Malice

Thinking back on it, I realize it was love at first sight. The moment I saw her, I felt something akin to inspiration. Almost a kind of déjà vu. It was as though I were meeting someone I’d always been meant to meet. For a moment I just stared at her, unable to speak.

Still, it was lucky for him that he became a bestselling author soon after that, or I suspect that he wouldn’t have been able to make his mortgage payments.

Well, you see, Mr. Nonoguchi always wanted to be a writer, and his childhood friend beat him to it. But he couldn’t just ignore what his friend was doing. Of course he thought, ‘What’s so great about these? I could write better.’”

The Osamu Nonoguchi that I knew was prideful, confident in his abilities. I couldn’t conceive of him copying so much of someone else’s work, even in the attempt to become a better writer.

The look in his eyes made me flinch, even though my brain was off wondering about completely unrelated things, such as why this man loved saying personally all the time.

I was desperately trying to remain calm, when in fact my heart was racing so fast, I thought I might pass out at any moment.

Therein lies Nonoguchi’s aim: to create a fictional account of the events in order to divert suspicion from himself.

I had no idea what that had to do with anything. Maybe it was just another example of the odd way that detectives saw the world.

I knew there was no point in thinking about it, yet the regret was hard to keep down

“It wasn’t easy, was it? I can’t say whether it was bad luck, a lack of talent, or a mix of both, but you never realized your dream. When your body began to fall apart around you, you realized that you never would.