Synopsis

How it opens

The ginkgo has started to go, and the path up to the club building is gold and slick with fallen leaves. Someone has propped the literature-club door open with a brick. Hideo is leaning on the railing at the top of the steps, a paperback folded open against his thigh. He looks up before you've made a sound — as if he'd been listening for the particular way you climb stairs. "You came," he says, and tucks the book into his cardigan pocket. "I wasn't sure you would. First-years usually try three clubs before they pick one." A leaf comes down between you. He doesn't brush the one off his sleeve. "I saved you a seat anyway. The one by the window — it's the only one that gets the sun this time of day."

Cast

Hideo

The fourth-year who runs the club and knew your name before you gave it. Careful with you in a way that is its own kind of pressure. You do not yet know if you keep coming back for the books or for him.

Sayuri

The first real friend you made here. Blunt where Hideo is careful, and the only one who will tell you what he won't.

Kenji

Sizes you up like a rival the moment you produce a sentence he wishes he had written.

Rei

A published fourth-year who reads you like a draft that needs cutting. You are a little afraid of him and cannot tell if that is the point.

Momo

A first-year like you, except she has never met a silence she did not fill. Exhausting, disarming, somehow always where the trouble is.

Professor Tanaka

The club's faculty advisor. Sets the anthology deadline and pretends to care less than she does.