Table of Contents
Copyrights and Credits
Table of Contents Page
Chapter 1: The Cobalt-Blue Charm
Chapter 2: A Gift Over Seven Years
Chapter 3: When the Rain Stops
Chapter 5: The Everyday, the Special Days
Newsletter
Chapter 1: The Cobalt-Blue Charm
Chapter 1:
The Cobalt-Blue Charm
ON HER WAY OUT OF THE BACK ROOM, KASUGAI Satoko paused in front of a mirror. She ran her fingers through her ponytail, making sure that the loose hairs framing her face were curled into S shapes. Next, she used her fingers to pinch the bangs that were trimmed above her eyebrows into place. A hairstylist’s own hair was their most obvious resume, so it was imperative to keep its style immaculate while they worked.
Taking a deep breath, she stood tall and cast smile magic on herself.
“Consider yourself an actress while you work, and be careful not to break character.” This was a lesson one of her senpai stylists had beaten into her five years prior when Satoko first began working at Salon Blan.
The main color inside the salon was white, with eight full-length oval mirrors lined up along the walls, each paired with their own styling chair. Sitting in one of the chairs near the entrance was a woman in her early twenties—a client Satoko had recently inherited from a kouhai stylist who’d quit to get married.
“Good morning, Maekawa-san,” Satoko greeted, peeking at her through the mirror. When their eyes met, Maekawa’s worried look transformed into a smile. “What did you think of your style last time?”
“It was wonderful. I’d like the same one today, please,” said Maekawa, adding that it was actually the first time she hadn’t worried about the way her hair grew at the nape of her neck. Seeing the smile on Maekawa’s face as she spoke, Satoko was relieved to hear that the switch between stylists had gone well.
Maekawa was a regular client who’d booked with Satoko’s kouhai at the start of her career and had stuck with her ever since. She had told that kouhai that she would follow her if she moved salons, but when she’d answered that she was retiring to help her husband with his work, Maekawa was at a loss over what to do. While Maekawa had come back to Salon Blan once so far, Satoko had worried that she might switch to a new salon after that.
Placing a towel on the woman’s shoulders, the stylist ran her fingers through her client’s hair from underneath. As she checked for spots where the hair had developed curls as it grew and how the dye had faded, Maekawa let out a little sound.
“Kasugai-san, I think there might be something on your sleeve,” she said, pointing at it in the mirror.
Satoko lifted her arm and looked at the back of her sleeve. Black stains dotted it like footprints. It seemed that she’d splashed colorant on herself without noticing.
“Ahh. I didn’t realize,” she murmured. It must have happened when I was doing that color first thing in the morning. And here I’d tried to be so careful, since this outfit is brand-new.
“It must be difficult being a stylist. I’d bet you end up ruining a lot of clothes, no matter how careful you are. Maybe stains wouldn’t show up as much if you wore black instead?” she suggested.
“When you wear black, your clothes blend in with the client’s hair while you’re standing behind them, and it gets harder to see where to cut,” Satoko explained. Plus, the color would run if bleach or perming fluid got splashed onto it, so it would likely have the same outcome. If she had to choose, she’d choose to wear brighter colors. “It’s all right. It happens all the time, and it’ll wash out enough that you won’t even be able to notice. Though I’ll probably end up staining it again right afterward.”
Once she had confirmed what Maekawa wanted, Satoko smiled and let her know that she would be mixing up her dye in the back room. There, Satoko stood at the sink and got some soap on her fingers before rubbing at the stain on her sleeve. Unfortunately, however, all that did was dilute the dye and spread the stain around. She’d been too late, and the dye had penetrated the fibers.
Just how many shirts that I love have I ruined this month alone?
As Satoko patted at her damp sleeve with a towel, an assistant stylist named Itou, who’d been working at the salon for half a year, poked her head into the back room.
“Kasugai-san, would you like me to put a cloth down and get ready for the color?”
“Yes, thank you!”
Itou must have heard her reply, but the woman stayed where she was, looking guilty. “Um, I might have been the one who stained your shirt,” she confessed.
“Huh?”
“I heard you talking to Maekawa-san a moment ago. I was at the station next to you this morning doing a color. I was rushing, and I ended up splashing dye onto the cloth and the floor. I mean, you don’t usually end up staining the back of your sleeve, do you? I’m so sorry!”
As her coworker paled and bowed her head, Satoko felt the tension leave her shoulders. While she would have stewed in self-hatred for a while if she’d been the one to ruin her own shirt, she could forgive someone else for doing it.
“Thank you for telling me,” Satoko said. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I understand, since I used to do the same thing all the time. I was so clumsy. I was slow doing foils, and then when I’d try to hurry up, I’d end up flinging dye everywhere. It got to the point where there were stylists who asked that I not be assigned as their assistant.”
“Really? I thought you were really skilled!” Itou exclaimed.
“Not at all! I’m always amazed to see how good you are, Itou-san. I was awful my first year here. If you’re available right now, I’d love some help with applying Maekawa-san’s color,” Satoko continued, much to Itou’s surprise, showing the assistant that she still trusted her. Itou, looking relieved, returned to the front. Getting back on track, Satoko started mixing up the dye.
In her first year at the salon, she’d been scolded so badly and so often that she ended up burnt out, making tons of mistakes. Every day was so painful for her that she even had to call off some days, whining that she just wanted to quit already.
The salon’s direction had naturally evolved with staff changes, but when Satoko had first gotten her job, employees had faced strict standards for things beyond their skills. There was training every evening, even if they ended up staying open later than usual anyway. When she once commented to a coworker that she was tired, she was scolded about how she should never forget that she could be seen through the window, even during training. She was taught that a place that made people beautiful needed be somewhere special, and that stylists couldn’t let themselves get too close to their clients.
Stylists were someone clients would talk to about things that they wouldn’t tell anyone else, like family problems, their love lives, and secrets at work. This was because stylists were strangers who were closer to them than anyone else. It was drilled into Satoko that the way to keep a proper distance was to not let them see your everyday life.
Satoko might have learned how to act as a top stylist should thanks to how hard she worked to live up to their expectations, but sometimes she didn’t know why it was she was still working this job.
Once she headed back out to the front and started doing Maekawa’s foils with Itou, Maekawa piped up and asked if she watched much TV.
“Not much. Sometimes I catch the news,” Satoko replied.
“There was an info program on when I turned the TV on this morning, introducing a hot shop in Shinjuku. It was a bookstore not far from here,” Maekawa explained.
“There’s a bookstore nearby?”
No such shop immediately came to Satoko’s mind. In the past, there had been a medium-sized one about a five-minute walk away, but they’d closed down a while back.
“It’s along the edge of Shinjuku Gyoen Park. You know, the one that’s also a tourist info center? They’ve got a shop cat.”
Satoko kept a smile on her face as she signaled Itou with her eyes for some help with the conversation.
“Oh, I know the one! The fancy bookstore that opened up last year with those big glass windows. It’s a tourist info center too?” Itou added, commenting that she’d never seen the cat. Apparently, she sometimes went to a café along the way to the park, so she knew the shop, even if she’d never been inside.
Maekawa’s voice brightened. “Yeah, that’s the one! I mean, there have been a lot more tourists around Shinjuku lately, right? They said in the interview that it’s important that we have more tourist info centers around, since they’re exploring further. The bookstore’s owner was born and raised in Shinjuku, so he’s familiar with the area. And! They say he’s super attractive!”
It seemed that Maekawa might have wanted to talk about the owner more than the shop itself.
“Look it up later,” Maekawa said. “It’s got an urbanite vibe, where you don’t have to put on airs and can just relax!”
Itou replied emphatically that she absolutely would. After that, the two began chatting about their favorite celebrities. It was times like this when Satoko was thankful to have an assistant with interests different from hers.
The salon’s receptionist, having been waiting for a lull in their conversation, stopped beside Satoko and asked for a moment of her time. The stylist left the coloring to Itou and headed to reception.
It seemed that a client had requested a change in appointment time, and they weren’t sure on how to respond. The client was booked into Satoko’s next appointment slot to get their hair straightened but had asked if they would be able to shift it to an evening slot the next day. If Satoko agreed to the change, then the appointment would run past closing time, but she didn’t have any other three-hour openings for a long while.
Satoko pulled up the client’s records on the reception computer and saw that this would be the client’s second visit. While she would have preferred to switch it to something in a few weeks’ time, she couldn’t refuse the client’s request. Shinjuku’s salon scene was flooded with options, and a client simply liking their haircut wasn’t enough to make them a return customer. The situation was so unforgiving that even going above and beyond wouldn’t stop them from going elsewhere.
While finishing up Maekawa’s hair, the woman mentioned that she was meeting up with a friend in Shinjuku afterward, and Satoko gave her the same light blow-dry that her kouhai used to. She pulled a bottle of hair oil off the shelf to give it some more gloss.
“The hairs around your face are so cute, Kasugai-san. Honestly, I’ve loved them for a while now,” Maekawa commented.
“These ones?” Satoko asked, pinching the straggling hairs she’d curled that morning. When Maekawa commented resignedly that she could never manage to do them for herself, the stylist picked up the curling iron from the wagon. “Would you like to match with me, then?”
Maekawa’s face perked right up. Seeing her finished style in the mirror, she beamed, “This is wonderful! From now on, I’ll always come to you, Kasugai-san!”
Having a loyal customer was a great thing, and Satoko was glad to hear it. But at the same time, sometimes she found the word “always” suffocating.
After settling the payment and seeing her client off, Satoko put on her coat and left the salon. Thanks to the sudden schedule change, she had a few hours off.
Should I have an early lunch at a café? But I’d still end up with too much time on my hands, then. Maybe I should go buy some new work clothes around Shinjuku? Though it’s kind of hard to have fun shopping when you know you’re going to ruin an outfit you love almost immediately… Fretting as she walked, she suddenly remembered the bookstore that Maekawa mentioned.
Turning onto the main street, Satoko walked the verdant paths along Shinjuku Gyoen Park. Peeking at a terrace-style café as she continued on to a T-junction, she found a shop with a storefront made entirely of glass. Inside the window was a wooden sign that said “Frère.”
