Eizo still couldn’t fathom what Ran wanted of him, or, more confusingly, what he wanted of Ran. Chalking it up to New World didn’t seem right. There was something more behind Ran’s actions, a puzzling confluence of cause and consequence. The editor had no reason to look at him like he had.

  If their dinner marked the end of his five weeks at Oakwood, where he’d temporarily lived his life away from the tower’s shadow, then he supposed he could accept it. Eizo felt like he had returned to signing papers for his apartment lease: the moment itself was clear, yet he couldn’t place the emotion he was feeling now. But for tonight, for these few hours until the clock struck twelve, he could, for once, allow himself to explore the full depth of what this might mean. The waves were ebbing. The seas grew calm. He wanted to rise to his feet at once.

  “So, does that make you happy?” Ran asked after a while, his voice carrying a hint of uncertainty that Eizo found oddly charming.

  “Who knows?”

  “Sounds like a yes to me.”

  “Nope.” Eizo smiled into his steak. “Not at all.”

  * * *

  After dinner, they strolled along the river promenade. In the distance was another tower. Not Tokyo Tower, but the Skytree. The illuminated steel column rose further into the sky than its more famous vermillion sibling to the east.

  “We have too many of them in one place,” Eizo muttered.

  “They serve a purpose. Terrestrial and radio communications doubling up as landmarks. An efficient use of space,” Ran said. “If all authors write like towers optimizing their use of land⁠—”

  “Editors like you will be out of a job,” Eizo finished.

  “I’ll gladly quit when that happens.”

  “Aren’t you a contender for Ido?”

  “It’s a means to the end,” Ran replied.

  The Skytree blinked. Blue, then slowly, a change to purple. Ran watched the light as it moved across Eizo’s face, a cool, silent wash that stayed. Eizo walked beside him, looking at the night, the tower, the city, waiting for something—or perhaps nothing at all—to happen. The younger man could have been content to remain here until morning. But Ran was done waiting. He had stopped for far too long. For weeks, he had painstakingly laid a series of traps. Small, careful movements beneath the surface so as not to alert the lamb. It was finally time to make a move.

  Ran began, “I want to publish a book. My One Book, so to speak.”

  “One book?”

  “For an editor, it’s their dream book to shape. For authors, it is the book of your heart.” Ran glanced at Eizo. “Do you have one?”

  Kamada Eizo was back onstage, the curtains drawing open as he rehearsed his lines.

  Had, not have, his expression begged to say.

  “New World,” he said instead. “You?”

  “Same as yours.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I never go back on my word.”

  “I know,” Eizo said after some hesitation. “That’s why I don’t believe you.”

  “You mean you don’t want to.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  Ran couldn’t tell if Eizo was joking or being serious. His tone was so airy, it could have been another person’s voice carried by the wind.

  The night drew closer to the end. As they walked, the backs of their hands grazed. Space was tight on Christmas, after all.

  They came to a stop at the northern end of the promenade, where the crowds thinned.

  Ran turned to the writer. “Eizo,” he called. “Who do you write for?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You mentioned you have a reader in mind for New World, so there must be a specific person you’re writing for.”

  “Oh,” Eizo said. Still the same airy voice, as if the answer didn’t matter to him. “Want it to be you?”

  Ran felt a foreign pang in his chest. He wanted New World to mean something—not just professionally, but for Eizo himself, and for both of them, together. Just like what An Act of Courtesy had done to him, he now longed for more of the same. Written in the present, something he could actually touch and actively shape with his own hands. He still wanted Onodera Shiho’s manuscript; that he hadn’t forgotten. More than that, he wanted everything that Eizo, or Shiho, or whoever the hybrid chimera—a Baku, maybe—was behind the stories, had written, was writing, would come to write. He could make it happen. All he had to do was speak it into existence. Ran steadied himself, rearranging the words he had been wanting to say aloud.

  “And if I say yes?” Ran asked.

  “You’re greedy,” Eizo said. “I already wrote a story for you.”

  “But is it your best?”

  A strange look crossed Eizo’s features.

  “The best under which name?” his voice was almost like a taunt.

  Ran glanced at Eizo’s hands, his right hand in particular, fingers stretching and curling into his palm, in tandem with the sound of his words.

  Who are you right now, Ran wondered.

  Was he addressing Kamada Eizo, or Stupid Seaweed, or Little Quill, or Onodera Shiho? Did it matter anymore? If Onodera Shiho was indeed one of Eizo’s pseudonyms, then all he had to do was keep Eizo beside him while he unmasked the prodigious talent left dormant for eight years.

  “I don’t care what names you use, as long as you—” Ran paused, catching himself as an unwelcome heat rose. What happened next was irreversible. Knowing this, he forced the rest of the sentence out. “—write your best story for me.”

  The admission hung there, thick and heavy. Just like that, he had destroyed five years of staunch adherence to his principles: that he, an editor, should never ask for or desire to possess a story not written by him. He had now wandered into the garden, not as the unseen figure holding the shears, but as the person holding the light, shining the path ahead for the writer to take.

