The latest novelette Height of the Moon is published in the January 2021 issue of monthly literature magazine Shosetsu-Gendai. An editor started a collection about travel from this issue, and he asked me to contribute. Thinking about travel was very interesting during this long quarantine for me. And more, writing about travel would be a great experience, then I agreed to write.
The setting year is 2019, the last year when we traveled often. The protagonist is experiencing stage making engineer Atae, 49 years old. In this story, he drove a road trailer truck to the northern part of Honshu island of Japan from Tokyo to carry stage pieces of equipment with a woman stage designer Atsuta. The conversation of them on that 400km road trip is the body of this novelette.
Atae started his carrier in the 90s’ when the Japanese financial situation was not so bad, he started stage designing using a higher salary of freelancer work, and got a stage jobs easily because there were many stage events was working. But in 2019, stage work is not a good job for stage designers like travel baddy Atsuta. After the 2000’s decade, Japan sank in finance, and all the cost around the stage was not changed in 30 years. Atae knows that kept stage as the exploitation of voluntary work.
Body discussion of them was smooth. Atae told Atsuta that the height of the moon is different in another country, and Atsuta responded in her professional stage designing around the projecting planetarium of her stage. but a call made them to the emergency. The CAD data of the hall which is used by Atsuta was different from the actual hall. One foot smaller than the data. They should re-make their stage equipment on the highway…
You may know that Atae is based on me, my first professional job was stage designing when I was a student at a university. I joined a team of stage designers and focused to develop stages well, or excess to quit the university. If I did not give up one stage of work without finishing, I would not start a computer engineering carrier and not write fiction.
Anyway, Hight of the Moon is published only in Japanese. I hope you may meet in the future.