Tokyo Literary Masters: Starting from the Late 1980s

Chapter 152 Unable to Keep Up with the Speed ​​of This Country's Sorrow

Nine o'clock the next morning.

From Waterstones in London to hundreds of chain and independent booksellers across the UK, they all rolled up their shutters simultaneously.

All the key display windows and prime booths were forcibly cleared.

The bestselling biographies and popular novels that were originally displayed here have all been moved to the bottom shelf in the corner.

Instead, Kitahara Iwao's new book, "Don't Let Me Go," has been released.

These white books, still smelling of fresh ink, stood quietly on the display stand.

At 9:15 a.m., as the glass doors were pushed open, the noise from the street officially flooded into the quiet bookstore lobby.

However, most of the first people to rush into the bookstore were not driven by a yearning for literature, but rather by a well-prepared mentality of watching a joke unfold.

Several columnists in trench coats stopped in front of the booth, their tone full of undisguised sarcasm.

"Over four hundred pages? They actually printed that many."

A tall man sneered, weighing the book in his hand, and said, "I bet I can find at least ten complete grammatical errors within the first three pages."

"Dowling paper, they really went all out."

His companion flipped open the pure white cover with a mocking laugh, echoing, "Hopefully this guy's English is good enough to justify the money the three giants are burning for him."

"Everyone, get your sharp tongues ready, tomorrow's front page depends on this."

Accompanied by these undisguised jokes and provocations, the hall was filled with the rustling of pages turning and low snickers.

At the Shuishi Bookstore booth, next to hundreds of new books wrapped in thick plastic, there was a thin sample booklet specially made by Ruoyuben.

Those peripheral writers influenced by television news, along with highly educated readers who were ready to gather material to bombard the audience, picked up the sample booklet with a "let me see just how bad you can write" mentality and opened the first page.

Having just finished reading the first page, the tall man who had boasted about finding fault was the deputy editor-in-chief of a second-tier literary journal. He raised an eyebrow, turned to his companion, and said, "It's passable, at least it didn't make any basic grammatical errors."

"But this bland and uninteresting narrative is like reading a diary, with no highlights whatsoever."

His companion gave a perfunctory reply, and the two of them reached out and turned to the second and third pages.

At this point, the tall man's voice noticeably decreased.

The colleague had originally intended to make a few sarcastic remarks about the lack of vocabulary, but found that the deputy editor's contemptuous smile had frozen at some point.

"Hey, did you find any bugs?"

At this moment, his companion tentatively asked a question.

The deputy editor did not answer. He simply raised his left hand and made a "shut up" gesture. Then he stared intently at the paper and even slowed down his breathing.

When he turned to the fifth page, he was completely speechless.

The first page lacks complete grammar.

The second page contained none of the blunders he had anticipated.

Professor Arthur and Mr. Ian's English translation perfectly captures the feel of Kitahara Iwao's original work.

But that wasn't enough to make him lose his composure.

What truly plunged him into an icy abyss was the chilling sense of disparity that suddenly emerged in the text when he reached the fourth page.

The protagonist, Casey, is reminiscing about her childhood playmates in a warm and nostalgic tone, as if chatting casually.

But amidst these beautiful memories of her youth, she inadvertently interspersed a few proper nouns: "caregiver," "donor," and "completed."

At first, the deputy editor thought it was just an ordinary story about a hospital and caregivers.

But the further he looked down, the more his pupils contracted.

With his keen literary sense, he suddenly understood the cruel premise hidden beneath the seemingly casual description.

The "completion" that Casey mentioned did not mean the end of any mission.

That means a dignified way of saying that a living person dies on the operating table after having their organs removed multiple times.

What chilled him most was that the young people in the book showed no anger or resistance to this fate of being cut up and consumed little by little like "consumables".

They spoke of their doomed "donation" mission with the calm, compliant, and even a touch of pride of discussing the weather.

This style of writing, which treats humans as mere commodities yet narrates them in the gentlest and most beautiful language, creates a suffocating literary tension.

This is a despair ten thousand times more terrifying than any desperate accusation.

