The literature clubroom at 4:17 p.m. on a Tuesday smelled like old paper, rain-soaked wool, and the particular mustiness of a heater that hadn't been cleaned since the Heisei era.
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I arrived seven minutes early. Hana arrived three minutes late, which meant she'd spent ten minutes pacing somewhere else in the building, working up the courage to walk through a door she'd walked through a hundred times before.
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She dropped a manila folder on the centre table without ceremony. It landed with the sound of paper that had been crumpled and smoothed flat at least twice.
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"First draft," she said. "It's garbage."
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"You haven't let me read it yet."
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"I read it. It's garbage."
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I opened the folder. Eleven pages, single-spaced, in handwriting so precise it looked printed. The title was The Weight of Water.
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"I thought you were writing about tomatoes."
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"That was last year. I've evolved."
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The first paragraph described a girl standing at the edge of a swimming pool at 5 a.m., watching steam rise off the surface while her coach screamed at her from the bleachers. By the third paragraph, I'd forgotten I was supposed to be editing. By the fifth, I'd forgotten I was supposed to be competing. By the eighth, I understood why Hana had won.
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She wasn't a better writer than me because she had better ideas. She was a better writer because she didn't flinch.
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"You cut the ending," I said.
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"The original ending was false."
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"What was it?"
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"The girl wins the championship and realizes her true strength was inside her all along."
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I looked up. Hana was staring at a point somewhere above my left shoulder, her jaw set.
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"That is garbage," I agreed.
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"I know."
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"So what's the real ending?"
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"I don't know yet. That's what I need you for."
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I set the manuscript down. Outside, the rain had stopped, replaced by the kind of grey afternoon that made fluorescent lights look like an accusation.
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"Why me?"
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"I told you. You come back."
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"That's not an answer."
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Hana's fingers found the edge of her sleeve and tugged once, a movement so small I almost missed it.
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"Because you're the only person who's ever made me want to be wrong."
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I didn't have a response to that. So I did what any self-respecting teenage writer would do when confronted with emotional honesty: I changed the subject.
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"Your dialogue tags are excessive," I said. "You use 'she said' thirty-seven times in eleven pages."
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Hana blinked. Then her eyes narrowed.
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"You counted?"
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"I'm thorough."
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"You're petty."
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"These are not mutually exclusive."
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She sat down across from me—the first time she'd voluntarily been in my proximity since the notebook incident—and pulled a red pen from her bag. It was already uncapped. She'd prepared for this.
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"Fine," she said. "Edit me."
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An hour later, the clubroom looked like a crime scene. We'd covered the table with loose pages, cross-references, and at least three arguments that had devolved into diagramming sentences on the whiteboard.
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The current stalemate involved paragraph seven.
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"You can't end a scene with 'she was sad,'" I said.
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"Why not? It's efficient."
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"It's lazy. What does sad look like? What does sad smell like? What does sad make her do with her hands?"
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Hana's pen hovered over the page.
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"She bites her cuticles," she said slowly. "When she's sad, or nervous, or angry. She bites them until they bleed, and then she hides her hands in her pockets for the rest of the day."
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"Then write that."
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"But that's gross."
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"Exactly."
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Her pen descended. The scratch of ink against paper sounded like someone taking notes during a confession.
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"Your turn," she said, without looking up. "Read me your new opening."
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I'd been dreading this. The Moon Is Drowning had been my obsession for eight months, a story about a city slowly sinking into the ocean while its inhabitants argued about property values. It was, depending on who you asked, either a brilliant allegory or the world's most boring disaster movie.
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I pulled out my notebook—black, utilitarian, stained with coffee and regret.
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"The water reached the fourth floor of the Kanzaki Building on a Tuesday," I read. "By Wednesday, the tenants had stopped arguing about the rent."
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Silence.
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I looked up. Hana was frowning.
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"What?"
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"That's good."
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"Thank you."
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"It's better than good. It's specific. It makes me want to know what happened on Wednesday."
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"Then what's the problem?"
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"The problem is that everything after it is terrible."
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She reached across the table and took the notebook from my hands before I could object. I watched her read, her expression shifting from concentration to something I couldn't name. Two minutes passed. Three.
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"You're still doing it," she said.
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"Doing what?"
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"Writing around the emotion. You describe the flood, the bureaucracy, the architecture. You never let anyone actually feel anything."
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"It's thematically intentional."
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"It's cowardly."
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The word landed like a slap. I felt heat rise to my face, the familiar sting of being seen in a way I hadn't authorized.
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"You don't know anything about me."
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"I know you write about a drowning city because it's easier than writing about yourself."
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Hana's voice was quiet. Not cruel. Just certain.
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I wanted to argue. I wanted to point out that she wrote about tomato gardens and swimming pools, that her characters were just as guarded as mine, that she had no right—
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But she was right. And worse, she knew she was right. That was the thing about Hana Mizuki. She didn't guess. She observed, catalogued, and struck.
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"We're not supposed to be psychoanalyzing each other," I said. "We're supposed to be editing."
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"Editing is psychoanalysis with better grammar."
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"Is that from one of your essays?"
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"It's from my grandmother."
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"Does she also write about tomatoes?"
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Hana's mouth twitched. Almost a smile.
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"Worse. She writes about turnips."
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We worked until the custodians started their rounds, the distant sound of mops against linoleum signalling the end of our session. Hana packed her folder with deliberate care, each page aligned, each corner flattened.
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"Same time tomorrow?" I asked.
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"Thursday. I have archery club on Wednesdays."
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"You do archery?"
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"You didn't know?"
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"No."
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Hana paused, her bag half-zipped.
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"You've known me for three years. We've competed in every writing contest since first year. And you didn't know I'm in archery club."
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"In my defence, you're very good at hiding things."
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"In my defence, you're very bad at noticing them."
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She left before I could respond. The door clicked shut behind her, and I stood alone in a room that smelled like rain and old secrets.
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The notebook was in my bag. I hadn't meant to keep it—she'd given it to me to read, not to steal—but at some point during our argument, I'd slipped it into my backpack like a criminal palming evidence.
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I knew I should return it. I knew I should respect her privacy, that our partnership was built on the fragile architecture of mutual trust and mutual blackmail.
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But I was a writer. And writers are the worst kind of thief.
A-Note:
And so the partnership begins. This is where the real dynamic between Akira and Hana starts to take shape—the friction, the honesty, and the fact that they're both hiding behind their words. Akira reads Entry Two next time, and it changes everything. Do you think Hana knew he would keep the notebook? Let me know in the comments! 15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7gtLsOes0h
and then Add to home screen.