While the counter seats along the storefront made it look like a café at first glance, the rack filled with flyers for Tokyo, Asakusa, and other tourist destinations made her immediately realize that this was the bookstore that she’d heard about. Though she wanted to go inside, the store’s lights were still off. She wasn’t sure whether it wasn’t open yet or if it was closed that day.
As Satoko looked around the shop through the glass, a man with a backpack pet carrier on his back and holding a paper bag held with both arms came running up, out of breath. His bangs were plastered onto his forehead with sweat, and his metal-framed glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. He wore both a hooded sweatshirt and a jacket, but for some reason, he had sandals on. Looking to be somewhere in his early twenties, she determined he must have been an employee.
Lowering his paper bag to the ground, the man took his smartphone out and started fiddling with it. He pulled up the same app-based key that Salon Blan used.
Just as he was about to step inside, Satoko spoke up. “Um, excuse me…”
Before she could get the words “when do you open” out of her mouth, the man just about jumped out of his skin in surprise. “We’re opening right now!” he cried, rushing inside before seemingly remembering to backtrack and open the glass door for her. “Please, come in!”
The entrance was two-layered. Directly across from the initial door was another glass door with a metal plate reading “Frère” on the front of it, and to the right, there was a staircase leading upstairs. Apparently, the store only occupied the first floor. The staircase had a sign asking unrelated people to stay out.
Satoko stepped into Frère. Just the sunlight coming in through the window was enough to light up the store. There were five counter seats along the front window, and the remaining three walls had bookshelves split up into square sections along them. Right in front of the entrance was a tiered display platform, but compared to normal bookstores with their densely placed shelves, there was a lot more open space. Perhaps that was because it was also a tourist information center.
The man put his backpack down before bringing a wooden sign out front. When he tried to move a flyer rack, he tripped over himself, but continued to turn on the background music and lighting to open the shop without picking up any of the scattered papers.
I wasn’t trying to rush him… Satoko felt guilty, picking up some of the flyers on the floor before noticing a feral growl mixed in with the gentle piano music. The carrier backpack on the floor was moving. Taking a step closer, she gave it a poke, only to get a low mewl in response.
“Whoops. I forgot about Chiyo-san!”
The man rushed over, opening the top of the carrier. Satoko’s eyes met with the white-furred, black-spotted cat on the other side of the mesh barrier. It looked up at her, meowing a number of times.
“A kitty.” Oh, that’s right. Maekawa mentioned there was a shop cat.
Just as she was about to try to touch the cat, a hand grabbed her wrist. She looked back in surprise, and the man immediately let go, flying backward so quickly that he nearly fell down. “Wah! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”
“Oh, don’t worry about it at all,” Satoko comforted him. Seeing as she worked a job where she was constantly touching people’s hair and skin, it didn’t bother her in the least.
“I’m seriously sorry, but I’m pretty sure my cat is in the absolute worst mood right now.” According to him, he’d overslept and then ran the entire way here in an attempt to arrive by opening time. The kitty was thus, understandably, growling quite unhappily at how she’d been jostled around so much. “Chiyo-san hates her carrier. Once when I opened the top of it back up, she got me right in the neck with her claws.”
“Really?!”
Satoko couldn’t help but cover her mouth in shock, but the store employee just gave a bashful smile as he marveled at how the cat’s wild blood had made sure she aimed right for his vitals. She wondered if cat owners ended up finding their pet’s viciousness cute too.
“Chiyo-san was a stray for most of her life,” the employee explained. Apparently, one day he’d noticed that the stray who hung around near his home had a pretty nasty injury on her leg, and he welcomed her as a new member of his family. “One of this shop’s main draws is having a store cat. It’s supposed to be the owner’s cat, but she’s so shy that she almost never comes out. I figured maybe I could bring mine instead today.”
Hearing a meow from the carrier, Satoko peeked in to see a very unhappy-looking kitty. She must have wanted out, now. But when the employee gently told the beast that she’d be staying in there until she calmed down, she finally got a little quieter.
“I’m sorry for blabbering on about things I’m sure you don’t care about,” the employee apologized.
“Oh, no! I love cats. There are a lot of them around where I live,” she assured him.
“Really?”
Their conversation was friendly, but he suddenly turned his back to her. Using his shoulder to wipe some sweat off his face, the employee began picking up the flyers he’d accidentally dropped when he’d tripped. Not only were there the sort of Tokyo tourist guides you’d find at subway stations but also some maps of nearby areas with handwritten writing and art. There were maps of Shinjuku Gyoen Park, different flyers for day and night barhopping, breakfast restaurant guides…all sorts of flyers that made you want to leaf through them.
“May I take one of each of these flyers?” Satoko asked.
“Yes, of course! Take as many as you like!” replied the employee, face flushed.
“So this is both a bookstore and a tourist info spot?”
“Yes. The store’s owner has had their hands in different businesses since he was a student. He said he was the one who made these flyers too,” he explained, eyes traveling to the staircase on the other side of the glass entranceway. He added that the second floor was for the owner’s company.
The flyers had the creator’s profile included on them. Sakurai Haruka, a restaurant consultant, born and raised in Shinjuku. They mentioned that other than restaurant management, he also managed a tourist bureau and bookstore.
Something that Satoko had noticed from chats with clients at the salon was that many people weren’t specializing in just one field anymore, instead working with a variety of things. When she thought about how the bookstore was owned by someone that curious, she understood why it had such a peculiar vibe.
Once everything had been picked up, the employee gave her a bow in thanks before circling around behind the register.
While she’d only intended on taking a little peek inside the store before going shopping for clothes, the more Satoko heard about the bookstore, the more interested in it she became. She slowly perused the shelves, starting from the entrance. She hadn’t been to any bookstores lately, much less bought any books herself.
She used to drop into one a few times a month to buy magazines for the salon or hair catalogs, but two years earlier, the salon had invested in tablets so that they could read the digital versions instead. Having lost her reason to go to any bookstores, she hadn’t read anything at all in a while.
I wonder what’s popular nowadays?
Each bookshelf had books of all different sizes and genres lined up on them. As she wondered about how they were all sorted, the employee grabbed a few off of a shelf and started putting them out on the tiered display platform. There was a book on job interview secrets, one of easy recipes for people who lived alone, the original novel that a popular movie from a few years earlier had been based on, manga, art collections… All sorts of different books.
One book slipped out of the employee’s arms and onto the floor. A fantastical foggy forest photo inside captured Satoko’s gaze.
“May I have a look at that one?”
“Yes, of course!”
After he handed her the book, Satoko began to flip through it. It was a photobook of foreign scenery. The cobalt blue at the end of a single path through a wasteland captivated her as she continued to turn the pages. The wind blew through her body, the blue sky painting over the bookshelves, and the building walls, spreading far and wide. She’d never seen any of the places in the photos herself, yet they all felt nostalgic somehow.
Satoko let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
Her first visit to Hokkaido had been on a high school trip. As she had stepped out onto the tarmac at New Chitose Airport, she felt as if the wind had called out to her, and looked up. She was shocked to see a blue sky with nothing to block her view, before looking down at her feet. The only thing touching the ground was the bottom of her shoes. It was the first time she realized that humans lived in the sky’s domain. She’d felt somehow floaty for the rest of her trip, glancing up at the sky a number of times.
Living in Tokyo, all you ever really saw was the ground or buildings. Even if you threw your windows open, you’d only ever see your neighbor’s home, and all that would catch your eye on a walk outside were the bright store displays you passed.
Back in Hokkaido, the sun rose from the horizon before staining the sky red as it sunk down the opposite side, bringing the night. The Earth’s natural rhythms had set her heart alight more than any other tourist attraction she could ever visit. And yet she’d somehow forgotten an experience that struck her through the heart.
Satoko took the book up to the register counter. There, the male employee took the price card out of it to show that it was one thousand yen.
“Huh? But the back…” She was pretty sure that the price on the back cover was a lot higher. “Is this secondhand?”
“Um, it’s actually my book, so it’s not really secondhand… Or wait, that does make it secondhand, doesn’t it?” the man said, scratching at his face.
What does he mean?
“I know I said the store’s owner was up on the second floor a minute ago, but each of the bookshelves here are managed by different people. It’s called a shared bookstore,” he continued.
“Shared bookstore?” Satoko had never heard that term before.
The male employee slipped out from behind the counter and headed to the shelves. Then, he turned back to her, pointing to one of them. “This is my shelf. Bit more like a box, though.”
Apparently, Frère was a collection of tiny bookstores, where every shelf was managed by a different person, each of whom paid a monthly fee for their shelf space. Those managers were called “shelf owners,” and they took turns minding the storefront. It seemed that the shop format was spreading quite quickly lately.
“Oh, I’ve heard of general stores who rent out shelves for people to sell their handmade goods. So there are bookstores that do the same thing!”
Satoko nodded in understanding, but the employee’s eyes widened in surprise, seemingly having not known that there were general stores like that.
“All of the shelves actually have their own proper names,” he explained. “They can be pretty hard to see with all the books in the way, though.”
There was a business card-sized sign stuck to the side of the shelf. His was called “The Hammock Cat.”
“Oh, the kitty!” Satoko exclaimed, turning back to look at the carrier, which had stopped shaking, seemingly because the cat had worn itself out.
“Um, would it be all right if I let her out now?” the employee asked hesitantly.
“Yes, of course.”
When she smiled back at him, he looked a bit bashful, sneaking up to the bag. The cat meowed, much calmer than before. She was pressing her face against the mesh. As soon as he unzipped it, the silky-furred cat poked her head out, looking at Satoko with her bright yellow eyes.
“Sorry about that, Chiyo-san,” he apologized as he reached out to pet her.
Chiyo knocked the employee’s hand away with her paw and jumped out in one smooth motion. She looked all around at the store, then guardedly began to walk.
“Thank you for teaching me about all of that, even though you were in the middle of taking my payment,” Satoko said.
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” the employee nodded, heading back behind the register. Once he’d finished ringing her in, he handed her a café menu. It turned out that the store had a capsule-type coffee maker, and customers who spent over a set amount would get a drink for free.
After Satoko placed her order, she headed over to the counter facing the Shinjuku Gyoen Park, sitting at a chair on the end. October would soon be over. The trees were changing color as the seasons crept closer to winter.
