Translation: Darkness 30 — Clair de Lune Arc

2026/07/26 sun
闇30：翻訳Claude

【Claude】

原文を送ってください。

【俺】

闇　30（月の光編）

【Claude】

読みます。 読みました。翻訳に入ります。 翻訳完了です。 Darkness 30 — Clair de Lune Arc、翻訳完了。

処理メモ

「寂びの部分」 → "the quiet passage" — 「わびさび」的なニュアンスを保ちつつ、英語の音楽用語として自然に着地させた。"the melancholy passage" も検討したが、原文の指示語的なニュアンスに "quiet" のほうが近い。

「ジャーン」 → "that deep chord" — 擬音語をそのまま英語に移すと間が抜けるため、音の質感として処理。

「DUAL」の音色番号92番 → そのまま保持。メーカー不明だが原文に忠実に。

「手帳に正の字」 → "keeping a tally in my notebook — counting with strokes" — 「正」の字でカウントする日本の慣習を英語圏読者に伝わる形で処理。

「ドン・キホーテ」 → Don Quijote（英語圏でも通じるチェーン名）

「職安通り」 → Shokunan-dōri（ローマ字表記のまま。Kabukichō内の通りとして文脈で分かる）

「レク」 → Rec（タイ人の名前、ローマ字そのまま）

「赤崎隼人」 → Akasaki Hayato（主人公の名前。ローマ字表記のみ、注釈なし——この命名の場面の面白さは英語でも十分伝わる）

ローマ字入力でAを多用する理由の説明 → 原文の論理をそのまま英語で再現。日本語入力特有の話だが、原文にない補足は一切加えなかった。

Translation: Darkness 30 — Clair de Lune Arc

Darkness 30 — Clair de Lune Arc

Kabukichō, Shinjuku. Early 2000s.

From that day, I formally began lessons in Debussy's Clair de lune.

I still couldn't read sheet music. Same as with Zanarkand — the only way was to memorize it.

"Boys always love Debussy."

The teacher said it with a laugh.

"Why's that?" "Because more than half my students tell me they want to play Debussy."

"Is that right." "Yes — and you're one of them, aren't you?" "I suppose I am."

I loved Debussy's music. This piece — Clair de lune. I was going to play it. I would make sure of that.

"Sensei, I have a request……" "What is it?"

"That quiet passage — you know, the one that starts with that deep chord. The low 'jaan.'" "Ah, yes, yes."

"Could you start by teaching me that part first?" "Of course."

She was always like this. Teaching me however I wanted, in whatever way made it easiest, never once showing annoyance.

I rested my fingers quietly on the black keys at the far left of the keyboard — the E-flat and the next one. Pressed lightly. A low tone rang out, deep and resonant. The same feeling as the sound she'd produced.

I tried playing it with feeling. The low tone rang out as if pressing heavily on the heart.

Piano is always like that. It expresses whatever the person playing it is feeling inside.

I threw myself into learning from that quiet passage first.

Each time I managed to play a little more, a new wave of feeling wrapped around me. A real joy. I was so glad I'd started piano.

I kept playing when I got back to my room.

My regular jazz bar near Hon-Kawagoe Station — Sweet Cadillac. I went in, and since there were no other customers I asked them to turn off the background music.

I went to the piano and placed my fingers on the keys. The quiet passage from Clair de lune. No matter how many times I played it, I never got tired of it.

Once I can play all of it, I'll reach out to Harumi. I still haven't offered her the piano.

I really am pathetic……

From that day, my obsessive days began.

Even going to work I carried the keyboard in one hand and walked with it openly. I was probably the only person in the world who'd brought a piano into a black-market video shop and played it on the job.

The sound of Zanarkand drifting out of Melon. Even the yakuza upstairs came down to see what was going on.

"Iwakami-san — what are you doing down here?" "Well, I've started piano again."

