Tokyo Literary Masters: Starting from the Late 1980s

At 12:30 noon, at a private high school in Yoyogi.

The moment the lunch break bell rang, the classroom of Grade 11 (B) erupted in chaos.

In the past, when the girls got together, they would always talk about Hikaru Genji or Shizuka Kudo, but today, everyone's eyes were focused on the black-covered novel in the hands of class president Yumi.

This is the prize she snatched after skipping class early in the morning to queue up.

"Hey, Yumi, let me take a look! Just one glance!"

"No, I haven't finished watching it yet! I just saw Asakawa watching that videotape in the cabin..."

In this closed campus society, "The Ring" quickly transformed into a kind of social currency.

The book's "death rule" of "having to copy the videotape to someone else within a week" has been creatively applied by students to real life: after reading the book, they must lend it to someone else.

In the corner, a boy was trembling as he read a book he had borrowed from someone else.

...A woman wearing an old-fashioned kimono appears in the picture, combing her hair in front of a mirror.

She was in the mirror, but I couldn't see her face clearly; all I could see was her abnormally long, black hair.

Suddenly, the woman in the mirror stopped combing her hair and slowly, very slowly, turned her head... Her movements were extremely stiff, like a doll with rusty joints.

Her thick black hair completely obscured her face, but for some reason, you could sense that there was a pair of inhuman eyes behind her hair, staring intently at you outside the screen.

The words seemed to transform into images, seeping into the boy's mind.

The boy swallowed hard, his fingers stiffly turning the page.

...At the end of the scene, a line of text flickered in and out: "[If you don't want to die, do as I say. You must do it within seven days...]"

However, the sound that followed was drowned out by a huge electrical noise, and the method to break the curse was erased.

Noisy!

The loudspeaker in the classroom suddenly emitted a sharp electrical hum due to a poor signal connection.

"ah!!!"

The boy screamed as if he had been electrocuted, and the book in his hand flew out with a thud, hitting the blackboard.

The whole class fell silent for a second.

Immediately, a burst of laughter, a mixture of fear and excitement, erupted in the classroom.

"Hey, isn't Kitahara Iwa a devil?"

The boy picked up the book, his face pale, and said, "Now I feel like I'll pee my pants whenever I hear the static on the radio."

18:15, JR Chuo Line, evening rush hour.

The crowded tram car was filled with the smells of tired sweat and damp rain.

Tanaka is an ordinary office worker, holding onto the handrail and reading "The Ring" in the dim light of the train carriage.

He maintained this posture and started reading from the moment he boarded the train, so engrossed in his reading that he forgot to change trains.

In his opinion, the book was too strange.

It's unlike those horror novels that depict ghosts in old houses.

The protagonist of this book is a journalist, and the whole story reads like a rigorous investigative report.

At that moment, he was reading the suffocating moment when the protagonist, Asakawa, discovered he only had seven days to live:

Asakawa glanced at his watch subconsciously.

The date displayed is September 18th.

There are three days left until the deadline for death.

If the puzzle is not solved, death will arrive precisely at this time, like a pre-set alarm clock.

The living room was deathly silent.

The air became thick and cold, as if an invisible hand was slowly tightening and gripping his neck.

Just then...

Ring ring ring!!

The phone at home suddenly rang.

The monotonous, mechanical electronic ringtone sounded particularly jarring in the dead of night, like a needle piercing the eardrum...

The oppressive feeling of the calendar being torn away day by day and the countdown to death drawing ever closer made Tanaka's breathing become rapid.

The noisy sounds of rain and railings inside the carriage seemed to disappear, leaving only the piercing ringing of the telephone in his world.

Beep—beep—beep—!

Just as this nerve was stretched to its limit, in the deathly silent carriage, Tanaka's pager suddenly burst out with a sharp, piercing beep.

In a daze, the chilling telephone ringing in the book strangely overlapped with the buzzing of pagers in reality, transforming into a death knell from hell.

"Whoa!!"

Tanaka was so frightened that he felt a chill run through his body, as if it exploded from his very bones.

He nearly dropped his briefcase and it hit the ground. His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst his chest, and a fine layer of cold sweat instantly appeared on his forehead.

