Chapter 105 Kitahara Iwa's Ambition

Five days after the double award was announced.

At six o'clock in the morning, the sky in Tokyo was not yet fully bright.

However, a long queue had already formed in front of the Kinokuniya Bookstore main store in Shinjuku, stretching all the way to the street corner.

Today is the official release date of the "Screaming" manga volume.

On the streets of Tokyo in the early morning, people queuing up were wrapped in thick winter clothes, and their breath rose in puffs in the biting cold wind.

Some people hunched their necks and stomped their feet to keep warm, while others leaned against the wall and closed their eyes to pretend to sleep. But even though they were shivering from the cold, not a single person was willing to move an inch out of the line.

Because of the length of this line, it is still spreading outwards at a terrifying speed that is visible to the naked eye.

So much so that by 7:30 in the morning, the end of the queue had even turned the corner and stretched all the way into the next block!

Given the potential for a stampede, the local police station urgently deployed three shifts of officers to forcibly set up yellow cordon tape on both sides of the bookstore entrance.

Several police officers wearing reflective vests stood at the edge of the sidewalk, holding megaphones and shouting at the top of their lungs to maintain order, constantly pushing back the crowd that was about to spill onto the road.

This kind of alarming, almost overwhelming, preparation is something Kinokuniya Bookstore has typically only done for the release of national-level RPG games or the launch of top idol photobooks in its decades-long history.

What made these thousands of people willingly endure the cold and queue up in the early hours of winter was actually just a social realist mystery novel!

The composition of the group is a remarkable phenomenon in the Japanese publishing industry.

The group at the very front are die-hard fans of suspense who have followed the series since its serialization in the magazine.

They clutched the old issues of "New Tide of Fiction" from the serialization period tightly in their hands, their bloodshot eyes filled with fervor, all for the chance to snatch the first edition, first printing of the standalone book with the "Double Prizes for All" exclusive dust jacket.

But looking from the middle of the line backwards, the scene becomes extremely bizarre and disjointed.

A large number of readers who never read detective novels flocked to this place like a tidal wave.

Among them were well-dressed middle-aged women, bespectacled and refined university professors, and many young readers with slightly red eyes, holding single volumes of "Love Letters".

Most of these people are pure literature readers attracted by the cross-disciplinary news of "winning two awards together".

In the story of "Love Letter," which brought tears to the eyes of people all over Japan, Kitahara Iwao wrote about the most awkward yet heartbreaking warmth and redemption between marginalized people.

He showed readers that even in the dirtiest, most filthy places in Shinjuku, there still exists a glimmer of humanity.

That's why they have such a strong curiosity about "The Cry," which won the Naoki Prize.

Since they both focus on the dark side of society and the struggles of the underprivileged, they wanted to see for themselves what kind of completely different, ruthlessly sharpness an author who can write so movingly and compassionately about tenderness in despair would reveal when he puts away his warmth and uses a social suspense style to depict a woman's endless fall.

At 8:00 a.m. sharp, the bookstore doors opened on time.

The queue of people poured in like a tidal wave.

Although everyone tried their best to maintain a semblance of order, their pace was surprisingly fast, heading straight for the literature section on the first floor.

Six parallel checkout lines quickly formed in front of the cashier, each moving forward at a breakneck pace, as if the cashier's fingers were cramping.

The staff had already moved all of the "Scream" inventory to the most conspicuous gold display stand on the first floor after closing last night, piling it up into three small mountains as tall as a person.

The hardcover is pure black, without any superfluous illustrations or clever decorations, except for two cold, piercing white characters printed in the center: "The Cry".

The lower half of the book features a dark red exclusive dust jacket that reads "Akutagawa and Naoki win the Double Prizes in a historic event," which stands out strikingly under the warm yellow spotlights of the bookstore.

These "mountains" made of heavy paper were visibly shrunken by more than half in the first hour after the door opened, as if they had been swallowed by an invisible fire.

When it was 10 a.m., the once magnificent exhibition stand was reduced to a few scattered books leaning crookedly against the acrylic partition.

