Tooshiro woke up with his face half-buried in his pillow and one arm trapped under his body in a position that could not have been approved by any medical professional. His alarm was still buzzing on the floor beside the futon, vibrating against the wood with the determination of a small angry insect. For a few seconds, he did not remember why his chest felt tight.
Then he remembered Apartment 305.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
Fumiko Yamaguchi had his book.
That was no longer a plan, a fantasy, or a stupid little scheme he could still cancel by pretending to be a responsible adult. Somewhere in Tokyo, inside an apartment with a neat entryway and probably an organized bookshelf that had never once endangered anyone's toes, The Kingslayer King existed outside his room.
Tooshiro reached for his phone, nearly smacked it off the floor, and checked the screen.
No messages.
Of course there were no messages. She did not have his number. She had no way to contact him. This was information he already knew, yet apparently his body had decided to check anyway, because hope and intelligence were not the same department.
He lay there a moment longer while the air conditioner clicked softly above him.
Maybe she hated it.
The thought arrived before he could stop it. Then came the others, because one anxious thought was never polite enough to travel alone.
Maybe she opened it, saw the prologue, and thought it was too much. Maybe she read Ghaldre's first line and closed the book. Maybe she got to Baerlon spitting on his boot and decided the author needed therapy, which would be rude but not inaccurate.
He dragged both hands down his face.
"Work," he muttered. "You have work. People need their toilet paper subscriptions and emotional support bottled water."
That helped, in the way a wet tissue helped during a typhoon.
He got up, showered, and ate breakfast standing over the sink again because he had learned nothing. Today's meal was a convenience store tuna mayo onigiri and half a banana that had entered the dangerous stage of ripeness. He considered the banana, considered his life, and ate it anyway. Waste was bad. Food poisoning was also bad. Adulthood was mostly choosing which bad thing had better timing.
Before leaving, he crouched beside the low desk and pulled out another copy of The Kingslayer King from under it. The book looked at him with the same weight as yesterday's copy. Maybe slightly more smug, now that one of its siblings had escaped into the world.
"One more," he said.
The apartment stayed quiet.
He slid the book into another slim brown envelope and tucked it into his delivery bag. He told himself this was confidence. It might have been repetition. Those two looked similar from a distance, especially if the distance was denial.
The ride to the depot felt longer than usual. Nakano's morning streets had their usual rhythm: students walking in clusters, office workers moving like they had been launched from the station by a machine, older men sweeping in front of shops with care that made the sidewalk look more respected than most people. A small bakery had already opened, and the smell of fresh bread hit Tooshiro in a way that made his convenience store breakfast feel like a personal insult.
At the Nekonoha Express depot, the morning chaos was already in full bloom. Carts rolled. Scanners beeped. Someone cursed softly at a damaged box like it had betrayed his family. Tooshiro clocked in and kept his bag close to his side, which was apparently the exact wrong thing to do because Daiki noticed immediately.
"You brought the frog again," Daiki said.
Tooshiro stopped walking. "It's too early for this."
"For frogs?"
"For you."
Daiki held up his canned coffee. "I'm powered and dangerous."
"You drink the same thing every day, and every day you look disappointed."
"That's called marriage training."
"You're already married."
"Exactly. I stay sharp."
Tooshiro moved toward his assigned route shelf, deciding that ignoring Daiki was not rude if the alternative was becoming involved in whatever that sentence meant. He scanned the route list with more attention than he wanted to admit.
No Yamaguchi today.
His shoulders dropped a little. He told himself it was a relief. It was safer that way. Seeing her today would have been awkward, especially if she had not read anything or had read enough to politely return the book in a plastic bag like evidence from a crime scene.
But then he scrolled through the rest of the route.
Nothing obvious.
No regulars who ordered books. No apartment names he associated with thick paperbacks. No familiar bookstore packages. There was one small box from an electronics store, a few clothing orders, two heavy boxes marked beverages, one refrigerated delivery, and something from a hobby shop that could have been anything from model trains to a terrifying number of tiny screws.
No chance.
He stared at the list like it might change if he looked disappointed enough.
