By the time the two of them reached their usual spot and pushed open the door of the manga café, the wind chime hanging on the frame gave a crisp little ding-dong.
A wave of warm air rushed out to meet them, mingled with the scent of coffee and tea.
"Welcome back, Kagami-senpai~"
The moment the two of them stepped inside, Tsushima Kagami saw that it was PA-ko working the front today.
A quick glance around showed Shimizu Nayotake, Ijichi Seika, and Hiroi Kikuri were all here too.
It looked like there weren't many customers at the moment, and the other waitress girls were all off to one side chatting.
Clearly, this whole group had been scheduled for the same shift today.
"Kosaka-senpai and Machida-senpai are already over there waiting for you."
PA-ko smiled and pointed toward the seats at their usual spot.
"Over here, over here!"
Sayuri's voice carried over from the booth, brimming with a bouncy sort of excitement.
Today she was wearing a cream-white turtleneck sweater, her hair tied into low twin tails at the back of her head, and she was waving at them furiously.
Like a little flag fluttering in the wind.
Beside her sat Kosaka Akane, Machida Sonoko, and Hiratsuka Shizuka.
Tsushima Kagami and Yukinoshita Shizuku finished greeting PA-ko and then walked over with smiles of their own.
"You two finally made it."
Sayuri patted the empty seats beside her, motioning for them to sit.
Yukinoshita Shizuku slipped off her off-white coat and scarf and set them aside.
Tsushima Kagami followed behind her, draping his own coat over the armrest of the sofa. Just as he was about to sit down, his ears caught a familiar melody.
"This is..."
He froze for a moment.
"It's your song."
Ijichi Seika came walking over with a menu, grinning.
Hiroi Kikuri trailed along beside her.
"The café's been playing these singles from Young Tree's album on loop lately."
"The owner says these songs are just too popular—customers come in and specifically ask to hear them."
Tsushima Kagami laughed too.
"I never expected to hear them everywhere I go."
Yukinoshita Shizuku picked up the hot lemon tea Hiroi Kikuri had brought over and gently blew on it.
"Yesterday at the convenience store, on the walk over just now, and now here."
"I feel like I could practically sing it myself already."
"Isn't it a good song, though?"
Sayuri tilted her head and asked.
Yukinoshita Shizuku took a sip of her tea.
"Even a good song gets old if you hear it too much."
"Well, there's nothing to be done about that."
"It's not our fault Kagami-senpai writes such good songs!"
Hiroi Kikuri looked at Tsushima Kagami with a face full of admiration.
"Senpai's even taught me a lot of brand-new musical concepts lately."
"It feels like I could churn out a whole stream of songs in one go now!"
Ijichi Seika laughed as well.
"I've got no complaints about the melodies."
"But could you maybe do something about those lyrics?"
"They read like an elementary schooler's diary—just a running account of the day!"
Evidently Ijichi Seika and the others had already given Hiroi Kikuri's newly written songs a thorough critique.
"Kagami, do you have any idea how many people in our class asked Shizuku to pass you a love letter?"
Hiratsuka Shizuka chimed in at this point with a smile.
"?"
"How come I didn't receive a single one?"
"Oh my, maybe they got too embarrassed and took them back."
"The coffee really is delicious today."
Only after hearing Tsushima Kagami say that did Hiratsuka Shizuka realize that Shizuku hadn't just failed to hand the letters over—she hadn't even mentioned the matter at all.
Sensing things had gone sideways, she immediately found an excuse and launched into a tactical sip of coffee.
Machida Sonoko set down her coffee cup at this point and looked at Tsushima Kagami with a smile.
"Kagami, do you have any idea how famous you are right now?"
"If you just mean the recent news coverage, then I suppose I have some idea."
Tsushima Kagami, unsure why Machida Sonoko was asking something so obvious, answered a little uncertainly.
Machida Sonoko glanced at Kosaka Akane beside her.
Then the two of them both smiled and pulled several magazines out of the bags at their sides, laying them out on the table one by one.