Faced with this bottomless despair, the vocabulary he had prepared for nitpicking seemed utterly ridiculous.

This is not some sensationalist, low-brow literature, but a masterpiece that reveals its sharp edge from the very first page.

At that moment, the fingers holding the pen lost their strength.

The pen slipped from his fingers and fell onto the carpet with a dull thud.

But he didn't bend down to pick it up; he just felt a tightness in his throat.

His heart pounded, and he desperately wanted to turn the page and see just how far this madman named Kitahara Iwa could go with his cruelty.

However, when he forcefully turned to the fifth page, his fingers touched a thick layer of cardboard.

He paused for a moment, then looked down.

The reverse side of page five is pure white, with only one line of cold, small print in the center: "The trial reading ends here."

To find out what happens next, please purchase the complete book.

The deputy editor-in-chief froze in mid-air.

Meanwhile, in the lobby of Shui Shi Bookstore, at the same moment, the astonished readers who turned to the last page of the preview book could be heard everywhere, followed by heavy breathing that grew heavier with intense longing.

Without a moment's hesitation, the deputy editor-in-chief turned around abruptly.

He grabbed the stack of original physical books piled up like a wall on the display stand, and roughly tore off the thick moisture-proof film with both hands.

"Sizzle—"

'

The sound of the plastic film tearing was particularly jarring in the quiet hall, but he completely disregarded the fact that this was considered impolite in a bookstore—damaging unpaid goods.

At that moment, he had only one thought in his mind: he needed to know what would happen next immediately.

The deputy editor opened the heavy volume and eagerly found page six.

As he read on toward the brutal truth, an overwhelming sense of despair robbed him of all focus.

He felt his legs go weak and involuntarily leaned against the bookshelf behind him, his body uncontrollably sliding slowly down the shelf.

He bent his knees and eventually half-squatted in the corner between the bookshelf and the floor, holding the book above his knees and continuing to read in a rather undignified posture.

Not far away, a university associate professor specializing in Victorian novels had just experienced the same collapse of his defenses.

She frowned slightly as she opened the first page of the trial reading book, displaying the standard critical expression of someone doing "critical reading" in academia.

But when she finished reading the preview and first encountered the context behind the words "donation" and "completion," the associate professor's breath caught in her throat.

With her years of academic background, she instantly grasped the unfathomable abyss beneath those seemingly ordinary words.

There were no bloody accusations, no loud shouts, only a suffocating sense of resignation.

This calm and restrained literary approach, like a resounding slap, completely shattered her arrogance.

She also lost her composure and tore open the plastic wrap of a physical book.

At this moment, she no longer tensed up to nitpick the grammar and structure.

This unconscious relaxation means that she has completely let down her guard and abandoned the judgmental stance of a scholar.

She was so captivated by the allure of words that she regressed into a mere reader.

In the lobby of Waterstones Bookstore, a similar scene quietly spread within ten minutes.

Those who originally entered with various prejudices and loudly mocked the booklet transformed into out-of-control unpackers after experiencing the "cliff-like" abrupt end to the preview booklet.

The mocking conversations ceased, replaced by the sounds of plastic packaging being torn apart, before everything fell into an eerie silence.

As it approached 10 o'clock, with the increase in customer flow, more and more unsuspecting new customers entered the lobby.

They looked at the people standing, leaning, and squatting around the room reading, their faces full of confusion.

A young woman in a trench coat walked up to the deputy editor-in-chief, hesitated for a moment, and peeked at the pure white cover in his hand: "Excuse me, is Kitahara Iwa's book good?"

However, the deputy editor didn't even look up, his eyes fixed on the pages of the book, as if he hadn't heard a thing.

Thinking the hall was too quiet for him to hear, the girl leaned closer and whispered again, "Sir? You all seem so engrossed in reading. Is this book really worth buying?"

The deputy editor, whose reading rhythm had been interrupted, finally looked up abruptly.

His eyes, slightly red from staring at the black and white text for so long, were filled with impatience and irritability at being disturbed.

"It's beautiful! Absolutely stunning!"

