Chapter 192: The Ghost Writes Back

Chapter 192: Chapter 192: The Ghost Writes Back

The message came through the Lantern’s anonymous request form at 3:12 on the morning of the twenty-fifth of August. It was the same time as the second access log, and Tanaka noticed that before he noticed anything else.

He forwarded it to Haruki at 7:40 with a single line above it.

This came in overnight. I don’t know what to do with it. I think you should read it before anyone else.

Haruki read it sitting on the crate in front of his desk, with the morning light coming through the open door of his parents’ room.

I’m sorry to use this form. I don’t know where else to write.

I’m one of five artists who draw Crownless. We were hired in March through a company in Osaka. They told us it was a new original series with a big budget. They gave us a contract with a confidentiality clause on page six. They said we couldn’t tell anyone we worked on it, not even our families, and our names would never appear anywhere.

They gave us a folder of reference material on the first day. It was every Chapter of Threadless Gate, printed out and tabbed. We were told to study how the empty space was drawn and do it the same way, but different. We were told it was "a style, not a story," and styles can’t be owned.

In June they gave us an outline for Chapters seven to eighteen. We didn’t know where it came from.

Last Friday they stopped paying us. There was no explanation. The office in Osaka doesn’t answer the phone. Our contract says that if we talk about the project, we owe them back every yen we were paid, with eighteen percent interest.

I read Threadless Gate Chapter 67 on Saturday. The letter. "Nobody needs to pay."

I’m not asking you for anything. I just wanted someone to know that we didn’t know. I wanted it written down somewhere.

It wasn’t signed. But at the very bottom, beneath the message, whoever had written it had added one more line, as though they couldn’t help it.

You wrote me a card once. About florists. Chapter 12. "Trust me." I still have it.

Haruki sat on the crate for a long time.

He knew who it was. He had known from the word florists.

He had written the card on a Monday night in the first autumn, in the middle of the Creator War. A romance creator from Fukuoka had signed with Ariadne because she wanted to be seen once before she quit. He had spent an hour reading her series from Chapter one, about two rival florists on the same street falling slowly and grudgingly in love through the arrangements they left in each other’s windows. He had written three lines.

For anyone who has ever said something with flowers because they couldn’t say it out loud.

Two rivals, one street, and a window each. Watch what they leave for each other.

Chapter 12. Trust me.

The next morning, she had sent him a photograph of a small bunch of blue flowers on a windowsill, with no caption. She had signed the Two Percent Pledge in November. He hadn’t heard from her since.

Her name was Morikawa Sayo. She was twenty-four, from Fukuoka, and she drew flowers better than anyone he had ever seen.

He called Tanaka at eight.

"Don’t answer it yet," he said. "Not from the Lantern’s account."

"Why not?"

"Because it came in at 3:12 in the morning," Haruki said. "The same time as the second log. If someone is watching, I don’t want them to see the Lantern write back." He paused. "And because she’s frightened. Her contract says she owes them everything back with eighteen percent if she talks. She already wrote to us. That’s already talking."

Tanaka was quiet on the line for a moment.

"Eighteen percent," he said slowly. "The same as ōkubo’s advance."

"The same as ōkubo’s advance," Haruki said. "Written by the same people, who learned nothing except how to hide better."

He called Hirose next, at 8:20. The old lawyer listened to the whole message read aloud, twice, without interrupting.

"Page six," Hirose said at last. "A confidentiality clause with a repayment penalty at eighteen percent a year." He was quiet for a moment. "Under the Interest Rate Restriction Act, anything above fifteen percent on a sum over a million yen is void. We’ve been here before, with Sakaki-kun, in a kitchen in Nerima." A pause. "But she doesn’t know that. None of the five do. They’re sitting in five rooms thinking they’ll be ruined if they say a word."

"What do we do?"

"We don’t write to her from any account anyone can watch," Hirose said. "We find someone she already trusts, someone who’s been exactly where she is." He paused. "Who signed with Ariadne at the same time she did, and was trapped by eighteen percent, and read page six with a volunteer, and went to court anyway?"

