Eight years ago I took a week off of work and headed to Tokyo Big Sight, Japan. There is no other reason that I would visit Japan than for Comiket of course. It was a chance to cool off my mind in the excruciating heat and sweat of the crowds of the festival held under those upside down pyramidal structures.
Of course I didn’t take any of my office friends with me, to what was ostensibly a trip to buy some foreign pornographic drawings that I didn’t even know whether I would be allowed to take through customs back to Scotland.
This fleeting desire led me to all sorts of venues, first I visited the maid cafes, in the name of gaining inspiration of course, underground idol concerts, and then the “thin book” stores. Finding these places did not come easy, and without a contact which I had previously formed it would have been impossible. Under the guise of stemming the causes of Japan’s decline the government had gone for the easy peripheral issues like anime because that’s always easier than tackling the real material issues.
Akiba was not what it used to be, not that I was ever young enough to witness it in its full glory, but there was still a fire burning in those middle-aged men who silently, almost religiously, dutifully browsed the shelves and aisles of doujinshi and figurines. I felt together with them even if we did not even glance at each other.
Comiket had miraculously survived the cultural revolution, perhaps to appeal to foreigners like me to visit Japan and spend money or perhaps due to the cleverness and connections of the organisers…
For the duration of my trip, I stayed in a manga cafe in Akiba, so as to double my chances of emptying my pockets on buying anime and eroge paraphernalia that I did not need with money that I did not have. Back then I still had the aspirations to be some kind of artist, it didn’t even matter what kind of art it was that I made, I just wanted to embrace the world through the act of creation. To that end I spent the day outside spending my money irresponsibly but at night in a manga cafe, inside that cubicle, where I felt like I had more privacy than in that open office floor at work, with nothing but my computer and time on hand I worked on a novel called Albion Online. I cut it close and was able to finish writing it before the printing date. Translators and localisers were a thing of the past thanks to AI, so getting my novel translated was not a big deal.
It was my first novel and it was about an alien from another planet coming to save humanity from a complacent death in pleasure machines, by bringing a message of hope and glory to the disaffected young men, only to die as a victim of his own excess and fame. I wanted to tell people not to wait for some kind of messiah, false or otherwise, to save them. I published it online on a popular Japanese novel sharing platform hoping to get some feedback on how to improve it. If I didn’t get any readers at all I would have given up just like in my previous artistic endeavours. There was just one problem and that was that I had a single reader who had left at least a single comment on every chapter urging me to finish the story whereas I felt like stopping the whole endeavour.
Here is an exchange I had with him when I was about to give up half-way:
LordProtector: “Come on, you have got to finish this novel. After all, it’s going to change the world. Besides, a man has got to finish what he started.”
RRaynar: “Are you mocking me?”
LordProtector: “No, I just believe in your potential. The writing needs some work although I understand that you’re taking inspiration from actual light novels. For example…”
At first I thought it was just a troll but all of the feedback he gave was genuine, so even if he most likely was just some dirty NEET who had so much time on his hands that he could be my editor for free, it still meant that he, for some reason, believed in my potential.
Comiket came, and as expected I was only able to sell thirteen copies of the hundred I printed by the second day. Better than nothing, I just hoped that those who had bought my books would not feel like it was a waste of money afterwards.
“Don’t let it get to you,” said Shigeru Nanami, my contact in Japan who allowed me to get an actual booth at Comiket. “Remember that books sell thanks to their illustrations. You didn’t do bad for a first timer.”
It’s true, I could only afford a cheap illustrator from the Philippines with my money but I felt like they had a great job so I couldn’t really blame them.
Nanami was a very rational guy who had been a professional light novel author when artificial intelligence, which could write whole novels in a fraction of second, started to replace human writers. As a rational guy, he stopped writing novels and instead started working on his own AI rather than complaining about inevitable change like many others in his profession did. Now writing novels was just something for hobbyists like me. I was a fan of his novels.
“I must say seeing you getting excited when someone passes by and disappointed when they don’t buy a book from you has reignited some memories in me.”
“It’s strange hearing you talk about the good old days when you are younger than me.”
“Haha that’s true. I also have no idea what it’s like growing up in Britain.”
“You are not missing out on much. It’s pretty horrible, except for being able to smoke and drink early.”
“Eh-? That sounds much more fun than being forced to study till late in the afternoon though.”
Nanami had his own booth to attend, advertising his AI-powered fantasy-mecha video game. However, just as he was about to leave and join his team, a customer arrived at my booth.
What caught our attention was how well dressed he was but also that he seemed to have a bodyguard with him, an especially well-shaped beautiful girl dressed in a suit with an earpiece in her ear and wearing sunglasses.
Was this Cosplay?
The European man in his fifties looked tired and boiled from the heat but he didn’t even bother unbuttoning a single button on his suit.
He picked up one of the volumes from my booth and nodded to himself.
“Can I shake hands with the author?”
Nanami turned towards me. We shook hands.
“Can’t you recognise me, R-Raynar?”
“LordProtector?”
“Yes, although that’s not my real name. Do you keep up with British politics?”
“I would say, yes I do but what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, my name is Chamberlain, I am the Minister for Agriculture in His Majesty’s government. No, no, you don’t need to apologise, I am only the Minister for Agriculture now but rest assured that in the not too distant future we shall meet each other again somewhere new. How much do these volumes of Albion Online cost?”
“5200￥”
“Ha, inflation has ruined this country since I last visited it. Helen, come, I am buying all of these volumes, unless of course Mr Raynar here objects to it.”
Helen struggled to carry all of the books and trailed behind the man she was supposed to guard.
I didn’t have anything else to sell, so this was an unexpected opportunity to do some shopping of my own but before that…
“What the hell was that about, did you know him?”
“Only on Narou, you know the novel-writing site.”
“Raphael, your novel was good but not that good, that guy must have a screw loose in his head or want something else from you. I’d say you should be careful.”
Nanami was the only other person that I was aware of, other than Chamberlain, to have read my novel.
Shortly after Comiket, I returned to Scotland, and my online account on the writing platform was banned for “breaking the TOS,” and I stopped writing novels as I was too busy with work and my time consuming hobbies anyway to do something as painful as writing another novel. Gradually, I started to earn money for my sales work. Sales was one of the things which was not done by AI because people trusted other people more than AI, in any case my bank account grew fatter and my desire to write novels or to “embrace the world” disappeared.