  Eizo caught his eye and smiled.

  “On one condition,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  The shadows on Eizo’s face shifted like clouds on a windy night, refusing to settle into a particular shape.

  “Say you love me.”

  Without waiting for Ran’s reply, he turned around to look at the Skytree, elbows resting on the railing. A breeze rippled through the Sumida River, distorting the purple glow in the water. Eizo held his palms outstretched into the night.

  “Just kidding.” His tone was casual. “You would disappoint me if you said that.”

  “Why?”

  The wind continued to blow, unearthing what lay hidden under layers of make-believe. One by one, the shadows on Eizo’s face swept away until they revealed eyes that held the whole swath of city lights.

  “Because that would be a lie.”

  50

  That night, Eizo fell in love for the first time.

  It wasn’t permanent, and it wasn’t sensible, but the feeling was too large to take home, so he carried it with him to a 24-hour cafe.

  All he wanted was to pour his entire mind out, to empty himself from within. He needed the words to bear witness to the fact that he could still feel something this strongly. The page was neutral, the language only a medium, and he needed every line to store the full, desperate spectrum of what he was about to say without fear of judgment. For once, he didn’t want the sea to take it away from him.

  Eizo bought a pack of notebooks and pens from the convenience store. He ordered an espresso, took a corner table, and sat watching the empty streets.

  And so, he created a story from scratch.

  A tale of a werewolf with perfect black hair that clung to his scalp and pale skin that glowed like pearls under moonlight. Despite his beautiful appearance, the devious werewolf was a thief, often stealing fried chicken from hapless teenagers after he had transformed back into a man.

  Eizo scribbled down whatever he thought of, as fast as he could. If he paused for a second, he would forget what he wanted to say. Words exploded over the page, lapping and overlapping from one end to the other, moving in every direction a mathematician could calculate. Sentences strung together wildly, with no discernible beginning or ending.

  Four hours later, he stopped and held up the notebook. The handwriting was nothing like the precise, linear print in the notes hidden inside his Kujo Juku texts.

  Tears and tatters marked the areas where horizontal strokes ended. He couldn’t make out what he had written. If he couldn’t read it, how could anyone else?

  Eizo left the cafe and rented a bicycle from a nearby kiosk. He stopped outside the imposing behemoth that was K2 Residences and took out the notebook again. Under the orange glow of the streetlights, his scribbles appeared even more repulsive.

  The content—shambolic.

  The handwriting—illegible.

  What was he thinking?

  It was a mess. Everything was a mess.

  He tore out the sheets and crushed them into a tight, hard ball. The scrunch of paper in his fist echoed between stone walls in the neighborhood. Eizo launched the ball, throwing it as far as he could. Dawn broke over the horizon.

  In the distance, the wizard readied his bat, swinging it for the last time.

  * * *

  In the distance, the wizard called his name. For the last time, he said.

  He stood in the square between the tatami mats, waiting, bat raised above his head. Back bent, shoulders hunched, knees locked at an awkward angle. He could never hit anything like this.

  Little Quill, he said, my job here is done. I returned what the sea took from you.

  You didn’t, Eizo heard himself say. The voice inside his head was brittle, already cracking. You still haven’t.

  You have the story now.

  It is not mine.

  You are right. It’s not yours, the wizard said. Your words are not your own. They never were.

  The wizard wore a sanguine expression, as if he were simply stating a fact.

  You lost your voice, he continued, calm and unhurried, you lost it when you claimed a story that wasn’t yours.

  Eizo fell silent.

  Eight years ago. Do you remember that?

  Even in death, she was polite.

  All you can do now is hold on to what the sea returned to you. Even if it isn’t yours.

  Drawing one last breath, the wizard craned his neck skyward.

  You must carry it to the tower, where the dragon awaits.

  * * *

  Eizo watched the paper trace a sharp trajectory across the red-streaked sky, bending at the peak before disappearing.

  Seconds ground by until he heard a barely audible plop miles away—a soft, desiccated sound you could crumble in your grasp. He leaned back against the wall, his arm shaking uncontrollably.

  By then, the wizard and the square and the tatami room had dissolved in the frigid winter air. It was just him standing alone in the middle of the road, with nothing in his hands.

  The story continues in

  Or So We Say, Book Two of the duet

  in the Resistance series.

  * * *

  Available in bookstores in Winter 2026.

  A Note from Byrd Koto

  Thank you for reading Our Funny Love Story. I hope this book (and Ran and Eizo) resonates with you as much as it has with me.

  As indie authors, reviews and word of mouth are vital for raising the visibility of our work and amplifying its voice.

  If you have enjoyed the story, I’d appreciate it if you could take a minute or two to share your thoughts using the links below.

  Amazon

  Goodreads

  Pagebound

  StoryGraph

  Fable

  All other book retailers (e.g, Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Google, Smashwords, and more)

  All links are also available at https://byrdkoto.com/pages/links, or scan the QR code below to access them directly on my website.