Relaxing in the warmth of the sunbeams coming through the window glass, she began turning the pages of her newly purchased photobook one by one. It might have been a bit of an exaggeration to say that she’d met the book, but it was one that she never would have found by herself in her entire life without coming here, with the warm spring breeze blowing outside and the sunlight surrounding the flowers blooming on the side of the road. The photos she gazed at entwined themselves with memories sleeping deep within her heart.
As Satoko soaked in refreshing new feelings, the employee brought her coffee over.
“This is a wonderful book. Really good!” she gushed, unable to stop herself from speaking to him. She’d never felt like this while looking at photos before. She didn’t know how to properly express the glee in her heart, only managing to repeat the words “really good” once more.
“Actually, I fell for that book as soon as I saw it too. It’s a complete coincidence, but it was published on the same day as my birthday, so I’m a little attached to it.”
“If you’re attached to it, then why did you give it up?” Satoko asked.
“Um, it’s because I liked the book that I wanted someone else to know about it,” he replied.
Satoko was shocked to hear that. He’d let go of a book he liked so that other people could discover it. She’d never even considered the possibility.
“I’d always thought that the reason people sold their books was because they didn’t need them anymore,” she murmured.
“There are definitely some books like that. I’ve got books I’ve left laying around because I had no room on my shelves and just kept forgetting about them, and books I bought intending on reading them but missed the right time, or series where I read one book and ended up buying a bunch of the other volumes at once… My house is just bursting with them.”
The employee said that he’d tried making another room at home into a library in an attempt to stop leaving books laying around his bedroom, but he ended up having too many to fit inside. When all was said and done, they’d apparently filled up his entire home.
“Wow! You must really love books,” marveled Satoko. It must have been people like him who’d want to have their own little bookstore.
“Oh no, no, not at all. There are tons of people who love books way more than I do. I’m sure that all of the other shelf owners read a lot more than me and are way more familiar with them.”
If having so many books that your home can’t fit them all and becoming a shelf owner because you want other people to know about the books you like doesn’t make you a booklover, then what does?
“I’m job hunting right now, but I had no idea how to answer when they asked about my hobbies at an interview. Other than reading, I don’t really have any, but I just couldn’t make myself say it. I don’t do anything past thinking what I’m reading is interesting, so I’m pretty sure I’m not getting super deep into books like other people,” the employee continued.
“Isn’t it fine for you to say you like something without worrying about everyone else? If everyone compared how much they like something with everyone else all of the time, then only a handful of people in the world would ever be able to say they liked books.”
The employee was flummoxed, murmuring that the world was a big scale.
Satoko lifted the photobook she’d just bought in front of her face. “If that were the case, then I wouldn’t be able to say I liked this book I only found today. Even though I thought it was fate that brought it to me!”
“Oh yeah, you’re right there,” he said, his tense expression softening. “This is actually my first time selling books that I liked. That’s why I was happy to see you pick it up right in front of me. Uh, I know I mentioned that it was published on the same day I was born, but it’s also a book I bought while I was worrying about a lot of stuff. I looked at the picture of the sky and thought it was nice… I mean, I know you don’t need a book to see the sky, since you could see it anywhere, but… Well, it’s just like how sometimes you know you could go somewhere anytime, but then end up never going at all. Like, just because something’s there all the time, you never give it a proper look. I just wanted someone else to look at the sky the same way. I’m pretty sure there were other reasons. I bought it in my first year of high school, after all.” He put a hand to his chin and tilted his head in thought.
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to buy it when it’s so important to you?” Satoko asked. She had no idea when the last time she bought a book for herself was. She was sure he’d be shocked to hear that the apartment she was currently living in didn’t have even a single bookshelf in it.
“It’s fine, it’s fine! I’ve already realized that the sky’s always there if I just look up,” the employee said with a smile. “That photobook is actually part of a series, you know. I’ll bring the next volume sometime, so you should pop in the next time you’re in the neighborhood!”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
A pair of Western-looking foreigners, probably in their early twenties, stopped on the other side of the window. Taking a peek inside must have piqued their interests, because they ended up coming in.
When they spoke to the employee, he started explaining the concept of shared bookstores to them in fluent English. Satoko found it a bit unexpected, but the photobook she’d just bought was of foreign scenery. There were university students who used their long breaks to travel, enjoying visiting lots of foreign countries.
I bet he wouldn’t claim travel as a hobby either, Satoko thought to herself with a giggle as she imagined the employee at another job interview. She decided she’d try asking him about it if they ever had another chance to chat.
After finishing her coffee, she stood up from her seat. She turned her head as she readied herself to leave, eyes meeting the employee’s as they smiled and bowed their heads to each other. Chiyo followed her to the door, as if she was seeing her off in his stead.
“I wonder if you’ll let me pet you?” Satoko wondered. She crouched down, and when she brought the back of her hand down under the cat’s chin, trying not to scare her, Chiyo rubbed up against her. The unexpected feeling of her warmth brought a smile to Satoko’s face. “I’ll see you again sometime, Chiyo-san.”
Pushing the glass door open, she left the bookstore.
“Ahh, the weather really is nice.”
While the wind was cooling as November approached, it just made the sunlight feel even more pleasant.
Satoko’s eyes fell on the trees of the Shinjuku Gyoen Park directly across the street from her. She’d only ever visited the park once a few years earlier, thinking that she could go anytime she liked since it was so close. Why not go today?
After buying herself a ticket, she entered the park through the Ookido Gate and spread the guide map she’d picked up at Frère open in front of her. According to it, the autumn leaves were worth seeing. Her last visit to the park had been when autumn was changing over to winter as well. She remembered that she’d gone to see the avenue lined with plane trees.
Satoko started walking, following the route shown on the map. The traditional Japanese gardens surrounded by forests came into view. Tamamo Pond still showed traces of the Edo period. Stopping on the bridge to the island in the center, she watched the waterfowl preen their feathers in the shadows of the maple trees.
“I think these guys were here last time too. Maybe they’ve actually been here ever since the Edo period?”
She’d been convinced that Shinjuku was a city where new things gathered, and the buildings, people, and the way they lived was always changing. But right here was a pond that had existed for hundreds of years already, and living beings that were probably continuing the same way of life as the generations before them. She could barely believe it.
At the other side of the bridge, she saw an open field of grass. Despite it being a weekday, there were people lounging on sheets spread on the ground. Satoko spread her handkerchief out on the grass and sat down. She stared at the high-rises of the Shinjuku Subcenter on the other side of the forest as her hair fluttered in the wind. Listening carefully to the rustling of the trees, she tried just looking up at the sky.
Her first visit to the park had been right after her job interview for Salon Blan. She’d been over the moon when they hired her on the spot. It had felt like it’d be a waste to just go home and end the day like usual afterward, so she came here.
Back then, she’d been thrilled that she’d be working somewhere where she could wear outfits she liked and make people smile. Now, though, she couldn’t only deal with her clients one-on-one. She also had the responsibility of bringing in profits, had to be considerate of her client’s work schedules, and so on. The list of things she had to handle had slowly grown, and maybe, just like the buildings blocked the view of the sky, the things that she’d considered to be obvious were getting blocked from her sight as well.
“That employee said he’d bought the photobook at a time when he was worrying over a lot of things,” Satoko mused.
He’d mentioned it was back in high school. Were his worries about family? Or maybe romance? What had he been seeking from the photobook in a time with so many worries?
The sky’s always there if you just look up, huh… The fact that the land and sky continued into each other was something you might forget, living in a city with buildings looming over you. Could opening the photobook remind her of that, next time the busy days overwhelmed her?
Satoko opened the photobook, which had already become a protective charm for her heart, on her lap. When she finished reading through it once more, she flopped back onto the grass and watched vapor trails dragging behind planes as if they were a breath. While she was surrounded by the wind, a line she barely remembered from the book swept through her dozing body. She stretched her arms right up toward the sky and slowly let out the breath she’d been holding in her lungs.
Sometimes, you needed to spread the buildings apart. Maybe it would be okay to live how she wanted to, a little bit more carefree. Now that she’d met this book, it felt like she’d finally returned to who she was meant to be.
Chapter 2: A Gift Over Seven Years
Chapter 2:
A Gift Over Seven Years
AS HE WAS FILLING OUT A JOB APPLICATION, A notification for an email titled “Notice Regarding Our Selection” popped up in the corner of Shirane Rintarou’s monitor. It was the results of the secondary job interview with an appliance maker he’d had a week before. Taking a deep breath, he put his palms together in front of his face.
“Please. Let me get in.”
Deep breath in, now breathe out. Readying himself, he opened the email. Shortly after he began reading it, he became unable to focus and closed his laptop. He spun his chair around, turning his back to his desk.
“Chiiiyo-san,” Rintarou called out to the spotted cat lazing about in the free-standing hammock in the center of his bedroom. She kept on looking at a random spot in the room, not reacting at all. He tried reaching out to pick her up, only for her to smack his hand away with a paw as she let out a cranky meow.
“C’mon, can’t you comfort me once in a while?” Rintarou protested.
When he forced himself into the hammock with her, Chiyo used his face as a springboard, kicking his glasses with her back legs as she jumped down onto the ground. Stepping over the books scattered across the floor, she calmly walked to the corner of the room.
“I mean, I didn’t expect to get hired, but…”
Lying on his back, Rintarou let his limbs go limp. He’d gotten through the first interview fine thanks to the questions fitting the answers he’d practiced ahead of time, but the second interview was basically small talk, and the conversation had died out.
Near the very end, they’d asked him if he had anything he wanted to show them. The conversation might’ve stagnated, but he’d thought he said everything that needed to be said—but saying nothing was essentially admitting that he had no selling points.
The thing that had popped to his mind as he panicked was the shared bookstore Frère. This managed to catch their interest, maybe because it was the first time they’d heard about such a store. But in the end, they told him to keep on trying, in a show of impersonal encouragement. It had been too little too late.
Maybe things would have been different if he’d at least told them how dealing with the shelf owners broadened his world, or that he wanted to suggest a book management system using the things he’d learned in university. But if he’d been the sort of person skilled enough to pull that sort of thing off the top of his head, he wouldn’t have been struggling with interviews in the first place.
