I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 131 is back! The familiar Beichuan teacher is back! (Two in one, 2 missing)

"Did this bookshop have so many guests before?"

Rinko Matsubara looked at the crowded seaside bookstore with a dull look and couldn't help but ask.

"Of course not! This is a holiday resort. This seaside bookstore was only used to provide tourists with newspapers. How could there be so many customers?"

The proprietress of the izakaya next to the bookstore crossed her arms, looked at the long queue over there with admiration, and sighed,
"I heard that all the bookstores in Kamakura city were sold out, so these people came to the resort area to buy magazines. After all, the stock of these small bookstores rarely sells out."

Ever since the long queue started to form, the proprietress of the izakaya had never taken her eyes off the huge poster.

"South of the Border, West of the Sun" seems to be a new serialized novel, the author is named Kitagawa Hide.

Anyway, she doesn't understand. In recent days, three or four out of ten people who came to the izakaya to drink mentioned this writer.

He should be a very famous writer in Tokyo, right?
In short, she was very grateful to this great writer.

After the Aum Shinrikyo cult caused trouble all over Japan, tourist attractions were the most affected.

The tourist flow of Kamakura's Shichirigahama Coast was originally not as good as that of Shonan Coast. After being manipulated by the cult, sometimes there were not many holidaymakers for ten days or half a month. Her izakaya on the coast was about to go bankrupt.

Then in the past few days, the number of tourists suddenly skyrocketed, from an average of dozens of people per day to several hundred. Within two days, the stock in her izakaya was sold out!

Thanks to him, at least I don't have to worry about this month's performance.

Maybe I should go to the Seaside Bookstore and buy a magazine to support Mr. Beichuan.

"Have all the stocks in major bookstores in Kamakura City been sold out?" Muramatsu Tomoshi exclaimed in a low voice, his heart full of regret.

If he had known this would happen, he should have continued to look for Kitagawa Hide. If the book was sent back to "Gunzo", he might have been recalled by the editorial department!
"Yeah, didn't you see? Those delivery trucks are all from Tokyo. I heard that not only Kamakura, but also Yokohama, Kawasaki, Miura and other places are all sold out, and they are rushing to ask the Tokyo headquarters for goods." The proprietress nodded and smiled, "This is the first time I've seen something so popular."

"This is not going to be easy, Youshi-kun." Rinko Matsubara is a calligraphy teacher and doesn't know much about literature. She now feels that if she continues like this, she might run into someone she knows from Tokyo here.

I was in a resort area in Kamakura with a strange man. This was not something that could be explained away by work.

The two had been caught by a private detective while having a tryst in a small hotel before. Fortunately, Muramatsu Tomoshi was wealthy and resolved the crisis with a 300 million yen hush money.

After that, the number of their private meetings decreased a lot, and the locations they chose were more remote.

This morning, Rinko couldn't help missing Muramatsu Tomomi, so she called him. The two secretly met at Tokyo Station, then took the Yokosuka Line to Kamakura, and then took a train for dozens of minutes to reach Shichirigahama Beach.

I thought this place was sparsely populated due to the invasion of a cult, and was suitable for a tryst, but I didn't expect to encounter such an emergency!
Rinko was worried that her tryst would be discovered, but Muramatsu Tomoshi seemed to have lost his soul, walking step by step towards the seaside bookstore.

"Youshijun" she called out, but got no response, and then her attention was attracted by a line of words under the huge poster.

[Extramarital affairs: the secrets that Japanese women are reluctant to talk about]

Is this what the novel is about?
I heard from Youshijun that he seems to be a very famous new writer?

By choosing this kind of subject, is he really not afraid of being despised by others?
As if by some magic, Rinko Matsubara's feet involuntarily walked towards the seaside bookstore.

At this moment, she suddenly just wanted to see what the novel was about. As for whether their tryst here would be discovered, it didn't seem so important.

Walking into the seaside bookstore, Muramatsu Tomoshi paid 400 yen and picked up a copy of "Baijutsu". Seeing Rinko coming, he reached out to the clerk for another one.

The two of them came to the beach, feeling the chilly winter wind, snuggling together and opening the "Literature and Art" magazine in their hands.