Daiki leaned over his shoulder. "Bad news?"
"No."
"Good news?"
"No."
"Neutral news?"
"Work news."
"Tragic."
Tooshiro clicked the scanner off and started loading his van. The second copy sat in his bag like a passenger with no destination, and as the morning route began, it became increasingly obvious that today was not the day for independent marketing, suspicious or otherwise.
The first stop was a small office where the receptionist bowed so deeply that Tooshiro bowed deeper out of panic, and they got trapped in a brief politeness duel until a man behind her cleared his throat. The second was a house down a narrow street where a tiny dog launched itself at the window with the fury of a demon sealed in a hand towel. The third was a redelivery to Tanaka, who once again was not home during the time slot he had chosen with his own human fingers.
Tooshiro held the failed delivery slip between two fingers and stared at the door.
Tanaka-san, are you real? Are you an urban legend created to punish courier workers?
He slid the slip into the mailbox and moved on.
By noon, the sun had climbed high enough to make the dashboard warm under his hands. The copy of The Kingslayer King had not moved from his bag. He kept thinking he had found someone, then immediately talking himself out of it. A young woman with a manga keychain answered one door, but her package was from a cosmetics shop and she looked too busy to be handed a fantasy novel by a sweaty delivery worker like some kind of quest item. An older man accepted a box from a used goods store, but he complained about the price of shipping before Tooshiro even finished saying good afternoon, which did not feel like fertile ground for literary discovery.
Around two, he parked outside a convenience store for a quick break. He bought a bottle of barley tea and a curry bread that was hotter than justice, then sat in the van with the engine off and the door cracked open. Traffic hummed nearby. A cicada screamed from a tree like it had personal grievances with the season.
He took out his phone. Still nothing. Again, no reason for there to be anything.
He opened a blank message to Nana, then closed it. If he told her he had brought another copy and failed to give it away, she would call him a street-corner wizard handing out cursed scrolls. Accurate, perhaps, but not helpful.
He looked at the bag beside him.
"One reader is enough for now," he said quietly.
The book did not answer. Books were good at that. They let you embarrass yourself and kept the receipts.
The rest of the day dragged. Not horribly, but worse… normally. A boring day had no mercy because there was nothing dramatic enough to distract him. He carried packages. He collected signatures. He apologized for things that were not his fault. He said "Thank you for waiting" to people who had not waited and "Sorry for the inconvenience" to people who had created the inconvenience personally.
At one apartment, a woman opened the door while brushing her teeth, signed with the wrong end of the stylus, realized it, apologized six times, and closed the door with toothpaste still on her chin. At another, a teenage boy accepted a package and whispered, "Please don't tell my mom this came," which Tooshiro decided was above his pay grade. The box was light, from a game shop, and probably harmless. Probably.
By the time he returned to the depot, the second copy of The Kingslayer King was still undelivered.
Failure, but quieter than yesterday's possible crime.
Daiki saw him unloading and took one look at his face. "The frog was rejected by society."
"The frog is patient."
"That sounds like something a cult leader says."
"You keep making the frog worse."
"You started with the frog."
"I never accepted the frog."
Daiki lifted a small stack of returns and placed them on the cart. "So no customers worthy of your genius today?"
Tooshiro gave him a flat look. "I hate how you say supportive things like insults."
"Marriage training," Daiki said again.
"That still doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have to. I already got married."
Tooshiro was too tired to fight that. He finished his paperwork, clocked out, and biked home with his bag heavier than it had been that morning, though the weight had not changed. He hated that feeling. The returned copy seemed to press against his side all the way back to Nakano.
That night, he tried to write. He failed. He tried to edit his website draft. Also failed. He searched for author website examples, found three that made him feel underqualified as both a writer and a person, then spent ten minutes changing the font on a placeholder page like that was progress.
At 11:20 p.m., he went to bed and stared at the ceiling again.
She probably didn't read it yet.
That was reasonable.
She has a job. She has a life. She is not sitting around reorganizing her evening around a suspicious paperback from a delivery guy.
Also reasonable.
Unless she read the first page and hated it so much she buried it in the trash under vegetable peels.
