On August 31, 1961—just one day before the new school year began—
Catherine arrived at school early.
As soon as she returned to her dorm room, she saw her friends gathered around a table. Jenny was holding a book and doing calculations.
"Lily, you dealt seventeen points of damage to the troll. It has thirty-three health left."
…Were they playing her strategy game?
"Look, our magical girl, Miss Catherine, is here!" Lily laughed, jumping up and throwing her arms around her.
"It's fine, Lily," Catherine said, looking exhausted.
"Kate, want to play too?" Lily asked enthusiastically.
"No, thanks."
The strategy game hadn't been officially released yet. They were playing the full version Catherine had given them—the general edition, of course.
The general edition had relatively simple rules. It wasn't very strict, but it was definitely fun. The professional version, on the other hand, was better suited for hardcore players and tabletop RPG enthusiasts.
"Ida, your father… um… how is he now?" Catherine asked.
"He's doing well now. Jenny helped him find a psychiatrist—much better than that so-called healer… Oh, Jenny, thank you so much… I don't know what I would've done without you…" Ida said, looking at Jenny with deep affection.
"My mom's a doctor too. That so-called lobotomy thing is really just about the doctors' own interests. They never look at problems from the patient's perspective—only their reputation or making their jobs easier. Besides, I didn't really do anything," Jenny replied calmly.
"That's good," Catherine said, collapsing onto her bed.
"What's wrong, Kate?" Lily asked, concerned.
Even though the game was going well, Catherine couldn't bring herself to smile.
The reason was simple:
Her manuscript had been rejected.
"I got rejected."
"What?"
Lily thought she'd misheard.
"I… I got rejected!"
Catherine rolled over on the bed, utterly frustrated. She thought she was already a "successful person"—she never expected something like this to happen!
"What happened?" Lily asked.
Catherine pulled the bound manuscript out of her backpack and handed it to her.
The title was Fallout.
This novel was written under Catherine's "alias"—in other words, a pen name.
The pen name was Black Island Man.
The story is set in 1977, when nuclear war breaks out across the world. Before that, escalating conflict between China and the United States led to the disaster—though for contemporary reasons, Catherine had changed China to the Soviet Union. The protagonist lives in Vault 13 in Southern California. In the year 2161, a critical chip in the water purification system is damaged, putting the settlement in danger. The village leader sends the protagonist out to find a replacement chip and save their home. In the end, after he painstakingly retrieves the chip from other settlements and saves the vault, the residents lose trust in him and exile him forever.
The protagonist's name is Bruce Edson—her adoptive father.
In its original form, Fallout was meant to be a computer game, but its story was widely regarded as a classic.
Catherine remembered the first time she played Fallout 3.
At Tenpenny Tower, there was a quest where she had to persuade the residents to allow a group of "ghouls" to move in. In the game, ghouls are mutated humans who retain their intelligence and live alongside normal people, but face discrimination.
Most of the residents didn't seem to mind the ghouls, and Catherine eventually convinced everyone to agree, allowing them inside.
She thought she had completed the quest perfectly.
But when she returned later, she discovered that all the residents had been slaughtered by the ghouls, their bodies piled up in the basement.
That was the first time Catherine experienced the feeling of doing something good—only for it to backfire horribly.
Of course, since the original Fallout was a game, Catherine had heavily revised the story.
One of its defining features was its rich web of subplots, which Catherine seamlessly connected into a coherent narrative.
After all, having already written Harry Potter, she was quite skilled at this sort of thing—it came relatively easily.
Catherine was confident that Fallout, in both plot and world-building, was slightly superior to Harry Potter.
And yet—
Her manuscript had been rejected!
Others might not know it, but Catherine did: the following year would mark the peak of the Cold War.
Especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union would reach their absolute high point.
If her judgment was correct, Fallout—depicting a post–nuclear war world shaped by conflict between the U.S. and the USSR—should have been hugely popular!
What's more, Catherine had even considered the Vietnam War. In just two years, an antiwar movement would erupt across the United States, and Fallout would fit that theme perfectly.
Of course, another reason the Fallout series succeeded in its original timeline was its 1990s release, paired with its distinctive 1950s aesthetic.
But Catherine had taken a different approach, transforming Fallout's original tone into something postmodern—almost the opposite of the original work.
People today were far more interested in the future, in technology, and in what lay ahead.
This was especially true after Gagarin's journey into space.
Surveys showed that the United States experienced its fastest technological growth during that period.
Back then, Americans—champions of freedom and democracy—were jolted into a nationwide surge of enthusiasm after discovering that the Soviet Union had surpassed them technologically. Ironically, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than half of Americans lost much of their passion for democracy and freedom.
In any case, Catherine had placed enormous hope in this book.
But not everyone shared her foresight.
"Your novel is excellent, but we regret to inform you that it does not align with the principles of our paperback publishing house…"
Their "principle" was profit!
Or rather… a refusal to cross the Cold War's red line?
Hey—what kind of person thinks like that?
Isn't exploiting the Cold War practically fashionable these days? How could someone like that even exist?
Catherine grew more and more irritated.
"Honestly, I think the novel is really well written—or at least, it reads very well," Lily said with a shrug.
"But it's not really suitable for girls," Jenny added.
"Ugh…"
Catherine sighed. She didn't want to throw the novel away—it was her life's work.
Besides, no one understood the future better than she did.
Change publishers?
Would other publishers take it?
Or… would she have to self-publish?