But I answered the bouncing book girl in my coldest tone.

"Someone came to my house to get me and brought me here by force."

"What? What? You didn't rush here after getting my telegram? And why are you acting so grumpy when we're seeing each other after so long? Aren't you happy to see the president you respect so much?"

She tugged repeatedly on my arm, as if making sure that of course you are! You could shout at the setting sun any second now you're so moved by all this.

My look grew even more bitter.

"Oh yes, I got your telegram."

A commemorative telegram for birthdays and anniversaries, with pressed flowers pasted onto it at that.

The August holiday of Obon was over, and summer break had been heading toward its latter half with a peaceful morning. I was in the air-conditioned living room of my house playing with my elementary schoolaged little sister, just relaxing.

Ah, how peaceful things were without a club president always saying crazy things.

I was feeling that keenly as a voice- "Mr. Inoooooue, telegraaaaam!"

-sounded at the front door.

My mother was busy with housework so I answered it for her. The telegram was decorated with a vivid pressed flower, and the name it showed was mine.

My birthday...was still a ways off.

The instant I opened it, despite my suspicion, I felt my head ache.

I've been abducted by a bad person.

Bring a week's change of clothes and homework and come save me soon.

Tohko It made me light-headed, and I stumbled.

Tohko...what are you doing? Summer break is an important time for students taking their college exams.

And there's no address so I don't even know where you are. How am I supposed to go save you?

When I pointed that out...

"Oh? Really?" Tohko said in an offhand voice. "But if we have the bond of the book club, your spirit should have picked up on that much at least."

"The book club isn't a psychic fan club, so no, actually. Besides, even if there'd been an address, I would have ignored it."

"Meanie!"

Tohko turned a disapproving eye on me that seemed to suggest I was an ungrateful, coldhearted snake.

Of course, she had just about no grounds to criticize me. If I'd gone to save her because I'd gotten a telegram with a pressed flower on it telling me to, that would be insane. Plus, thinking back over all the messes Tohko had gotten me involved in up till now, I knew that staying home to help my little sister learn homework techniques was the right choice.

So then why had I come to this fishy-looking mansion in the middle of the mountains carrying a travel bag, you might ask. Because twenty minutes after I received the telegram, a car came to pick me up.

It was hot enough to set off heat waves, but without even a drop of sweat, dressed to the nines in a well-tailored suit, Takamizawa had greeted my mother, saying, "I will take responsibility for your son. Allow me to take him into my charge," with a truly serene and affable smile.

Totally won over, my mother said, "So my boy made friends with someone he can go visit and even stay the night!" and she packed a bag with my things and elatedly sent me off.

Unable to give much resistance, I was loaded into a sparkling limousine.

"Why do you always get me involved? Let me spend my summer break in peace at least."

Tohko glared at me with tears in her eyes at my indignation.

"You're awful! Awful! You're the only underclassman I have in the book club, so what else can I do?"

She was right. There were no members in the Seijoh Academy book club but me and Tohko. In which case, it was bizarre that the club still existed. But no, the real problem was that Tohko had forced me to join the club, and I had come this far without quitting.

Just then Maki appeared.

Her long, gorgeous brown hair was tied back messily. She wore a pair of pants with a loose, shimmery shirt and over that a simple work apron. She was grinning.

"Come in, Konoha. Welcome."

"Actually, this is kind of a problem."

Maki Himekura, the granddaughter of the school's director who was known as the Princess to the other students, let my sarcasm wash over her unnoticed and gave me an elaborate shrug of her shoulders.

"Oh. Well, Tohko was throwing a tantrum and said, 'If you don't bring Konoha here, I'm leaving!' And how could I, who loves Tohko with all of my heart, ignore her demands?"

Tohko turned bright red and argued.

"If you love me, how can you abduct me and hold me prisoner? Or make me dress up in humiliating outfits every day while circling around, leering."

"That's the price for all the information I've funneled to you up till now. You said you would rather die than model nude, so I let you split up your payments and everything. Or are you going to pay me back in a lump sum now? If you just take off everything you're wearing and stand still for a second, your balance will be zero before you know it."

"Urk..."

Tohko's voice died in her throat as Maki put a taunting arm around her shoulder and drew her closer.

"We've still got today's payment to do. I called Konoha for you, so focus on your work..."

"Eek! Maki, let go of me! Konoha, help!"

"All right, time to resign yourself to it. Oh, Sayo. Will you show Konoha to his room? He's a very important guest, so be polite."

Maki disappeared down a hallway, dragging Tohko with her, though she kept up her pointless struggle.

"...I can take your bag. Your room is this way, sir."

A hand reached out from beside me and took hold of my bag.

"It's you-"

It was the tiny maid I'd seen in the yard. She took my bag from me with a cold expression and walked off briskly.

"Uh, what about my shoes?"

"There's no need to remove them."

"I can carry my bag; don't worry about it."

"This is my job."

Despite how young she looked, her speech was formal. Or more like, it sounded as if she disliked me.

I hunched up my shoulders and followed after her.