He turned over and pulled the blanket up to his shoulder. Tomorrow, he would work. He would not obsess. He would not think about Apartment 305 every time the scanner beeped. He would not mentally rehearse what he would say if she called the company, or if she returned the book, or if she opened the door and said, I read it, and then paused long enough for his soul to leave through his shoes.
Sleep took him in pieces.
The next morning, rain threatened but never arrived. The sky hung low and gray, the kind of Tokyo weather that made everyone carry an umbrella and resent the air. Tooshiro clocked in expecting another normal route, another day of pretending his life had not become a slow-burn disaster written by a god with questionable pacing.
Then he saw the name on the scanner.
Yamaguchi Fumiko. Apartment 305. Delivery window, 10:00 to 12:00.
His grip tightened around the device.
Daiki, who had apparently been born from a wall nearby, said, "Oho?"
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm reacting to."
"I know your voice."
"That's intimacy."
"That's harassment."
Daiki leaned in, saw the route list, and made a sound so delighted that Tooshiro considered pushing him into a stack of coolers.
"Door 305 returns."
"She is a customer."
"She is the frog princess."
"There is no frog."
"Not with that attitude."
Tooshiro shoved the scanner into his pouch. "I'm going to work."
"You should. Your face is doing that thing."
"What thing?"
"That delivery boy in a romance manga thing."
Tooshiro stopped. "That's not a thing."
"It is now."
He left before Daiki could make it worse, which he would have, because men like Daiki treated embarrassment as a sport.
For the first part of the route, Tooshiro moved on autopilot. The van's wipers squeaked once even though there was no rain, as if preparing for drama. He delivered to a hair salon, a dental clinic, two apartments, and one house where an elderly woman insisted he take a mandarin orange because he looked "thin in the soul." He did not know how to respond to that, so he thanked her and accepted the orange like medicine.
All the while, Apartment 305 waited on the route list.
By 10:37, he was parked outside Fumiko's building again.
He checked the package in the back. Smaller than yesterday's. From a bookstore this time.
He stared at it.
Then at the building.
Then at his reflection in the van window. His hair had been bullied by humidity. His uniform was fine, but his expression was not. He looked like someone about to receive exam results for a test he had written himself.
"Professional," he told his reflection.
His reflection did not believe him.
He carried the package inside, rode the same elevator, smelled the same cleaning spray, stood in the same hallway, and stopped at the same door.
山口.
He pressed the intercom.
The door opened faster than last time. Maybe too fast.
Fumiko stood there in a pale cardigan over a white blouse, hair down today, falling over her shoulders in soft dark waves. She looked composed. Almost aggressively composed. The kind of composed that required effort. In one hand, she held her phone. In the other, nothing.
No book.
No envelope.
Tooshiro did not know if that was good or bad.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning. Nekonoha Express. Delivery for Yamaguchi-san."
He held up the package like it could protect him.
She accepted the scanner first, signed, and handed it back. Her movements were precise, but her eyes kept flicking toward him. Not the package. Him. Then away. Then back.
She read it.
The thought hit him hard enough that he almost forgot to breathe.
No. Dangerous assumption. Maybe she was deciding how to report him. Maybe she had practiced a speech. Maybe she had named the speech The Delivery Man and His Many Crimes.
He passed her the box.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome."
Silence.
The hallway stretched.
Somewhere behind a nearby door, a TV played a morning variety show at low volume. Someone laughed on screen. It felt rude.
Fumiko adjusted her grip on the package, "About that book."
His stomach dropped into the basement, which was impressive from the third floor.
"Right," he said, "The promotional copy."
"Yes. That." She cleared her throat, then looked down at the box label as if it contained notes. "I read the first chapter."
Tooshiro's heart went straight up.
"The first chapter," he repeated.
"Yes."
"That's… great. Thank you."
"I said I would."
"You did."
"I keep my word."
"You seemed like you would."
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing bad. Organized. Responsible. Like someone who owns matching food containers."
She stared at him.
He regretted the sentence immediately.
"I do own matching food containers," she said.
"I knew it."
"That's not the point."