Word had spread about my computer skills, and the yakuza from the floors above had started coming down for consultations. I'd gone up to the office a few times to configure their computers. After that, the building's residents started looking at me differently.

All thanks to Bōzu-san.

And now this same person was playing piano at Melon. Everyone stared with wide eyes. Seeing that reaction was satisfying beyond words.

Kitanaka just watched with a faintly contemptuous smirk. I didn't care — I hadn't wanted him to understand for even a moment.

People passing on the street looked at me strangely — this man walking openly with a keyboard, apparently in his own world. What is this guy? That's what those looks said. I didn't care what people around me thought. Getting better at Clair de lune was all that mattered.

Every spare moment I went to Kukki's and had lessons. I could feel myself improving.

The business with Harumi had left me low, but when I was playing piano I could forget everything. It wasn't an exaggeration to say my days were nothing but work and piano.

On the way home from work, keyboard in hand, I stopped at a convenience store. The woman at the register spoke to me with obvious curiosity.

"Um…… do you play piano?"

"I do……" "That's kind of cool."

Nothing cool about it. I was just an employee at a black-market video shop.

"Would you like to hear some?"

"What?" "If you plug this in for me, I'll play right here."

She must have thought I was joking. She plugged it in with a laugh.

I set the keyboard on the checkout counter and started playing, without any concern for the store around me.

She clearly hadn't believed I'd actually do it. The woman's eyes went wide.

The piece I started playing was Zanarkand. I ignored every surrounding sound and played with everything I had.

In a sense, no one had ever performed in a place like this before. I was probably the first in the world.

A concert at a convenience store checkout. Not a trace of embarrassment. When I finished, the woman applauded. Other customers who happened to be in the store started clapping too.

There were a few who looked at me with open contempt — what is this guy — but no one said anything to my face.

Even so, that hollow was always there. A sadness that lived alongside everything else inside me.

It came from feelings for Harumi that couldn't reach her. Loneliness. Only the time I spent playing piano let me forget it.

On a day off I was in my room playing keyboard, but my head was full of Harumi. No contact at all, actively avoiding me — maybe it really was over……

Once I started thinking negatively, my mind ran straight into the dark.

To shake it off, I went to a cabaret club. Walking openly with the keyboard, I drew plenty of stares. I sat down without changing my expression.

When a hostess came to sit with me, she asked with obvious curiosity why I was carrying a keyboard. To play piano, I told her simply.

"Huh — the way you just carry it around so openly, it's kind of cool."

She smiled, seeming genuinely impressed.

I hadn't been with a woman in a while. I was lonely.

"I'd really like to hear you play sometime." "In that case — want to hear it now?"

"What?" "I started piano for one woman — to impress her. Started when I was past thirty."

"You're thirty? You look younger." "However I look, I've been alive thirty-one years. I don't dislike the way I'm living. I feel like I've aged well enough."

The lies came easily.

"Something about that is nice." "Thanks. But — I took the lessons, got to where I could actually play, and then through my own selfishness I got rejected. The piece was finished, but she never got to hear it."

"I just went through a breakup too, actually. So I understand a little."

It had been a while since I'd been with anyone. No word from Harumi since that time. Maybe it was fine now. It's not like she was mine — how long was I supposed to keep holding myself back?

The woman right in front of me. Maybe I'd try……

"I see…… I think my piano can probably heal someone who's been hurt. Maybe I'll offer it to you." "Really? But aren't you always saying things like that to women?"

"My piano isn't that cheap."

I said it straight-faced, and the hostess turned red.

"I want to ease your heart. Would that be unwelcome?" "No…… I'd like to hear it."

The alcohol made everything feel reckless. Harumi wasn't going to listen to my piano anyway……

"Sorry — could you plug this in for me?"

I flagged down a passing staff member.

"Ah, um……" "If it bothers the shop, I'll stop right away."

"Ah…… all right……"

I set the keyboard on the table and began to play. Playing for the hostess beside me.