Even when he’d done practice interviews with one of his university’s alumni, they’d pointed out that, aside from his poor answers to the questions, he wasn’t even making eye contact. Whenever someone asked him a question that he hadn’t practiced an answer for, his mind would just go blank—he couldn’t even manage an answer when asked what sort of books he’d read recently.
Rintarou let out a sigh along with the heaviness that had sunk to the bottom of his stomach.
“But still, it was a good thing that I managed to even get a second interview. Failing is fine, since there’s nothing I can do about being a bad fit. But I wish I could get myself to spit out ‘I thought things were going fine, so I don’t understand what went wrong’ at least once. The fact that it doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere is rough. I wanna tell myself to stop reading all the time and just talk to someone. Right, Chiyo-san?”
Despite being spoken to, the spotted cat didn’t even look his way. When he repeated her name, she gave him a low, annoyed growl. She was rejecting him. She probably didn’t even feel obligated to give Rintarou the time of day in the first place. He’d seen pictures of cats laying with their tummies in the air on social media, but he’d never seen Chiyo do anything that immodest. Her caregiver was nothing but a servant to her, and she didn’t trust him at all.
“And here you went and saw that pretty lady out the door, even though you’d just met her. Just what part of me do you not like, Chiyo-san?”
Rintarou gave up on looking for any response from the cat, turning his eyes to the bookshelves that covered an entire wall in his room. The mountains of books that didn’t fit stacked in front of the shelves looked just like the high-rise buildings towering over the Shinjuku Subcenter.
Most of the pay from his part-time job at a rental car shop went toward constructing those buildings. His feet would unconsciously carry him to bookstores, and once he was inside, he couldn’t leave without buying another book. It was to the point where whenever he got lost in thought, he’d be in a bookstore when he came back down to earth. It was just like how one of his university friends would get sucked into pachinko and slot machines, often finding themselves already playing before they even realized it.
“Aaanyway, how ’bout I read to take my mind off things?”
Rintarou reached out to a pile of books from his spot in the hammock. Just brushing it with his fingertips was enough to knock it over, and Chiyo walked over as if to laugh at him. He’d decided that once he graduated university, he’d move out of his family home no matter where he was in his job search. He needed to get rid of some books to prepare for that, but he just kept getting more.
“Rintarou, c’mere for a second!” he heard a high-pitched voice call from the first floor. Rushing down the stairs, he found his mother, Kimiko, wearing a knit dress he’d never seen before. She pointed at a paper bag sitting in the entranceway with a scowl. “I told you not to leave books laying around.”
“But those are the ones I’m bringing to the bookstore tomorrow…”
His murmur should have reached her ears, but she just told him to take them back upstairs before spraying air freshener around the entranceway. Slippers pattering, she raced back to the living room.
Picking up the paper bag full of books, Rintarou headed to his room on the second floor. Bringing the books he’d decided to get rid of back up to his room made him have second thoughts about it all. Despite knowing that opening them up again would end up wearing down his determination, he reached into the bag for a book and flipped through the pages.
While he settled into reading, the interphone rang. He could hear his mother’s excited voice from downstairs, a far cry from moments earlier. Her guest had arrived.
“I should get changed for dinner, at the very least,” Rintarou muttered to himself.
Rintarou opened his closet and pulled out a shirt and a sweater. Just as he was about to close the door after getting changed, Chiyo jumped inside through the crack.
“No can do, Chiyo-san.”
He grabbed her around the stomach to try to pull her out, but she dug her claws into a storage box and braced all four legs. Why did cats like small spaces so much? If he left her inside, his suit for interviews would probably end up covered in fur.
“C’mon, Chiyo-san. Listen to me.”
But the cat had no intention of listening to her servant’s pleas. When she dug her claws into the back of his hand, he had no choice but to surrender.
Leaving his room, Rintarou ran down the stairs. He could hear Kimiko’s cheery voice coming from the living room. Dinner was more or less ready. His mother wasn’t much of a cook, so the plates were all piled with side dishes she’d bought in the basement of a department store.
“Evening, Niimi-san,” Rintarou called out toward the kitchen.
The thin man who was retrieving the chopsticks from the cutlery drawer turned to him with a soft gaze. He wore a light-gray shirt with a navy-blue V-neck sweater on top and well-fitting slim pants. Rintarou knew the man had gone home to change out of his work clothes, but this outfit admittedly wasn’t much different.
Niimi was Kimiko’s boyfriend. He was in his mid-fifties but took care of his appearance, and so he appeared around the same age as her despite being twelve years older.
“You’re home early, Rintarou-kun,” the man greeted.
“I haven’t been taking many shifts at my part-time job lately, since it’s so hard to plan around job interviews.”
“Ahh, that’s right. It’s already November,” Niimi nodded, expression clouding over.
“I guess companies are rushing to hire. The cycle for getting an interview has been short, so I’m trying to avoid making too many plans. Don’t wanna cause trouble at the rental shop by calling off work on short notice,” Rintarou explained in a light tone, not wanting to darken the mood right off the bat.
Chiyo slipped into the living room through the crack in the door, walking straight over to Kimiko and rubbing up against her legs affectionately. She was like a completely different cat. It was because she knew that when everyone gathered, she’d get fed too.
Rintarou opened the fridge to grab the dressing. “Oh. You bought beer for us, Niimi-san?” he commented, seeing two six-packs lined up on the very bottom shelf.
“I thought it might be nice for a change. Feel free to drink any leftovers.”
“They’re gonna be all gone by the time I think about having one,” Rintarou grumbled, muttering that his mother would drink them all while watching her dramas. Niimi gave him an understanding smile. Between the three of them, Kimiko was the biggest drinker.
Chiyo had been gallantly following Kimiko as she walked between the living room and kitchen. Once the cat finally gave up and sat still on the floor, Niimi opened the cupboards. Looking for her meal, Chiyo jumped from a chair to the sink, then inside the cupboard to meow beside the cans of cat food.
“Okay, okay, I’ll get your food out,” Niimi cooed.
Despite usually prioritizing her beloved kitty over everything, Kimiko tended to lose sight of anything else when she had something that needed to be done immediately. Niimi understood that part of her completely, which was why he’d always feed Chiyo.
Once everyone was at the table, they began eating. Conversation was always livelier with three people rather than two.
The first time Kimiko had brought Niimi home was when Rintarou was in his second year of junior high. He’d been shocked when his mother told him there was someone she wanted to date, but when he saw his usually cranky and high-strung mom smiling so happily, he’d been impressed by how much love could change a person.
From then on, they spent most weekends traveling. Then, even when he knew that Kimiko was busy and wouldn’t be home, Niimi would always come over. He’d take Rintarou on drives, just the two of them, take him out to watch baseball games, and things like that. He was the first adult the boy had wanted to become a part of his family. Niimi would happily drive him to go play with his friends, and when Rintarou got stuck on his summer homework, Niimi would patiently talk him through it.
Wanting to show off, he’d introduced the man to his junior high friends as his mom’s boyfriend. They had always been jealous, but things were different with his high school friends. When they visited his home and he introduced Niimi the same way he always had, they’d act sympathetic, apologizing for not realizing sooner that his homelife was so tough. It had felt like a slap in the face to Rintarou. But before he could feel indignation, he started wondering if his life really was that pitiful, which ended up causing problems with his relationships both at school and at home.
When he’d entered university and met people from other prefectures, he finally realized that his values and the environment he’d been raised in were peculiar. Living in a city with so many different sorts of people for so long had made the idea of worrying about being different from others feel stranger than anything else. He’d grown up only interacting with other people who’d been born and raised in Shinjuku, so he hadn’t had any prejudices about people’s families, but he now realized that wasn’t the norm.
“Going back to what we were talking about before, how is the job hunt going?” Niimi asked as he poured a can of beer into Rintarou’s glass.
“So-so, I guess. I got to the second round of interviews. Didn’t get the job, though.”
When Rintarou mentioned that he’d just got the rejection email to Kimiko earlier, she frowned. “That’s not ‘so-so!’ You either got the job or didn’t,” she’d said.
She was always so blunt. Nowadays he could let it go since he was used to it, but when Rintarou was a teen, it had hurt him a lot. If it hadn’t been for Niimi, his relationship with his mother would’ve gone rotten.
“It’s already November, so I’m getting a bit anxious about it. It’s like, there’ll be people turning down the jobs, so maybe it’ll be fine. Or it’d be nice if it’d be fine.”
Most of Rintarou’s friends from university had either already gotten jobs or been accepted to graduate schools. The people who got job offers usually got them from multiple companies, which meant they turned a lot of them down. That meant he still had a chance.
“Rintarou-kun. This is just if you’re interested, of course, but would you like me to ask HR at my job about any openings for you?” Niimi asked, expression serious. He worked at a major pharmaceutical maker, developing perfume. One of the new employees in human resources was one of Niimi’s old coworkers, so he thought he’d be able to swing something.
“You should take his offer,” Kimiko chimed in. “Wouldn’t it be better for you to work somewhere you have someone you can rely on, Rintarou?”
But Rintarou couldn’t do that. It would be bad to get a job through connections when he didn’t have any knowledge or skill for it—he’d just end up embarrassing Niimi. And what was he supposed to say when anyone asked what their relationship was? If he told people he was his mother’s boyfriend, they’d know Niimi was looking at him through rose-colored glasses.
“I’m gonna keep trying on my own for now. I still have hope, after all,” Rintarou said, wishing it was true.
After an awkward toast, Kimiko kept her glass in her hands without drinking anything, even though she was always the first one to drain her drink.
“You know, Rintarou…you don’t have to get a job right away. You could try doing a bunch of different part-time jobs once you graduate, or you could just stay at the rental car shop. You’re always talking about how you’re gonna get a job once you graduate and move out, but I wouldn’t mind it a bit if you stayed here forever. To me, you being home is natural,” she said, looking serious.
The fact that she was always honest was one of his mother’s good points. He could tell that she was worried, and her offer was completely serious.
“I bet you’d find life difficult moving elsewhere after being born and raised in Shinjuku. What have your friends from junior high done, Rintarou-kun? You still hang out with them once in a while, don’t you?” Niimi asked.