"Right. Sorry."
She looked away, and for a moment he thought he had ruined the whole thing over food storage. A normal man would not have done that. A normal man would have said, What did you think? and waited. Tooshiro had chosen containers. This was why he wrote dialogue alone in his room where nobody could witness the early drafts.
Fumiko shifted the package under one arm. "It was… interesting."
Interesting. Interesting? That word had more traps than an ancient ruin.
"Interesting… good?" he asked carefully.
"Interesting enough."
"Enough for…?"
"For one chapter," she said quickly.
Her face remained composed, but her fingers tapped once against the cardboard box. Then again. Her eyes flicked toward him.
"I thought the opening was strong," she said. "The throne room had good atmosphere. Ghaldre was compelling. Baerlon was awful, but not in a shallow way. Johanus and Elyas were introduced cleanly. The fox and wolf imagery worked."
Tooshiro's soul sat upright.
That was not casual first-chapter feedback. That was structured analysis. That was a woman who had thought about it in the shower.
He kept his voice even by force, "That's detailed."
"I read carefully."
"I can tell."
"It was only one chapter."
"Right."
She nodded once, satisfied, then ruined herself immediately.
"I do think Selena's introduction shifts the tone in a good way, though."
The hallway went still.
Tooshiro blinked.
Fumiko blinked back.
Her face did not change, but the tips of her ears turned pink.
Selena did not appear in the first chapter.
Selena was not even near the first chapter, depending on how a person counted the opening sections. Selena belonged after Johanus, after Quintin, after the farm, after the attack, after grief, after the road. Selena was deep enough into the first arc that a person could not arrive there accidentally unless they tripped and fell through several chapters with their eyes open.
Tooshiro opened his mouth.
Fumiko lifted a hand, "I meant, hypothetically."
"Hypothetically… Selena?"
"If a character named Selena were to appear."
"She does."
"Yes, well, if she did."
"She does."
"I know."
"You know because…"
"I skimmed."
He stared.
She stared back with the poise of a woman defending a budget request she knew was nonsense.
"You skimmed to Selena."
"Yes."
"Through Johanus' entire retirement, Quintin's father dying, the warden scene, and the tavern?"
Her mouth opened, then closed. The pink in her ears spread. Tooshiro realized what he had done a second too late. Now he had exposed himself too.
Her eyes sharpened, "You know the chapter order very well."
His brain performed the same drawer-opening trick as before. Still empty. Truly, a consistent system.
"I read it too," he said.
"You read it too."
"Yes."
"Because your friend wrote it."
"Yes."
"And you are helping him promote it."
"Correct."
"By knowing the chapter order with suspicious emotional accuracy."
"He talks about it a lot."
"Does he?"
"All the time."
"To delivery drivers?"
"To me specifically."
"Because you're close?"
"Close-ish."
"Close-ish?"
The word left her mouth dry and pointed. Tooshiro smiled in a way that probably looked like a man trying to pass through customs with a live eel under his shirt.
"He's just, private," he said, as if that explained anything.
Fumiko looked at him for a long moment. Then, to his surprise, she laughed. Not loudly. Not enough to echo in the hallway. It was a small laugh, quick and reluctant, like it escaped before she could approve it.
"You are terrible at this," she said.
"At what?"
"Whatever this is."
"That's fair."
She pressed her lips together, trying to regain control, but the damage had been done. Her composed office face had cracked, and behind it was someone brighter. More animated. Still shy, but not in the timid way people meant when they did not know what to call a woman who kept parts of herself private.
She glanced into her apartment, then back at him. "Fine."
"Fine?"
"I read more than one chapter."
"How much more?"
"A normal amount."
"That is not a number."
"A reader's amount."
"Also not a number."
She looked away.
Tooshiro waited.
The silence grew.
She held out for an impressive three seconds.
"All of it," she said.
The words hit him in the chest.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But with a force that made the hallway, the package, the damp air outside, and the weight of his uniform all fade for half a breath.
"All of it," he repeated.
She hugged the package closer like it was suddenly a shield. "Not because I was obsessed."
"Of course."