He lowered his voice and replied in an almost rude tone, "Just grab a copy and read it yourself! Don't bother me!"

After saying that, he immediately lowered his head and plunged back into the thick fog of Haytham, as if wasting even a second would be a crime.

The girl was startled by his terrible attitude.

But when she turned to look around and saw that whether it was university professors or other well-dressed critics, they all had a fanatical and focused attitude of "don't say a word to me," she couldn't help but swallow.

She didn't ask any more questions, but obediently walked to the booth and picked up the book.

The sound of footsteps moving back and forth gradually decreased.

Even the beeping of barcode scanners at the cashier has become sparse, because no one is willing to take their eyes off their books.

The entire store was filled with people who found a corner to stand, lean, or squat down to read books.

Customers who have just entered the room will also be infected by the atmosphere when they see this group of readers who are completely immersed in the story. They will unconsciously shut their mouths, slow down their pace, and lower their voices.

It was exactly 10:00 AM.

In the lobby of Shui Shi Bookstore, only the rustling sound of turning pages could be heard.

This quietness doesn't stem from emptiness, but is the inevitable result of hundreds or thousands of people's attention being firmly locked onto the same story.

Everyone seemed to have entered a thick fog called Haytham, and could no longer make a sound.

10:00 AM.

London Underground, Central Line, westbound.

The morning rush hour is coming to an end.

The morning commute on the train is always somewhat dull, with most passengers looking down at their newspapers or staring blankly out the window.

But today, this dullness was broken by a book with a pure white cover.

There were five or six passengers in the carriage holding the same book.

Standing by the car door was a man in a dark blue striped suit, with a long-handled black umbrella on his left arm and a name tag on his wrist that clearly indicated his status as a financial executive.

The man boarded the train at Liverpool Street Station.

As is customary, he should be reading the pink Financial Times at this moment, but instead, he is holding a pure white cover of Never Let Me Go.

As a devoted fan of Colin, Arthur, and Ian, he was well aware of the suppression of these three literary giants by the mainstream British literary scene during this period.

But in his eyes, the noise from the outside world was nothing compared to the three men's illustrious reputation that had lasted for fifty years.

They would never ruin their reputation for a mediocre work.

So, to verify this high praise, he bought the book at the ticket booth near the entrance.

His destination was the next stop, Bank Station, so he planned to flip through a couple of pages to pass the time on the short train journey.

As the train rumbled rhythmically through the tunnel, the atmosphere inside the carriage subtly shifted.

At first, you could still hear scattered conversations.

A young couple sitting diagonally opposite the man in the suit were holding the same white book and talking quietly.

"Is this really a book that Colin Firth highly recommends? It looks so bland."

The boy muttered to himself.

"Let's wait and see before jumping to conclusions. These are endorsements from three titans who have given their reputations."

The girl lowered her voice to retort.

The man in the suit silently agreed with the girl's words, then lowered his eyes and turned his gaze to the pages of the book.

In the first sixty seconds of reading, he could still hear the couple chatting and the announcements on the radio.

But as he read on, the book's bland yet cruel narrative style, like an invisible net, suddenly tightened, firmly binding his mind.

As a bank executive who spends his days working with financial statements, he has an innate keen sense of "costs" and "depreciation".

Soon, he saw through the gentle words describing daily life and discovered a set of appalling underlying rules.

Kitahara Iwao constructed this fictional society, meticulously objectifying living people into "stockpiles" that could be consumed at any time.

This undercurrent of cruelty, depicted without a trace of bloodshed but rather with an exceptionally cold-blooded touch, instantly pierced his mind.

Before I knew it, the chatter of the people around me had stopped.

The monotonous female voice announcing the arrival of the train was completely ignored by his rapidly processing thoughts.

The train doors opened, and a stream of people poured onto the platform.

But he didn't react at all, his upper body leaning slightly forward, his eyes fixed on the paper.

He was completely swallowed up by the terrifying abyss of objectifying humanity, utterly ignoring the train's stop.

The doors closed, and the train started moving again.

At São Paulo station, he didn't move.

He remained motionless at the courthouse alley station.

