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Ritsu trips over a tree root and hits the ground hard. He shoves up to his knees and struggles to his feet while the manuscript bobs optimistically up and then sinks halfway underwater. With a squawk, Ritsu charges into the biting cold water and scoops up the soggy masterpiece with his bare hands. Undeterred, the water soaks up from the bottom and conquers a few more pages.
To add insult to injury, a gust of wind kicks in and tears off the top two pages from the binding.
Ritsu reaches after them with an anguished cry, overbalances, and tumbles headlong into the river.
Mino drapes a towel around him and puts another smaller towel over his shaking hands. “You did well getting back in time,” he offers.
“I’m going to die,” Ritsu says, oddly calm. “‘This is my final resting place, here in the abyss of my own making.’”
“That sounds familiar,” Mino says. “Inohara Reiko?”
Ritsu nods. “I edited her last book before she retired.”
Mino hums, impressed.
“There’s a thought,” Ritsu says. “I retire. I’m submitting my two minutes’ notice.”
“I’m fairly sure you need to report that to your boss,” Mino says.
“Can I promote you, by any chance?”
“In a purely fictional sense, sure, I don’t see why not.”
“Then I promote you to department head.” Ritsu stands and bows deeply. “Thank you very much for the opportunity of working here. I won’t need any references.”
Mino just smiles some more, maybe amused. At the very least, he doesn’t comment on Ritsu’s hair dripping on his shoes.
“I’m going to assume that’s the manuscript.”
Ritsu winces and turns around to face Takano directly. And then address him indirectly, by talking to the floor. “Maybe. More…it was a manuscript, and now it’s more sort of…a memorial to a manuscript.”
Takano’s shoes gleam with disapproval.
“I’m sorry,” Ritsu offers. Bows as an afterthought. Adds some more depth when the disapproving sheen of Takano’s shoes takes on an annoyed edge.
Mino says, “I’m going to get some coffee,” and strolls out of the room.
There’s a length of silence in which Ritsu decides holding this angle and speaking to Takano’s annoyed shoes is easier than straightening up and acknowledging the unfortunate fact that Takano has an upper half.
“I tried to save it,” he says. “But it—”
“You didn’t try.”
Ritsu snaps upright and gapes. “How do you know? Were you there?”
Takano leans on the doorway, one hand plunged deep into his pocket. “No,” he says. “I don’t need to have been. I just know what was going through your head this morning.”
Ritsu goes dark red. “You do, do you,” he mutters. “When, exactly?” Before or after you cornered me in the kitchen?
“You didn’t want it published,” Takano says. “Did you?”
Ritsu looks off to the side. “Of course I did.”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And yet, you didn’t. Did you?”
Ritsu bursts out with an exasperated groan. “Why would I finish it and and rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it if I didn’t want it to get—”
“Because I pushed you.”
Ritsu meets his eyes for the first time since Takano walked in. “Eh?”
Takano holds his stare. “I wanted you to do it, and I was unrelenting until you got it done. I knew you wanted it written. You have about two incredible stories in you, and it was eating at me that you were ignoring them.”
Ritsu frowns. “What do you mean ‘about two’?”
“Don’t be insulted,” Takano says, frowning back. “Most people only have one, and most of those people can’t write well enough to tell it as a publishable book.”
Ritsu rubs his forehead. “Well, I missed the deadline anyway.”
“You can try again. I’ll make an excuse for you. It doesn’t have much chance of getting published, anyway, but—”
Ritsu stares, open-mouthed.
Takano’s expression shifts into wary. “What?”
“Then why did you hound me into trying to get it published?”
“Because it would have been a waste to write a book and just let it languish,” Takano says, irritated. “Don’t be dense. Of course you had to try.”
Ritsu rubs his forehead harder, adding a noise of frustration. When his skin starts to feel burned, he drops his hand and uses it instead to point accusingly at Takano. “So, you bullied me into writing a book for over a year, criticized it mercilessly when it was finished, sent a partial in without telling me, and then demanded yesterday that I bring the manuscript to the editor’s desk today and you never even thought it had a chance?”
Takano says nothing, but Ritsu can see him thinking, …Yeah…?
He gives an anguished yell and turns to his desk for his coat. “I’m going home to spend the rest of my day off in a bathtub letting my rage keep the water boiling hot and—“
Takano catches him around the waist.
Agh, this. Damn it.
Lips touch the shell of his ear. “I wouldn’t have published it,” he says. “Nor would most.”
Ritsu tries to elbow him away. “Get off, I heard you the first time.”
Takano adds another arm around Ritsu’s chest. “I’m telling you,” he continues slowly, “that it’s not a traditionally marketable subject. Nothing like it has ever had commercial success, so many editors are going to turn it away. You might give up before it’s accepted by a publishing house.”
“You really don’t need to understand my failure as a writer to me,” Ritsu says, craning his neck. He meets Takano’s eyes and glares. “I’m not a writer, I’m an editor.”
“You’re a storyteller,” Takano says. He kisses the bridge of Ritsu’s nose. “And you’re passionate.” He mouths Ritsu’s top lip. “Are you proud of what you did? You completed a book. Now you have something in common with the people your primary job requires you to assist.”
Ritsu squirms. The door is wide open. “Okay, fine. I’m proud. Now let go, please?”
Takano hugs him tighter for a long moment, just long enough to make Ritsu forget where they are, and then releases him.
“I’ll tell the editor you’ll bring it in tomorrow,” he says.
Ritsu sighs. “Okay.”
Takano ruffles his hair. “Work on the ending since you have time. Some of the imagery could be stronger.” He exits the office with his hands in his pockets.
Ritsu says, “Fine,” and sits down with the warped manuscript. When he began this, it was a short story he’d done in college for an assignment that Takano discovered in one of Ritsu’s old binders (snoopers: a type of person Ritsu apparently finds attractive). For a month after that Takano ragged on him endlessly: “It could be better,” and, “You’re missing an opportunity,” and, “This is clearly something you want to do.”
Ritsu rests his hand on it and takes a deep breath.
He was right on every count.
He always is.
…The bastard.