"I had time."
"Sure."
"And it was raining last night."
"It didn't rain."
"It looked like it might," she pointed at him. "Don't get smug. I'm still annoyed about how you gave it to me."
"I'm not smug."
"You look smug."
"I look terrified."
"That too."
He laughed then, because he could not help it. The sound came out lighter than he expected. Fumiko's mouth twitched again, and for some reason that almost ruined him more than her praise.
She had read it. All of it. The whole first arc. The gods abandoning the world. Ghaldre killing Baerlon and then dying by Johanus' hand. Johanus trying to live as a farmer. Quintin losing him. Selena stepping out of the tavern like trouble had put on boots. The ravangers. Knoxorn. Mount Scion waiting in the distance.
Fumiko Yamaguchi had walked through Centava and come back to stand in a Tokyo apartment hallway wearing a cardigan, pretending she had read one chapter.
"So," he said carefully, because his voice felt too close to betraying him. "You didn't hate it?"
Her expression changed.
The humor softened. The defensiveness slipped a little, and something honest took its place.
"No," she said, "I didn't hate it."
He waited.
She looked down at the package in her arms, then let out a slow breath. "It was good."
One word.
Good.
After three years, five opening rewrites, too many nights with cold coffee, and a number of deleted scenes that could have formed their own graveyard, good should have felt too small. It did not.
It felt like someone had opened a window in a room he had been sitting in for too long. Then she kept going.
"The opening is brutal, but it has a point. I thought Ghaldre would be the main villain, then he dies, and suddenly the story becomes about what people do after the so-called ending. Johanus becoming a farmer should feel strange after that kind of prologue, but it works because the quiet feels earned. Then Quintin…" She stopped, pressing her lips together like she had said too much.
Tooshiro could barely keep still.
"Quintin?" he prompted.
Her eyes flicked up. "Don't fish for compliments on your friend's behalf."
"I'm not fishing."
"You are holding the rod."
"I don't even fish."
"Then you're doing badly on land."
He smiled. She did too, only for a second.
Fumiko adjusted her stance, "Quintin works because he doesn't feel like some chosen hero who woke up special. He feels sheltered. Strong, but sheltered. He has ability, but no idea what the world costs. And then the story makes him pay before he even understands the price."
Tooshiro swallowed.
She had seen it.
She had seen him.
Not fully. Not as the author. Not yet. But she had seen the thing he had been trying to put on the page, and it made him feel strangely exposed, like she had walked into his apartment and found the drafts stacked beside his futon.
"And Selena?" he asked before he could stop himself.
Fumiko's face shifted so fast it was almost funny. Caution gone. Interest awake. A door opening.
"Selena is dangerous," she said.
"That sounded like praise."
"It is. I like women in stories who are allowed to be sharp without the narration punishing them for it every three paragraphs. She's clearly hiding things, but she's not written like a puzzle box with lipstick. She has survival habits. She tests Quintin, but she also notices him. And the bath scene after Knoxorn…"
She stopped.
Tooshiro stopped breathing.
There it was.
The bath scene.
Not the most explicit thing in the world. Not even close. But intimate in a way that had made him rewrite it twice because it had to be vulnerable, not cheap. A quiet moment after bodies had been buried, after fear and exhaustion, after two people who barely knew each other let the silence say something neither of them was ready to name.
Fumiko's entire face went red.
"I mean," she said, "from a narrative standpoint."
"Of course."
"It was thematically relevant."
"Very."
"About trust."
"Exactly."
"And scars."
"Yes."
"And nothing else."
"Nothing else?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Do not make me regret praising your friend."
"I would never."
"You absolutely would."
He tried to stop smiling and failed enough for her to notice.
She looked away, but she was smiling too now. It was smaller than his, but it was there, tucked at the corner of her mouth like she had not decided whether to allow it.
Then another door opened down the hallway. Both of them froze.
An elderly woman from Apartment 302 stepped out carrying a bag of burnable trash, despite burnable trash day not being until tomorrow. She looked from Tooshiro, in uniform, to Fumiko, in her doorway, to the package in Fumiko's arms, then back to Tooshiro.
