Contest, part 1

The advertisement was for an annual contest organized by a big publisher called ‘Kusachisha’ and the winner would get their novel officially published as a series with illustrations from the popular illustrator ‘Tetsuko’, though neither name sounded familiar to me. You’d have to write a novel between one hundred and three hundred pages and submit it in time for the deadline. After that your novel would be in the hands of the public as the winner was decided by popular vote. The entry that gets voted second place gets their novel published as a standalone volume, with illustrations by the winner of a different contest that the publisher is also holding. Third place wins a cash prize of fifty thousand yen, which a quick search informs me would be about four hundred and fifty dollars.

I had participated in similar contests before and never even got close to winning, but something deep inside of me was calling out to me, begging me to at least give it a try. The deadline might be later this week, but if I try my best then maybe I can just barely cross the threshold of the pagecount and stumble my way into third place if I’m lucky.

I put down the magazine and take a seat in the chair in front of the computer. When I press the power button I’m greeted by a lockscreen asking for a password. Of course I have no idea what it was, but for some reason my hands start moving on their own. As if ingrained in my subconscious, I perform a set of keystrokes in a deliberate rhythm and press enter. A sense of deja vu comes over me as a desktop reveals itself on the monitor. Icons for multiple programs are sorted on the sides, but what stands out among them are a few plain text files. Curious to see what the previous me was up to, I open them in a text editor.

My suspicions are confirmed as I scroll through a collection of concepts and ideas for characters and events in a science fiction setting. Looking through them, the bits and pieces start connecting inside my head. A story of spacebound pirates searching for a magnificent treasure guarded by exotic creatures and treacherous environments, guided only by clues left by their predecessors and their own lust for adventure. A headstrong captain commands a crew held together with bonds forged through countless voyages. Allies become rivals and death lurks around every corner, forming a narrative of betrayal and sacrifice.

Before I know it, an entire novel is typed out in front of my eyes. I sit there blinking and rubbing my eyes to check if they’re still working properly. The pagecount reads two hundred and ninety nine and the virtual clock on the bottom of the screen says it’s ten in the morning. As if possessed, I wrote an entire novel over the course of about fifteen hours.

The title at the top of the document reads ‘Wandering Stars of a Lost Era, Volume 1, The Endless Hunt for the Forgotten Crown, part 1’. It’s a bit optimistic to include both a volume and part number, as if this already has a sequel planned. While it’s a bit unnecessarily long, I must admit that I think it does sound kind of cool.

Checking to see if it’s not just gibberish, I scroll through some of the pages and a few lines. To my surprise it’s all coherent and they seem to form an actual story. When I begin reading from the first page, I actually start to get invested in the story and its characters, as if someone else wrote it. After a short while I have to tear myself away from the screen to stop reading and when I take a glance at the screen I see that I already read fifty pages. In just fifteen short hours I accomplished what I tried and failed to do in fifteen years.

An email notification pops up on the bottom of the screen. When I open it the same font as the magazine article jumps out at me. In big red letters, it reads “Thank you for submitting your entry to the contest!” and below that a confirmation of my personal information. Not only did I write it, I already sent it in.

A sudden wave of fatigue comes over me. Exhausted to my very core, I wheel my chair over to my bed and let myself fall onto it, immediately drifting off into a deep sleep.

When I open my eyes, countless stars light up the night sky outside my window, clearer than I’ve ever seen them before. When I was young I never bothered learning any of the constellations, so calling it stargazing would be an exaggeration. All I’m really doing is blankly staring into the void of space. As I lay there mesmerized by the view, I notice something odd.

The window is much larger than I remember and instead of being on the wall next to the bed, it’s on the ceiling. Stranger still is its frame, which looks like it’s made of some sort of metal. It’s not just the window, the ceiling and the walls surrounding it give off the same dull metallic sheen. I close my eyes and take a deep breath in an attempt to calm myself down, but I can’t escape the fear grabbing hold of me. That fear that told me what I already knew but didn’t want to acknowledge, that this was not the room I was in just moments ago when I fell asleep.

This was the second time I woke up in an unknown room, but this is different than last time. Perhaps the medication had lessened the mental shock somehow, making it easier for me to adjust gradually to the new environment I found myself in. Without that aid I was stranded in yet another unfamiliar room with only the small comfort of a soft bed below me to cushion the blow.

Gathering my courage to face the unknown once more, I open my eyes and turn my head to the right. What greets me is a spacious yet still cluttered room, the contents of which confuse me. Closest to me is a pile of brightly colored clothes almost as tall as the bed I’m on with a strange hat as the top. Behind it stands a closet, made of a similar metal as the walls and hopelessly neglected by the room’s occupant. The wall next to it has several small hooks sticking out of it that have swords of different shapes and sizes hanging from them. On the wall furthest from the bed is a big rectangle with a slit diagonally down the middle, which I assume is the door. Finally, next to the door stands a tall mirror.

I strengthen my resolve as much as I can before dragging myself out of the bed and walking in front of the mirror. Standing opposite the reflective surface, I get a sense of deja vu. The figure on the other side defies even my wildest expectations and I start doubting my own eyes.

An indigo blue military uniform, customized with bright red highlights. A magnificent cape, flaming red on the inside and pure black on the outside. Long golden hair flowing down to the shoulders out of a red bandana. A face adorned with a handful of small scars, unable to hide its beauty. Deep crimson eyes, shining like brilliant rubies. Standing there was a young woman dressed like in a pirate’s outfit.

Fortuna stares at her reflection in the mirror until she suddenly shakes her head. Snapping out of the daze, she picks up the captain’s hat on top of the pile of clothes next to her bed and puts it on her head where it belongs. She walks out of her cabin with a confident stride and quickly arrives on the main deck.

“Captain, we’ll arrive at our destination soon,” the navigator reports when he sees it’s her coming through the door, “it should take us about 15 minutes to reach the coordinates indicated on the map.”

“Good, that means we should have plenty of time before any Stevaris track down our position.”

Taking her seat in the captain’s chair in the middle of the deck, she can’t help but smile at the prospects of treasure when they finally arrive at their destination. A glint in her eye betrays the greedy obsession that led her and her crewmates here. Fortuna Hawkes, captain of the Vermilion Eagle, could practically taste the prize she’d been seeking since she was eighteen years old.

The Aurum Stella, a golden crown from a lost civilization. It is said to contain magical powers that went out of control and destroyed the kingdom of Versigna, but most people only consider it a fairy tale. The few that consider the legend to be true have been looking for the crown for over a century. Following a map obtained after many setbacks and hardships, Fortuna was finally able to get one step closer to finding that mystical prize.

“Shotaro!”

I open my eyes to Satsuki violently shaking me back and forth.

“Shotaro! Wake up!” she shouts right in front of my face with her own eyes closed.

“Woah, calm down, I’m awake! What’s your problem!?”

She stops and lets me go, dropping me back against my bed. My brain feels like it’s still rolling around in my skull from the vigorous shaking I just received. As I try to recover, Satsuki once again leans forward and gets so close that I can feel her breath on my cheeks.

“Are you okay? I got really worried when you didn’t come out of your room, so I went to check up on you. When I found you collapsed on your bed and you wouldn’t wake up I panicked. Maybe you’re dehydrated? I’ll get you some water!”

A sudden impact.

“Oh no, I’m sorry! That was an accident!”

As my blurry vision is filled with stars, the sight of a similar night sky crosses my mind, but it disappears as quickly as it appeared.