The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) Read Free Page A

publishers don’t really care if amateur artists copy the figures. What the amateurs sell is called doujinshi, and when those doujinshi comics sell, it is believed to create publicity for the original series.”
    ‘‘Rika-chan is right.” Mr. Sanno nodded at Rika, who promptly hung her head and mumbled how worthless she was. It was a perfect Japanese etiquette moment that I would have appreciated if Mr. Sanno had not swiftly turned his gimlet gaze to me. “Rei-chan, I know that you are only a part-time employee, but you will be a part of the transformation. Your column relates to antiques and fine arts, so you will have many possibilities.”
    “I know very little about manga,” I said stiffly. “My background is in Japanese decorative arts.”
    “Manga are today’s most important art form,” Mr. Sanno said. “Can’t you write that in your column?”
    A battle raged inside me. I wanted to walk away from this stupid fantasy comic book of Mr. Sanno’s, but I didn’t want to give up seeing the phrase “Rei Shimura Antiques” in fourteen-point type once a month. I spoke carefully. “My goal is to help the Gaijin Times be the best that it can be. That is why I would be willing to resign if my writing doesn’t fit the new format.”
    “Are you hoping to be fired, Rei?” Alec asked. I was really beginning to hate him.
    “I know what you can do, Rei-san!” Rika offered. “Since you are a serious person, you can write a serious article about the history and artistic significance of manga. If you can present manga in a worthwhile light, the readers will become prepared for the switch to the new format.”
    “That’s right, Miss Fuchida! Please help with Miss Shimura’s assignment.”
    Rika, sitting across from me in her short pleated skirt, knee socks, and braids, still looked more like a junior-high-school student than a senior at Showa College. But at that moment I, and probably every other staffer in the room, could imagine what form she would emerge into as surely as Clark Kent transformed himself into Superman: She’d be Rika Fuchida, Gaijin Times’s youngest-ever editor in chief.

Chapter Three
    “Jealousy is a sin,” I muttered into my arm on Saturday afternoon.
    “What’s that? I can barely hear you over the waves.” Takeo Kayama was rubbing some sort of super-organic sunblock on my back. Up and down, back and forth—his fingers, rough from gardening, created a pleasant abrasive sensation on my skin.
    “I’m jealous of the student intern at the Gaijin Times,” I said in a louder voice. “Rika Fuchida was a glorified gofer until yesterday, when she turned out to have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in cartoon history! It’s all so suspicions. She started working at the magazine just a few months ago. There was nothing on her resume about her knowledge of animation. It surfaced at just the right time, in front of the right person. I wonder if she knew in advance what was going to happen to the magazine.”
    “Whatever the situation, you should feel glad for her,” Takeo said. “You’ve had your own share of lucky breaks. As have I.”
    “That’s true.” I counted Takeo Kayama as one of my blessings. In the few months that I’d known him, he’d brought a considerable amount of fresh air and sun into my life. It was an ironic union, because I was struggling to become an upwardly mobile capitalist while Takeo was on a downward slide, forgoing a management role in his family’s prosperous flower-arranging school to plant his own organic seedlings.
    “Are they paying you as much as usual for the story?” Takeo asked, putting the cap back on the tube of sunblock. We were on Isshiki Beach in Hayama, a seaside town an hour south of Tokyo where Takeo’s family had a summer house. Ping-pong balls and Frisbees were in the air along with the excited squeals of a few hundred schoolchildren on their brief summer vacation.
    “Mr. Sanno became so thrilled about Rika’s idea that he asked me to