Inside, the house was old and dark, just like the outside. The ceiling was high, and there were stairs laid with red carpet in the front hall. While we were climbing, I suddenly felt eyes on me, and when I turned around, I met several gazes.

Probably the people who worked in the mansion. A mature man in a black butler's suit, a middle-aged woman who looked like a housekeeper with an apron on over her kimono, an old man dressed in work clothes who looked like a gardener, and a young man wearing a chef's jacket. The four of them were looking up at me from behind doors or the edges of hallways, as if wary of me.

When my steps came to a startled halt, they hurriedly bowed their heads and said, "Welcome" or "We look forward to having you with us." Every one of them looked pale, and they were clearly tense.

Was there a reason for that?

Feeling unsettled, my spine thrumming, I was guided to a room on the second floor.

"You may use this room."

She really was brusque. Her face stayed taut and she didn't smile.

"Um, what's your name?"

"Uotani."

"Maki called you Sayo just now."

"Sayo is my first name. Why do you ask?"

She turned cold eyes on me that all but asked, "What does my name have to do with you?"

"N-no reason. Have you always worked in this house?"

"It's a part-time job during summer break."

"I see. That's pretty impressive for a little girl like you."

"I'm in middle school. I'm not a little girl."

"What? Middle school?! What year are you?"

"First-year."

I'd been convinced she was in elementary school!

But hey, wasn't it weird for a first-year middle schooler to be working as a maid? This wasn't the turn of the century. Maybe they just didn't have enough people to do the work. Though as far as I'd seen in the hall, they had more people than they needed... Or maybe at the opulent villa of a family like the Himekuras, they needed that many servants.

"Uotani, was that you praying at that little shrine before?"

"...What of it?"

There were barbs in her voice.

"When you saw me, you were surprised, but why? And the other people were too."

"...A student coming from Tokyo is unusual, that's all. This is the country. I'm sure everyone would do the same."

Was that really the reason? I wasn't convinced. But Uotani turned her face sharply away.

"Please make yourself comfortable until dinner," she said with a brusque whisper and left the room.

Uotani reminded me of my classmate Kotobuki. Something about the curt way she said things. In which case, maybe Uotani really did hate me.

As I was putting my luggage in order, thinking about things like that, Tohko came in on wobbly steps.

"Konohaaaa, I'm hungryyy," she appealed to me, slumping and burying her face in the bed, like a camel that had collapsed in the desert. "Write me somethiiiiing, write it, write it, write iiiiiiit. Nooooow. I was just about to eat Manon Lescaut by the Abbe Prevost in the clubroom when Maki burst in out of nowhere and kidnapped meee.

"I dropped my book, so I couldn't bring it with me. Ahhh, the love story of the sprite-like, capricious, adorable Manon and purehearted Chevalier Des Grieuuuuuuuuux...You get fed up with Manon's devilishness, since she's naturally unfaithful, but she's so cute. And Des Grieux who does nothing but get jerked around by Manon is a real thoughtless idiot who stains his hands in crime without a second thought, but then you get caught up in the suspense and can't put it down. You expect it to be the story of the lovers' downfall, and it's like sweet ripe figs sprinkled with so much whiskey it makes your tongue burn, then boiled up and served with bitter chocolate ice cream. The chewy flesh of the figs cloys to the tongue, and it's sooo good it makes your head spin.

"So why, why, why did I let go of it? I've regretted it so much it's even in my dreams. I tear up the pages and start to take a bite, but they get bigger and thicker like a canvas and I can't tear them anymore."

Tohko wept pitifully that all she had in her bag was Ogai Mori's Takase River Boat, and she'd started eating it but now only about half of it was left, so she'd been staving off starvation since coming by eating carefully morning, noon, and night, and how she'd been in a mood to nibble on sidenotes, and she hurried me along as I sat on the bed, set my fifty-page notebook on my knee, and scribbled out with a thick mechanical pencil an improv story like the ones she always made me write in the clubroom.

So this was why she'd summoned me here.

Tohko was a goblin who ate stories.

She tore up the pages of books and crinkled through them as she expounded joyously on the stories.

She herself would insist, "I'm not a goblin! I'm just a book girl," but however you thought about it, when she ate it was ghoulish.

"If you were that hungry, you should've written something to eat yourself," I said coldly as my pencil moved. Tohko let out a pitiful sound, hugging her stomach and lying depleted beside me.

"Urgggggh... I wrote the scene of an epic battle between Captain Ahab and the sperm whale from Melville's Moby Dick and ate that. But something was wrooooooong. I meant to bite into a whale steak, but the flavor was like shreds of whale meat bobbing in a boil-in-the-bag curry mix! That right there is sacrilege against Captain Ahab."

"If what you wrote was the same as what he wrote, it should taste the same, right?"

"No! Even first-rate French cuisine is totally different when you partake of it in a restaurant playing classical music and the waiter brings it to you beautifully plated and when you eat it off of plastic wrap instead of a plate in a dingy apartment with a broken air conditioner."

Her refusal to compromise about eating could be called a strength or simple selfishness.