It was a lie, though. My piano isn't that cheap. I only wanted Harumi to hear it.

But that chance never came. I pressed the helplessness into the keys. I tried to express that sadness through sound.

The convenient thing about a keyboard: it doesn't only make piano sounds — it produces all kinds of tones. The timbre labeled DUAL. I pressed button ninety-two. When playing something sad, that was the sound that fit most perfectly.

Zanarkand was already a sad melody. Run through that electronic adjustment, it became even sadder.

The hostess watched me intently, nodding as she listened.

When I finished, the cold stares from other customers in the room were noticeable. I was indifferent.

"That was beautiful…… You're really good. It moved me." "This is all I can play…… But I'm glad I could offer it to you."

"But — is it all right? For it to be me? When really, the person you loved——" "The reason I started might have been her. But right now, what I played was for you, and I meant it."

No matter how corny or theatrical it sounds, when a man does it right in front of you, women can't hold out. That had always been my philosophy. "If someone showed up with roses I'd laugh" — and yet the women who said things like that were the very ones who melted completely when I actually did it.

I quietly placed my hand over the hostess's as she looked down. She didn't pull away. Her cheeks went redder.

"What time do you get off tonight?"

"Tw-twelve……" "Can we meet after?"

"……"

"If you don't want to, that's fine. I won't come back here anyway, so you don't have to worry." "It's not that I don't want to…… But we only just met today……"

"That's true — we just met. But it feels like something more than that to me. This is the first time I've ever played piano for someone."

"That can't be true……"

It wasn't a lie, technically. But it wasn't for her.

"I don't lie. My spirit when I play piano isn't that rotten. You don't have to believe me. But I want you to believe in the sound I played."

The next day I forced myself to take the day off. I'd gone to a hotel with the woman I'd met at the club.

Kitanaka grumbled on the phone, but I didn't care.

Being with another woman after so long. The wound Harumi had left in me — I was trying to fill it by being with someone else.

Being with a different woman felt good. And with every time, I felt my own soul rotting a little more, going a little darker.

Harumi was all I really wanted. But that wish had no way of reaching her.

So I talked to women and slept with them, many of them. No real connection — just bodies pressed together.

I don't remember any of them. I drank and wandered and talked to women and slept with them, nothing more.

I started keeping a tally in my notebook — counting with strokes. A completely rotten way to be.

The only thing I stayed serious about was the piano lessons. Unlike before, when I practiced in bursts, I set a fixed time once a week and went properly.

Clair de lune was advancing, piece by piece. Every other hour I played keyboard in my room.

When night came I roamed the city looking for women to be with. My heart was rotting away……

During a lesson one day, I said to the teacher:

"Piano is a wonderful thing, isn't it, Sensei." "Isn't it?"

"Yes — just recently, I played piano in front of a woman and managed to sleep with five of them."

The teacher's expression changed.

"I didn't teach you piano…… for something like that."

That was all she said. She turned her back to me. My self-satisfied words had hurt her.

The teacher's back was trembling slightly. That was the moment I first understood I'd done something wrong.

Piano — the thing I'd started to offer to Harumi. Hadn't it always been something more elevated than that, for me?

I'd always felt gratitude toward the teacher. She'd accepted my selfishness with a smile, every single time.

And now she was crying. Maybe she regretted teaching me piano. I apologized and left Kukki's.

I lay in my room and thought for a long time. What is piano to me……?

Calls started coming in from the women I'd been with recently. I turned the phone off and threw it aside.

The teacher's words stayed in my head. Music is moving — I understood that better than anyone, because I was the one playing it. How much it had healed me.

I was glad I'd started piano. But somewhere deep in my chest, something was blocked.

I stopped going to Kukki's — I'd been going religiously once a week, and now I couldn't face it.

In my room I practiced only the sections the teacher had taught me, repeating them. When I played Zanarkand, Harumi's quiet, sad profile appeared in my mind. When I played Clair de lune, the teacher's sorrowful face came to me.

