Chapter 166: The Lantern-Maker’s Apprentice

Chapter 166: Chapter 166: The Lantern-Maker’s Apprentice

The proofs of Morning Light Volume 2 arrived in Koenji on the second of March. On page one hundred and forty-one was a story Haruki had been waiting thirteen years to read, although he hadn’t known it until he turned the page.

Nishida sent the proofs by courier with a single index card on top, in her brisk handwriting.

Thirty new voices again. Read page 141 first. Then call Hirose-sensei. I’ve already told him to sit down.

He sat on the crate in front of his desk and opened the proofs.

The second Morning Light had the same plain cream cover and the same small lit lantern in the corner, drawn by Tsubasa, uncredited again at his own insistence. It had thirty stories by thirty rookies, none of whom had been in the first volume. Nishida had been very strict about that. The door has to open for someone new every time, she had written in her editor’s note, or it’s only a door for the people already inside. There was no Eclipse Blade this time and no famous name on the cover. Her board had complained for a month, and she had told them the first volume’s fourth printing had paid for the right to be stubborn.

He turned to page one hundred and forty-one.

The title was written across the top of the first page in careful brush lettering.

The Lantern-Maker’s Apprentice.

Below it was the author’s name.

Tsuji Kaho.

It was sixteen pages long.

It opened in a mountain village where it was always winter, with snow on every roof and a narrow street climbing a hill. At the top of the street stood a small workshop with a paper lantern hanging over the door.

Inside, a girl of about fifteen sat at a workbench, splitting bamboo into thin strips with a small knife. Her hands were red with cold, and her face was very serious.

It was the same series Haruki had heard about in a small office above a tea shop in Kichijōji, in February of the previous year, told by an old lawyer who hadn’t looked up from his tea once. Every Chapter, she made one lantern and gave it to someone who needed light. It had stopped at nineteen, when a girl signed a contract with Theseus Partners and never drew again.

Now it had started again, at thirty-one.

The lines were different from anything Haruki had ever seen in a rookie’s work. They weren’t uncertain or clumsy. They were careful and patient, the lines of someone whose hands had spent twelve years arranging flowers in a shop in Nagano and had learned things about stems and petals, and how light falls through thin paper, that no manga school could teach. The bamboo strips looked like they would bend if you touched the page. The paper stretched over the frames was so thin you could see the snow through it.

In the story, the apprentice made one lantern over sixteen pages. She split the bamboo, bent it, and bound the joints with thread. She stretched the paper and painted a single character on it, very carefully. Then, on the last two pages, she carried it through the snow, down the hill and across the village, to a small house at the edge of the forest where an old man lived alone. She had never spoken to him. She knew only that his window had been dark all winter.

She hung the lantern on the hook by his door, lit it, and walked away without knocking.

On the last page, the old man opened his door into the night and found it burning there. He stood in the doorway for a long time, looking at the light, and at a single character painted on the paper in ink.

Haruki zoomed in on the proof to read it.

Four.

He sat very still on the crate.

At the very bottom of the last page, below the final panel, in small type, was a single line. It wasn’t part of the story. It was a dedication.

For H.K., who read page six four times, and sent twelve cards.

He called Hirose at 10:40 that morning, as Nishida had told him to.

The old lawyer answered on the first ring. He didn’t say hello. For a long moment, Haruki heard only breathing on the line, careful and slow, the breathing of a man who had been told to sit down and had.

"You read it," Hirose said finally.

"I read it."

"She sent me a copy of her pages in January," Hirose said. His voice was very quiet. "Before she submitted them to Nishida-san. She asked if I’d read them first." A pause. "I told her I’d read them four times. She said she knew I would. That’s why she asked."

"The character on the lantern," Haruki said.

"Four," Hirose said. He was quiet for a long moment. "The number of times I read page six. After I lost her case, I read everything four times, for twelve years. Nobody knew why." He let out a breath that shook slightly. "She knew. Somehow, she worked it out."

Haruki didn’t say anything.

"The old man in the house at the edge of the forest," Hirose said. "His window had been dark all winter." He paused. "My wife died fourteen years ago. The year before I took Tsuji-san’s case. I never told anyone that either. I never told her." Another pause. "I’ve been living alone in a flat in Kichijōji ever since, above a tea shop. It’s very quiet in the evenings."

Haruki closed his eyes.

"She never met me except in a courtroom," Hirose said. "Twelve years ago. She was nineteen, and very frightened, and I lost." His voice cracked. "And she drew me an old man with a dark window. And a lantern with my number on it. Hung on my door without knocking."

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Outside Haruki’s window, a train rattled past toward the station.

"Hirose-sensei," Haruki said at last. "Are you all right?"

"I’m seventy-two," the old lawyer said. "I’m sitting in an office above a tea shop with a proof of a manga in my lap, crying like a schoolboy, and my next client is due in twenty minutes." He laughed, unsteadily. "I’ve never been better in my life."

Nishida called at noon.

"You read it," she said. She didn’t phrase it as a question.

"Page one forty-one."

"She sent it to me in February with a note," Nishida said. "She said she’d been drawing for thirteen months, every night after the flower shop closed. She said it was the first thing she’d finished since she was nineteen. She said she didn’t care whether I published it, only that someone at a publisher read it." A pause. "I read it on the train between Osaka and Kyoto. I had to get off at Kyoto and sit on a bench for twenty minutes." Her voice was very dry, which Haruki had learned meant the opposite. "I’m putting it in the exact centre of the book, page one forty-one of two hundred and eighty-two. My father said that’s where the heart goes."

"When does it come out?"

"The first of April," Nishida said. "I’ve already told the printer to make the first run twelve thousand. My accountant has stopped crying and started lighting incense."

Haruki laughed. Then Nishida’s voice changed, becoming slightly more careful, the way it did when she was about to ask for something she expected to be refused.

"One more thing," she said. "Before you say anything, remember I already know the answer."

"What?"

"Eclipse Blade," Nishida said. "The first-look option in your Morning Light contract runs for eighteen months, until the end of April. My board has asked me to ask you whether you’d consider serializing it. Monthly, in the anthology, twenty-four pages at a time." A pause. "They’ve read the fan letters. A twelve-year-old in Koenji apparently asked you in a bookshop whether there was more of it, and you told him not yet. He wrote to us to complain. Twice."

Haruki looked across his desk at the stack of things beside the crate. There was the Hikari storyboard for episode one, pages thirty to forty-five, with a white page now twelve seconds long. There was Chapter sixty of Threadless Gate, half-inked, and a list of fears and a list of needs in a pocket notebook.

He thought about Minase at her desk at 2:40 in the morning. Choose two, Amamiya-kun. Everything else, give to someone who has the hours for it.

"Not yet," he said.

"I know," said Nishida. She didn’t sound disappointed. She sounded, if anything, relieved. "I told my board you’d say that. I said you’d already chosen your two things, and a sensible creator doesn’t add a third because an anthology asked nicely." She paused. "Kael can wait. He’s good at waiting. He waited three years for four minutes."

"Tell the twelve-year-old—"

"I’ll tell him not yet means not never," Nishida said. "In my experience, twelve-year-olds understand that better than boards do."

She hung up.

[Morning Light Vol. 2 — Proofs received. Release: April 1st. First run: 12,000.]

[Tsuji Kaho — "The Lantern-Maker’s Apprentice" (16 pp.). First published work in 13 years. Dedication: "For H.K."]

[Eclipse Blade — Serialization offer (Naniwa): Declined ("not yet").]

[Note: The Host chose two things and said no to a third he loves, not because it was unfair, but because he had no hours left for it. The System records this as the first time.]