When the train arrived at Holborn station, an elderly woman next to him nudged his elbow and gently reminded him, "Excuse me, young man. You must have missed your stop."

The man in the suit suddenly looked up at the station name outside the window, a brief look of confusion flashing across his face. Then he looked down at the book in his hand, and then looked out the window again.

As an investment banking executive who is always punctual and whose every second counts in pounds, he made a choice that defied all common sense.

He didn't get out of the car, but instead lowered his head again and turned to a new page.

Meanwhile, accompanied by the dull scraping sound of the rails at the bottom of the carriage, a silent psychological storm was quietly brewing in the corner window seat.

A female college student in her early twenties was huddled there.

The heating in the carriage wasn't very strong, so she hid most of her body inside a dark wool coat, with a large cashmere scarf wrapped around her neck, almost covering the lower half of her face.

On her lap lay the book "Never Let Me Go," which had a pure white cover.

Compared to the other people in the carriage who had just started reading, she was reading very quickly and was already completely engrossed in the middle of the story.

For the past half hour, her emotions had been fluctuating with the book's beautiful, melancholic yet subtly unsettling tone, reminiscent of an English morning mist.

However, at this moment, her fingers, which were turning the pages, were trembling uncontrollably.

Just a moment ago, the young people at Hailsham Boarding School were carefree on the lawn in the afternoon, dreaming about the future.

They excitedly talked about how they wanted to be supermarket cashiers when they grew up, to be actors in Hollywood, and to buy their own red brick house in the beautiful countryside.

This is the most common and beautiful scene in all adolescent literature.

Until she turned a new page.

The cruel truth was revealed coldly and bluntly without any dramatic build-up.

Ms. Lucy stood before the overjoyed children and shattered all their illusions: None of you will become actors, none of you will work at the supermarket, and none of you will go to America.

Your future has already been predetermined.

You were created only to donate your vital organs to others again and again after you reach adulthood, until the end of your life.

There was no alien invasion, no grand apocalyptic disaster, only this cold-blooded verdict from the system that stripped all human beings of their rights and hopes.

But that wasn't the most devastating thing for the female reader.

What truly became a sharp blade, brutally shattering her psychological defenses, was the reaction of the children in the book.

Upon learning this cruel truth, these cloned children showed no anger, no screaming, and no attempt to escape.

They simply accepted this cannibalistic arrangement with a chilling meekness.

This deep-seated numbness and submissiveness became the final straw that broke the female reader's back.

Through the thin pages, the suffocating coldness of the book seemed to materialize into a chill that instantly crept up her fingertips and spread throughout her body.

The next second, the female college student's psychological defenses completely collapsed.

She unconsciously arched her back, curled her legs tightly into the hard seat, and buried the lower half of her face deep in her large cashmere scarf, as if trying to escape some kind of extreme cold.

The next second, tears fell without warning, landing on the pure white paper and blurring the black lead characters.

She didn't make a sound, but just bit the edge of the scarf tightly.

But the sobs she tried so hard to suppress still made her shoulders tremble uncontrollably, and a few muffled and suppressed sobs leaked out intermittently in the quiet carriage.

The middle-aged foreman sitting opposite her heard the slight noise.

He frowned, a hint of early morning irritation in his eyes, and looked up.

Then he noticed the girl's reddened eyes and saw that she was clutching a book tightly in her hand.

It was printed with the title "Don't Let Me Go".

The foreman was taken aback.

He recognized the cover; for the past three days, subway news outlets and free tabloids had all been mocking this "industrial junk cobbled together in fourteen days."

He wanted to complain, but seeing the girl's truly heartbroken expression, he swallowed his words.

On the slightly crowded early morning train, the man asked nothing.

He simply withdrew his gaze silently, moved his burly body towards the aisle, and blocked the arms of the passengers next to him from squeezing in, leaving her a small corner where she wouldn't be disturbed.

He hadn't read the book, but he had a gut feeling that all those high-and-mighty intellectuals in the newspapers were talking nonsense this time.

As it turned out, the foreman's intuition was far more accurate than the arrogance of those columnists.

