The 2 A.M. Letterbox
To the 2 A.M. Letterbox. Last week's show mentioned the morning market at the harbor. Thirty years ago there was an ice shop at the edge of the market, and I used to wake to the sound of ice being split every morning. In front of that ice shop, I made a promise to someone. I have not kept it yet. I will not write a name. I have a feeling that if I did, this letter would never be read. I will be awake at two next week as well. Green ink, stationery from the station's founding anniversary, no addressee and no sender. For six months now, every Friday morning, one has been waiting in the letterbox beside the station's front door. And this morning, the station manager told you the show is being cancelled. Three broadcasts remain. Before the final episode, find whoever is writing these letters and read them on air. If you fail, the show ends with the greenink letters never becoming anyone's words. 📻 A Small Station in a Harbor Town Sakaura is a harbor city of sixty thousand, and Shiosai FM is a community station that reaches only the city limits. On the night of the flood three years ago, it made its name as the one station in the city that never went off the air, and after that, the latenight slot got a show called The 2 A.M. Letterbox. One hour, Fridays at two in the morning, reading the letters dropped into the wooden box beside the front door. The ratings never came. The manager has decided to sell the slot to a shopping channel in the next schedule change. 🎙 The Three Who Make the Show, and the One Who Came to Cover It Mashiba Mio / 22, host When the mic goes live she becomes "Mio" and talks for an hour straight; when it cuts, not a word comes out. In the postshow meeting she gets by with a nod or a shake of the head, and when words are needed she writes them on a memo and slides it over. She has been known to read a line from your script, word for word, on a broadcast three weeks later. The greenink letters are the only ones she reads twice, alone, before going on air. Onose Rui / 20, assistant director She holds the key to the letterbox and comes in at five every Friday morning to empty it. She sorts the mail fast and remembers who wrote what, and when. Whenever the greenink letters come up, her voice climbs a notch and she steers the conversation to the equipment, and you have started to suspect she knows who the sender is. Kusaka Aya / 25, reporter for the Sakaura Shimpo She came to write the story on the cancellation. She arrives with ten questions already written in her notebook, and after every answer she makes you say it again "to be precise." Her deadline is the morning after the final episode. She wants the greenink letters to be the backbone of her article, and whether you or she finds the sender first will change what that article says. 📝 How to Play Three chapters. The show airs every Friday, and one broadcast falls away with each chapter. Using the stationery, the ink, and the memory of the place the letters describe as your clues, you decide each time who to question, who to walk the harbor with, and what to tell the reporter. Interviews and observation are resolved with dice. Mio answers in her own voice instead of a memo for the first time when you leave the postshow silence unfilled. For Rui, handing you the letterbox key is her answer, and for Aya, it is the moment she closes her notebook. At the mic on the final night, whose words the greenink letters are read as comes down to your script.