Calligrapher's beautiful character life in another world ~Daily life matchless with collection and character magic? ~

Calligrapher’s beautiful character life in another world ~Daily life matchless with collection and character magic? ~

Chapter 1 Why am I here?

This is odd.

Why am I in a place like this?

I’m certain I was in my own room.

I bought my favorite bento from the K store at the train station’s shop and was about to make tea.

Then suddenly, the ground beneath me gave way… and I ended up here.

Throughout today, I, Suzuya Takuto, have been incredibly cheerful.

After all, the eagerly anticipated new color ink from the Japanese S Company’s series was released.

I have a strong fondness for ink, ink bottles, and fountain pens; I’ve been collecting them for a long time.

With the aspiration to become a calligrapher.

During my third year of elementary school, I first encountered calligraphy through a video.

Its beauty was astonishing.

To think that such beautiful characters could be written by hand, and in one stroke without preliminary sketches!

Since then, I’ve been captivated by calligraphy.

I stopped engaging in typical childish games or playing video games.

I still couldn’t afford a fountain pen, and even if I asked my parents for a calligraphy pen, they wouldn’t buy it for me.

So, I practiced with highlighters and flat-tipped markers.

Saving up my allowance, I looked forward to buying one or two bottles of ink every month.

And in this way, I discovered the joy of collecting.

The collection continued to grow.

Not just ink, but various sizes and types of notebooks, loose sheets of paper with different qualities — I purchased them all.

Pens and markers of all kinds allowed me to delight in calligraphy.

With the desire to write a multitude of characters, dictionaries from different countries gradually found their way into my collection.

Upon entering middle school, I finally acquired my very first fountain pen.

My parents bought it for me as a celebration of my entrance to school.

I was so happy, so elated, that I held it close to my chest as I slept.

Yet, that fountain pen became the last gift from my parents.

A drunk driver crashed into our car while we were waiting at a traffic light.

Both my parents, who were in the driver’s seat and the passenger seat, lost their lives, and I was the only one left alive.

Since then, I started living with my paternal grandparents.

Both of them were kind, and I had no major complaints about the arrangement.

My grandfather was a calligrapher, and he was happy to know that I liked writing characters, although he was somewhat disappointed that it wasn’t traditional Japanese calligraphy.

Seeing my grieving face when my grandparents took me in and expressed their sadness, I started practicing traditional calligraphy.

However, deep down, I still loved calligraphy.

The precision, the orderliness, the skill of writing evenly without leaving gaps — it was a different kind of beauty from traditional calligraphy.

But with my skill level… calligraphy alone couldn’t sustain me.

Perhaps, with an exceptional sense of design or if I had a degree from an art school with a range of skills, I might have managed.

However, even though I passed certification exams, I barely became an instructor at a cultural school. As for freelance work, there was hardly any.

However, calligraphy continues to be my refuge.

With my grandfather’s guidance, I achieved a high level of proficiency in calligraphy, reaching advanced ranks.

So, at the age of twenty-three, I managed to become an instructor at a calligraphy school.

Truly, having a professional to guide you and not having one can make a significant difference.

Still, even with a career centered around ‘writing characters,’ I managed to establish my independence by the age of twenty-seven.

After my grandparents passed away, I continued to live alone and expand my collection. These collections, they filled the void of loneliness and solitude.

And yet…

In a place like this forest.

I find myself wondering, why am I here…?”