyes lifted to meet Eizo for the first time that night. Eizo saw a tempest blasting through the fields, set to flatten all that stood in its way. “Which means you don’t need to stay here.”

  “It’s a free market. I paid rent, so I can stay wherever I want.”

  “What do you use it for?”

  Something inside Eizo momentarily snapped. “If you can run back to your hometown for a week, why can’t I move between two homes?”

  He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth, for they took on velocity and twisted the air between them into thin ribbons.

  “Hometown?” Ran asked mockingly. “There is a distinction between a home and a place.”

  Then, slowly, he repeated his question, enunciating every word as if he was raising a sword above Eizo’s neck, one which he had no qualms swinging down if Eizo so much as said the wrong thing.

  Eizo returned to the topic, wanting to end the impasse before it worsened. “I’m already twenty-four. What’s wrong with wanting to stay on my own and gain a little independence from my family?”

  The editor scrutinized Eizo’s face, his eyes still masked by a layer of something that Eizo couldn’t put a finger on. Eizo had never seen him like this before. Not that Eizo was familiar with him, but this version of Ran wasn’t like the one who’d appeared at his shoulder that morning at the crosswalk. The Ran in front of him didn’t just want to devour; he wanted to stand over you and watch you bleed out after he carved you open with his fangs. A chill came over Eizo. He wanted to leave as soon as possible.

  “Since you’ve now confirmed my identity and the contents of the box, I shall take my leave.”

  Ran moved between Eizo and the package. “I didn’t say you could have it.”

  The cramped space in the doorway was a narrow strip meant for just a cabinet and a shoe bench. One or two petite people could fit in the space at most, and it was a tight jostle. Certainly not two grown men facing each other.

  Eizo resisted the instinct to move backward, to hold that imaginary margin of safety between them. Behind him was the door. He must not let his back touch the surface. He’d be in trouble if that happened. The likes of Miyamoto Ran would not corner him. He might have an immense height advantage over Ran, but here it worked against him. He could never outmaneuver Ran if he threw the first punch.

  Eizo loathed that. He resented ceding power to Ran when he knew he didn’t need to. He gritted his teeth and apologized.

  “Did I ask for one?” Ran said.

  Eizo’s hands balled into fists by his side.

  Why was Ran making things so complicated? Oh—he knew why. Ran was still mad. Mad at losing to Eizo. At being written into that stupid story that Eizo didn’t even give a fuss about, nor bother with an ounce of editing. Mad at his space being repeatedly invaded by a younger man and lacking the power to do anything about it. And now, he was playing for double payback against Eizo. What did he want Eizo to do? Prostrate before him and beg for forgiveness?

  Fine, if Ran wanted, he could do that. He could do all of those, as long as he could have his notes back. He hated the thought of seeing the books he had once lost in the hands of someone who had no business holding them, much less knowing what was on the page.

  “Why would Yasuda send you textbooks from junior high? Most people throw them out after a couple of years, not bring them to their next home.”

  “I have a habit of keeping my old textbooks. They are like keepsakes from my time in school. What’s wrong with that?”

  Ran opened the box and retrieved a book from the bottom of the pile. From between the pages, he pulled out a note and held it in front of Eizo.

  Eizo knew this would happen. He had rehearsed the scenarios in his head. He was ready to react. But he couldn’t get a word out. Didn’t he already have the responses prepared? Why wouldn’t they spill forth? With just three lines, he could fob off Ran, collect his books and leave. Still, his voice caught in his throat.

  “There are a lot of these. Written in your junior high days, I presume?”

  “Put it back.”

  “You must have been one hell of an advanced student at fourteen. Or was it fifteen? Maybe sixteen?”

  “I said, put it back.”

  “You wrote this?”

  Eizo read the note held tauntingly in his face. It was indeed from his textbook eight years ago.

  And so, the dumpling-shaped alien (shall I name it or not?) infiltrated the corners of the school. Faced with food piles attached to the back of the heads of creatures who walked upright on two feet, its hunger was an entity that knew no bounds. It never knew it could be so hungry. Even after feeding on the nightmares of an entire dormitory, it was still hungry. So very hungry.

  Ravenous! Not famished, but ravenous! To be famished means a hunger for subsistence, the littlest of food and drinks one must consume to survive. To be ravenous means a hunger for more, much more than it can chew. The more it ate, the more ravenous it became. The more it ate, the more it realized how hollow it truly was. But that was all it could do, in a place where only nightmares took root.

  Ran took another step toward him, his face now coming into the light. Eizo stepped back in response. He was now the one veiled in the dark. Maybe it was the thin ribbons twisting in the air, an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time wormed its way up from the pit of his stomach and crested in the center of his chest, pushing air out of his lungs like a rapidly deflating balloon. His facial muscles tensed, pulling tight toward the back of his head. If he looked in the mirror now, he wouldn’t be able to recognize himself.

  “If you don’t answer,” Ran said, “I’ll take them to be mine and do whatever I want.”

  Eizo felt the words crowding at the back of his throat.

  Ran pulled a lighter from his trousers pocket and held it to the note. With a flick of the wheel, a spark ignited into a blue flame that charred the edge before catching.

  Before Eizo realized what he was doing, he lunged toward Ran and grabbed the note with his bare hand. The heat from the flame singed his palm, but he didn’t let go until he was sure he had the note. Fervently biting down on his bottom lip, he ignored the intense pain bubbling under the burned skin. As long as the note was safe. He had gone to great lengths to keep every piece intact in the pages, where he’d once thought his mother couldn’t find them. Now that he knew they still existed, he must not let them leave him again.