“I think most of them still live at home,” Rintarou said. “Can’t knock the ease of transportation here. When they go drinking, they can just walk home if they miss the last train. They say there’s nowhere else they could live that’s got everything handy nearby.”
“See! I was right!” Kimiko interjected as if she’d won.
“But, I mean, getting used to some inconvenience is part of learning about the world,” Rintarou added, laughing it off.
Kimiko muttered that he was starting to resemble Chiyo a little bit. Rintarou took a drink of his beer to push down the retort that there was a reason that he was being stubborn about this.
His plan was that once he graduated university and was out on his own, he’d suggest that his mother and Niimi should get married, or even just start living together properly instead of just over the weekends. The two had prioritized his feelings plenty over the years, maybe even to a fault. If he didn’t put an end to it somehow, then they’d keep on holding themselves back.
Back around one year into their relationship, Kimiko had asked if he would be okay with the three living together. Despite being a bit surprised, he’d said yes on the spot, but Niimi had caught his flash of hesitation. He gave Rintarou an escape route by saying that it would be difficult to suddenly have to live with someone new, so they should just test things out first. That was the beginning of their weekend-only cohabitation.
Back then, he’d been relieved, but it’d been seven years since then. They needed some sort of cue to take the next step in their relationship. If that cue was Rintarou getting a job, then that would be a joyous occasion and a very good reason. The problem was that it didn’t seem like he was getting anywhere with the job hunt.
Heading back to his room after they finished dinner, Rintarou saw that his clothes had all been yanked out of the closet and scattered across the floor.
“You really did it, huh, Chiyo-san…” he sighed, shoulders drooping. But his suit alone was untouched. That was probably her being nice. Having returned to his room ahead of him, the cat was stretched out and dozing in the hammock.
“Okay. Better get you brushed for today.”
Sneaking over, Rintarou grabbed Chiyo by the scruff. While she was subdued, he used his other hand to lift her body and place her down on the floor. She hadn’t been coming very close to him lately, so his only chance to groom her was when she was relaxing after a meal.
After getting her all brushed, he gave her a little rub on the head for being a good girl. The second he let go of her, she jumped onto the couch. When he tried to take a step closer, she went fully on guard. He spoke to her kindly and with love like he always did, but she’d been even less cuddly with him than usual lately.
Rintarou sat on his bed before flopping down onto his back.
“I’m not feeling good about my next interviews either. I wonder if I’d do better if I could talk normally, like I do with Niimi-san…”
But thinking back to the day he first met his mother’s boyfriend, he’d been so nervous and tense that he couldn’t even swallow his food, much less speak. Why was it that he’d get so caught up in needing to do everything properly that he’d freeze up, even though no one had ever expected perfection from him?
The woman who bought his photobook at Frère popped into his mind.
“I’m pretty sure I managed to talk to her normally, even though we’d only just met. I’m not really good with pretty people, so why? Was it because Chiyo-san was there with me?”
When he remembered her long, slim limbs, soft-looking hair, and the kind look in her eyes when she smiled, Rintarou suddenly felt warm and slapped his thighs with his palms. Chiyo jumped a bit in surprise, fixing him with a glare.
She was decked out in the trends from head to toe. He wouldn’t have thought they would have much in common, so it was strange that they’d been drawn to the same book.
“Isn’t it fine for you to say you like something without worrying about everyone else?” What she’d said was so pure. What had she thought when she saw that photobook?
“Ah, all I did was answer her questions. I didn’t ask her anything myself. She’d said the book was wonderful, so maybe she likes nature? Oh! I’ll try talking to her some more if we ever meet again. But will we ever? It’s not like my shifts watching the store are regular or anything. The chances are probably super slim, huh, Chiyo-san?”
He turned to the cat for agreement, but she just kept lounging with her back to him.
Carrying two paper bags full of books, Rintarou left his house. He was on his way to Frère to put out the photobook he’d promised to bring for the woman. Seeing as how he had no idea when she would end up visiting the store next, he needed to do it as soon as possible.
Pasted on the door to the store was a paper sign reading “There is a cat inside. Please take care when opening and closing the door.” It looked like the store cat, Sumi, was on duty today.
“Thank you for your hard work! I’ve come to change out the books on my shelf,” he called out as he opened the door. The store had only just opened, so there weren’t any customers inside.
A tall man stood in front of the register counter—a shelf owner Rintarou had never met before. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties and had a calm atmosphere about him. The man’s unremarkable silhouette with his black hair, white jersey-cloth shirt, and black pants made his handsome features stand out. He had been looking at the shelves with his arms crossed, shooting a “you too” back before throwing Rintarou an inquisitive look.
“I-I’m Shirane. Nice to meet you.” Remembering his job interviews, Rintarou introduced himself, voice cracking as he did. The man smiled back and said his name was Kajiwara.
Kajiwara Keiichi. The only thing Rintarou had known about him was his name, which he’d seen on the chat app that the shelf owners used to communicate with each other. Frère’s owner often asked him to look after Sumi.
There was a clear ring of a bell near the man’s feet. Sumi, the store’s resident brown-and-white tabby cat, was peeking just half of her face out from behind the register counter. When Rintarou took a step toward her, she bolted away, jumping into the bottom shelf of a bookcase farther inside the store. Despite being a cat owner himself, all cats ran from him.
“Sorry, looks like I spooked her, huh?” he apologized.
While the store advertised itself as having a store cat, Sumi would run and hide as soon as anyone walked inside. Because customers could never get a glimpse of her despite the glass storefront, the owner asked any shelf owners with cats of their own to bring them during their shifts. That was the reason Rintarou had brought Chiyo on his last one. People said that cats aren’t great with changes in their environment, but Chiyo was confident wherever she went. She was a true alpha kitty, immediately taking control of the shop. But Sumi was the complete opposite.
Looking at the striped tail swaying from the front of the shelf, Keiichi shrugged. “Restocking today?” he asked.
“No, less restocking and more replacing. They’re not selling well, so I was going to try to figure out what’s in demand,” replied Rintarou.
After a beat, Keiichi gave him an uninterested “I see” back.
Did I word that wrong? The man probably thought that Rintarou had his shelf for business purposes, but the university student wasn’t sure if he’d be able to explain the reason he wanted to sell his books. Disappointed in his own timidness, he headed toward The Hammock Cat. He could tell from a distance that nothing had sold.
It had been half a year since he first started renting his shelf at Frère. When he’d signed the contract, the owner had warned him that only a few shelves ever made enough money to cover their monthly rent and that the shop format wasn’t aimed at people who were looking to profit—which was exactly the case.
Considering the location, Rintarou had tried his best to stock a selection of books where anyone could find something they’d want, no matter who they were. He even switched out his whole shelf at least once a week, so that visitors wouldn’t get bored with what was on sale, but he didn’t make nearly as many sales as he wanted. He had become a shelf owner because he had a set goal in mind, but he had no idea when he would actually manage to reach that goal.
The books on the shelf were lined up neatly, and there was no sign that anyone had even touched them. As Rintarou started pulling them all out and piling them on a work cart, Keiichi approached.
“You can use that display, if you’d like,” the man said, pointing to the shelved display near the entrance. It was a spot that whichever shelf owner who was taking care of the store that day could use as they liked. The display was easily visible from outside, so most of them used it to display books they especially wanted to show off from their own shelf.
“No, it’s fine. They probably wouldn’t sell over there either,” Rintarou answered. It’d hurt if the other man ended up asking why he was even renting a shelf, but he didn’t want to go so far as to steal someone else’s rightful spot.
Arms crossed, Keiichi stared down at the books on the work cart, asking which ones Rintarou had brought in to stock that day. In response, the student took the books he’d brought out of their paper bags and lined them up on the cart.
“None of them are anything special,” he said, intending to sound modest about his choice of books, but…
“So they’re nothing special, huh? That’s why they won’t sell,” Keiichi concluded with a sigh. The polite tone he’d been using until then vanished.
Unable to read the man’s emotions in his gaze, Rintarou’s words got stuck in his throat.
“Why’d you bring these books?” Keiichi asked.
“Huh? Why? Because I thought someone might want them,” Rintarou replied.
“And who would that be?”
The university student went silent at Keiichi’s calm probing.
“Well then, what sort of person did you imagine picking up this book when you decided to bring it in?” Keiichi continued.
The reason Rintarou couldn’t reply despite wanting to wasn’t due to the fact that he was being put on the spot for an answer. It was because he didn’t actually have an answer.
“If you want to sell books here,” Keiichi started, picking Sumi up from where she’d silently approached him, “you should only stock books you have an attachment to. You can tell from looking at a shelf whether they’ve just stocked whatever books they’ve finished reading, or if they’ve stocked ones they want other people to read too.”
“Can people really tell?”
“I can, at least,” the man said finally.
Hearing Keiichi say that so resolutely, Rintarou couldn’t bring himself to put out the books he’d brought that day. As he stood there silently, the other man pointed at the photobook the student had brought.
“Ah! That one is…” Rintarou finally remembered that putting the photobook out was the reason he’d come to Frère that day in the first place. “I wanted the lady who bought one of my books a bit ago to get it. It’s part of a series, and this second volume here is my favorite. This is the only book here I’m attached to.”
The words flowed out without any pause. When Rintarou stated that proudly, Keiichi smiled for the first time.
“I see. Then you wouldn’t want anyone but her buying it.”
“But stocking a book for one single customer in particular is no good from a business standpoint, is it? And it’s not like the other shelf owners would know what’s going on if someone came in and told them they were the person a book was on hold for,” Rintarou said.
“Then how about you do something so that person knows it’s for them without writing it straight out?” Keiichi suggested, giving Sumi a gentle pet on her head before lowering her back to the floor. “Let me show you a good way to do that,” he continued, staring straight at Rintarou.
Once Rintarou got home, he opened his desk drawer. Pulling a simple, lined pad of Japanese paper out, he placed it beside the photobook. He’d brought it home for now after hearing Keiichi’s advice. He was going to write out his impressions of the book.
On his first attempt, he miswrote a kanji you’d learn in the lower grades of elementary school while trying to write the title. On his second attempt, he’d tried to write carefully but ended up accidentally skipping a character in the author’s name, which meant he immediately had to go on to attempt three.
“Damn, my writing is so bad… I’m always typing my stuff with a keyboard rather than writing it by hand. Was handwriting always this difficult?”
