Chương 28: The Creator’s Trash-Den and the Literary Girl

As we approached the entrance of the chamber, a decayed, low murmuring leaked through the paper sliding doors.

"... Impossible. Absolutely impossible. I can't write. I don't want to write another single character." It was a female voice—low, listless, and sounding as though it might evaporate into the dark at any microsecond."'Spring is all about the hype'... what total garbage.

'Spring is the dawn'? Huh? It just makes me sleepy.... I want to go home. I want to go back to my parents' estate. Can someone just execute my system already...?"

"... Age-poyo?" I tilted my head at the bizarre gyaru slang that felt entirely out of parameters for the Heian period. Without an ounce of hesitation, Yari slid the door open with an aggressive clatter.

"Excuse the intrusion." The sight inside the room left me utterly speechless. This wasn't an elegant, imperial parlor from a historical textbook; it was the absolute, chaotic battleground of a modern manga artist right before a terminal deadline. Discarded sheets of washi paper littered the floor like a blizzard. Inkstones were flipped upside down, caked in residue. Half-eaten dried confections and rotting fruit peels were left abandoned in random heaps.

And dead center in that mountain of trash—this true creator's den—was a massive lump rolled up tightly inside an expensive, multi-layered jūnihitoe robe like a makeshift futon. The chronological correction android. Code Name: MURASAKI / The Lady of Tale. The author of the world's oldest novel, The Tale of Genji, and the supreme intellectual prodigy of Japanese literary history—Murasaki Shikibu herself.

"Wake up, MURASAKI," Yari commanded, his voice freezing the air.

"Lord Fujiwara no Michinaga's deadline is tomorrow. What is the status of your manuscript progress?"

"... Ah, Prime Minister. Or should I say, Producer... Thanks for your hard work..." MURASAKI poked nothing but her head out from her multi-layered cocoon. Her long black hair was completely unkempt and tangled. Her pale, translucent skin possessed zero healthy color, and the dark circles bruising the skin beneath her eyes were significantly deeper than those of the exhausted nobles we had passed in the corridor. Clutched tightly in her hand was a sleek, fan-shaped high-tech device—her Holographic Console.

"It's a system limitation, I'm telling you. My mental fortitude is completely flatlined. I can't output a single line of emotional prose right now.... Honestly, why don't you just wipe my memory files and format my entire hard drive?" Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"Excuses are irrelevant to the mission profile. Write."

"Corporate tyranny... This is exactly why I despise those with systemic authority. I hope they all experience an unrecoverable system crash... I'll haunt their lineages for generations..." Muttering a steady stream of dark hexes, she sluggishly dragged herself into a sitting position. Every single movement was heavy, radiating a suffocating, absolute downer aura.

Yet, peering out from beneath her bangs, her eyes harbored the depth of a dark trench—housing a razor-sharp intellect capable of piercing the veil of the world.

"Um... hello there. My name is Kataru Mono," I offered, taking a tentative step forward. MURASAKI darted a cold glare at me. It was the exact look one reserves for a piece of biological waste.

"... Who? Another one of Michinaga's corporate spies? Did he send you here to demand I write more explicit, erotic filler scenes for his political campaign?"

"N-No! Not at all! I'm... I'm a massive fan of yours! I've read every single volume of The Tale of Genji!"

"... Oh?" Her eyes widened just a fraction of a millimeter. A subtle ripple disturbed the surface of her icy, detached expression.

"You actually read through that entire, bloated epic? What a bizarre consumer.... So, which arc is your preference? Let me guess—'Wakamurasaki'? Figures. Men are universally hardwired with a lolicon sub-routine."

"Y-You're wrong! My absolute favorite... is the'Uji Jūjō' (The Ten Chapters of Uji)!" I took a definitive step forward, the distinct, rapid-fire switch of an otaku instantly activating inside my brain.

"Specifically, the scene where Ukifune is caught in that inescapable psychological deadlock between two lovers and throws herself into the river... that absolute, beautiful lack of salvation shook me to my core! It wasn't the glamorous, flashy romances of Hikaru Genji that defined your genius; it was your flawless capacity to depict the helpless, suffocating despair and entrapment of the generations that followed him! Your prose left me shivering!"

"...!" A sharp, wicked smirk carved its way across MURASAKI's lips. For the first time, it was a genuine smile of recognition—the look of a creator acknowledging a true comrade.

"You... actually understand my source code, don't you?... Yes, exactly. That is where the narrative peaks. Everyone keeps whining about how 'dreamy and romantic' Hikaru Genji's conquests are, but he's just a privileged, trashy playboy boasting about his political leverage. What I actually wanted to compile was the raw, inescapable torment of the women trapped behind the screens—the absolute despair with no escape parameters." Oh man, she took the bait! I cheered internally.

As expected of a creator, she was highly vulnerable to someone praising the darkest, deepest layers of her work. I might actually be able to form a stable sync-rate with this woman. Right as that optimistic thought crossed my mind— THUD. THUD. THUD. A heavy, violent set of footsteps reverberated from the corridor, rattling the wooden floorboards.

"Ugh... speak of the devil." MURASAKI's complexion instantly drained to a sickly ghost-white, and she dove back into her multi-layered cocoon like a startled animal.

"Absolute worst-case timing. A catastrophic anomaly has arrived. Hide yourself, now!"