Chapter 247: Akiwara Yuto Fever

In Akiwara Yuto's estimation, the first edition of 100,000 copies should take about a week to sell out.

Because first-day sales are often the highest, then they will decrease day by day and reach a stable level at the end.

But he still underestimated the role of that recommendation, which was the sentence endorsed by the Mystery Writers Association: "A great work that can change the future."

The book review circle doesn't need to be mentioned; that recommendation from the Mystery Writers Association represented the recognition of Akiwara Yuto by the mystery literature circle.

Jumping out at this time to find trouble for Akiwara Yuto is undoubtedly opposition and non-recognition of the association's views.

And the association itself is an extremely huge interest group and has great influence on the public opinion circle.

So if one really wants to do this, who knows who is finding trouble for whom?!

In the situation where book reviewers were full of praise, readers in the market also felt "curious."

After all, rarely does a work receive unanimous praise from so many book reviewers—in that week, flipping through the cultural sections of a few newspapers at random, basically all had book reviews about *The Tokyo Zodiac Murders*, and without exception, they were all good words.

And that very "chuunibyou" recommendation sentence, "change the future of mystery," made many people, besides complaining, go to bookstores one after another.

Under such hype and following the trend, even readers who were not interested in mystery went to buy a copy of *The Tokyo Zodiac Murders* as a collection to appear cultured.

This made this book often "hard to find a copy" in many bookstores.

Facing this situation, many social critics also stood up and gave this social phenomenon a name—called "Akiwara Yuto Fever."

When seeing this term, Akiwara Yuto thought of Murakami Haruki and Higashino Keigo from his past life.

Murakami Haruki's published *Norwegian Wood* also seemed to be bought by the public following the trend because of the reputation of public opinion, becoming a phenomenal book, which is why it was called "Murakami Haruki Fever."

Higashino Keigo, through the popularity of *The Devotion of Suspect X*, was also called the "Higashino Keigo Fever" phenomenon.

Never expected that this time, he also enjoyed the same treatment!

But also because the range of readers this time was not just mystery fans, the book *The Tokyo Zodiac Murders* sold very hotly, and the first edition of 100,000 copies sold out in four days.

In order to compete for inventory, the two major distributors, Dong Fan and Ri Fan, both came to the door; not only did they offer preferential conditions one after another, but they also hoped that the reprint inventory would be handed over to one of them to act as an agent.

As for bookstores with independent channels, it goes without saying; from Tokyo to Osaka, from Shikoku to Hokkaido, those with connections used connections, and those without connections pulled connections hard, hoping to prioritize the arrangement of shipments.

Facing this request, President Anjiu Jin Gangyi and a group of employees at President Anjiu Bookstore were busy to the point of exhaustion, and even their hairlines collectively moved up a notch.

This made Akiwara Yuto feel a bit "guilty," so he gifted each of them a bottle of ginger shampoo.

The successful circle-breaking of *The Tokyo Zodiac Murders* also made many TV stations and newspapers tempted, and they sent invitations to President Anjiu Bookstore or *April Youth* one after another, hoping Akiwara Yuto would participate in programs or accept interviews to talk about his motivation for creating this book and his plans for the next step.

Akiwara Yuto considered it repeatedly and accepted; participating in such programs or interviews, while helping him build fame, also helped him sell the book better.

For a time, he was busy to the point of dizziness; today he went to TV Tokyo, tomorrow he went to Fuji TV, and he even went to TV Asahi, which was originally a competitor—it's not considered a competitor anymore; in the situation of sluggish ratings, *Detective Shang Cun* had long been cut.

Programs or interviews, actually, are all the same routine: ask about past experiences, talk about future thoughts, and then the host or guests collectively praise "Siguoyi."

Honestly, he was almost going to vomit from speaking these words, but because of the efforts in this aspect, the book *The Tokyo Zodiac* maintained a certain social heat for half a month.

When settling accounts half a month later, it was discovered that more than 500,000 copies had been sold in total!

In terms of traditional literature or mystery, it is a very exaggerated number!

But what Akiwara Yuto didn't know was that for this popularity, Gao Tianzhijiu's "New Honkaku" had contributed quite a bit behind the scenes!

……

Tokyo, Setagaya Ward.

In a tea room, Gao Tianzhijiu looked at the news about "Akiwara Yuto Fever" in the newspaper and revealed a satisfied smile.

And beside him, there were four writers, three men and one woman.

"Teacher Gao Tian, will our actions this time make the traditional Honkaku school dissatisfied?" a square-faced man wearing glasses asked.

Gao Tianzhijiu put down the newspaper, his smile undiminished: "Dissatisfied with what?"

"This," the square-faced man hesitated and didn't speak.

