Bye Bye Junai

XX

September 15,

After a three year break from writing, Usami Akihiko has formally given an announcement that he will be returning to the world of literature. This announcement comes hand in hand with rumours that he will be ending his popular Junai Romantica series, written under the penname Akihiko Yayoi...

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XX

Kiyoshi Reiko disconnected from the net and snapped her phone shut with a sigh. She was nervous. It was only midday and yet she had an undying urge to go for a drink. Today was the day - and she knew that she should feel unbearably excited – that she would interview the great Usami Akihiko.

This was a rare chance. Rumour was it that Usami-sensei hated the media and avoided company meetings like the plague. For some reason getting a morning interview was impossible, but to be able to meet him at all, to step into his penthouse, the place where he lived, and question him to her heart's content? That was a once in a life-time chance.

She trembled, gulping as she gazed up at the daunting penthouse.

Usami Akihiko; AKA Akihiko Yayoi, blood type B, Sagittarius, son of the famous Usami group's Usami Fuyuhiko and Usami Natsuko, turning thirty seven this year, had been writing publicly since the age of seventeen - this would be his first ever formal interview since his debut!

"Well, Usami-sensei, what kind of Usami Akihiko are you going to show me today?" she muttered to herself as she took her first quivering step into the apartment complex.

The man in person was a lot gruffer in real life than he appeared in the pictures she had seen of him. Reiko smiled nervously up as he opened the door. Maybe it was simply because it was early – was twelve in the afternoon considered early? – and he was wearing casual clothes rather than a formal suit and tie, but there were definite traces of sleeplessness forming around his eyes and tired lines etched across his forehead.

You're too young to be getting wrinkles, Sensei. You're only thirty six, your fan-girls will cry, she thought and smiled brightly.

"Usami-sensei? Nice to meet you! My name is Kiyoshi Reiko. I'm here for the interview."

He never would be interviewed before.

Usami did not appear to see the offering hand she held and stepped back, wordlessly granting her entrance to his great apartment.

He would never be interview before. It was always a bother.

Feeling awkward already, Reiko withdrew her hand and cautiously stepped inside. She did not know what to expect. She knew that Usami was rich but from her experience of interviewing authors she knew what complete slobs they could be, even the best of them; paper everywhere, pizza boxes and take-out cartons from the days they were too busy to cook, dirty laundry, stacks of reference books. An author's apartment could be the worst.

Usami's apartment, however, was spotless. It was a little too spotless for her liking. Did someone really live here? It seemed like a scene from a department store's furniture section; brilliantly polished, gleaming surfaces that had never known the touch of food, a sofa that had never been sat upon or slept upon or kissed upon, and a coffee table with perfect right angles and not a single coffee stain.

Where were the traces of life? Where were the stacks of paper and the take-out boxes? Where were the shameful, dirty magazines hurriedly stuffed behind pillows or an embarrassingly pink stuffed toy accidentally left out on the mantel?

Furniture was minimal. Apart from the TV there was not a single sign of the luxuries Usami Akihiko could no doubt afford. Stacks of boxes were neatly piled up in corners, as if the author was about to move out but, on closer inspection, the thin layer of dust settling on the cardboard told her that these boxes had been there for a long time.

They took a seat opposite each other with that perfectly square coffee table between them. Reiko did not know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or worry when she spotted that the ash tray was over-flowing with half-smoked butts.

It was a quirk in this hideously unreadable environment at least, but she did not want the Usami Akihiko she loved and respected to be sent to an early grave due to lung cancer.

No, no! She shook her head adamantly. She was here to do a job, not wonder at Usami-sensei's personal habits! Dragging a professional smile back on to her lips, she took out a Dictaphone and began recording.

"I hope you're well, Usami-sensei, shall we get started?" She asked, taking out a notebook and a ballpoint pen from her bag. Good old, trusty ballpoint. Never write in fountain. Fountain smudges when you're in a hurry.

"Well, Usami-san, you're a very private person and much of your personal life is unknown to the public. Care to shed some light on your personal background?" she began

Time slowed itself as he opened his mouth. The great Usami-sensei was speaking! It was a surprisingly unspectacular voice.

"I suppose most of the important stuff; name, family, blood type, birthday and so on, is probably on the web already. Check Wikipedia. Whatever's on there is most likely true," he replied, seemingly bored already with their interview.