Haruki closed his eyes.

"ōkubo," he said.

"ōkubo-kun," Hirose agreed. "He’s from the same year of the Creator War, and he was on the same side. She’ll believe him. She won’t believe a lawyer or the Clause 7 boy. She’ll believe another creator who signed for the same reasons and found a way out." He was quiet for a moment. "Ask him. Don’t tell him what to say. It’s his decision."

ōkubo called Haruki back at 11:40. He had read the message three times, on the bench outside room 312 at Kawasaki General, where his mother was having another routine check.

"The florist," he said. There was no loudness in his voice at all. "Morikawa-san. I remember her. She signed that autumn, four months after I did." He was quiet for a moment. "She wanted to be seen once. I wanted my mother’s surgery paid for. We both thought we were the only one."

"Will you write to her?"

"I’m going to do better than that," ōkubo said. "Fukuoka’s four and a half hours on the Shinkansen. I’m going on Saturday." A pause. "Mum says I have to take her some of the good crackers from the shop by the station, because you don’t visit a frightened person with nothing in your hands."

Haruki didn’t say anything.

"She wrote that she wanted it written down somewhere," ōkubo said. "That they didn’t know." His voice cracked slightly. "Somebody should tell her it’s already written down. In a court in Tokyo. With my name on it, and Sakaki-kun’s, and ten others."

After ōkubo hung up, Haruki sat on the crate for a long time.

He had spent a month thinking of Crownless as a thing made by a fund, a studio, and a woman in Osaka with two company registries. It was a machine that had taken the shape of his story and filled it with swords. He had never once thought about the hands that drew it.

There were five people in five rooms, with a tabbed folder of his pages on their desks. Every week they had drawn a boy with nothing above his head, the way they had been told to, different but the same. They had never been allowed to put their names on any of it. Now they sat waiting for a phone in Osaka that nobody answered, frightened of a page six that probably wasn’t even legal.

He thought of a man in Singapore who had read first Chapters with fewer than fifty readers every Tuesday night for twenty years, because nobody had read his. Somebody on the same side as that man had hired five young artists and made sure nobody would ever read their names at all.

Tsubasa called that evening, after his last class at the art college. Haruki had told him about the message at lunchtime, because the backgrounds of Threadless Gate were in that tabbed folder in Osaka as much as anything Haruki had drawn.

"Five artists," Tsubasa said. His voice was very quiet. "In five rooms. With a folder of your pages, told to study them."

"Yes."

"Told to copy the empty space," Tsubasa said. "Different, but the same." He was quiet for a long moment. "That’s what I did. Two and a half years ago. With my first series. I studied your pages at my desk at two in the morning and drew them different but the same, because I didn’t believe I could make anything of my own."

"You chose to," Haruki said gently. "They were told to."

"I know." Tsubasa’s voice caught. "That’s worse, isn’t it. For them. I at least got to be the one who decided to stop." A pause. "Nobody gave them a choice to stop. Somebody just stopped paying them."

Neither of them said anything for a while.

"When I admitted it on the forum," Tsubasa said at last, "everyone was angry. Nobody believed me for weeks. The only person who didn’t shout at me was you. You offered me backgrounds, two days a week." He took a breath. "If ōkubo-san finds her, and the other four, will you tell them that? That someone who copied you once draws your backgrounds now?"

"You tell them," Haruki said. "It’s your story, not mine."

The line was quiet.

"Okay," said Tsubasa. "I will."

[Ghost Project — Contact: Anonymous (Lantern request form, 03:12). Identified (probable): Morikawa Sayo (24, Fukuoka), one of 5 uncredited Crownless artists.]

[Terms disclosed: Confidentiality clause (p. 6); repayment penalty 18% p.a. (likely void above 15%); payment suspended since Aug 22.]

[Emissary: ōkubo Shin (co-plaintiff, ōkubo v. Ariadne). Travel: Fukuoka, Saturday.]