At noon, the sweating store manager, holding a marker, hung a handwritten notice at the entrance on the first floor, filled with helplessness: "The standalone edition of 'The Cry' is completely sold out. The publisher is urgently reprinting it. The next restock date is to be determined."

This is by no means an isolated case for Kinokuniya bookstore.

On the same day, the same crazy scene played out simultaneously like a virus in bookstores large and small throughout Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and even all of Japan.

First edition, first printing, a total of 800,000 copies!

This figure represents the absolute limit that editor Kenichi Sato pushed to when drafting the distribution plan, despite immense pressure from higher-ups and citing his dual wins of the Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize.

For a social realism novel, this would normally be an astronomical figure that would take half a year or even a year to sell.

However, within half a day of the release, all 500,000 physical copies of the book were sold out across Japan.

In half a day, 800,000 copies were sold, not even lasting a full business day.

Shincho-sha Editorial Department.

From noon on the day of release, every phone in the third-floor editorial department was ringing non-stop.

"Editor-in-Chief Sato! The Sapporo distributor called again, saying their allocation sold out in two hours and they're strongly requesting an additional 30,000 copies!"

"It's the same in Osaka. Kinokuniya Umeda store said their afternoon customer traffic is five times the usual amount, and they asked us what time our second order would arrive tomorrow morning!"

"I haven't finished answering the call from Fukuoka yet, and now another one from Sendai is coming in..."

The editorial assistants' voices rose and fell, and the wind they stirred up made the documents on the table rustle.

The noise and frenzy in the entire office area were comparable to the opening hall of a stock exchange during a crash.

Kenichi Sato sat at his desk, his left hand gripping the receiver tightly, while his right hand was rapidly scribbling and drawing on the reprint schedule with red and blue pencils.

By this time, his voice was so hoarse that he could barely speak, and the thermos on the table contained his fourth cup of Malva nut tea for the day.

You should know that in order to cope with the terrifying popularity that "winning both awards" might bring, he faced tremendous pressure from the company's finance department and pushed the first edition and first print run to an astonishing 800,000 copies!

Moreover, as a veteran editor-in-chief, he even made a preemptive agreement with three printing plants to keep the rotary presses on standby at all times, ensuring that if there was a shortage of stock, the second printing of hundreds of thousands of copies could be produced and shipped to all parts of the country the very next day.

They were fully prepared to face a Category 12 storm.

But when the storm truly swept in, Kenichi Sato discovered with a mixture of despair and elation that this was not a storm at all, but a tsunami of the century that was capable of swallowing everything!

"I've confirmed with the printing plant that the first batch of 400,000 copies of the second printing will be shipped out tomorrow morning."

Kenichi Sato hissed into the receiver in a strained voice, "But at this rate of selling out 800,000 copies in half a day, these 400,000 copies probably won't even last until the day after tomorrow!"

"Notify the planning department that all the paper production schedules for the third and fourth printings must be locked by the end of today!"

In the brief pause between hanging up the phone, Editor-in-Chief Sato painfully rubbed his aching temples, looked up, and stared intently at the sales tracking whiteboard on the wall with his bloodshot eyes.

The numbers on the whiteboard have been erased and changed repeatedly, going back and forth several times.

The latest data was written with extreme force in a red marker, the handwriting somewhat jagged due to the speed of writing.

But the number itself is so clear it's suffocating.

With the second printing pre-sale starting tomorrow, the estimated sales for the first week have already broken through the terrifying mark of 1.2 million copies.

Kenichi Sato stared at the numbers on the whiteboard, his hand gripping the marker trembling slightly uncontrollably.

Having worked in the publishing industry for over twenty years, he had never seen a social realist mystery novel's sales curve rise so dramatically at such a vertical angle, almost defying the laws of physics.

What's even more alarming is that this is happening against the backdrop of a gradual economic downturn across Japan and a decline in consumer spending.

At a time when people are even switching from eating out to bringing their own lunches and trying to stretch every penny of a thousand yen, they still unhesitatingly pull out their wallets to queue up and snap up this social realist mystery novel.

This is no longer a miracle that can be explained by commercial success.

