A Collection of Short
Fantasy Stories
12“The Book of Confinement”
My good friend Old K has always been a struggling screenwriter whose talent has never received the recognition it deserves. His career has been full of misfortune, and after analyzing his situation, I came up with several reasons: (1) he keeps falling in with the wrong people, getting tricked by unscrupulous producers and directors into doing unpaid work; (2) he is always writing for others, ghostwriting for big-name screenwriters while they get the meat and he gets only the soup; and (3) he never turns down a job and always fulfills his mission, yet his compensation is completely out of proportion to the time, effort, and emotional energy he puts into his work. He knows this diagnosis perfectly well, but like a cockroach that refuses to die, he never gives up. He has always believed that he is simply unlucky and has never encountered a true patron who would recognize his talent and give him a helping hand.
Fortunately, Old K and I are not in the same line of work. I write popular fiction, and my main readership consists of students and young people who love to dream. I frequently use old-fashioned devices such as chance encounters and coincidences in my novels, and I carefully arrange suspenseful cliffhangers to whet the reader’s appetite. However, unlike Giddens Ko, I do not deliberately pile on melodrama or turn every plot development into something excessively emotional and sensational. Old K has always looked down on my novels, saying that none of them could ever make it onto the screen and that they were nothing more than “clearance goods from a bankrupt factory being sold at a night market.” The cruel reality, however, is that several publishing houses compete with one another every year to sign me. The advances and royalties alone are enough for me to travel abroad for a week every season, and I live quite comfortably.
Travel is my main way of relieving stress and recharging myself. This summer, I went to Japan, and while wandering through the old streets of Kyoto, I suddenly felt like taking a detour into an old secondhand bookstore. The owner was an elderly man with a full head of silver hair, but he still appeared to be in good spirits and reasonably strong. He greeted me first.
“Young man, my shop is a treasure mountain. As long as you are willing to look, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.”
“Sir, I wanted to ask you about Seicho Matsumoto’s first novel, The Saigo Currency, and the collection in which it was published. I found online that the story won the Naoki Prize in 1950.”
After listening to me, the old man stared at me for more than ten seconds with a pair of eyes as bright as searchlights. Then he laughed heartily and asked, “Do you like mystery novels?”
I nodded. “I’m thinking about changing direction and developing my writing in the areas of mystery and fantasy.”
“How old were you when you started writing novels? What kind of novels do you write now?”
I immediately blushed and answered hesitantly, “I wrote my first novel when I was eighteen, and my first bestseller when I was twenty-five, but they were all popular novels about school life, young professionals, and workplace romance.”
“So you write popular fiction? How old are you now?”
“Thirty-five.” I scratched my forehead and gave an awkward grin.
“Have you ever heard that Seicho Matsumoto was forty-one when he wrote his first novel, The Saigo Currency, and became an overnight sensation after that? You are only thirty-five and already thinking about changing direction. That means you have a chance to rise to an even higher level in the future.” The old man’s words of encouragement were exactly what I needed to hear.
“But I don’t have Master Matsumoto’s ability to sweep up all those major literary prizes! I grew up in Taiwan, an island with a shallow cultural environment.”
The old man spoke mysteriously. “Then I will give you a chance to transform yourself completely and help you fulfill your wish to change direction. Come with me to my study.”
Driven by curiosity, I followed the old man into his study. Every wall was lined with old books, and in a corner beside the window stood a large wooden armchair. The old man walked over to it and pulled two ancient books from the shelf above the back of the chair. Their covers were made of leather, with the titles The Book of Destiny and The Book of Confinement embossed in gold. He handed them to me.
“Young man, can you guess what kind of leather was used for the covers of these two books?”
I rubbed the surface of the leather between my fingers and ventured, “It feels like deerskin or lambskin.”
The old man shook his finger. “Very close, but neither is correct. The covers of these two books are made of human skin.”
“Oh! Human skin? Then there must be a story behind them.” As I listened, my scalp began to tingle, although I pretended to remain calm.
“The skin from the chests and backs of a pair of lovers who agreed to die together was stripped from their bodies by their lord. You have heard of Saigo Takamori, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have! He was a great military commander of the Satsuma domain during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate, and one of the Three Great Figures of the Meiji Restoration. Sir, may I ask why you brought up Saigo? Are you telling me that he has something to do with Matsumoto Seicho’s The Saigo Currency?”
The old man gently patted my shoulder and smiled. “Not bad, young man. I didn’t expect you to know a fair amount about modern Japanese history. The Saigo currency was issued after Saigo Takamori raised an army. In nature, it was military currency issued by the Satsuma forces.”
“To be honest, when I took a course in modern Japanese history in college, I read a Chinese translation of Matsumoto’s The Saigo Currency.”
“Back to the original subject. I will give these two books to you, but you may choose only one.”
“Choose only one? Why?” I asked, puzzled.
The old man became serious. “Both books have been subjected to a curse of resentment by a sorcerer. They generate and counteract each other, so you cannot use or possess them at the same time. Otherwise, you will bring disaster upon yourself and may even lose your life.”
“All right. Then can I give one of them to my best friend?”
“You can, but you may only mail it to him. You cannot meet him in person, just in case you secretly exchange the books with each other. Now, which of these two books will you choose?”
I had not expected the old man to have thought that far ahead. “Can I first ask what the difference is between the two books?”
“That will not do. After you make your choice, I will tell you what to do next.”
“Do I really have to make the decision right now?” I felt as though I were facing a momentous choice.
The old man’s expression was solemn. “Yes. Make your decision according to your intuition.”