The silent breakdown that occurred on this early morning train is not an isolated incident; it is merely a small microcosm of the emotional storm that is about to sweep across the UK.

The first readers to open that pure white cover were precisely struck by the same suffocating feeling in every corner of the morning.

It took only a few hours to prepare.

An eerie silence began to settle over the bustling office buildings in the financial district.

Some office workers tuck "Don't Let Me Go" under thick stacks of reports and secretly flip through it when their bosses aren't looking.

Gradually, their page-turning slowed down, their eyes began to redden, their expressions became dazed, and they didn't even notice that the coffee beside them had gone cold.

By lunchtime, this pent-up emotion had finally reached a breaking point.

When the first buyers closed the last page, they were met with neither angry accusations nor passionate resistance.

The book's unfathomable despair and numb compliance, like a sponge soaked in ice water, filled everyone's chest, causing many to completely lose their appetite for the sandwiches on the table.

An overwhelming sense of grief compels them to grasp at something and desperately want to confide in someone.

In the era before online forums, the transmission of such emotions relied on the most primitive physical contact.

Thus, "Don't Let Me Go," still carrying the warmth of its previous reader, was forcibly stuffed into the hands of a colleague.

Landline phones in the city started getting busy frequently, and what came through the receiver were friends' tearful or extremely suppressed, powerful recommendations.

"Don't worry about what the newspapers say, you have to read this book. Go buy it now."

This is the sentence that has been transmitted most frequently on London's telephone lines in the past few hours.

Mars has completely become a sea of ​​fire.

Two o'clock in the afternoon.

The word-of-mouth for "Never Let Me Go" has exploded.

Despite the ridicule and suppression from mainstream newspapers and television programs, genuine praise has already reached a fever pitch among the public.

It raced through university corridors, company break rooms, and crowded subway platforms, smashing the carefully constructed walls of arrogance from the bottom up with the raw, primal power passed down through word of mouth.

In the corridor of the English Department at University College London.

A top student, known for his sharp wit and rational objectivity at seminars, stopped his tutor, who was on his way to a classical literature appreciation class, looking dazed, just as the lunch break ended.

"Professor, have you read Kitahara Iwao's new book?"

"I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. I heard Fleet Street is ripping it off. What happened?"

The female student opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to invoke the deconstructionist or narratological theories she had learned to make a precise evaluation.

But she failed.

The female student opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to invoke her knowledge of deconstructionism or narratology to offer a precise assessment. But she failed.

She took a deep breath, trying her best to make her voice sound steady, but it still trembled slightly as she said, "Never mind what the newspapers say, Professor, go buy a copy and read it for yourself."

"I only read half of it on my commute this morning before I had to get off two stops early."

"I stood in the cold wind on the platform for almost twenty minutes before I could finally catch my breath and walk into the school."

Upon hearing these words, the mentor stopped in his tracks, looking slightly taken aback.

He frowned slightly.

He knew his prized student very well; she was known for her extremely calm and objective textual analysis skills and was definitely not the kind of person who would be easily swayed by cheap, sensational literature.

"Is that exaggerated?"

The mentor looked at her with a mixture of scrutiny and inquiry and said, "I remember you were in my seminar last week criticizing the overly hysterical emotional expression in some contemporary novels."

"Is this book, which Fleet Street calls 'Fourteen Days of Industrial Waste,' really that devastating?"

"It wasn't hysterical."

The female student shook her head, her reddened eyes revealing exhaustion and helplessness. "It didn't utter a single complaint. But that resigned silence—it was utterly despairing."

She paused, as if recalling a scene from the book, and bit her lower lip hard before continuing, "Trust me, Professor."

"After reading it, you will completely forget who wrote it or how many days it took to write it."

"You'll just feel like a piece of your heart has been completely hollowed out."

Seeing the girl's still slightly red eyes, the professor's previous academic arrogance disappeared.

He stared at the student before him in silence for a moment, then nodded slightly, his tone becoming serious: "I understand. Since even you say so—"

The mentor glanced at his watch and made a decision immediately.

"I originally planned to go to the library this afternoon to look up some information."