After being suspended indefinitely by the editorial department, Muramatsu Tomoshi still closely followed the open and secret struggles among the five major publishing houses, and also got a lot of information about Kitagawa Hide's new book from many colleagues.

The opinions of the literary criticism community are quite unified this time. I don’t know whether they received bribes or really think so, but most of the well-known literary critics think that Kitagawa Hide has almost reached the point where his talent has run out.

In terms of sales, "No Longer Human" created a terrifying sales record of over 200 million copies in less than five months and about 250 million copies in half a year. If nothing unexpected happens, its total sales in one year will be among the top five in literary history. It is a record that will go down in history and it is estimated that it will never be broken.

In terms of literary quality, "I Am a Cat" has received widespread acclaim, and Kitagawa-style haiku pioneered the genre of mono no aware literature, a tradition that will be difficult to break with subsequent works.

So what should Kitagawa Hide use to go further?

No one can think of it.

Then just criticize him verbally and in writing.

"He will hit a bottleneck," "The sales of his new book will definitely be mediocre, and he may have to rely on his old reputation," "Wenyi Magazine is now under attack from all sides and has fewer resources. Can he still be as popular as before?"
The pessimistic remarks were heard again, and even the editorial department of "Gunzo" felt that Kitagawa Hideki would enter a period of weakness, and it was a good time for them to overtake and defeat him!

For this joint essay contest, Sawako Noma asked the "Tenka No. 1" teacher Arima Yoshiyoshi to personally guide Yomiuri Okatake.

Using the gimmick of "disability but strength of mind" and the fame of graduating from Waseda University, Yomiuri Okamoto secretly wrote an autobiographical novel "Five Bodies Are Not Satisfied".

This is the winning entry.

Yomiuri Okamoto's ability is not strong, but with the guidance of Mr. Yoriyoshi Arima, it is completely different.

There are only seven "Tenka No. 1" in Japan, and all of their disciples are "upper-class writers", which shows how strong their ability to educate people is.

Muramatsu Tomosuke has not read the manuscript of "Five Bodies Are Not Satisfied", but judging from the feedback from several close colleagues in the editorial department, it is definitely far superior to his own "The Remaining Epidemic" and is enough to rival Oshima Hikaru's "Thirty Years in the World".

Could it be that Mr. Kitagawa was really defeated?
While Muramatsu Tomoshi was thinking about these messy things, Matsubara Rinko was completely immersed in the story of "South of the Border, West of the Sun".

In the preface, Mr. Kitagawa said that he wanted to write a different "extramarital affair" novel, unfolding the story from the perspective of the male protagonist, and then supplemented by the perspective of the wife of the danchi.

Rinko Matsubara is the wife of the danchi.

Or it could be said to be an upgraded version of the danchi wife.

More than a decade ago, she and her husband, a doctor, lived in a danchi as part of the elite class. Now, at the age of 36, she has moved with her husband to a danchi of this era - a villa in the city center of Tokyo.

The place where I live has changed, but my mood, status, and the occasional rumors I hear have not changed.

So she insisted on going out to work. Even if she was only a calligraphy teacher in a training institution, it was better than staying at home and being gossiped about.

She really wanted to see how Kitagawa Hideki would write about the wives of the danchi.

Rinko Matsubara couldn't wait to flip through the magazine, and as she read, she couldn't help but read it.

".Shimamoto stared at my face. There was something in her expression that stirred my heart. That something - of course, I only felt it in retrospect - was sensual, as if it could gently peel off the membrane of people's hearts layer by layer.

I still clearly remember her thin lips, which changed shape subtly with her expression, and the faint light that flickered in the depths of her eyes.

The light reminded me of the flickering light of a small candle at the end of a long, narrow room."

"What beautiful words, the feelings of youth, isn't that the expression you have when facing a boy you like?" Rinko Matsubara crossed her legs, snuggled in Muramatsu Tomoshi's arms and whispered.

It was the first time she read this kind of novel, and she felt that Kitagawa Hide's writing had an extremely clear beauty.

It's as if the heart is being washed from the inside out by a trickle of water. It's so beautiful.

"It's indeed this kind of Kitagawa Hidefu! Teacher Kitagawa is really amazing." Muramatsu Tomoshi also saw this paragraph in the first chapter.