His hands were shaking from nerves, and his letters were warping. At the rate he was going, he’d go through his whole pad just from rewriting.
“Okay, wait, just calm down. There’s no way I’m getting this written in one pass, anyway.”
Deciding to write a rough draft to decide where he’d write what, Rintarou pulled out some of the paper he had for writing his reports. He read through the photobook again. He then pulled a poetry anthology off of his shelves, wanting to write something smart. It was supposed to have given him some inspiration, but time just kept on passing while his mind stayed empty.
There was a meow behind him—Chiyo was crying, despite the fact that it wasn’t mealtime.
“Okay, okay.”
Getting in the way when you were trying to work was a special skill cats possessed.
Standing up from his chair, Rintarou crouched down beside where Chiyo lay lounging on the hammock. He stared at his bookshelves while petting her back, only for her to quickly sink her claws into his arm. The spotted cat then slowly stood up and left the room. He could hear the light pitter-patter of her feet going down the stairs.
“Why, Chiyo-san?”
While Rintarou was rubbing his arm, Kimiko called up to him from the first floor. He stuck just his head out of his doorway and yelled, “What?” back.
“We’re eating out tonight. You’re coming too, right?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m fine. You guys go without me.”
“Why? We were going to go to that place you love, the spot with the delicious xiaolongbao buns near the Shinjuku West Exit.”
“I’m fine. I’m not going,” he repeated. He had other things he needed to worry about right now.
“Do you have a shift at your part-time job?”
“No. I just have something I need to do, so you two go by yourselves.”
“Should we get sushi then?”
Rintarou wilted. What they were going to eat wasn’t the problem. How many times would he have to repeat that he wasn’t coming before she gave up?
Niimi had apparently been close by, because he heard him say something. He must have convinced Kimiko to back off, because he heard the living room door close afterward.
First things first. He had to write out his impressions on the photobook and then return to Frère to put his books back out. His shelf was currently empty, so he wanted to get back to the store within the day if possible.
“I need to write something, quick.”
Something that would make whoever looked at the book realize that it was intended for one specific person. His impressions written out like a letter, but in a way that wouldn’t seem too pushy. Keiichi had told him to write something that only someone who had read the first volume in the photobook series would understand. Rintarou had replied simply that he thought he could manage that, but when he thought about the lady who bought the book, he couldn’t find any words.
A while later, Kimiko and Niimi left the house. While he sat there rewriting his impressions over and over again, the sun went down, and closing time for Frère passed.
Rintarou’s room had gotten chilly, so he turned his heater on. While he sat cross-legged at his desk, staring at the paper in front of him, Kimiko and Niimi came home, delivering some seafood yakisoba and xiaolongbao steamed buns to him in his room, assuming he hadn’t eaten. They asked him what he was doing, but he had no idea where to even start explaining. When he turned around after taking his food, he saw Chiyo had come back and settled in the hammock at some point.
“This is bad. This is harder than just talking to her face-to-face,” Rintarou grumbled, drooping as he stared at the draft he thought he’d never finish.
Rintarou made his way to Frère, making sure to visit on a day that Keiichi was minding the store.
“Thank you for your advice earlier.”
The student made a beeline to the counter and immediately bowed his head to Keiichi, whose eyes opened in surprise for a moment before softening as he recognized him from his last visit.
It had been ten days since Rintarou had come back to restock his shelf. He wasn’t thinking that just switching the selection would mean he’d instantly get sales, but he was wondering if anything had happened with the photobook.
“Kajiwara-san,” he began.
“Hm?”
“I completely underestimated how hard it would be. I’ve been writing reports every week, so I thought I’d get it done quick. But I was so, so wrong. Writing my impressions on something while thinking about the person they were for was so much harder than writing any report.”
Keiichi listened to Rintarou talk about his struggle with a smile. “Take a look at your shelf,” he said.
Turning around to look, Rintarou saw that there was a gap between the books. “Oooh, it looks like there’re fewer books!” Which one sold?
Just as he was about to go over to check, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Sakurai Haruka, the owner of Frère. He must have been on his way out, because he had a coat on over his jacket and was carrying a business bag. Holding Sumi firmly in his arms, his eyes softened behind his glasses.
“Shirane-san! Here to restock? Good work.” After letting his beloved cat down inside the store, he pushed his wavy hair back and faced Rintarou again.
“I just came to check on something today,” Rintarou said. “I’ve got a shift at my part-time job to go to after this.”
“I see. You two…it doesn’t seem like you’ve only just met,” Haruka observed.
“Kajiwara-san has been a great help to me.”
When Rintarou bowed his head again, Haruka held his stomach and laughed.
“You don’t need to be so stuffy with Keiichi. He might look scary at a glance, but he isn’t. We were classmates back in junior high. There were tons of students who looked up to him, but no one ever tried to talk to him, so I was always with him,” he explained, plopping a hand on Keiichi’s shoulder.
Haruka made the place brighter just with his presence. He and Keiichi were different types, but rather than just classmates, it seemed like they’d been close from the get-go.
“Oh yeah. Shirane-san, has Keiichi told you about his shelf yet?” Haruka asked.
“Not yet.”
Murmuring that Keiichi would never tell him unless he asked, Haruka led the student over. “It’s the best-selling shelf in Frère, so maybe you could learn a thing or two from it,” he said, pointing to a shelf labeled “Triple Sec.”
Not a single one of the books on the shelf was placed so you could see its cover. Looking at the back covers, they were all by authors that Rintarou didn’t recognize. When Haruka had said it was the most successful, he had expected it would be one of the fanciest decorated ones, so it was surprising.
“You just thought it looked plain, didn’t you?” Haruka said, pulling a book off of the shelf. “But that’s one of the unique bits about it. See how the way the books are displayed changes the impression you get, even if the books are the same? You can tell what the shelf owner is like from the way they try to sell their books. Keiichi writes out his impressions for every single book he puts out, which is why anyone who buys one will absolutely buy more. The shelves that sell always have some sort of gimmick, even if they don’t stand out. Like how you’ll feel that you can trust every book on this shelf.”
On the last page of each book was a sheet of paper folded in two. Casually unfolding it, Rintarou was flabbergasted. The entire sheet was covered with precisely written words.
“He’s down bad for these books, huh?” Haruka commented.
“Very bad,” Rintarou agreed.
“They’re love letters to the books.”
It had taken Rintarou an entire day to write his impressions on one book, so just how long would it have taken Keiichi to write something for every book on his shelf?
“He doesn’t do social media much anymore, but a while ago he’d post a lot of his impressions there. Look!” Haruka said, showing Rintarou his phone. It was Keiichi, using his real name on his account. The number of followers he had was yet another shock, and Haruka added that quite a few professional authors were fans.
“You used your real name. Is that safe?” Rintarou couldn’t help asking, turning to look at Keiichi.
“Writing is just like showing your nakedness. It wouldn’t be fair for me to say anything about them without being open myself. But I have no intention of pushing my thoughts on anyone or criticizing anyone else’s beliefs,” answered Keiichi.
“Well, in Keiichi’s case, he’s paying his respects to the authors. It’s interesting how many different types of booklovers there are, isn’t it?” Haruka said.
“In your case, you just like books as material,” Keiichi shot back, lips curved up into a grin.
“Ah, yeah, it’s true I like buying books more than reading them. There are some shelf owners who get it, but others don’t really understand. I don’t think it’s any different from people who buy clothes or collect knickknacks, which is why it’s so stimulating having a place where all sorts of booklovers can gather,” Haruka explained, looking around for agreement and getting nods from Rintarou, who was completely sucked in.
“And even as we stand here chatting, new stories are being born one after another. I wish I could read every one of them, from the ones in the past to the ones now. But that’d be impossible, as long as I can’t stop time, anyway,” Keiichi mused, observing the shelves with a somewhat distant look in his eyes. It was strange how a person like him who looked like he lived in a different world than Rintarou could suddenly seem to actually be so close.
“What does your shelf’s name mean? ‘Triple Sec,’ was it?” Rintarou came right out with his question for Keiichi.
“Ah…”
He glanced away, looking a bit troubled before answering, “Light on the sweetness.” Haruka laughed and shot back that it was still pretty sweet, but Rintarou had no idea what they were talking about. Was it in reference to the impressions Keiichi wrote?
“Oh, yeah. That photobook of yours sold today. The one you took home before to write your own impressions,” Keiichi said, pointing at Rintarou’s shelf.
The idea of someone reading his awful impressions had Rintarou sweating. “Who was it who bought it?”
“Woman. In her mid-twenties.”
Most of the female customers who visited the store were in that age group. Wanting a bit more detail, he prodded further. “Was her hair long, short? What sort of air did she give off?”
A smile rose to Keiichi’s lips for some reason. “Height was about the same as you, maybe a little shorter. If you asked if she was cute or pretty, I’d say pretty. Hair was long, tied in a ponytail on the back of her head. She looked like she paid a lot of attention to what she wore, so she might’ve been a stylist. She didn’t seem like someone who worked at an apparel store.”
It had to have been her. Basking in his glee, Rintarou pumped his fist. He hadn’t wanted the book to go to just anyone—he wanted it to go to her. But how did Keiichi know her job?
“Keiichi’s pretty good at guessing people’s occupations. He’s a bartender,” Haruka piped in. Apparently, Rintarou’s question was written on his face. Haruka added that Keiichi’s senses must’ve been sharpened by serving so many different people for so long.
“She left a message in the notebook. I didn’t know if she was the one you wanted to get the book, after all,” Keiichi said, pointing to the reading counter. To the edge of it was a notebook for shelf owners and customers to leave messages for each other. It was used in various different ways. Sometimes, customers would even write the reason they bought a book.
Quickly flipping through the notebook, Rintarou found a note written in small print.
“Hello. The sky photobook that I bought before was wonderful, so I came looking for another one. Today, I bought the next book in the series. Looking at pictures of foreign scenery makes me want to go on a trip! I’ll come again to write my impressions.” At the end was a name, “Kasugai.”
Kasugai-san. Rintarou repeated it in his mind. He knew her name now.
“Why not write her a message back? She can read it the next time she pops in,” Haruka suggested as he peeked over his shoulder and held out a pen.