The instructor switched the lesson plan folder from one hand to the other and said, "Looks like I'll have to go to Shui Shi Bookstore first."

Inside the break room of a large law firm in London's financial district.

The two partners, who usually only talked about high legal fees and heavy case files, were now standing face to face, and the atmosphere was frighteningly somber.

"Have you finished reading?"

"I bought it downstairs at noon. I just saw the part where Tommy and Casey went to Norfolk to look for the 'possible source'."

A brief silence followed.

Outside the window was a bustling London business district, but the two men's eyes were filled with weariness.

"That's too cruel—"

A man loosened his expensive silk tie, his eyes reddening, and said, "What's most unsettling is that kind of submissiveness. Looking at the busy pedestrians downstairs, I feel like everyone—is also queuing up, waiting for it to end."

These kinds of dialogues have nothing to do with "literary techniques", "narrative structure" or "the constraints of Eastern authors".

It is a touch that goes straight to the soul and can instantly destroy an adult's defenses.

After 2 p.m., the wave spread like a dark wildfire through London’s office buildings, university campuses and street cafes.

Nobody is discussing literary techniques.

Everyone's attention was completely captivated by the seemingly gentle yet incredibly cruel vocabulary in the book.

An ordinary "caregiver" has become a cold-blooded observer watching her fellow human beings die.

The noble act of "donation" has turned into a plundering where one's chest is forcibly ripped open.

The “end” that sounds like a relief — represents a young clone having his last organ removed on the operating table.

When these cruel truths, written in a calm tone, along with the despairing ending devoid of any resistance or miracle, crashed down on the reader, everyone who finished the book fell into complete speechlessness for a long time after closing the pages, their very strength drained away.

This primal wave, spreading from person to person and unstoppable by any official reporting, gave rise to the most straightforward and direct market consequence after 5 p.m.: bookstores throughout London were completely packed.

It wasn't just large chain stores like Mizushi that sold out their first batch of stock by noon.

Those independent booksellers who are usually ignored, secondhand bookstores at intersections, and even the meager stock sold by old newspaper stands at train stations, as long as that pure white poster is still hanging in the window, there will definitely be long queues outside.

A dull, cold rain fell in London in the afternoon.

The people in line held up black umbrellas, or simply stood up in the rain with their coat collars turned up, shivering, but stubbornly none of them were willing to leave the line.

When HarperCollins' logistics director received the first order reminder call at 3 p.m., he was still able to remain calm while holding his coffee cup: "The first day of fermentation, the normal peak sales, are all within expectations."

At 3:30 PM, the fifth call.

Four o'clock in the afternoon, the twelfth call.

At 4:30 p.m., all three circuits on his desk started ringing wildly at the same time, and the red lights were flashing so brightly it was unsettling.

The bookstore managers' tone shifted from initially saying "Could you please restock some stock?" to "Please deliver it quickly," and finally to a near-collapse, roaring cry: "Where are your delivery trucks?! There's a line stretching three blocks outside my store! Even the sample books displayed in the window have been bought at an extra cost!!"

HarperCollins' initial massive inventory, which it was absolutely certain would last for three days, was completely wiped out in just six hours.

Not a single one left.

At 5 p.m., the logistics director, sweating profusely, dialed the hotline of the head of the large printing plant, Random.

"Can you print more? We need the stock! Right away!"

The factory manager's voice on the other end of the phone was hoarse and booming: "The production line has been running at overcapacity for thirty-six hours straight. The red light on the cooling system started flashing two hours ago!"

"What does this mean?"

"This means that if I maintain the highest speed, all the equipment in the workshop could be completely paralyzed due to overheating at any time!"

"Then you'll figure something out! Even slowing down a little will do—"

"Don't you understand?"

The factory manager wiped the oil off his face, his voice revealing genuine helplessness: "Even if I max out all the backup power in the factory, even if I have the workers stay by the assembly line 24 hours a day—"

He paused for a moment, listening to the muffled sound of cold rain outside the window.

"The speed at which books are printed cannot keep up with the speed at which this country is falling into grief."

>