In the endless despair of a bursting bubble, Kitahara Iwao's "The Cry" transformed itself into a spiritual necessity for the entire Japanese nation.

The reason why "The Cry" was able to explode to this extent against the economic downturn is simply because of one thing.

It resonated with this collapsing era in a terrifying way.

During the magazine's serialization, readers saw an incomplete story that was cut into two parts.

However, when the individual volumes bring all the content together into a complete and seamless reading experience, the impact is amplified many times over.

Yoko Suzuki's husband abandoned his wife and daughter and disappeared after his leverage in real estate speculation collapsed. Just a month ago, this was only a plot in a novel, but now, almost identical real-life cases are being reported in the social news every day.

Yoko Suzuki was ensnared step by step by a ruthless broker using sophisticated persuasion, eventually signing a contract of servitude. Countless people across Japan who had just experienced similar ordeals found their fingers trembling uncontrollably as they flipped through these passages, overwhelmed by the intense sense of identification.

Yoko Suzuki died alone in her deserted apartment, her body devoured by stray cats. Just last week, three more cases of people dying alone were discovered in Tokyo, one of which was described almost exactly as it appeared in the novel.

This terrifying synchronicity between fiction and reality, which almost overlaps, caused "The Scream" to trigger a social earthquake among readers that went far beyond the realm of literature.

It is no longer just a simple mystery novel.

In a smoky izakaya late at night, a middle-aged white-collar worker, recently laid off, clutched a black-covered book tightly. Fueled by alcohol, he yelled at his junior colleague at the table, his eyes red with rage: "Memorize the passages about 'joint guarantors' and underground loan sharks to the core!"

"From now on, whether it's a relative or a boss, if they dare to let you stamp a loan agreement, tell them to get lost!"

At the afternoon tea gatherings of housewives, the usual atmosphere of comparing designer bags was completely gone.

Holding the book, someone said in a trembling voice, "After reading about Yoko Suzuki's fall, I suddenly woke up... It turns out that we, these seemingly respectable housewives, are actually only less than three months' worth of savings away from the irredeemable hell described in the book."

In a sociology seminar at Waseda University, an elderly professor placed a black-covered copy of "The Cry" alongside his heavy lecture notes.

He adjusted his glasses and calmly suggested to the students below the stage, "As a supplementary reading for understanding 'class decline' this semester, I recommend that you all read this novel after class."

"Its analysis of the hidden poverty of Japanese women and the failure of the social safety net is far more thorough and cold than many of the academic papers we have that only look at statistical data."

In this way, "The Cry" pierced through the barriers of class and social circles in an extremely sharp and even unreasonable way, squeezing into the real lives of tens of millions of Japanese people.

It became a survival guide for a desperate era.

A mirror that reveals the hidden ills of society.

A folk bible passed down by word of mouth among countless people amidst economic ruins.

Meanwhile, penthouse duplex apartments in the port area.

The Tokyo Bay outside the window was bathed in a cold gray light on a winter afternoon. The Rainbow Bridge was clearly visible in the distance, and a few cargo ships occasionally sailed across the sea, leaving long white trails behind them.

Kitahara Iwa sank into the large leather swivel chair, with a stack of specially made blank manuscript paper bearing the logo of Shinchosha quietly spread out on the wide solid wood desk in front of him.

Not a single word was written on the paper.

He was fiddling with a black fountain pen in his hand, his fingertips touching the cold body of the pen, but he hesitated to remove the cap.

Today, the social tsunami triggered by "The Cry" continues to spread wildly, and the sales of the standalone edition are breaking publishing records every day at a terrifying rate.

With the added prestige of winning the Akutagawa Prize, "Love Letter" also experienced a new wave of extremely exaggerated reprints.

If it were an ordinary writer, they could simply announce their retirement at this point.

The huge royalties generated by these two books alone would be enough for him to squander for the rest of his life.

Moreover, in Kitahara Iwao's secret offshore account, there lies a terrifying fortune obtained from shorting the entire Japanese economy.