“I’ll do it later.”
Rintarou couldn’t write it right away. He was going to write himself a draft at home and come back tomorrow. He snapped a picture of the message with his phone camera.
“Oh yeah,” Haruka spoke up from his spot to the side. “Seeing the word ‘trip’ reminded me: Did Rintarou tell you the reason he became a shelf owner, Keiichi? It’s amazing. He’s planning on using the profits from the books he sells at Frère to send his parents on a trip as a gift!”
“No, not my parents. My mom and her boyfriend,” Rintarou corrected him immediately, but Haruka didn’t seem confused at all.
“How nice. What a good guy. I want a son like him!” the owner said with a smile. Rintarou was relieved, remembering that he’d been born and raised in Shinjuku too.
Keiichi cocked his head questioningly. “Why are you using your book profits?” he asked, sounding a bit surprised.
“Um. It’s because I don’t think they’d accept if I paid for it with my job earnings. That’s why I thought maybe money from another source could work.” They might still turn it down, but if he paid for it first, then he’d just have to convince the two of them to take it easy. “My mom’s a bit innocent about the world, so I think she’d probably assume the books would sell automatically if I put them out there somewhere. That’s why I think it’d be easier for her to accept than if I just gave her my earnings from my part-time job.”
Haruka and Keiichi just gave each other silent looks.
“Huh? Did I say something weird?”
“Amazing. Parents like that really exist? My mom’s the type who’ll suggest we go out for sushi and make me pay,” Haruka commented.
“Mine only had kids to check it off her bucket list,” said Keiichi, shaking his head.
“It’s probably because I’m so childish that she won’t trust me. Whether it be getting a job, or anything else, she’s always worrying about me. That’s why I want to just move out now. I’ll be graduating in the spring, so I need to become an adult already. And it’s not just earning money, I can’t do anything on my own yet, after all.”
When he saw friends of his move to Tokyo from all over, going to school while working part-time jobs to pay for their living expenses, Rintarou understood just how easy he’d been living. The reason he was working part-time while job-hunting wasn’t just for book funds but because he wanted to show Kimiko that he could manage it while earning his own way.
Keiichi was throwing in interjections showing he was listening, but from the look on his face, it didn’t seem like he agreed.
“Just being able to live on your own doesn’t necessarily make you an adult,” Keiichi said. “Working a job and having your world become bigger will show you just how little you can do on your own. I think accepting that makes you an adult.”
“Now, now. That’s what Shirane-san is going to experience soon,” Haruka commented, saying that he was looking forward to it. “Maybe she’s not treating you like a child, but just worried about you? That was how my family was. When I told them I wanted to rent an apartment nearby and live alone, they asked if I really hated living at home with my family that much. I was like, huh? What are you guys saying?”
Apparently, Haruka was more of a night owl, so he’d been worried about how he kept waking his family up when he came home late at night. They had complained about being woken up when he talked on the phone at night, or by the sound of his car’s engine, so he’d thought that they’d understand why he wanted to move out.
“It’s surprisingly hard to understand how other people think without asking them. Sometimes they’ll misunderstand something so badly that it’ll shock you. And just like your way of thinking changes year after year, so do other people’s.”
The two of them might be seeing a completely different world. Learning that there were people like that was another step to becoming an adult.
“Oh yeah, did you manage to find a job yet?” Haruka asked.
Rintarou scratched his head. “Not yet, actually. I haven’t gotten an offer from a single company.”
“I see. I think you’d have a better chance if you showed more of your real self instead of trying to keep up appearances. You’ll do fine!”
Though Rintarou didn’t have much to base his optimism on, when Haruka cheered him on like that, he really felt like things would be okay.
Keiichi suddenly popped out from behind the counter, grabbing a few books off of The Hammock Cat and lining them up on the display shelf near the entrance. “Gotta sell them to get ’em on a cruise, huh!”
“Wha? That’s a bit much…” Rintarou argued.
“Nope. If you decide a limit yourself, you’ll never get far,” said Haruka, looking amused.
“Let’s sell tons of your books,” Keiichi said, smacking Rintarou hard on the back and almost knocking him over.
The two adults started discussing strategies for selling more of Rintarou’s books. Did that mean that they were going to help? His chest felt warm at their sudden, unexpected kindness. He wanted to live up to the expectations of the people who encouraged him.
On his way home from his part-time job, Rintarou stopped outside of a salon that still had its lights on. Despite the fact that it was past ten, there was still someone sitting in one of the chairs deep inside. The stylist who was doing the service was a woman, but he didn’t think it was the woman he’d met. Her hair color had been lighter. The woman in his vague memories had longer limbs and a graceful, catlike beauty.
The stylist must have noticed him outside, because she headed to the salon entrance. His feet reflexively started moving again. While he walked, his head cooled a bit, and he realized that he still had no idea if the woman he’d met was even a stylist at all.
He decided he would think of a reply to the message she left in the notebook as he walked. First off was telling her “Thank you.” But after that? Unable to think up a single word to continue the rest, he headed into the bustling city of Shinjuku. Why was it that he couldn’t think of anything to say, even though he wanted to talk to her more?
He pulled out his phone as he waited for the light to change. As he went to look at the picture he’d taken of her message, he saw an email titled “Regarding an interview date” buried in his notifications.
“Oooh, I got one!”
He had managed to get an interview. It was from an electronic manufacturer’s second round of recruitment. He’d made a last-ditch effort to apply, thinking he’d never even make it through screening.
During all of Rintarou’s interviews until then, he’d been solely focused on doing well that he’d gotten nowhere. Haruka had given him some advice, telling him to express more of his real self.
If they asked what his hobby was, he’d say he loved books. He wouldn’t try to look cool instead, he’d be honest and tell them that he knew so many booklovers that he’d felt like he wasn’t worthy of including himself among them. He might have trouble answering if they asked for his favorite authors, or which books he’d enjoyed lately, since there were just so many, but worrying about that sort of thing might even be fun.
“I’d felt like I was trying hard all by myself, but I have so many people who were worrying for me, huh?”
He’d tried to play tough, thinking he needed to be more reliable, but everyone around him had seen right through his act. But for some odd reason, that didn’t bother him.
“Maybe I should send Niimi-san a text. I need to explain to him why I want to live alone so bad.”
There were still tons of hurdles he had to get over, and things he had to do.
Becoming part of the stream of people headed to the station, Rintarou walked out onto the crosswalk. The breeze made him look up, and he saw Shinjuku’s night sky reflect the city’s lights.
Chapter 3: When the Rain Stops
Chapter 3:
When the Rain Stops
AS KEIICHI WAS LEAVING HIS BAR AFTER GETTING everything ready for that night, two boys ran past him like the wind. They turned at the end of the narrow alley, cluttered with outdoor air-conditioning units and potted plants, their laughing voices fading away.
Kajiwara Keiichi turned to look where they had come from. A couple of Southeast Asians, possibly their parents, were taking pictures as they walked. During the day, Kabukicho’s restaurant and bar district was just another tourist attraction.
Locking the door to his shot bar, Undecimber Garden, he walked through the Shinjuku’s noontime Golden Gai. He stopped in front of the stone stairs to the Hanazono Shrine. Clapping his hands together inside his heart and letting them know he was coming in, he stepped inside their grounds.
It was halfway through November at this point, and the trees had all changed color. There were two women with backpacks ringing the bell of the little Inari Shrine at the end of a row of torii gates.
At some point, more tourists had begun visiting the area, but Keiichi, who’d been born and raised in Shinjuku for twenty-nine years, still wasn’t used to non-residents being around, outside of the Hatsumoude or Tori-no-Ichi festivals.
Humans were an important part of the scenery. They could even make a place that hadn’t changed in years seem to be completely different.
After stopping to gaze at the tourists for a moment, Keiichi headed toward Frère. He’d promised Haruka that he’d take Sumi before the shop opened, but the lights in both the bookstore and the office upstairs were unlit. Unlocking the door, he stepped inside.
Putting down his bag, he stopped in front of the shelf The Hammock Cat. Up until recently, its owner had been switching out his whole stock frequently in his rush to sell books, but these days its stock was steady. After their initial meeting, Rintarou started messaging Keiichi, and the two had multiple discussions on how to sell books. The kid had a personality where he’d honestly listen to advice, so his shelf no longer just looked like a jumble of used books.
“Ahh, I get it.”
Strangely enough, Keiichi could tell what emotions someone put into their shelf at a glance. Even if Rintarou put one book out specifically for the woman named Kasugai, that didn’t guarantee that another customer wouldn’t buy it. He’d made his shelf into something for her sake, somewhere that she could always find a book she would want.
Rather than being exasperated, Keiichi was impressed. When you were in love, you’d do anything to catch your beau’s eye, and changing yourself became something to be happy about.
Once he’d finished getting the store ready to open, he checked on his own shelf. Several of the books he’d recently brought in had already been sold.
“My books have been selling fast lately, huh?”
He’d need to find some time to write more impressions.
By reading a book, you explored the author themselves. You faced them head-on and grasped their true message. Up until just recently, he had posted his impressions on social media in the hopes that it would make at least a few more people read the book. But as his followers grew, and his posts were shared, his judgment of a book began to be linked to people’s judgments on Keiichi himself, which made him question what he was doing. Showing his value off to others wasn’t what he wanted.
After straightening his shelf up, he made himself a coffee and sat down at the reading counter. He still had fifteen minutes until Haruka was supposed to arrive. As he looked at his list of read books on his phone to figure out what he’d bring to sell next, he heard the sound of the door unlocking.
“Sorry for the wait. I meant to get here earlier, but…”
Haruka walked into the store with a Boston-style pet carrier. He undid the zipper as soon as he was inside, but Sumi was curled up at the back of the carrier, not wanting to come out.
“Heeey, Sumi, we’re here. Your beloved Keiichi is on shift today,” he said.
A moment later, the tabby peeked her face out. She looked around, and once she realized she was at the usual place, she slowly exited the carrier. When Haruka gave her some pets, she stood calmly with her front paws together in front of her, pushing her face against his hand happily. Who she was with was much more important to her than where she was.
“I’ll be back before closing, so Sumi’s all yours until then. She hasn’t eaten yet, so that’s up to you too.”
