“Get to bed.”
He was still a bit tipsy, so he decided to take a shower instead of a bath. As the hot spray struck him, he wondered, had she read his mind? Just as she’d said, Kaguya meant more to him than just a “pretty waitress.” Of course he wasn’t in love, nor did he seriously want to take her to bed. He’d just wanted to beat Majime. If Kaguya had chosen him over Majime, his sense of inferiority might have eased. A crazy dream, that’s all it was. He hadn’t really believed it might come true, hadn’t done anything to make it happen, either.
Nishioka had his pride. Unable to get deeply involved in much of anything, and incapable of getting a satisfactory evaluation at work, he was constantly comparing himself with others and feeling he fell short. He didn’t want anyone to know that side of him. Not even Remi, who knew all there was to know about how disgracefully lackadaisical he was. His useless pride had become so swollen that the expression “caring nothing for appearances” could never, ever apply to him.
He rubbed hair restorer into his scalp as a precaution and carefully towel-dried it before heading to the bedroom. Remi lay stretched out on the far side of the smallish double bed, her eyes already closed.
Nishioka crawled into the empty space and let out a sigh. Sleeping in the same bed with Remi was a little cramped, but he didn’t really mind. He switched off the light on the nightstand. After a moment his eyes grew used to the darkness, and with just the light from the streetlight seeping through the space between the curtains, he could see into the corners of the ceiling. Blue night shadows, in contrasting shades of light and dark.
“If something’s bothering you, you can tell me, you know.”
He’d thought she was long asleep. He turned to face her. Her eyes were still closed.
“If I know you, you’re just pretending nothing’s wrong out of silly pride.”
Sheesh. Who do you think you are, my girlfriend? Or what, you’re trying to be my mother or my big sister or something? You know what you are? You’re somebody I have sex with. Period.
He was frustrated beyond measure. The words rose in his throat, and he was on the verge of spitting them out when for some reason he looked at her sleepy, fleshy expression as she lay beside him halfway dreaming. He found himself stroking her hair.
“Do I seem that down?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Want me to show you I’m not?”
“Turkey.”
She thrust out an arm to distance herself from him, smiling as if tickled. Before he knew it, he was smiling, too. He pulled her head close, a bit roughly, and cradled it in his arms. He buried his nose in her soft hair and sighed again. This time it was more like a long, deep breath.
Even as they fell into their separate slumbers, they could hear each other’s hearts beating.
Revision of Gembu Student’s Dictionary of Japanese was in full swing.
Even after steering a dictionary safely through to publication, Professor Matsumoto never let down his guard. “That’s the real starting point,” he liked to say. Day by day he busied himself making new file cards filled with bothersome turns of phrase or young people’s slang. Revision started with a review of those cards. Which ones were suitable for inclusion in the revised edition of the Student’s Dictionary? And which words included in the current edition had to be taken out? Removing a word from a dictionary was more unnerving than adding a new one. Even if a word was seldom used and all but obsolete, there still might be people who wanted to look up its meaning.
They held cautious deliberations. Professor Matsumoto and Majime made most of the judgment calls on which words to keep or drop. Readers’ comments and requests were also taken into consideration. Dictionary users’ opinions were a particularly valuable tool for improvement. After all, dictionaries aren’t made only by editors-in-chief, contributors, and editorial staff. They are perfected over a long period of time using the collected wisdom of readers.
Adding or deleting entry words often necessitated adjusting the word count in surrounding entries. Definitions had to fit neatly on the page, with a minimum of empty space. Sometimes fine adjustments had to be made over several pages to fit everything in as attractively and readably as possible.
Some words referred the user to another entry, but if that second entry had been deleted in the revised edition, the user would be left high and dry. Such a calamity would seriously damage the dictionary’s trustworthiness, so careful checks were made to ensure that revisions didn’t give rise to contradictions or discrepancies. Everyone pitched in on this task, not just the professor and Majime, and they were joined by proofreaders from inside and outside the company. Day after day was spent reviewing the vast number of galleys, red pencils at the ready.
The appropriateness of usage examples for new entry words also had to be verified. Twenty graduate students in humanities courses, students of Japanese language and literature, were hired as part-time assistants. The students’ job was to make sure all the quotations were accurate and all the examples of usage appropriate. Their schedules weren’t set. They could come and go as they pleased, whenever they could spare time from their studies, punching time cards to document their hours worked. They sat at a large desk that had been brought into the office and checked examples with materials on the shelves behind them. Mrs. Sasaki was in charge of overseeing reference materials and assigning work to the part-timers, and Araki oversaw what they did.
The office was suddenly full of life and activity, but for Nishioka time hung heavy. He was leaving in the spring to join the advertising department. Even if he became involved in the revision process, he would have to leave before it was finished, so he felt awkward and hesitant about jumping in.
Instead, he decided to rearrange the office. He was the one who brought in the large desk for the students, lugging it from the storage room on the first floor. Actually, since it was too heavy for him alone, he had enlisted the custodian’s help. He also reorganized the reference room and brought newly empty shelves into the office, where they were useful for storing the voluminous galleys.
In the course of moving all that furniture, the door to the office got in the way. It was an antique door with brass knobs, but Nishioka decided it had to go. He borrowed a screwdriver from the custodian’s room and removed the hinges. The wood beneath was fresh and lustrous, unaffected by the passage of time.
“How old is the annex?” Nishioka asked Araki.