"Oh," the woman said.
There was no reason for that single syllable to sound scandalized.
Fumiko straightened, "Good morning, Kobayashi-san."
"Good morning." Kobayashi-san's eyes lowered to the package, then drifted back up with the slow confidence of a gossip professional. "Delivery?"
"Yes," Fumiko said.
Tooshiro bowed. "Nekonoha Express."
"Such hardworking young people," Kobayashi-san said, smiling gently in a way that suggested she had already written three versions of this story in her head and all of them involved spring weddings. "Please take care not to catch a cold in this weather."
"It is not raining," Tooshiro said.
Fumiko's head turned slightly toward him. He realized at once that this was not the point.
Kobayashi-san smiled wider. "Weather is unpredictable."
Then she walked toward the elevator, trash bag in hand, leaving behind the faint scent of detergent and danger.
The silence after she left was different.
Fumiko looked like she wanted to close the door, open it again, restart the scene, and possibly move buildings.
Tooshiro cleared his throat, "She seems nice."
"She once asked if my father was visiting because a man from the gas company came by."
"Ah."
"She is nice. She is also very aware of doors."
"That's a skill."
"In this building, it's a sport."
They stood there for another moment, both suddenly aware of how long he had been at her doorway. A delivery worker lingering outside a young woman's apartment was not ideal, even if the conversation involved fictional monarchy and scar symbolism.
"I should go," he said.
"Yes," she said quickly. "You have deliveries."
"I do."
"And I have work."
"Right."
Neither moved.
Fumiko looked down at the package again. "Can I ask something?"
"Sure."
"Did your friend write anything else?"
Tooshiro's chest tightened, "Not published."
"But written?"
"Some."
"More of this?"
"He's working on it."
Her eyes brightened, then she tried to hide it by nodding like this was a reasonable business update, "Good."
"Good?"
"It would be irresponsible to stop there."
"To stop where?"
"At Mount Scion, obviously."
He tilted his head.
Her face froze.
She had done it again.
"Obviously," he said.
"I skimmed."
"All the way to Mount Scion."
"Fast reader."
"You read all of it."
"I admitted that already."
"You did."
"Don't become unbearable."
"I'm trying not to."
"You're failing."
"Noted."
She shifted her weight and looked past him down the hallway, then back. For the first time since opening the door, she looked uncertain. Not about the book. About him.
"If your friend likes privacy, I understand," she said. "But if he ever wants feedback from someone who reads fantasy seriously, not as a favor, then… I would be willing."
The offer was small, careful, and adult. No dramatic declaration. No sparkling background, except maybe in his head, which he refused to acknowledge. Tooshiro gripped the scanner a little tighter.
"I'll tell him," he said.
"Please do."
"And thank you. I think he'd be happy."
"He should be," she said, and the confidence in her voice nearly knocked him over. "It's good."
There it was again.
Good.
This time with certainty.
He bowed before his face could do something embarrassing. "I'll let him know."
Fumiko nodded.
He turned to leave.
"Senda-san."
He stopped and looked back.
She held the package against her side, her expression composed again, though the faint red in her cheeks had not fully disappeared.
"You read it too, right?"
The question was casual on the surface, but there was a hook beneath it.
Tooshiro's mind went quiet for one dangerous second.
"Yes," he said. "I read it."
"All of it?"
He almost laughed, "All of it."
"And?"
"And what?"
"What did you think?"
There it was. The most absurd question in the world. What did he think of his own book? What did a mirror think of a face? He could have said something vague. He should have. It would have been safer.
Instead, he looked at her and said, "I think it's a story about people finding out freedom is heavier than chains."
Fumiko went still. The hallway seemed to hush around them. For a second, he thought he had said too much. Too writerly. Too close to the center. Too close to the kind of answer Shin Kaidou would give if someone asked him what the book meant and he forgot to be mysterious.
Then Fumiko smiled. Softly this time. Not teasing. Not guarded.
"That's exactly what I thought," she said.
Tooshiro could not reply. If he tried, he might confess to everything by accident and then throw himself down the stairs to avoid the follow-up questions. His scanner beeped.
