Category Fiction

Book of Matches

A warm, softly lit scene inside a mobile home converted into a tiny anime convention. In the foreground, a young woman dressed as a maid sits at a kitchen counter, counting dollar bills beside a notebook and a can of soda. A handmade bedsheet sign reading “REGISTRATION” hangs from the table. Behind her, a small group of cosplayers and fans—one wearing a fox tail, another with pink hair, and one in a wolf mask—chat casually in the narrow hallway near the open door, where cold daylight spills in from the snowy outdoors. The space feels cozy, improvised, and full of friendly anticipation.

In a forgotten corner of winter suburbia, a tiny anime convention blooms inside a rented trailer. Cosplayers swap stories in makeshift panel rooms, the smell of frying food leaks through paper walls, and nostalgia hums louder than the generator. But when a spark outside grows into something more, one attendee faces the moment that divides witnesses from actors. Book of Matches is a lucid dream about fire, duty, and the thin warmth of shared obsession.