Beyond the Window: Being Read Across the Sea

Reading today's article, where Rukai's Lord Chamberlain said His Majesty has read this paper ever since the stream began, made me think again about just how far this newspaper reaches. Before streaming existed, we never even knew if we were being read at all. Someone, somewhere, nodding quietly over a page, with the sender never finding out — that was always the ordinary shape of this job.

In the 114 years since our 1912 founding, this paper has reached countless readers, but I can count on no hand at all the times I've been able to picture a single one of their faces. It was the same when I was a rookie in 1975. Even while the city was in an uproar over the Yuragi that had just begun, the paper kept getting printed, kept getting delivered, kept landing in someone's hands. Whether that someone narrowed their eyes over the headline the same way a reader does today — there was never any way to check.

Hearing that the king is always the first to bring up an article about the Lit City, the same day it runs, made me smile a little. Our reporters are always racing the deadline to settle on a headline. If there's a scene, somewhere across the sea, of someone reading that headline in their own chest before we ourselves have finished with it — that's about as strange, and quietly gratifying, a coincidence as this job offers.

I think the reason I named this column "Beyond the Window" was that I'm always the one looking out at the world beyond the window, writing about what I see. But today, of all days, it turned out someone beyond the window was looking back at us. Some days, the watcher and the watched trade places without warning.

Tonight, too, Yurari is on the desk holding its teacup. Whether the faint glow at the tip of its antenna is from the air pressure, or something else, I still can't say. But I'm fairly sure of one thing — this creature, too, is being watched by someone.