Both of them jumped.
The next delivery alert flashed on the screen, saving him in the most corporate way possible.
"I really should go," he said.
"Yes," she said. "Sorry. I kept you."
"No, I…" He stopped himself. "It's fine."
She hesitated, then said, "If your friend has a website later, or somewhere to follow updates, could you tell me?"
"Sure."
"How?"
He froze.
She watched him.
The hallway became dangerous again.
"How," he repeated intelligently.
"Yes, Senda-san. How would you tell me?"
Another fair question. She was good at those. He fumbled for an answer, and she seemed to realize the same thing at the same time. Her eyes flicked to his phone, then away. For a moment, both of them stood there in the bright, horrible awareness of the obvious solution.
Numbers. Exchange numbers. For book updates. Not strange. Except it was completely strange…
Fumiko cleared her throat, "I mean, if that's inconvenient, you could bring it up during a future delivery."
"That could work."
"But I might not order anything."
"Right."
"And your friend might make a website before then."
"Possible."
"Or he might not, considering his current marketing plan."
"Also possible."
A small pause.
Then Fumiko sighed, as if annoyed with both of them. "Give me your number."
His brain stopped.
"For the website," she added quickly.
"Right. Website."
"And book updates."
"Of course."
"And so I can send feedback if your friend wants it."
"To pass along."
"Yes."
"To my friend."
"Yes."
They were both doing a terrible job. Truly awful. If Kobayashi-san had still been in the hallway, she would have started taking notes.
Tooshiro pulled out his phone. Fumiko did the same. There was a brief, awkward shuffle of QR codes and screens, the modern ritual of two adults pretending that exchanging contact information did not carry the emotional weight of signing a peace treaty.
Her contact appeared on his phone. Yamaguchi Fumiko. No emoji. No nickname. Very her.
His appeared on hers. Senda Tooshiro.
She looked at it for a second. "Tooshiro is written how?"
"俊白."
"That's uncommon."
"Yeah. My mother liked the sound."
"It suits you."
He blinked, stunned as she looked down at her phone quickly, "I mean, it's memorable."
"Right."
"Names should be memorable."
"Sure."
His face felt warm. Her face looked warm too. The scanner beeped again, more aggressively this time, like dispatch had sensed character development and disapproved.
"I have to go," he said.
"You said that already."
"I'm saying it with more fear now."
She laughed quietly, "Then go."
"Right. Good luck with work."
"Good luck with deliveries."
He bowed and walked toward the elevator with the stiff dignity of a man trying not to sprint. The doors opened when he pressed the button, and he stepped inside. As they began to close, he looked back.
Fumiko was still at her doorway.
She lifted one hand in a small wave. He lifted his. Then the doors shut.
Tooshiro stood in the elevator, staring at his phone. Yamaguchi Fumiko. He had her number.
Because of a fake author website.
Because she had read his entire book while pretending to read one chapter.
Because he had lied. The elevator descended.
His phone buzzed. For one wild second, he thought it was her. It was Daiki.
Daiki: Why are you late on Route 17?
Tooshiro stared at the message, then at the scanner alert, then at his reflection in the elevator mirror, where he looked like a man who had been attacked by happiness and was not sure if he needed medical attention.
He typed back.
Customer had questions.
Daiki: About package?
Tooshiro hesitated, then typed.
Philosophically.
Daiki: I hate you.
Tooshiro smiled despite himself and slipped the phone away as the elevator reached the lobby. Outside, the gray sky had finally given up and started to rain, thin and soft over the street.
He hurried back to the van with no umbrella, holding the scanner under his jacket like that mattered more than his own head. His route was behind schedule. His uniform was getting wet. His secret was more complicated than it had been an hour ago.
And on his phone, tucked between his sister's insults and Daiki's nonsense, was the name of his first reader.
He climbed into the van, shut the door, and sat there while rain dotted the windshield. His next delivery was already blinking red on the tablet.
Tooshiro started the engine.
"Normal day," he said.
The van coughed again. This time, it sounded like laughter.
ns216.73.216.214da2
and then Add to home screen.