I'm the worst……

I bit down and lived through each day with a complicated heart. And against all that, Kitanaka's treatment of me was awful.

Canned coffee — given free to customers who bought videos. We'd always bought it from a supplier, but the price was barely different from retail. I mentioned to Kitanaka that a hundred-yen shop sold them two for a hundred yen. He decided immediately: "Where? Buy it there from now on."

A man who never took his eyes off money. He must have figured even a little more going into his pocket was worth it.

I ended up being sent to the hundred-yen shop on the street in front of Seibu-Shinjuku Station to buy canned coffee by the case. Once Kitanaka realized the drink costs had halved, he got a taste for it, and from then on buying drinks was added to my list of duties.

I regretted saying anything, but it was too late.

Kitanaka always phrased his unreasonable demands as if he were doing you a favor by delegating. He said, straight-faced, to carry fifteen cases back by myself.

I borrowed Kitanaka's bicycle and rode to the hundred-yen shop, but how was anyone supposed to load fifteen cases onto a bicycle? I asked a store clerk if I could borrow a hand trolley.

Kabukichō has luxury cars parked along the street. They were mostly yakuza vehicles, so I pushed the trolley with extreme care, making sure not to tilt it and scratch anything.

Even after arriving at Melon, I still had to get everything down to the basement. Tedious work.

One day Kitanaka's bicycle had a flat tire. Having no idea how it happened, he shouted that it was my fault and ordered me to go get it fixed.

"Where do you even get a puncture repaired?" "Don Don Quijote on Shokunan-dōri. Go. Now."

No repair money given. I paid out of my own pocket and got the bicycle fixed. I took a receipt so I could claim it back later. Back at Melon, I showed Kitanaka: "It was six hundred yen." He snatched the receipt and said "You're the one who punctured it, so it comes out of your pocket" — a complete non-sequitur — and walked out of the shop. An absolutely terrible man.

The worst times were when Kitanaka and I were alone in the shop with no customers. I'd be subjected to his boasting, on and on.

"I've got connections with all kinds of yakuza outfits, you know. Maniwa-gumi. Tachibana-ikka. Nishidai, Fujimi Kōgyō — same. And the Okita-kai and Sasagura Rengō upstairs, goes without saying. The only ones I don't have standing with are maybe Jōhoku."

Completely meaningless to me — I had zero interest in yakuza. And what exactly did having connections with them accomplish? Kitanaka boasting about it only looked ridiculous.

"I used to run with a bōsōzoku gang, you know. White Zeppelin — we controlled Tokyo. So when it comes to fighting, I'm no amateur."

The man was in his fifties. What was he talking about? Whether he was trying to intimidate me I couldn't tell, but if he was that tough, he could try his luck in the combat sports world.

And saying this to me — someone with pro wrestling and martial arts experience — felt more like an insult than anything.

Kitanaka always carried around three bundles of cash and showed them off at every opportunity. The people of Kabukichō talked about him behind his back.

"Sure, he's got money — but I wouldn't want it if it meant being like that."

Kitanaka's reputation in Kabukichō was bad enough that it became a talking point.

One day I was working on the computer, entering data, when a customer came in.

"Hey — do you have any underground stuff with Fukagawa Alice?" "Just a moment. Let me check."

I searched the Excel data and found three results. The customer stared at me working at the computer with evident surprise.

"Impressive, kid. First time I've seen anyone at a video shop using a computer."

He seemed to take a liking to me — he settled into a chair and kept talking.

Then Kitanaka came down. With a customer right there in the shop, he pulled three million yen out of his bag and tossed it on top of my laptop.

"What are you doing?" "Count it."

Whenever there was a customer present, Kitanaka would do something like this — deliberately, to signal that he had money.

"Business is good, boss, huh?"

