“Huh? You don’t have to. I’ll pay my share...”
“No, let me. Today’s a special day, no?”
With that, Runa picked up the small paper bag that’d been sitting next to her purse and held it out to me.
“Here. I got you some chocolate.”
The paper bag had the logo of a famous, luxurious chocolate brand on it.
“Oh, thanks...” I replied, accepting it.
Runa smiled faintly at me. “I should be the one thanking you. I couldn’t work so hard if it wasn’t for you.”
Her gentle smile was filled with affection and sincerity. I’d once fallen in love with it, and as the feeling continued to burn within me, that smile had grown more beautiful and mature over the years.
Once I had seen her off and was alone in the room, I looked into the bag. Inside was a bar of high-quality chocolate and a small note card. It read:
Thank you for always supporting me.
I love you, Ryuto.
I can’t wait for when we can be together every day.
Runa
After reading the card, my mind went blank for a while. Then, filled with emotion, I quietly said, “Let’s get married.”
***
Both at work and at home, people needed Runa. They relied on her and she fulfilled her duties well. As her boyfriend, I had to strive to do what I had to.
I was now working in the editing department three days a week. I didn’t have many sessions at the cram school at this time of the year, so I’d put as many of my new third-year high school students on Wednesdays as I could and got shifts at the editing department on days when I’d previously tutored those who’d had entrance exams coming up.
Incidentally, Kurose-san worked four days a week, so she was always there on days when I went in.
I saw her sigh as she worked.
It was 8 p.m.
“I hate how you have to do this after proofreading,” she said, otherwise silently gathering completed proofs that’d been scattered on other employees’ desks.
I’d only recently found out myself what a galley proof was—a sample copy of a publication that was created for review before it would be sent to print. Simply put, it was like an unfinished book.
Basically, one had to make corrections—even minute ones—to all manuscripts waiting to be published. Then, the completed proof would be submitted. Working on galley proofs was the most intense period in the editing department’s life cycle.
This department published a monthly manga magazine for young people titled Crown Magazine. When a deadline for a completed proof was close, the air in the company would be strained. You’d see more editors that were in bad shape—some would pull all-nighters—and once they successfully met the deadline, the editors would go home looking like zombies.
The proofreading process involved the production of lots of galley proofs. And today, it was up to us part-timers to sort the huge stacks of galley proofs those editors had left lying around all over the place so that they could go back to business as usual tomorrow.
In fact, we weren’t finished yet—we were very much working overtime here. At least we were going to get paid hourly wages for the effort.
You could say that, in the world of publishing, Crown Magazine—or “Cromag,” as it was otherwise known—was considered to be the kind of manga magazine that anyone who really liked manga would know about. I’d previously heard of the title myself, though I’d never read an issue before starting to work here. Judging by the lineup, however, it was the kind of magazine that covered a rather broad range of topics, and authors of once-phenomenally popular manga were publishing serialized stories about things they were into themselves. It also had picaresque novels with peculiarities you’d expect to be off-limits in a classic shonen manga magazine. At the same time, there were also works with a heavy moe focus.
The area we worked in wasn’t all that spacious. The editing department’s space took up about half of the fifth floor of the company’s building and was roughly the size of two or three school classrooms. Aside from the editor-in-chief and other executives, there appeared to have been at least ten editors here, and some worked from home. I’d yet to meet all of them.
Right now, none of them were here. Kurose-san and I were the only ones in the room.
“Kashima-kun, how long do you think it’ll take on your end?” she asked.
“Well... Things are looking much better now, so maybe an hour...?”
“Should be about the same for me.” She sighed again. “Cleaning up is so boring. There’s no creativity involved. No wonder the part-timers quit.”
The fluorescent lamps on the ceiling routed through three different switches to save power. Out of all of them, only the ones directly above us were on.
“It’s so dark outside...” Kurose-san’s hands stopped moving all of a sudden and she turned around to look out the window. “It’s even raining.”
“Oh, you’re right.”
“Did you bring an umbrella?”
“I didn’t...”
We were currently working next to each other. Kurose-san was cleaning up the galley proofs on the editor-in-chief’s desk, while I did the same with those on his assistant’s. Since the windows were behind us, we hadn’t noticed the change in the weather. We hadn’t heard the rain either—maybe the room was soundproof.
“Did the forecast say it would rain today?”
“No, they said not to worry because the skies were clear...”
As we talked, we could see a flash of light shoot by in the corner of our vision, piercing through the darkness outside the window. It was followed a few moments later by a thunderous roar.
Kurose-san screamed, holding her ears.
“Lightning, huh? You don’t see a lot of that at this time of the year,” I said.
Lightning was strongly associated with summer.
“Is this spring thunder?” asked Kurose-san. “The weather’s been on the warm side recently.”
“‘Spring thunder’?”
“It’s a seasonal phrase in haiku, meaning the coming of spring.” After saying that casually, Kurose-san went back to work.
That’s a Japanese literature student for you, I guess.
She’d always been the intellectual type, but her intelligence seemed to have grown even more since she’d begun college.
However, her composure came apart once more when the next bolt of lightning struck.
She shrieked again. Abandoning her work, she went up to the window and looked outside through the gaps in the blinds.
“Huh...? Didn’t that seem really close?” she said.
“Yeah...”
I stopped working for the moment as well and went over beside her, looking out the window.
A roar of thunder came almost simultaneously with the next flash of lightning. It startled her, and she screamed once more.
“It seems to be way too close...” she said.
Suddenly, all the lights on the floor went out.
“What?! Oh gosh, what’s going on?!” Kurose-san said frantically.
Another lightning strike.
“Aaahhh!”
I felt something bump into me. It wasn’t until I’d picked up on a sweet scent that I realized Kurose-san was clinging to me.
“K-Kurose-san?!”
I was about to pull away from her in a hurry, but she was trembling as she held on to me tightly.
“Did the power go out...? Please, no, I’m scared of the dark...”
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