Tokyo Literary Masters: Starting from the Late 1980s

Chapter 84 The Influence of Love Letters

To be honest, she couldn't afford the special edition; what she was holding was a sample copy she had borrowed from a kind college student in front of her.

As she struggled to decipher the words, and saw Byakuran's half-baked words at the end, "Thank you, Goro—thank you for giving me a home," the psychological defenses she had built up over the years against the curses of her illegal employers, the police interrogations, and the endless exploitation instantly crumbled.

Because in this suspenseful letter riddled with typos, she seemed to see another version of herself.

They too lack legal status, and like rats, they hide and struggle in this cold country.

What truly tore at her heart was not the despair of shared suffering, but a kind of utterly absurd yet incredibly real envy.

She was actually envying Bai Lan.

She envied the fictional woman who died in a dirty alley, who, in her final moments, when her life was about to be taken away by coughing up blood and a high fever, still had someone to say "thank you" to.

The clumsy yet pure feeling conveyed in Bai Lan's letter—"Even though I've been driven to the brink by this world, even though I'm about to die, I still want to give you the last bit of warmth I have"—precisely pierced through all the numbness she had been feigning.

At that moment, she thought about how she had been hiding in this indifferent city for so long. If one day she were to die like Bai Lan in some deserted back alley, she probably wouldn't even have anyone to say "thank you" to.

Upon seeing this, she didn't understand what highbrow literature was, but her eyes welled up with tears.

Because in this foreign land where even breathing requires caution, there is a writer who truly sees these people at the bottom of society, like mud, and is even willing to write such a story about their despair.

Overwhelmed by immense grievance and bitterness, she was instantly pierced through.

Ignoring the stares of those around her, she slid down the bookshelf and squatted down, burying her face in her arms.

Out of an instinctive fear of attracting the attention of the police and having her identity checked, she didn't even dare to cry out; she could only bite her cracked hand tightly.

In this quiet corner filled with the scent of high-quality ink, her thin shoulders trembled violently, and tears silently soaked through her rough sleeves.

And at this moment, there are many others like her, silently shedding tears in various corners.

Meanwhile, the editorial department of "Bungei" magazine, located in Chiyoda Ward, was in complete turmoil.

Throughout the office area, there was a constant stream of frantic calls from booksellers from all over the country, urging them to deliver their orders.

The old fax machine was running at full capacity, spitting out reprint orders like snowflakes, which quickly piled up into an exaggerated little mountain on the wooden floor.

At this moment, the old editor-in-chief stood in front of his independent desk, habitually holding a rough pottery teacup in his hand.

As a leader who has spent most of his life in the publishing industry, what kind of storms and literary giants hasn't he seen?

He boasted that he had long since cultivated a calm and serene demeanor.

Even as word-of-mouth for "Love Letter" began to spread this morning, he calmly sipped his tea, feeling that everything was as expected.

But when the head of the distribution department rushed into the office without even knocking and was covered in sweat, the old editor-in-chief originally wanted to frown and scold him for not being calm enough as a veteran publisher.

"Editor-in-chief! It's insane! Everything's sold out!"

At this moment, the head of the distribution department spoke up before the senior editor could.

He then slammed the almost unbelievable half-day sales summary table onto the table, exclaiming, "The initial allocation plus the reserves from all major channels were completely depleted in just one morning!"

"Bookstores throughout the Kanto region are frantically urging us to stock up!"

The old editor-in-chief's gaze had initially been casually fixed on the report.

However, after only three seconds of gazing at the dizzyingly large numbers, his carefully maintained composure completely crumbled.

"Are you sure—this is the sales figure for a single issue of 'Literature and Art' in just one morning?"

The senior editor took a deep breath, his voice unusually hoarse, and stared intently at the main pipe: "Didn't the terminal statistics system add an extra zero?"

"Absolutely true! And dealers across the country are reporting it—"

The manager nodded frantically, panting heavily, and said, "The vast majority of readers left the bookstore with red eyes after reading it. They all came for the third-ranked story, 'Love Letter'!"