They both thought that Kitagawa Hideki's story would start like those ordinary novels, with an unexpected affair being discovered, or a middle-aged man and woman falling in love in the crowd and going to a pub tacitly.

But Kitagawa Hide's novel does not start with this kind of cliché.

He used delicate brushstrokes to write about the protagonist "Chu's" childhood experiences.

Then he wrote about his family, his life, and his confusion - as a rare only child, he always felt that he was incomplete.

But I can't tell where it's incomplete.

Seeing this, Muramatsu Tomoshi realized that "only child" seems to be one of the themes of Kitagawa Hide's new book.

In addition, there seems to be a "hollow disease".

In other words, did he intend to write about the three themes together?
"Kitagawa Hidefu, what is that?" Rinko Matsubara asked curiously.

"That's an evaluation of him in our industry. It was proposed by Professor Takeuchi of the Faculty of Literature at the University of Tokyo, who said that Kitagawa's writing has opened up a new literary genre of his own, which he named 'Kitagawa Hidefu'."

Speaking of this, Muramatsu Tomoshi couldn't help but sigh,
"This is truly a groundbreaking evaluation, even though it has not yet been recognized by the Academy."

"It's great to name it after him, but why isn't he acknowledged? Look, even someone like me who reads it for the first time can feel his extremely personal style, so why isn't he acknowledged?"

Rinko Matsubara couldn't help but ask.

Muramatsu Tomoshi sighed: "Because it's so popular."

"It's such a hit?!" Rinko Matsubara felt like her three perspectives were being challenged.

It is indeed difficult for people who are not in the literary world to understand this behavior.

But that's what literati are like.

Since ancient times, scholars have looked down on each other, and this is not just talk. Muramatsu Tomoshi really wants to tell Rinko some stories about Kitagawa Hide. He has always been proud of being Kitagawa Hide's friend and former editor-in-chief.

This is one of his achievements, a feat that can make his mistress worship and shock him.

But Kodansha drove him away.

In the end, he didn't say these to Rinko, but just continued reading with her in silence.

As they watched, the two discovered that "South of the Border" was actually an American country jazz song praising Mexico, but unfortunately they had no way to buy the record to listen to it.

As for "West of the Sun", I believe everyone is wondering now, what is there west of the sun?

Just like when "Hear the Wind Sing" came out.

On the night of January 1, there will definitely be many people who will not be able to sleep all night after reading those five chapters.

The sunset slowly approached the Nanashihama coast.

Only then did Muramatsu Tomoshi and Matsubara Rinko realize that they had been snuggling together and watching "Wenyi" for the entire afternoon.

Although the book including the preface has less than 40,000 words, it attracts them to read it over and over again.

Will "Hatsu" and Shimamoto meet again?
What happened to Quan, the high school girlfriend who was deeply hurt by "Chu"?
Why did "Chu" have a relationship with Quan's cousin? Was it just because they were both only children and therefore felt each other's incompleteness?

This was the first time that Rinko Matsubara read pure literature. She never expected that the novel, which she had always thought was boring, could maintain its story while raising some thought-provoking questions for readers to discuss.

The most important thing is that the biggest gimmick, the extramarital affair, has not happened yet.

The protagonist had just started a blind date at the end of Chapter 5 and had not yet gotten married!

This novel can actually be written like this!

"After reading it, I realized that the really exciting parts have not yet been written. Everyone wants to read the sequel. It's really wonderful. This is a very good novel, right, Youshi-kun?" asked Rinko Matsubara.

Muramatsu Tomoshi didn't know how to answer her.

excellent?

That word doesn't quite fit Kitagawa-sensei.

Because as long as other works can be called excellent, then this word is not suitable to describe Mr. Kitagawa.

Mr. Kitagawa needs an evaluation word that belongs only to him.

But Muramatsu Tomosaki couldn't think of the word.

"Excellent is not enough to describe this novel." Muramatsu Tomoshi shook his head.

Looking at the seashore, the sunset, and the book "Literature" in his arms, he suddenly wanted to hug his lover.

Rinko Matsubara felt the same way.

At this moment, she felt that she and Muramatsu Tomoshi were closely connected by a novel.

