Mizuki Nomura - Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime

Story: MIZUKI NOMURA

Illustration: MIHO TAKEOKA

Translation by Karen McGillicuddy

Bungakushoujo to shinitagari no pierrot 2006 Mizuki Nomura. All rights reserved. First published in Japan in 2006 by ENTERBRAIN, INC., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with ENTERBRAIN, INC. through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

English translation 2010 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Cover design by Kirk Benshoff. Copyright 2010 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

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First e-book edition: December 2012

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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-316-24593-7

Mine has been a life of shame.

Hold onwhos that talking? An actor? An athlete? A politician who was arrested for corruption?

Well, whatever.

Maybe its a little overblown to talk about my life so dramatically since I only just started my second year of high school. But the things I experienced at fourteen turned my world upside down. Trial followed on tribulation, which was followed by bursts of outright craziness, and in one short year, I felt as if my life had come to an end.

Why? Because during that year, the eyes of all Japan were on me: a brilliant, mysterious author who happened to be a lovely young girl.

It all started in the spring of my last year of middle school.

I was fourteen-soon-to-be-fifteen, living the life of a perfectly ordinary middle school boy. I had friends, had a girl that I liked, and the kind of fun youd expect someone with those things to have. An impulse made me submit the first novel Id ever written to a literary magazine for a new author competition. I won the grand prize and was the youngest winner ever, to boot.

My narrator was a young girl, and my pen name was Miu Inouea girls nameso I got a ton of publicity with headlines such as Youngest Winner Ever! 14-Year-Old Girl Takes the Prize! or In a Unanimous Decision, Realistic Style and Refreshing Sensitivity!

God, Im so embarrassed.

My publisher ran with it. People are more receptive to girls, so lets go ahead with the mysterious young girl as a masked author to sell it.

I didnt quite get how people would know the author was a cute little girl if she was wearing a mask, but they published the award-winning story, which quickly became a best seller. The book was flying out of stores, and it soon shattered the one-million-copies-sold mark. It was adapted into a movie and a TV miniseries, and there was also a comic book adaptation. It became a phenomenon.

I was astounded.

My family didnt know what to think.

My son? Well he used to be such a nice, ordinary boy. What can we do? The royalties are a billion yen! I mean, thats twenty times his fathers salary!

They were in shock.

Whenever I got on the train, the ads for my book were staring me in the face, the title printed in gigantic letters. And if I so much as set foot in a bookstore, I saw my book stacked up on the checkout counters like stalwart fortresses with big-name reviews on the covers.

Little Miu is still in middle school, right? I wonder what shes like. I bet shes cute.

I heard shes a rich kid from an old, aristocratic family. Thats why they cant say who she really is.

She must have been raised by nannies since she was a baby. Shes probably never had to lift anything heavier than a pen.

Oh, definitely. She just screams book girl. You just know shes a delicate, innocent young lady. God, Miu, I want you so bad! Marry me!

Whenever I heard people saying these things, I got so embarrassed it felt like I was suffocating. I only cared about getting away.

Im so sorry, please dont get mad at me, it was just a whim, my storys not some great work of literature. They were just scribbles in my notes for class that somehow won an award. Im really sorry. I could never hope to have refreshing sensitivity. Its just the ramblings of a boring, wimpy little kid. The illustrious members of the judging panel were only trying to make a joke. They were just thinking, Hey, wouldnt it be funny if a fourteen-year-old girl won the prize? Wouldnt that be incredible PR material? And it would give the industry a real shot in the arm, too. I bet it would sell like crazy. That would make the publishers happy. They gave in to temptation. I have no talent whatsoever. Please, please forgive me, Im so sorry.

I yearned to go to every last corner of Japan and throw myself at peoples feet to apologize, until finally it happenedthe stress made me hyperventilate, and I passed out at school and got taken to the hospital. I was sobbing pathetically about how I couldnt write novels anymore, and I even refused to go to school. I put my parents and my little sister through a lot.

Have I mentioned how embarrassing that year was?

That was how the mysterious genius, the masked young author, Miu Inoue, burned out after producing only one novel. I took my exams, passed them, and started high school, which is where I met a real book girlan older girl named Tohko Amano.

Why did I start writing again?

Because I met Tohko under the brilliant white magnolia trees that day.

Gallicos story feels like winter to me. Its like the purity of falling snow melting on your tonguethe serenity you get from that coolness and ephemerality. It has that same beauty and desolation to it. Tohko sighed with pleasure as she flipped through a collection of Paul Gallicos stories.

We belonged to the Seijoh Academy book club, which met in the western corner of the schools third floor.

As the day ended, the sun lit the room with a beguiling golden light the color of honey.