“All right. I choose The Book of Confinement. Sir, what should I do next?”
“You will mail The Book of Destiny to your friend, and then stay here with me for ten years.”
“Ten years?” Instinctively, I felt as though I had just been trapped.
“That’s right. During those ten years, you must complete one novel every year, and I must read it and consider it worthy of publication. Only then will it count as a completed novel.”
“But what if you are not satisfied with it? Or what if I cannot write ten novels within ten years?”
“When the ten-year period is over, I will leave this place and hand this bookstore over to you to run. That is why I want you to write ten novels for me within ten years. Once I am satisfied with them, I will help you plan each one, enter major literary competitions in Japan, and arrange for their publication.”
“All right!” I thought to myself, It’s not as though I have much of a future if I stay in Taiwan anyway. In the end, I’ll probably remain nothing more than a second-rate popular novelist. I immediately asked another question. “Can I open The Book of Confinement and take a look?”
The old man smiled even more mysteriously this time. “Of course you can. But the pages inside are completely blank.”
“Completely blank? Then how am I supposed to begin writing my novel?”
I was completely confused.
“This book will interact with you intensely once you begin writing your novel in it.”
“Sir, do you mean that it is a magical book with a soul?”
“Yes. The soul attached to the book belongs to the woman among the pair of lovers who died together.”
The old man continued, “For the next ten years, you must remain in Japan. Every year, after you hand in your novel, I will give you half a month off, and you may travel anywhere in Japan. But you cannot return to Taiwan. You also cannot meet or communicate with the friend who receives The Book of Destiny. Even if you hear any news about him, remember this: it is an agreement between the two of us. I must make sure that you remain unaffected by any outside factors and devote yourself wholeheartedly to completing those ten novels.”
“May I ask one more question?”
“You may ask two final questions.” The old man’s attitude had become warm and gentle.
“Are there any taboos or restrictions regarding the use of this book?”
“There are indeed several restrictions, but I only know two of them. First, you cannot write your own past experiences into the story, nor can you make yourself the main character of the story.”
“Why?”
The old man’s expression suddenly became stern. “Because you will pay a price for it. Don’t underestimate the power of the supernatural!” As he spoke, he sat down in the wooden armchair, bent over, and pulled up the trouser leg on his left side. “In my last novel, I made myself the male protagonist. In the story, I was an equestrian. I wrote that during the final competition, the equestrian unfortunately fell from his horse, and his beloved horse trampled and broke his left lower leg. Sure enough, not long afterward, while I was traveling, I was hit by a motor home. It crushed my left lower leg on the spot. Then I was taken to the hospital, where the doctor didn’t waste any time talking to me and simply amputated my left lower leg.”
My entire spine turned cold as I listened. I thought to myself, Is this book really that sinister?
“I want to ask one last question. With my limited knowledge of the Japanese language, can I really write novels that will satisfy you? And when my novels are published, can I use my pen name?”
“Young man, let’s treat those two questions as one. First, as for your Japanese language ability, the book in your hands will gradually broaden and deepen your command of the language, as long as you diligently write and interact with it every day. Second, I will find you an appropriate pen name for your books. But after they are published, I will be the only person in the world who knows that you are the original author.”
I muttered to myself, What the hell? With the rules of this game set up like this, how am I ever going to become famous?
Unexpectedly, the old man seemed to see straight through my thoughts and reminded me, “A novelist spends a lifetime striving for one thing: for his novels to receive a tremendous response from readers and to be passed down from one generation to the next. Isn’t that what it is all about?”
I nodded with a smile. To have my work live on and be passed down through generations, like Dream of the Red Chamber or The Tale of Genji, was indeed my greatest wish.
That evening, I moved my luggage into the old bookstore called “Elegant Retreat Book House.” My study was at the back of the second floor. When I opened the window and looked outside, I could see a quiet grove of plum trees.
From that moment on, I began a ten-year writing career. The Book of Confinement and the old man from Arashiyama became my two mentors and companions.
A year later, my first fantasy novel, The Paradise Inn, was officially published and won the Fantasy-Horror Newcomer Award. The pen name “Arashiyama Qing-Yang” began to attract the interest of readers.
One literary award every year. By the tenth year, I had practically won every major Japanese literary fiction prize: the Naoki Prize, the Akutagawa Prize, the Yomiuri Literary Prize, the Junichiro Tanizaki Prize, the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, and many others. The pen name “Arashiyama Qing-Yang” became a household name not only in Japan but also achieved a level of fame comparable to Haruki Murakami. Every one of my novels was adapted into a television drama or film. Yet the real person behind “Arashiyama Qing-Yang” had never appeared in front of a camera, so no one knew that I was the mysterious figure who had become a nationwide sensation. Whenever I received an award or was interviewed by reporters, the old man from Arashiyama’s grandson appeared on my behalf. I remained a mysterious “man behind the scenes.”
At the end of that year, horrifying news arrived from Taiwan that sent a chill through me: Old K, the famous film and television screenwriter, had been sentenced to death by the Supreme Court, with the conviction finalized for serial murder and dismemberment. Although I was deeply shocked, I still honored my agreement with the old man from Arashiyama and did not return to Taiwan to visit Old K.
When I handed my tenth novel to the old man, he gave me a novelized screenplay. The author was none other than my best friend Old K, whom I had not seen for ten years. I glanced at the title, The Butterfly Serial Murder Mystery, and immediately understood. Old K must have made himself the protagonist of the story, violating the taboo of that human-skin book and thereby bringing disaster upon himself.