When the customer said that, Kitanaka broke into a smile and answered with a pleased "Not really" in a tone that said the opposite. I was sick of this daily reality — and still I came to Melon and worked, day after day.

After work I drank at the yakitori place near the shop. I'd been too awkward to show my face at Kukki's since that day.

So naturally, Clair de lune was still unfinished. Even so, I'd been practicing the sections I'd learned every day, and the opening passages I could now play perfectly.

I drank to blur the edges of myself. Kept drinking until I felt better, and ordered ten skewers of yakitori to take back.

Kitanaka's character — it would never change, not in this lifetime. If I couldn't stand it, the answer was to quit the shop.

Or — what if I tried approaching it differently? What if I made more of an effort to get along with him? That thought crossed my mind, and I brought the yakitori to Melon.

"What's this? You were still out drinking all this time?" "Yes, occasionally…… I brought yakitori as a little something. Would you like some?" "I'll take two. Give the rest to the people upstairs."

A simple 'thank you' — was that really so hard……?

I'd been foolish to expect anything. I gave up and took the yakitori upstairs to the pachinko parlor.

When I pressed the intercom, a Thai man named Rec opened the door. The floor was unusually busy — lots of customers gaming, people moving around.

"What?" "I thought you might want some yakitori."

Rec took it in silence, said nothing, and closed the door. The bastard……

A Thai man with no manners whatsoever. What was wrong with me, trying to do anything for people like this.

I went back out to drink. I'd stay in Kabukichō overnight tonight. Tomorrow was a day I was going to the pachinko floor to help out.

Going home felt like too much effort. I was wandering unsteadily down the street when I ran into a member of the XX Alliance from the third floor of the same building.

"Oh — Iwakami-chan. What are you up to?" "Ah, Mitsui-san. Just thinking of going for a drink."

"Then let's grab one around here." "Sure."

This was the first time I'd gone drinking with anyone from that building — and it was this yakuza, Mitsui. He was an easygoing older man; I'd never asked his age directly but he was probably in his late forties.

There were a handful of touts who came to the pachinko floor every day with exactly a thousand yen. It turned out Mitsui's job was to collect it. I'd always found it strange — why were touts bringing a thousand yen to the floor every day? I decided to ask.

"Ah, that's because we lend them money." "To the touts?"

"Right. The deal is — we lend them fifty thousand yen." "Yes."

"When we hand it over, we deduct five thousand as interest, so they actually receive forty-five thousand." "So the interest is ten percent?"

"Just for the first transaction. After that, they bring a thousand yen to the floor every day." "How many days do they have to do that?"

"Well — until they pay back the full fifty thousand in one go, obviously." "What?"

"The daily thousand is just the interest. They borrowed money from yakuza. That's what that means."

"……"

In other words, unless a tout paid back the full fifty thousand in one lump sum, they'd be bringing a thousand yen every single day, forever. The yakuza method — you had to respect the thoroughness of it.

"Those guys skim a little off each customer every day, so they always have daily cash on hand. And that means they just spend it at game shops or on drinks. So there aren't many touts who actually have fifty thousand saved up."

I made a firm promise to myself right there: never borrow money from that side.

That night I stayed at a sauna, and in the morning headed to the pachinko floor. Today I had to work the floor together with Yamamoto.

When I showed up, the night-shift staff Koizumi and Akiba greeted me with smiles.

"Good morning." "Busy night last night, wasn't it?"

"Unusually so. But whenever that happens, Kitanaka-san goes over the IN-OUT figures obsessively and pulls everything he can from the machines that look vulnerable — it's a problem."

Koizumi, the floor manager, clearly didn't think well of Kitanaka either. When Yamamoto came in, the accounts were settled and the night shift went home.

I looked at the bin and went cold. The yakitori I'd brought as a gift the previous night was sitting there — completely untouched, thrown away whole. Rec……

That rotten Thai man. One day I was going to give him what he deserved.

The morning was its usual dead self. Shinshine, on a losing streak, was at a machine pouting and playing.