The two hugged each other tightly, as if they had become "Hatsu" and Shimamoto.

"Do you think Shimamoto likes 'Hatsu'?" Muramatsu Tomoshi suddenly asked in a low voice.

Matsubara Rinko gave the answer almost instantly: "Of course, girls will only do that when facing the boys they like. Even if they are only twelve years old, their feelings will not lie."

"So you like me as much as Shimamoto likes 'Hatsu'?" Muramatsu Tomoshi asked.

This question was completely unnecessary. Rinko's reaction just now was obvious enough, but he still wanted to ask.

As if to disappoint him on purpose, Rinko said nothing and gently rested her head on his chest.

The answer is of course yes, but I am just ashamed to say it out loud.

How could she not like him when she came here to meet him secretly behind her husband's back?

But the more a woman avoids it, the more a man wants to hear it.

"Do you like it or not?" Muramatsu Tomomi asked again.

He didn't know what was wrong with him, but after reading "South of the Border, West of the Sun", he seemed to be infected by Hidemoto Kitagawa.

That day he said in the cafe that he wanted to have a serious relationship, and that was the truth.

But he felt that he was wishful thinking. At this age, a middle-aged man, almost bald, he was still thinking about this. He was shameless and delusional. This was also the truth.

But this feeling was inexplicably aroused today.

This time Rinko quickly responded, "I don't like it."

This was a coquettish complaint, because she quickly lowered her head and added: "Actually, I hate that I can't control myself now. I look so ugly as to be lost in lust. I seem to have fallen into your trap."

"No, I fell into the trap." Muramatsu Tomoshi smiled. He was very satisfied with this answer.

"Anyway, it was you, a bad guy, who made me like this."

"But the responsibility lies with you."

"at me?"

“Because you’re so delicious.”

"But this is my first time."

"What first time?"

"This is the first time I've become like this." Rinko Matsubara held the book "Literature" in her hand and looked back at the words under the poster.

Suddenly I felt a chill running down my bones.

She murmured, "We're going to hell, right?"

"Go to hell? No. Don't be afraid. It's okay." Muramatsu Tomoshi comforted her. He felt that Mr. Kitagawa's book would give them an answer, but now he had to give Rinko some comfort and security.
"Believe me, we will never go to hell. We haven't done anything bad, so why should we go to hell?"

“Now this, isn’t it a bad thing?”

Rinko graduated from a church-run university, and she was a married woman, so her sense of guilt was particularly strong. She had had trysts with Muramatsu Tomomi in hotels more than once.

"I'm sure Kitagawa-sensei won't give Shimamoto and the others a happy ending! This is something that absolutely cannot be done."

At this point, reason no longer made sense, and Muramatsu Tomomi could only silently obey the stubborn woman.

"Then let's go to hell together."

He clenched the "Wenyi" in his hand, thinking about calling Kitagawa Hide when he got back to find out the subsequent plot content of the novel.

He also wanted to know what would happen to the protagonists of the story.
Is there really room for extramarital affairs that are not tolerated by the world to survive?
The answer is definitely no.

So how will he arrange the ending for the two of them?
"I got it! I got it! I got it!"

"Wow! Li-chan, you're amazing! How many copies of Literature did you buy?"

"A total of twelve books!"

"Great!" Qian Hehui gave a thumbs up and crawled over with a grin, "Can you sell me a copy?"

"Hey Hui-chan, wipe your butt clean before getting on bed, idiot!" shouted several other girls next to Kobayashi Tomoyo.

Today, a group of girls from the literature department are holding a study session in Jabami Rei's new rental house.

After winning an award for her role in "Akudani", Jabami Rei, with her cool looks, a pair of long white legs, and a model-like figure like Miyoshi Ayaka, immediately became the new darling of the print modeling industry.

Now she takes on advertising jobs after school and soon saved enough money to rent a luxury apartment.

In terms of enjoyment, she is just like Kitagawa Hide and never treats herself badly.

Today we said it was a study session, but in fact it was just a reason for everyone to read Kitagawa Hide's new book together.

"Okay, 4000 yen per book, no bargaining." Jabami Rei grinned, revealing her true face as a profiteer.

(End of this chapter)