"But won't you allow a more personal look into your life?" Reiko pressed on. This interview was not going the way she had planned it at all but she refused to be daunted.

He drew a cigarette from his breast pocket – what number would that make it today? Reiko wondered? She tried counting the ones in the ash tray – and lit it with a silver lighter.

"I admit that I've always been a private person and I have been able to keep the paparazzi at bay for a very long time."

"Yes, it's an incredible talent!" she enthused. A very annoying one too, she added in her mind.

"Well, if you really want to know," he conceded, "I have a pet dog, a long haired daschund. His name's Alexander. Ah, I also have a cat called Tama but they're both at the family home."

"Usami-san, that's...cute," she replied for lack of a better adjective. "What about a love interest? Both your normal novels and yours Junai series are famous for their intricate love stories. Did you draw inspiration from real life?"

"Love interests?" This made Usami seem slightly more aware of her than he had initially been. Had she struck a chord? "Well, I've been told that Alexander's met a poodle - "

"I'm talking about yourself, not your pets!"

Maybe not.

"Oh?" he hesitated. "Perhaps."

"Please don't keep me in suspense, Usami-san!"

He smiled slightly. The people she knew had told her that Usami-sensei had a wonderful smile but, as much as she adored his works, she thought he had an odd smile for a man; a little lopsided, as if they had moulded themselves around the constant presence of a cigarette, and showing too few teeth.

Usami rested his chin on top of the back of his hands, looking at her with intently. "When it comes to love I think I've had my fair share of it. I believ I've experienced all the different sides of love," he replied. "The ugly ones, the happy ones, even the painful ones. Writing is a lot like being in love. Through the act of writing, you also experience all the happy and painful feelings that come with love."

It was the most eloquent thing she had heard him say all day. It was also the biggest lie he had said all day as well or, if not a lie, than a half-truth covering up something far starker, far more real.

That was the problem with writers, she thought. They lie. They lie constantly and without a second thought.

"I see that you're trying to be purposefully vague on this one, Usami-san," she would begrudge him this one. "Well then, to the point of this interview; as you must be aware, several rumours have been floating around the net lately that your next book will bring an end to the Junai Romantica series."

"It's not very surprising. All series have to come to their end eventually."

Reiko leaned forward, eager to hear the answer yet dreading it at the same time. It was no secret that she was a Junai fan as well, which was half the reason why this interview made her so eager and so nervous.

"So then it is true that the Junai series will end? What is your reason for doing so? Did you simply grow tired of it?" she asked with bated breath.

Usami looked as though he were about to laugh, though there were no traces of mirth to be seen anywhere on his expression. She thought his laugh must sound very dry. He lifted his cigarette to his lips, taking a long, thoughtful drag.

"Tired of it? No, that's not it," he muttered. "That's not it."

Reiko shifted on her seat. The sudden pensiveness, the thoughtfulness, all of Usami's behaviour was lighting green signals in her head, telling her she was reaching her scoop.

"Does it have anything to do with the traffic accident you were caught up in a few years ago?"

"No, those are completely separate incidents," he frowned at the memory. It seemed quite distasteful to him, not that she blamed him for it. She would not particularly like to remember being caught in a car crash either.

"Then it's merely a coincidence that the time after your brief hospitalisation was the same time the rumours began?"

Usami sighed for the first time since their interview had begun. It was a terrible sigh; like something dropping with enough gravity to smash the world to pieces. "I'm surrounded by people who worry too much. Whenever someone hears the word 'hospital' they assume the worst."

Reiko shook her head in disbelief.

"After your accident you stopped writing for three years! It was announced that you would return to the world of literature but only in order to end your Junai series? Surely it must have affected you more than you let on!" She pressed him. This could very well be the last interview with him and she was not about to let Usami get away without giving her a more insightful answer.

"No, that incident didn't really faze me," Usami denied, putting undue emphasis on the word 'that'.

"I heard - "

"I think that we're getting a little off topic here," he interrupted her curtly. She was getting closer. Just a little more, Reiko, she told herself. Just a little more and you will strike gold.

"Your fans were very worried. There were even crazy rumours about it being suicide. And I believe one site claimed it was an attempt on your life!"