The first was Fujin Kōron.
Fujin Kōron was a long-established and highly influential women's monthly in Japan, published by Chuokoron-Shinsha (formerly Chuokoron-sha).
This publication wasn't merely a platform for publishing—it was a cultural phenomenon in its own right.
In Tsushima Kagami's past life, Kunio Yanagita, the father of folklore studies, had published an article titled "Fujin Kōron" in 1925, using the magazine as a springboard to explore the shifting social roles and family status of Japanese women at the time.
The literary giant Yukio Mishima had also published several important works in Fujin Kōron, regarding it as a crucial channel for "self-promotion" to the public.
Its main selling points were its intellectualism and cultural depth, its in-depth exploration of social issues.
Everyone looked at the magazine.
The cover bore a portrait of a dignified middle-aged woman, and beside it the large headline was printed in striking red type.
[The Anguish of Japanese Women's Status—An Exclusive Interview with Author Tsushima Kagami].
The second was Shūkan Josei.
This was a veteran women's weekly known for its journalistic sharpness, entertainment value, and in-depth social reporting.
It was aimed mainly at women over thirty, especially housewives and working mothers.
Even so, when it came to certain hard-hitting social reports it took a clear political stance and dared to criticize current affairs.
The cover was printed with even larger type.
[Women Hold Up Half the Sky vs. Building a Nation on the Sex Industry—Why Are the Fates of Women in Two Countries So Different?]
The third was Josei Jishin.
Josei Jishin was Japan's very first women's weekly magazine, styling itself "the nation's weekly."
Together with Shūkan Josei, it was known as one of Japan's two great women's weeklies.
Aside from also giving in-depth attention to social current affairs, its main focus was on the everyday lives of ordinary women.
This one's cover left Tsushima Kagami truly stunned.
Compared to the covers of the previous two, this cover was actually a photo of him from when he'd been interviewed.
Beside the photo, in ornate script, was written:
[The National Boyfriend of 60 Million Women—Tsushima Kagami, Speaking Out for Women Everywhere!]
"When did all this even happen?"
Tsushima Kagami looked at these women's magazines with their exaggerated headlines and asked.
"They literally say it's an exclusive interview with you."
"And you seriously don't know when it happened?"
Kosaka Akane also looked at Tsushima Kagami with a face full of astonishment.
At this point Yukinoshita Shizuku spoke up from the side.
"It was the day before your Danchi-zuma went on sale in Shinchō."
Tsushima Kagami thought it over—sure enough, there had been several interviews arranged by Shinchōsha that day.
But because there had been so many interviews from major news outlets lately, he hadn't even bothered to ask which outlet each one was from.
Interviews were generally arranged through Shinchōsha, and any disreputable media or pointless interviews were all screened out by Shinchōsha.
The ones that made it through were basically all influential and relatively friendly press outlets.
Back then, when these interviewing reporters learned that Tsushima Kagami had a brand-new short story about to be published, they all read through it beforehand before organizing fresh interview topics.
At the time, one reporter, after finishing it, asked Tsushima Kagami how he viewed the status of contemporary women.
Tsushima Kagami didn't give a direct answer.
Instead, this was how he replied.
[In this land where flowers of evil bloom, no one will ever tell you what actually happened. They'll only let you hate blindly, fear for no reason, live in a muddled daze, and die in confused obscurity.
Take the social status of our vast female population, for example.
Over in the country next door, during their founding era, women engaged in the same heavy physical, constructive labor as men—agriculture, industry—refusing to fall behind the men and taking pride in it, and they were praised by the great figures next door as holding up half the sky.
Now let's take a look at what our own country did during its reconstruction era.
They sent vast numbers of women off to work in the sex industry, to service American GIs.
As shameful as this was, our nation in its early days really did rely on these sex-trade industries to build and develop so rapidly.
You could say the nation owes a debt to these women of the sex trade.