  Reviews are for readers, so please rest assured that I will not interact with them.

  If you would be so kind as to mention me or my book(s) on social media or other online platforms, please note that you do not need to tag me. I believe that reader spaces should be as they are—far and away from the author’s curious gaze. Unless prompted, I will not engage beyond a simple thank you.

  Once again, thank you for giving me and my story a chance, and I hope you will stay tuned for more.

  P.S. If you chance upon this book while traversing the high seas, you could pay it forward and drop some treasure at my Ko-fi page (or scan the QR code) to fund the production of future books and character art commissions. Ahoy!

  Coming Next

  Ran and Eizo’s story continues in Or So We Say, Book Two of the Resistance series, coming forth in Winter 2026.

  * * *

  Can’t wait? Turn the page to preview a snippet from Or So We Say.

  Special Preview: Or So We Say

  Book Two of the Resistance Series

  For as long as Ran could remember, he could never sleep on the night before his birthday. Once he closed his eyes, for some strange reason that he could never decipher, the thoughts he had pushed to the back of his mind for the twelve months prior would rush forward to the skin of his eyelids, strung into thin webs of white and red streaking across an universe that only he could see.

  What he saw had always been the sum of everything—all that he had welcomed and denied in equal parts—scrounged up from dirt he had painstakingly swept outside his perimeter every day. When you move through the living world, all things will leave a part of themselves with you as your paths cross, and you with them. Humans shed hair and skin in the form of granules, or what is called dust. Animals shed fur. Plants shed leaves, fruits, flowers, scraps of branches, or tree bark. Abscissions. To eliminate waste. To preserve energy. The wind blows, scattering them in all directions. What is once far from you is now at your doorstep. Uninvited yet at the same time, a most natural order of things.

  After Ran brushed his teeth, gargled, and prepared his outfit for the next day, he set his alarm for five-thirty the next morning. Then he added a few more at fifteen-minute intervals before his usual wake-up time, because the insomnia might lead him to accidentally sleep in and run late for work, as he had once done when he was twenty-three, after returning to Tokyo from Niigata.

  He thought about the misdelivered package, the notes hidden inside the textbooks, the look of fear and pain in Eizo’s eyes when one of them was lit aflame, and even that was an understatement of what he must have had felt, the back of his hand, the outer side of his right knee, him mocking Ran at Mrs. Tamura’s, laughing with such obnoxiously unbridled joy, a sight that had only happened once in the seven months since their first meeting, an encounter which Eizo refused to acknowledge but Ran knew it had been him and he couldn’t have had been wrong because he knew people like Eizo, or more accurately, he once knew of a person who reminded him of Eizo, and to put a face to the name, his mother, the woman who gave birth to him in Niigata thirty-three years ago, the lies, the deception, the long con over twelve years, to conceal what, who knew, and the more he knew of Eizo, the less he knew of the young man himself, perhaps until the moment when the wind finally blew away the shadows masking his eyes that night by the Sumida River, revealing a glimpse of the light that shone from his heart, an organ meant to pump blood throughout the body, not glow like a bulb in a dark house because that would mislead Ran into thinking that warmth came from light, that warmth equated light, especially on a night as cold as this, when according to the natural laws of the world warmth was another word for heat, a raise in external temperature higher than your body’s, or more crudely, waste emitted from generating energy.

  He went on thinking, runaway thoughts pinching his head like sentences he spared no qualms in cutting away from the page, half-finished, grammatically loose, the stuff that modern readers he scrubbed manuscripts for would love to hate.

  According to his mother, he was born in the hours of the Ox, one a.m. to three a.m. He would later learn that these hours were associated with a traditional curse ritual where the white-clothed practitioner, typically a scorned woman, hammered nails into the sacred tree of a Shinto shrine, determined to strike down her enemy. Crowning her head was an iron ring of three upright candles. He had no idea why she would specifically describe it by putting the Ox before his actual time of birth. In this day and age, would other mothers tell their children that they were born in the hours of the Tiger, or the Snake, or the Monkey?

  The hour-hand on the clock by his bedstand ticked from twelve to one, one to two, two to three. Ran kept thinking that way for the rest of the night, until it was time to wake up for work.

  Ran’s day started just like any other day in his life.

  At five a.m., he got out of bed, turned off the alarms, and set the kettle on boil while he vacuumed his apartment. He couldn’t control what he thought, but he could make his space clean enough to contain the exact amount of multitudes he could perceive in one sitting.

  At six a.m., he showered, shaved his face clean, changed into his pantsuit, full sleeves already buttoned at the cuffs as he prepared breakfast. A simple fare of broiled salmon with miso and tofu soup, and a serving of rice he had heated up in the microwave. He didn’t usually eat rice for breakfast, but people ate mochi cakes in soup for their first meal on their birthdays, and since mochi was made from pounded rice, he figured it was the same as soaking rice in miso soup.

  At forty minutes past six, he put away the dishes, turned on the TV, caught the morning news, where the weather forecast went: It would be another cold night, with a light dusting of snow.