In his view, Akiwara Yuto was a person from Hehe's faction, and the support for his work would undoubtedly make the traditional radical Honkaku school represented by He Tian Xin feel resentment.

After all, Akiwara Yuto had made He Tian Xin lose quite a bit of face before, and even until today, some people were still criticizing him.

Gao Tianzhijiu saw the concerns in his heart and said impolitely: "Don't think too much; the better this work sells, the brighter the future of New Honkaku will be."

In his view, cooperating with the traditional Honkaku school to operate award selections is actually also for the development of the New Honkaku school.

Since promoting a book can achieve the same effect, why should he care about the faces of He Tian Xin and that group of people.

After all, for New Honkaku, the book *The Tokyo Zodiac* is too important. In a substantial sense, it has even become a representative work of "New Honkaku."

So in this "Akiwara Yuto Fever" event, he also spent quite a bit of effort, including inviting familiar book reviewers to praise it, or taking the initiative to mention and praise it in public occasions.

However, he himself didn't expect that this book could actually sell so hotly; according to the sales trend he understood, selling millions of copies within a year was not an impossible thing!

At this time, the only female writer in the venue asked a question: "Teacher Gao Tian, if possible, could you invite that Teacher Akiwara to briefly talk about the creative philosophy of New Honkaku works."

Not all writers are interested in mystery orthodoxy; she is one of them.

Compared to that, she wants to know more about how Akiwara Yuto wrote the tricks in *The Tokyo Zodiac Murders*. If possible, she also wants to learn more content.

Gao Tianzhijiu replied in an apologetic tone: "Sorry, I invited Teacher Akiwara before, but the other party indicated that his schedule was already full."

Just when everyone in the venue was disappointed, Gao Tianzhijiu took out a letter paper and placed it on the desktop, "But he wrote some of his thoughts about New Honkaku on this piece of paper."

After finishing this sentence, everyone gathered around to look carefully, only to see 30 nouns written on this piece of paper.

"Island murder, long-distance murder, no-footprint murder, locked-room murder, imitation murder, headless corpse, corpse decoration, corpse exchange, corpse disappearance, exchange murder, ride-along murder, physical trick, narrative trick, physiological trick, animal trick, character trick, twins, detective-culprit swap, code, diary, suicide note, story-within-a-story, word puzzle, alibi, missing link, misdirection, deathbed message."

After reading everything, everyone was surprised, and the female writer, after hesitating for a while, revealed an admiring tone: "How did Teacher Akiwara think of these!"

Among these nouns, besides the locked-room murder representing traditional Honkaku, other murder methods looked full of "novel" elements at a glance, and these novel elements were closely related to the trick creation philosophy of the New Honkaku school—while maintaining reasonable logic, ensuring the fun of the story.

Gao Tianzhijiu shook his head and sighed deeply, "Teacher Akiwara only sent me this letter, but didn't say much."

When seeing these murder methods, he was also very surprised and admired, and believed from the bottom of his heart that Akiwara Yuto writing this book *The Tokyo Zodiac* was definitely not a moment of good luck.

But what he regretted was that Akiwara Yuto didn't give further explanation.

He thought for a moment and said in an uncertain tone: "Perhaps he doesn't hope that his views will cause too much influence on us."

Others in the venue also accepted this view and continued to lower their heads to ponder; some even took out paper and pen to copy them word by word into their notebooks.

But no one considered a problem, which was that Akiwara Yuto actually didn't understand "New Honkaku" very well himself.

In fact, Akiwara Yuto indeed had "half-knowledge" or "didn't understand" New Honkaku.

In his past life, New Honkaku could be considered the youngest school; not only that, the styles of various writers within it were also very different.

Some loved playing with mechanism design, even drawing a large number of blueprints in their works; some liked to talk about monster murders, and even the protagonist wasn't necessarily a human.

Between Dao Tian Zhuang Si and Ling Shi Xing Ren, who were representative figures, there were different philosophies regarding New Honkaku, and even the design methods called the "Seven Rules of New Honkaku" had many nonsensical places.

God knows which philosophy is right or wrong.

In order not to lead the New Honkaku of this world onto a crooked path, Akiwara Yuto avoided this invitation and just took out the "Thirty Elements Composing Mystery" written by Qing Liang Yuan Liu Shui in *Joker Old Testament Detective Myth* in his past life to fool people.

But what he didn't know was that these things he used to fool people were still too far ahead of this era and gave the "New Honkaku" school too much shock, so much so that everyone became even more convinced by him!

If he really wanted to join New Honkaku, he estimated he could become a god in the flesh like Dao Tian Zhuang Si—becoming the so-called "God of Mystery"! ===== CHAPTER 248 =====