The president spoke like a preacher—his speeches resembled sermons. It was a blatant attempt to gaslight Rintaro, to throw his chain of thought out of whack. However, Sayo’s grip on his arm was firm, as if to offer support.
As the president quietly chuckled to himself, Rintaro thought furiously.
He thought and thought, and then finally stepped forward. The president’s laughter and his thick cigarette smoke had formed a kind of fog in the air, but Rintaro seemed to cut his way through the fog. He didn’t falter.
“It’s true that Natsuki Books isn’t your average secondhand bookshop.”
Rintaro looked at his formidable adversary behind his grand desk.
“We don’t have many customers and we don’t sell that many books. But it’s a very special place.”
“Yes, there’s a word for that—despair,” said the president, shaking his head. “And it’s the perfect word for my current state of mind. Really, your personal sentiments are of no concern to me.”
“But it’s not personal. Every single customer who came in the door felt the same way I do. That little used bookshop was filled with my grandfather’s thoughts and feelings—anyone who stepped over the threshold could feel them. And that’s what made it special.”
“Well, that’s vague. Nobody’s going to be convinced by an abstract argument like that. Would you mind being a bit more specific about your grandfather’s thoughts and feelings?”
“I don’t need to explain it to you. I know—because I’m just like you.”
Rintaro’s words, delivered very quietly, had the power to stop the president in his tracks. He didn’t move again for a while. The plume of smoke that rose from between his fingers gradually thinned then finally petered out.
Eventually he narrowed his eyes slightly and opened his mouth.
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“That’s another lie.”
The president’s eyebrows twitched.
“You said just now that books are expendable goods. You claimed your job is impossible to do if you love books.”
“That’s correct.”
“That’s a lie.”
Rintaro’s voice was blunt.
A line of ash fell from the president’s cigarette.
“You said it just now: books need to metamorphose if they are to survive. If you really just saw books as expendable goods, you would never have said that.”
“Humph. That’s a questionable line of reasoning.”
“It’s all about the nuances. If you really think of books as nothing but scraps of paper, then you ought to quit this job. But I hear from you that you are committed to changing the form of books so they will survive. That means you like books. That’s why you’re still sitting there. Just like my grandpa . . .”
Rintaro’s voice trailed off into a heavy silence. The room remained silent apart from the occasional swish of a book falling past the window. But there were fewer than before.
The president regarded Rintaro awhile, then spun his chair around to observe the bleak landscape beyond the windows.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter what I think—we have to face reality. Books are getting thinner and thinner, and people are flocking to them. And then books need to respond to the demands of the flocks. No one can stop the cycle. And isn’t Natsuki Books proof of this? No matter how special or welcoming the atmosphere, the number of customers won’t go up. Am I wrong?”
“Not true!”