Therefore, Kitahara Iwa has already defied the odds and stood at the pinnacle of the country's wealth and prestige during this harsh winter of bursting bubbles, achieving a class leap that ordinary people could not reach in several lifetimes.

But this is far from enough for Kitahara Iwa.

The miracle of the "double-headed prize" may be enough to create a literary genius that only appears once in a decade, or even create a phenomenal social carnival.

But in Kitahara Iwa's ambitious empire, this is just the beginning.

What he wanted was to become a true and undisputed "literary giant" of this era.

What is a literary giant?

They are like Natsume Soseki, Dazai Osamu, and Mishima Yukio, whose names are firmly imprinted on the backbone of a nation's century-old culture.

They are people who can truly define, analyze, and even reshape the spirit of a nation in the torrent of history!

Therefore, if one wants to leave their own mark in this despairing era that is about to enter the "lost two decades," the thickness of just two single volumes is far too thin.

Thinking of this, the black pen spun smoothly between his fingers, as if drawing a sharp arc in mid-air, before being firmly held by Kitahara Iwa and slowly coming to a stop.

In the genre of social mystery, "The Cry" has reached its peak.

If a similar theme is presented again in the short term, no matter how well it is written, it will be difficult to create a deeper level of impact within the crater created by the author's own actions.

As for the realm of pure literature, although "Love Letter" won the Akutagawa Prize, it is ultimately just a short story. There are still too many masterpieces in this vast field that are enough to crush the times yet to be born.

So what should I write next?

Meanwhile, the publishing giants across Japan were frantically calculating how to wrest Kitahara Iwa from Shinchosha at all costs!

At the same time.

Chiyoda Ward, Kadokawa Shoten headquarters, top floor president's office.

Haruki Kadokawa sat behind his desk, a special issue proposal that had just been delivered from the planning department spread out in front of him.

The cover title, printed in extremely bold black font, reads: "Heisei Pain: Literature of the New Era."

This is a special literary issue that Kadokawa Shoten hastily planned after the bubble burst.

The idea behind the project was simple: in this winter when all of Japan is filled with sorrow, literature cannot be absent.

Therefore, Kadokawa Shoten is going to use a major special issue to declare to the whole society: even on the ruins of the economy, words still have power.

Haruki Kadokawa glanced at the list of received manuscripts attached to the end of the proposal, and his brows furrowed involuntarily.

I received quite a few manuscripts, including more than a dozen from well-known writers in the Japanese literary world.

But the content...

Haruki Kadokawa flipped through several of the printed manuscripts that had already passed the initial review, his expression growing increasingly grim.

A stock investor jumped to his death.

The family broke apart.

After her husband went bankrupt, the wife took her child and went to live with her parents.

A middle-aged white-collar worker whose house was seized by the bank wept bitterly on a bridge.

The themes are all unanimously focused on tragedy, and the writing style is unanimously overly forceful. The whole thing is full of cheap tears and deliberately piled-up despair, as if afraid that the reader would not feel the pain, and they wish they could circle the word "tragic" in red and draw three exclamation marks on it.

Haruki Kadokawa pushed the stack of manuscripts aside, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

The effect of putting all these things together in a special issue is self-evident.

After reading it, the reader will feel as if they have read a thicker edition of a collection of social news articles, which is nothing but depressing and lacks any of the weight that literature should have.

This special issue needs something that can truly command attention.

A landmark piece placed at the beginning of the volume, which automatically makes all the subsequent manuscripts seem inferior.

Thinking of this, Haruki Kadokawa suddenly opened his eyes and his gaze fell on the telephone on the table.

At that moment, a name came to mind.

In all of Japan today, there is only one person who can write that kind of thing.

So Haruki Kadokawa picked up the receiver and dialed a number.

The phone rang three times before being answered.

"Teacher Kitahara, excuse me. I am Haruki Kadokawa."

This time, Haruki Kadokawa's tone was completely different from when they discussed copyright at the Kitahara Iwa apartment last time.

Last time it was the arrogance and aggression of capitalists; this time it's almost cautious politeness.

It even carried a hint of ingratiation that was barely perceptible.

Turn the page, and you'll find yourself in another world.