“Today it was my turn to give the speech at morning assembly, but the manager told me off for not being concise enough and I felt frazzled from anxiety and stress. I picked up my bag and went to the bathroom, where I took out my Prada pouch and gazed at my forty lovers inside. The small buttons, key chains, magazine cuttings, and so forth stuffed inside had all the characters I had loved: the seven-thousand-year-old immortal boy warrior, the boy ­detective who received secret orders from the police, the UFO pilot, the newborn android who couldn’t control his own strength, the prince who rode a dragon into battle . . . After gazing at them for a while and watching a video of Krom on my phone, I started to feel better. I felt them all cheering me on as I left the bathroom and went back to my desk, and I was able to concentrate on my work. I even managed to complete a particularly tricky document before noon without making any mistakes.”

—Narrator