Upon hearing this, the old editor-in-chief's hands, which were holding the teacup, finally began to tremble slightly, and he didn't even notice the scalding tea splashing onto the back of his hands.

He knew better than anyone what this terrifying data meant.

Despite constant doubts and criticisms from the outside world, Kitahara Iwao has not only proven to the whole of Japan with his undeniable strength that he is absolutely capable of writing pure literature, but also that he writes better and more soul-stirring works than most self-proclaimed orthodox pure literature writers in the literary world today!

What's even more chilling is that in this unpretentious battle of words, Kitahara Iwa not only won everyone's approval, but also single-handedly broke through the commercial ceiling that pure literature had been considered absolutely insurmountable for decades!

In the filthy back alley outside a pachinko parlor in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district late at night.

A ruthless loan shark debt collector was sitting alone on the curb.

-

By the dim, flickering streetlights, he read the last word of "Love Letter" word by word.

He remained silent for a very long time.

The hand, covered in scars and holding a cigarette, trembled slightly in the night wind.

Finally, he took a deep breath, his eyes red, and pulled out an IOU with a bloody handprint from his inner pocket.

This is a loan agreement from an elderly couple from a poor background who were taking out a loan at exorbitant interest rates.

According to the plan, he will go to take away their last refuge first thing tomorrow morning.

Ding!

A crisp metallic clanging sound rang out, and the flame of the windproof lighter suddenly shot up.

He brought the IOU close to the flames, watching the yellowish paper quickly shrink and carbonize in the fire until the last bit of ash drifted on the street. Only then did he put the lighter back in his pocket, turn around without looking back, and walk towards the other end of the alley.

A few blocks away, in an underground mahjong parlor filled with the smells of smoke and sweat.

A low-level gang leader who controls several female migrant workers is staring at a magazine on his lap with a cigar between his fingers and a furrowed brow.

When he read Bai Lan's extremely humble words in her farewell letter, "Thank you for giving me an identity and a home," his heart, which had long been calloused by the laws of the underworld, was suddenly stabbed hard by something.

"Cough cough cough————"

Just then, a violent coughing sound came from the corner, as if the person was about to cough up their lungs.

He subconsciously looked up and, through the swirling smoke, gazed at the smuggled girl huddled in a dark corner, emaciated from high fever and overwork.

In that instant, the tragic figure from the book, Bai Lan, who died a miserable death in a foreign alley and was still grateful even in her dying moments, and the lifeless girl before her eyes overlapped abruptly.

His hand holding the cigar paused abruptly, and then he realized that if this girl died in this basement today, she wouldn't even have a "Goro" to write a letter to thank.

She won't even have a single piece of paper to prove her existence; she'll just be thrown into Tokyo Bay like a stray dog, leaving no name behind.

And he himself was the culprit who had dragged her down into this quagmire.

A feeling mixed with irritability, fear, and deep self-loathing suddenly gripped his heart.

The extreme purity in Bai Lan's letter was like a mirror, revealing his utter ugliness and disgust.

The next second, to the astonishment of his underlings, he suddenly stood up and stubbed out his burning cigar on the table with extreme frustration.

He suddenly stood up, strode to his desk, pulled out the key from his waist, and yanked open the drawer that was usually locked tight.

At the bottom of the drawer lay several dark red notebooks, all covered in creases.

For the illegal immigrants, this was the weapon they used to manipulate them, and it was also the identity that Bai Lan dreamed of in the novel, an identity she was even willing to be grateful for with her life.

Then, he took his passport and walked back to the corner. He then pulled out a wad of banknotes reeking of smoke and alcohol from his suit pocket and threw them at the girl who was coughing violently, as if throwing away trash.

"Cough cough cough, what are you coughing for! This is so damn unlucky!"

He deliberately turned his head away fiercely, ignoring the girl's somewhat bewildered face, and roared in an extremely vicious tone, "Take this travel money and your worthless notebook, and tonight you're going back to your hometown for medical treatment!"

"If you dare die on my turf, I'll have to pay someone to dispose of your body, understand? Get lost!"