"Yamamoto — massage." "Come on, give me a break……"

Spoiled woman, this Chinese Shinshine. Just because she was Kitanaka's woman, everyone around her deferred to her.

An idea came to me.

"Yamamoto-san, I'll do the massage." "Sorry to put you out, Iwakami-san." "Not at all."

Around the time I went back into mixed martial arts at twenty-nine, the teacher at TBB Sōgō Seitai near my house had been maintaining my body. Out of goodwill, she'd also shown me some of the techniques for treating people.

One time the teacher had given me a mischievous look and said "Iwakami-san, there's actually a pressure point that makes you fall asleep" — and showed me where it was. I'd never once tried it since.

I was half-skeptical it actually worked. But on a woman like Shinshine, it was worth a test.

"Iwakami-san, you're good at this." "Your shoulders are quite tense."

At first I gave her a normal massage. Shinshine's face went slack with pleasure.

After about ten minutes, I decided to try the sleep pressure point.

"Shinshine-san, your eyes must be tired too from all that gaming. This will hurt a little — bear with me."

I pressed my thumb into the hollow behind her right ear. I held it for about thirty seconds.

"How does that feel? Any relief?" "Feels clearer now."

I went over to the counter and told Yamamoto: "Shinshine's going to fall asleep soon."

Yamamoto didn't follow and looked puzzled. I opened the laptop and killed time gaming. Shinshine should be getting drowsy in less than five minutes, but……

"Iwakami-san, Iwakami-san. Look at Shinshine's face."

Yamamoto was whispering.

I looked — Shinshine's head was beginning to droop, her face fighting off sleep. She was making a visible effort to keep her eyes open and keep playing, but her body wasn't listening. That's what it looked like.

"Look — the face on her."

I barely managed to keep from bursting out laughing.

Shinshine was asleep at the table, drooling. Same as having no customer at the machine.

"Incredible, Iwakami-san. There's really a pressure point that makes you fall asleep," Yamamoto said, genuinely impressed.

I brought up the guarantor story from when Shinshine had asked me to sign. A woman with no manners — demanding I sign with Kitanaka's name nowhere on the form.

"That said — wanting to become the wife of someone like Kitanaka-san, it must be about the money." "Kitanaka-san himself didn't seem very enthusiastic about getting married."

Thinking back on that episode still irritated me.

"Is everything just about money in this world?" "No, I don't think it's like that."

"But — Kitanaka-san included, most of the people in Kabukichō have foreign wives. Even Kaneko-san, the owner here, has a Chinese wife."

A wife……

If Harumi would become my wife, I'd get married right now. It had been a while since I'd thought of her. She's probably forgotten me entirely by now.

Clair de lune hasn't progressed since that day either. I'd always been someone who leaves things half-done.

The computer — I'd gotten reasonably capable with it.

But above every level there's another level. Compared to Bōzu-san, if my skill was a one, his was a thousand.

Being used and worked like a servant by a man as rotten as Kitanaka — was this just how it would always be for me?

"Iwakami-san, something wrong?"

"No, nothing. I was just thinking — if someone wrote down everything Kitanaka has done, it might make an interesting novel." "There really aren't many people that awful."

"Maybe I should try writing it up — everything Kitanaka has done so far."

I said it as a joke.

"You could do it, Iwakami-san." "What?"

"You're someone who puts in the effort. I think if you decided to, you could write a novel." "Me, write a novel? I've never done anything like that. I was only joking."

The things I'd thrown myself into seriously until now. Aiming to be a professional wrestler, training every single day.

Drawing — I'd done it on instinct in school, pure sense. After meeting Harumi, wanting to make her happy even a little, I'd drawn again for the first time in years. She'd been genuinely pleased.

The craft and mindset of bartending at the Asakusa View Hotel. I'd always taken the study of liquor seriously.