  Shock flitted across Ran’s face before it vanished, replaced by a smile, twisted as it derived joy from another’s suffering. It was as though he had deliberately set up this situation to toy with Eizo. Did Ran think it was a joke? Ignoring the pain in his hand, he grabbed Ran’s collar, fingers bunching around the fabric pulled taut around his neck.

  Ran’s smile widened. “Not bad.”

  Not bad?

  “Finally showing some balls,” Ran said. The pressure Eizo exerted in his grip seemed to bear no effect other than amusing him even more. “Better than the fuckwit missing a nut sack who smiles and then turns around to write porn because he can’t get what he wants.”

  “I already apologized for that.”

  “Whatever you said or did was to pacify your conscience. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

  Eizo’s grip tightened. A ballplayer’s grip was not to be scoffed at. The wider Ran’s smile became, the more Eizo wanted Ran to feel what he had felt.

  No, he needed to constrict the air supply that fed this deviance.

  “Just so we are clear, I don’t give a fuck what you think about me, be it that way or some other shit.”

  “Definitely not that way,” Eizo hissed through gritted teeth, fisting even more of the fabric. “I will never see you like that, even if you get on your knees and beg me.”

  Ran’s eyes glistened in malicious glee, but his voice was straining. “I would say you enjoy choking me.”

  It was then that Eizo realized what he was doing. Alarmed, he relaxed his grip on Ran’s shirt. In his fury he’d forgotten the note in his hand and scrunched it up so tightly that it nearly ripped into shreds. He placed the paper on his palm and attempted to smooth out the crumpled folds, wincing as the adrenaline wore off and a raw, stinging sensation radiated over his right hand.

  “If you had begun with this—the dumpling and its endless hunger—at our meeting, I would have told you I was interested. Right off the fucking bat.”

  Eizo opened his mouth to retort when he noticed the redness around the editor’s neck. Ran coughed a few times and rubbed at his throat where Eizo had pressed down the hardest.

  “I don’t mean to—” He was reaching out to Ran when the sudden weight of the package in his arms took him by surprise.

  “Take it and fuck off.”

  Before the door shut in his face, Ran added, “Make sure you work this into your concept. Let’s get the premise sorted before you crank out the words. If you give me any more half-assed bullshit, I will make you fuck right off and have someone else write it.”

  23

  Ensconced in the safety of his Oakwood apartment, Eizo carefully extricated the ripped notes from the textbooks and pieced them back together in their original sequence. He hadn’t stopped doing this since Ran gave them back.

  He had one day left before he met with Suigetsu, and this time, Konishi Kisuke was attending. The man who’d sought him out from a sea of web novelists and offered him a lucrative contract to write for his new platform. The man who could overrule Ran on major decisions. It was Eizo’s opportunity to convince Suigetsu to keep his creative vision. Certain things must happen a certain way, or the story would invalidate itself.

  Where he had previously spun a narrative from the vaguest threads of memory—disjointed and clumsy—he now had the complete picture of the story, including detailed notes on crafting the introduction. He might not remember how the notes were ordered, but gradually, in the space that belonged to him and him only, he laid them out on the floor, picking them up when the sunlight hit at certain angles, arranging them in a sequence that he found interesting. Each note was like a lost memory that only he remembered; each piece represented a step closer to what he wanted, an equivalent exchange with the wizard.

  He barely slept, barely stopped for breaks. All he did was reshuffle the notes and retell the story in a new sequence, one after another, and another. He tried and tried, flipping the notes back down on the floor, picking them up again, testing multiple permutations to decipher how the story should unfold. The hollow between his shoulder and arm grew sore as he hunched over on the floor, ignoring the aches breaking out all over his body, begging for rest.

  It wasn’t until late in the evening that he settled on a narrative he felt was closest to the story it was meant to tell. Relief flooded him, but he wasn’t done. Eizo placed the notes in two columns, left to right, and took photos of each row. He transferred them to his laptop and backed them up to two cloud storage accounts, in addition to the hard drive. Kamada Kiko could take the books away again. This time, he would be better prepared.

  After dinner at Mrs. Tamura’s, he returned home to bind the notes together so he could reference them as he wrote. For so long, the lost notes had felt like a distant memory. Now he could hold them again. When a word escaped him, he’d reach for the notes, taking refuge in the knowledge that he could find it if he tried hard enough. The paper was crusty with age, the words at least eight years old, producing a dry, crackling sound when he leafed through the pages. In his mind, time stopped when Kamada Kiko found the notebooks and took them away.

  Don’t you ever write again.

  The next moment, he saw torn notebooks and pages cruelly ripped apart, reminding him that his dream was dead.

  Don’t you dare ever write again.

  Looking at the bound copy in his hand, he supposed things happened for a reason. He now possessed a definitive manual for what he should write in New World. Konishi Kisuke had promised him creative autonomy and an editorial team to support him. They wouldn’t stand in his way, Kisuke had assured him at the signing. Just be yourself, he’d said.

  Eizo spent the last hour of the day preparing his pitch. The new story would be a success. After all, the narrative elements were in place: themes, settings, characters, and how their storylines would spin, intertwine, deviate, and twist. It was an ambitious story, meticulously planned years ago. Drafted initially in five notebooks, there was enough content for at least a hundred chapters.