Seeing Tanaka's appearance, the surrounding passengers all looked at him in astonishment, but he felt like a drowning person who had just escaped death, gasping for breath.

Feeling the strange looks from the other passengers, Tanaka suddenly realized that it was just a normal, caring message from his wife.

"Damn Kitahara Iwa..."

Tanaka trembled as he turned off the pager, gasping for breath, his face pale: "This isn't a novel, it's downright mental torture for modern people."

21:00 PM, Shinjuku, Golden Street Izakaya.

In the narrow, smoky bar sat several traditional mystery and horror novelists who had been active in the literary world for many years.

On the counter, there was a copy of The Ring, a book whose edges were curled from being read so many times.

"We've lost completely."

A seasoned writer with a thick beard took a big gulp of cheap sake, his voice hoarse and full of frustration.

"Mr. Watanabe, isn't this just a scary piece of stuff that became popular through marketing?"

The younger colleague next to him tried to comfort him.

"You don't know anything!"

The bearded writer slammed his glass on the table, his finger trembling slightly as he pointed at the book: "You only see the 'scary' aspect, but didn't you see what he was doing? He's redefining horror!"

He turned to a page in the book and pointed to a passage describing the principles of videotapes: "In the past, when we wrote about horror, we wrote about the 'extraordinary,' about deep mountains and forests, about ancient curses."

"But look at this part... He interprets 'resentment' as 'writing,' attaching 'curse' to a videotape, the most ordinary industrial product."

"He writes about everyday life!"

"Videotapes, televisions, telephones... he turned the most familiar things around us into murder weapons."

"This fear is unavoidable, because you'll watch TV when you get home and answer the phone when you go out!"

The writer slumped onto the table, gazing at the cold rain outside the window, and sighed, "We're still writing about haunted houses, and this twenty-year-old newcomer has already written about something that can kill."

"I never imagined that starting today, Japanese horror novels would be about to undergo a major transformation."

at the same time.

Sales Department, Shincho-sha Building.

The once orderly office now resembles a battlefield that has just been bombed.

The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and the agitated smell of sweat. Dozens of landline phones rang incessantly, creating a huge, ear-splitting sound.

"Yes! This is Sales Department 2 of Shincho-sha! I'm so sorry!"

"What?! Kinokuniya Shinjuku store ordered an additional 3,000 copies? Impossible! We don't even have a single copy left in the warehouse!"

"The bookstores in Saitama? Stop yelling! We're already urging the printing plant!"

The bookstore salespeople, their ties askew, were sweating profusely as they shouted into microphones, their pens frantically scribbling numbers on order forms, even tearing the paper in the process.

Machida stumbled into the editor-in-chief's office, clutching a newly printed statistics sheet.

Although he had dark circles under his eyes, his eyes were frighteningly bright, as if they were burning with two flames.

"Editor-in-chief! The statistics are in!"

Machida's voice cracked with excitement: "It exploded! It completely exploded!"

Editor-in-Chief Sato put down his teacup, glanced at the numbers on the report, and his pupils suddenly contracted.

"The first printing was 30,000 copies..."

Machida swallowed hard and said with difficulty, "Just now, everything was sold out! Not only the bookstore's inventory, but also our inventory through Tohan and Nihonpan channels was wiped out!"

"The current situation is that all the major bookstores in Tokyo are protesting to us, saying that customers are banging on the counter with money, demanding books!"

"Even the printing factory that had to shut down due to the paranormal incident at the printing plant just now had its manager call to beg for mercy."

Machida took a deep breath, a twisted, ecstatic smile spreading across his face: "He said that as long as we give him the orders, even if the workers are so scared they wet their pants, he'll tie them to the printing press and print them for us!"

Editor-in-Chief Sato stared at the bright red "Inventory: 0," paused for two seconds, then abruptly stood up, the chair scraping against the floor with a screeching sound.

"Tell the printing factory to give me three shifts! The machines must keep running, and the people must keep working!"

Editor-in-Chief Sato waved his hand and shouted sharply, "Print more! Print an additional 50,000... no, 80,000 copies immediately!"