"Well, stranger things have happened," Usami gave a non-committal reply. She was starting to think that this evasiveness was quite habitual of him.

"But you have lived through your share of excitement, haven't you? Just before your car accident, I heard you were present at Queen Kamiya's when that drug addict started a rampage. It was very fortunate that you did not get shot!"

"Fortunate," Usami echoed thoughtfully, his lips twisting contemptuously over the word as though he never wanted to say it.

"If I remember correctly, there was actually one fatality. Did that ever inspire a scene in one of your books?"

"No," was the blunt reply. He looked dangerous, as if warning her with his eyes. Don't go there. Don't open the box.

"Oh, of course, right after that came the car incident and you stopped writing for a while," she tapped her pen against the spine of her notebook. She remembered waiting months for the next Junai release, or even the next normal novel to come out on the shelves. She waited months, a year, two years, three...and now here was a man she had waited for forever telling her – telling the world, she should say – that he would write again.

Only in order to stop writing.

To tie everything up into neat little packages and give it the proper closure it deserved, just like the boxes in the corner of the apartment; everything packed away neatly, a clean, clear cut.

"Tell me, Usami-san, now that you, who have often written about death in your books, have now seen an actual death. Is it much different from your imagination?" she asked. It was a bold question, a sensitive one at least, but she was a journalist. She was paid to provoke.

Usami leaned heavily into the back of the couch, searching for the right words to reply with.

"It's more different than I could say," he started slowly. "It's much more painful, you feel a lot more helpless, it..." he trailed away mid sentence, his words dying pathetically on his lips. Lapsing into silence, he gazed intently at the ash tray and the accumulating evidence of his unhealthy habits.

After enough silence had passed between them to assure her that he would by no means continue his failed sentence, Reiko picked up their current thread where it had been dropped.

"Some people find inspiration in tragedy, and of course it was a tragedy, for a young man to have died so unexpectedly in that incident. He was a university student, wasn't he? But, if not in tragedy, where do you find your inspiration, Usami-san?"

He laughed. She had been right, it was a dry chuckle which showed no humour "Who knows? I wonder...I don't really know anymore..."

"Just how - "

"I believe we're running out of time," Usami suddenly moved, checking the wristwatch which had been hidden under the long sleeves of his shirt.

Reiko glanced at her phone. Had it really been an hour? She panicked. An hour and all she had were vague replies and illusions to something bigger. Right now, she needed to know what that bigger thing was. A murder, a family dispute, blackmail, bribery, a forbidden love interest, anything at all!

Hurriedly, she snapped her note book close and shifted forward until her legs were almost touching the coffee table.

"Ah, then back to the case of the Junai series, can I assume it is confirmed that the next volume will be the last?" She needed one concrete confirmation at least.

"Yes." There was no doubt in his voice at all.

Reiko's heart sank. She wanted a confirmation but she was hoping it would be a confirmation to the contrary. "That's a shame. Your fans will be incredibly disappointed." Herself included. "If I may, what caused you to stop? You said that writing is like being in love. Did you simply fall out of love with the series? Or did you get tired of it?"

Usami turned his head to gaze out of the large windows. That weird, half-thoughtful, half-wistful pose held tensely still belonged in a gallery of modern art. So much so that, when he finally spoke, Reiko jumped, as though a statue had suddenly started moving.

"It's not that I got tired," he directed the words at the windows and not at her. "I could have gone on forever, writing that wonderful romance until there was no more paper in the world."

Reiko frowned with confusion. "Then why - "

"Oh." Finally, he had turned back to her again, looking at her with unnervingly light eyes shadowed and darkened under the weight of memory, like the eyes of someone who has died whilst his body keeps breathing.

"My inspiration for it just died, that's all."

This is only my second time writing a death fic. I just don't like death fics where people are screaming 'No, don't die!' so I thought I'd set it a few years after Misaki's death and just allude to it.

If people are thinking 'What? This is a death fic?' then I obviously fail....err, I mean it is a little subtle. The fatality at Queen Kamiya's, which the interviewer is referring to, was Misaki, and the car incident three years ago was Akihiko's attempted suicide afterwards.

Well, thanks for reading. If anyone's wondering about my other fics, I have a poll up in my profile so please also vote!