But even afterward, during the economic upswing of the bubble era, women's rights saw hardly any improvement—if anything, the sex industry only grew more prosperous.
Then, once the bubble burst and the economy declined, we faced mass unemployment, falling wages, and rising prices.
Many husbands' salaries could no longer sustain household expenses as they once had.
And yet, in such an environment, discrimination against women in the workplace persisted, with men feeling that letting their wives return to work would be a disgrace to themselves.
Is this what they call striving to revitalize the economy?
Are they once again trying to push more women from respectable families below the poverty line, forcing them to "voluntarily" enter the sex trade in order to revive our nation's economy?
Have some shame!
We loudly proclaim ourselves a people of shame culture, yet every single administration is the most shameless of all—and they even want the masses to be as shameless as they are.
Are the women of our nation simply born inferior, lesser than those of other countries?
I certainly don't think so!
This can't help but plunge me into deep thought: what on earth is wrong with this country? Something must be wrong with the system itself!]
He'd never imagined those words would be quoted verbatim.
Still less had he imagined they'd be reinterpreted in a context like this.
Tsushima Kagami bowed his head and leafed through the magazines.
He opened up that copy of Fujin Kōron and found one of the commentary pieces inside.
The author was a sociology professor from the University of Tokyo, and the article was titled "The Tsushima Kagami Phenomenon: When Literature Intervenes in Society."
In the article, he said that Tsushima Kagami's pen was a scalpel that laid open society's festering sores.
[Danchi-zuma is not merely a novel—it is a diagnostic report on society.]
[With cold, austere brushstrokes, Dassai-ya-sensei peels back that seemingly harmonious veil in the Japanese family structure, exposing the cage beneath it, woven together by gender discrimination, economic oppression, and social institutions.
His work leaves readers no room to escape—they can only face head-on those truths that have been deliberately ignored!]
He then opened another one—a column in Shūkan Josei—which read:
[With a man's pen, Dassai-ya-sensei has written out women's pain.]
It said that Tsushima Kagami's work made many Japanese women feel seen for the very first time, and hailed him as the first great male author to speak out for the women of Japan.
In no time at all, Tsushima Kagami had become an idol to all the wives and single women of Japan.
"I had no idea the ones interviewing me back then were women's magazines."
Tsushima Kagami set the magazines down, feeling a little sheepish inside.
He genuinely hadn't paid any attention to it—he hadn't even known who was interviewing him at the time.
He'd simply wanted to give the current government a bit of a jab.
Just like they said in the web novels of his past life: once you've transmigrated and become a literary master, can you even call yourself one if you don't dabble in some political commentary?
He never expected to receive so much praise.
It really was praise he didn't deserve.
"And that's not all."
Machida Sonoko corrected him.
"The readership of Fujin Kōron, Shūkan Josei, and Josei Jishin isn't only women—there are also plenty of male intellectuals who follow social issues."
"Kagami's already a cross-circle celebrity now."
"Cross-circle?"
Sayuri blinked; the term was a bit novel to her.
"It means he's crossed over from the literary circle into the social-issues circle."
Machida Sonoko explained.
"And the entertainment circle too!"
Hiroi Kikuri suddenly piped up from the side.
"Then doesn't that mean everyone from young girls to married women are Kagami's fans?"
Sayuri suddenly asked.
"And that's not all."
"Before long, every woman in the country might just end up his fan."
Kosaka Akane laughed from the side as well.
"Roughly how many of our country's total population are women?"
Hiratsuka Shizuka suddenly asked.
"About 60 million, I think?"
"We just happened to cover it in our textbook the other day."
Ijichi Seika thought it over and said.
Then everyone looked at Tsushima Kagami and laughed in unison.
"Kagami's now the dream boyfriend of 60 million women."
"How does it feel to have that many girlfriends?"
Tsushima Kagami thought about it.
His expression turned rather subtle.
Why do I suddenly find myself thinking of the shooter-game dream of 300 million mouse-clickers?
____
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