““As dangerous as Komatsu’s plan might be, he could not possibly stop rewriting the novella at this point. He might have been able to give up on the idea before he started working on it, but that was out of the question now. He was up to his neck in it. He was breathing the air of its world, adapting to its gravity. The story’s essence had permeated every part of him, to the walls of his viscera. Now the story was begging him to rework it: he could feel it pleading with him for help. This was something that only Tengo could do. It was a job well worth doing, a job he simply had to do.””