Piano……

Meeting Harumi, wanting her to hear it — that's why I'd started piano. I still hadn't offered her Zanarkand.

Computers — Bōzu-san was teaching me, all-nighters on weekends. A computer that could do so many things. I narrowed down what I actually wanted to do with it and had him show me.

Every time I learned more, I understood more fully how extraordinary he was. I wanted to catch up with him, even a little — but I knew I couldn't.

This was a rare feeling — the sheer scale of the difference between us.

"I've been at it every day since middle school. Of course there's a gap."

Bōzu-san laughed when he said it.

Hmm — wait. If I could never catch Bōzu-san in computer skills, what if I used Word to write a novel? Even Bōzu-san wouldn't have thought of writing one. If the direct path doesn't work, find a different angle to close the distance.

This was something I'd learned from watching the great master I'd known in my All Japan Pro Wrestling days — Jumbo Tsuruta.

The master, now gone. The first time I stood before him, the sheer scale of the man made me understand, instantly, how small I was.

I wanted to reach him. But doing exactly the same things he did, I'd never get there.

He was the complete face — the ultimate good. So I'd consciously walked the opposite path: heel, villain. Even after wrestling fell apart, I'd decided to stay a heel.

Whatever form it took. I wanted to get at least a little closer to Master Tsuruta.

If he were still alive, I might have kept fighting and chosen to stay on the ring……

I seemed to have forgotten the pride I'd carried from my All Japan days.

Never lose yourself. I am nothing but myself. So work at it in my own unorthodox way……

"Yamamoto-san — I'm going to try writing a novel."

I'd decided to take on a new challenge: fiction.

Back at home, I started thinking about what to put in it.

Writing about Kitanaka's behavior directly would be the easy path — just write what happened as it happened.

But if it somehow reached the world — would readers believe it? They'd almost certainly take it as fantasy, like a manga. And then writing it wouldn't mean much.

So — what to do? Use my experiences, the things I'd been through that other people hadn't, to build a story. First, readers would have to understand Kabukichō. Without that, nothing else would follow.

The game parlor Vega — the first place I'd worked when I came to this city. That owner, Naruto, had been genuinely terrible. A different kind of terrible from Kitanaka.

He'd taken a liking to me — up to that point it was fine. But then he'd taken me to meet the head of a yakuza outfit, and I'd nearly been recruited as a member. Maybe I'd write something based on that……

No — what happened then was still too raw to write straight. I'd make the protagonist quieter, more restrained, and let Naruto's menace speak for itself by contrast.

And then — the abuse my mother put me through in childhood. I'd give that part of the story to the protagonist.

I hadn't even started writing yet, and the story was already expanding in my head.

All right — I'd write it. A novel.

What had started as a joke with Yamamoto was turning into something real. That's what makes living interesting.

When it was done, Harumi would be the first to know. And if she agreed to meet — I wanted to offer her Zanarkand.

The protagonist's name — what should it be? I still couldn't touch-type. Even entering inventory data at Melon, I hunted for each letter with my index finger. If that was the case, I should choose a name that was easy to type.

Start with a surname that uses the same vowel repeatedly. Since my right index finger would be doing most of the work, I needed the left hand holding down a single vowel in a convenient position.

Of the five vowels — A, I, U, E, O — the easiest to hold down was A, all the way on the left.

"A…… surnames starting with A…… Aida, Akama, Asao, Asano…… None of them feel right. Arabata, Arai — no…… Ah…… Akasaki…… hm?"

Akasaki — that uses the vowel A three times.

And K appears twice as well — so it would be very easy to type.

Decided. The protagonist's surname would be Akasaki.

The given name — may as well be the name I'd always wanted for myself.

And so the protagonist's name became Akasaki Hayato.

Age? Probably the same age I was when I first came to Kabukichō — twenty-five.

How to open it?

Writing a novel, I was realizing, might be many times more enjoyable than I'd expected……

— end —

闇　31（新宿クレッシェンド編）