“Got it,” Keiichi replied.
Haruka was trying to feed her breakfast at Frère as much as possible in an attempt to get her more used to being in the store.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me,” Haruka began as he stood up. “You remember Uneta-san, right?”
Keiichi hadn’t heard that name in a while. Uneta was the head bartender at the main bar in the City Hotel, where Keiichi had worked two years earlier.
“Yeah, of course I remember,” he nodded. He’d worked with the guy for seven years; there was no way he’d forget.
“The person I met for work last night was a cocktail lover, yeah? When we were chatting about where to go, his name came up. Apparently, he opened his own place near the station in front of Shinjuku Gyoen. It’s got a rare name, and they said he was a man in his forties, so I figured it must be the same guy. Look, see?” Haruka explained, showing him the website he had open on his phone. It was called The Authentic Bar @TEN, and it was about a five-minute walk from Frère.
“That’s close.”
“Right? Wanna go with me sometime? He makes a mean cocktail.”
“I mean, I could go, I guess,” Keiichi answered. Honestly, he wasn’t very enthusiastic about it.
“Huh? Did you two not get along?”
“It wasn’t that we didn’t get along. We just didn’t talk much. He’s the one that told me that I wasn’t fit for bartending if I wasn’t interested in people.”
“What the heck? Uneta-san said that? To you?”
When Keiichi shrugged in place of a response, Haruka looked horrified.
“It was about a year after I started working there,” Keiichi explained. “He said it a few times.”
“Did you mess up on something or make a customer mad?”
“Nope. Back then, I thought really hard about what might’ve made him think that way, but he wasn’t the type to stick his nose into anyone’s business either,” Keiichi explained.
He’d always been a reader, but after that, he changed the way he read. Instead of just paying attention to the characters, he started trying to read the authors too.
“I can’t even imagine it. I’d go there sometimes when you weren’t working, and he was always really good to me. He seemed like someone who picked his words carefully and spoke with consideration. Like, he knew when you wanted to talk or when you wanted to just think,” Haruka said.
“Yeah, because that’s his job.”
Regardless of whether or not a bartender was interested, he was likely to get complaints if he couldn’t pick up on what his clientele were thinking about through their slight movements and gazes. Those indicators were much more important than whatever conversation they were having, and it was a spot where his customer service skills were naturally needed.
“If you aren’t suited to be a bartender, then just who is? The two of you were always simply doing your work, so I never noticed anything. He said some pretty unbelievable stuff behind the scenes, huh?” Haruka mused.
“He just has his own set of aesthetics.”
“You don’t have to defend him. When you don’t get along with someone at work, it keeps you from doing your job. Whatever he was worrying about, I would’ve worded it differently, at the very least,” Haruka said, voice raising.
“That just means that he worded it that way after thinking about how to say it. It wasn’t like I wanted to be a bartender, so he might’ve felt that I was only there to fill an empty job opening.”
As they spoke, Keiichi remembered things he’d already forgotten.
Keiichi had graduated from a specialty cooking school and was hired at the City Hotel in Shinjuku’s high-rise district. He had a dream: to get some experience working in a restaurant so he could one day open his own, however small it might be.
He’d been assigned to the department he wanted when he was hired. But due to staffing shortages, he was asked to work in the food and beverage department temporarily, and once he completed training, he got shuttled off to the main bar. He’d heard that not being able to work in the spot you were hired for happened in every industry.
In order to be able to respond to the clientele’s desires, you needed knowledge in all sorts of things, not just alcohol. While he waited to be moved back to his original job, Keiichi had to keep on studying. When he ended up not hearing anything about that, and being put in charge of the counter on a weekend, he had to give up and get qualified as a bartender. It took a considerable length of time of him considering quitting before he finally admitted he’d just have to bartend for a living.
“But I didn’t think he’d open a bar in Shinjuku,” Keiichi said, finding Uneta’s decision strange.
One of Uneta’s regulars was a female web designer who would come in on the weekend to talk to him about independent business. When she asked him why he didn’t have his own bar, he told her, “One day, I’d like to open a little bar in a seaside town, serving mainly cocktails.” So why had he opened a bar in the middle of the city?
Keiichi knew that Uneta cared about the woman and was friends with her—he didn’t think that Uneta would just tell her a casual lie.
“I only heard about it in passing, so I don’t know the specifics, but apparently Uneta-san got sick and had to quit not long after you left. Guess he opened his own bar to work at his own pace. I’m just worried it might’ve been my fault,” Haruka said, tilting his head with his arms crossed.
“Why would it be your fault?” Keiichi asked.
“Because I poached you to work with me. I mean, I’m super happy you’re working at the Undecimber Garden, and it’s helpful that I’ve finally got somewhere I can go to let off some steam, but…”
One of the businesses run by Haruka’s company was the Undecimber Garden. The Sakurai family was made up of business managers. Both his parents and siblings each owned their own businesses as well as managing a variety of them, so they would hear about work from a number of different industries.
When Haruka heard he might be able to rent a spot in Golden Gai from an acquaintance of his sister’s, he jumped at the opportunity. He got Keiichi into it, hiring him to help run the bar.
“Anyway, I’m off to work. Take care of Sumi. Let me know if anything comes up.”
Lifting his head to get himself back on track, Haruka left the store.
Keiichi headed behind the register counter. He grabbed a package of wet cat food off of the shelf and put it out on a saucer. Looking around the store, there was no sign of the cat.
“Come here, Sumi.”
A moment later, he heard the clear sound of a bell from among the bookshelves. Sumi poked her head half out of the bottom shelf of the bookshelf farthest from the counter. She was looking at the saucer but made no move to approach. When Keiichi called her name again, she walked over to him. At first, she would only watch him from afar, even if he had her food out, but recently it seemed she was letting her guard down around him.
“You must’ve been through a lot before Haruka adopted you, huh, Sumi? It might be safer not to deal with humans, but you’re gonna have to if you want to live.”
As she started eating, body still stiff, Keiichi stroked her back. She turned to look up at him, eyes pure. She must have started considering him someone who wouldn’t hurt her for now, so she didn’t try to run away.
“Keeping a distance is a way to live peacefully. Nothing especially wonderful will happen, but that’s not too bad.”
When he pulled his hand away, she went back to her meal. She finished a few minutes later, turning to him and giving a satisfied meow. She stiffened for a moment when he reached out to her again, but once he actually touched her, she shut her eyes in pleasure. Keiichi pet her the same way that Haruka always did, going from her chin to her ears. He had no idea where cats enjoyed being touched. But they were better than humans, since their reactions were easier to comprehend.
Picking up the empty saucer, he headed back behind the register counter. Then, he heard a little mew from behind him. When he looked again, Sumi was sitting there, staring at him.
“What?”
Keiichi set the saucer down in the sink and walked back over to Sumi. Had he not given her enough food? Haruka might’ve forgotten to feed himself when he got busy, but he’d never forget to feed his cat. Not knowing what to do, he knelt down in front of her. Sumi then stood up, walking away from him. He headed back toward the counter, thinking she was done with him, but she meowed again. Looking over once more, she was still staring at him.
Did she want to play?
When he stepped closer, she walked away, glancing back over her shoulder before jumping into the bottom shelf in the bookshelf farthest inside the store. Then, she poked her head out, as if she was inviting him inside.
“I won’t fit in there.”
As he knelt down, he noticed something in the corner of the shelf. It was a memo block, with “Free Papers” written on the first page. There was also a note to take the pages in order from the top.
“It couldn’t be…”
Keiichi reached his hand into the shelf. When Sumi bolted out in surprise, a little piece of Japanese paper floated to the floor. It said “Sayokyoku.” Apparently, Sumi’s favorite spot had a new shelf owner, who had yet to put any books out.
He flipped through the memo block. Each page had a different title and passage of prose written on them.
“Messy Bangs”
Spring had finally come for me. Lured out by the sunshine, I pulled out my bicycle for the first time in half a year. The pedals were heavy, and I was outpaced by pedestrian after pedestrian despite not being on a hill. Could an old couple walking their dog beat me because my body was still in hibernation? Was it because my muscle strength had dropped while I wrapped myself in blankets, freezing? Was the bike rusted?
I pedaled and pedaled. As I traveled down the azalea road, the scent of the earth carried through the air, and the voices of high schoolers playing burst out. All humans were surrounded by a membrane. No matter how many words you exchanged, or how much you pounded their chest, you could never rip through. How about I fly outside and search for a small hole?
Running children effortlessly passed me. I pedaled and pedaled, a common bluebottle butterfly overtook me, my ankles gradually wore out, and my forehead dripped with sweat. The bangs I straightened out with my flat iron were already messed up and ruined. Even though I still hadn’t gotten anywhere.
“Is this a diary?”
Each of the pages had a date, and the prose was never reused. Any writing mistakes were crossed out with lines, so the writer probably hadn’t intended on distributing them to other people. Were people supposed to take one page of these daily writings each? Keiichi had seen journals and essays left out for free on other shelves, but they were all printed. He’d never seen anything handwritten like this before.
He looked at the shelf name again. Sayokyoku was the Japanese word for a serenade, which was a song played while thinking of a loved one. It was a musical term, but it must have been widely used, because he couldn’t find anything linked to the shelf owner online despite changing his search terms multiple times.
Picking up the block note, Keiichi headed to the reading counter. As he flipped through the pages, he heard the sound of a bell approaching him from behind. Surprisingly enough, Sumi jumped up to the counter using a chair as a step.
“You want to read too?”
After getting a few pets on her back, she lay down right where she was.
Drinking his now-cold coffee, Keiichi read through the memo block from the beginning again. The seasons changed from spring to fall. The first pages were about daily life, but the writer must not have gone outside much over the summer, because the prose started turning into internal reflection, and as the seasons went on, their hidden feelings for someone overflowed word by word.
“Are they really okay with giving these away, regardless of who reads them?”
The way the author hadn’t hesitated to write out all kinds of things that people would unconsciously hide made him feel like he was looking at something he shouldn’t.
He went back behind the register counter and checked the shift calendar hanging on the wall. In three days, Haruka’s name had been crossed out and “Sayokyoku” was written in its place.
“That probably means they’ll be here to put out some books.”
After checking his own plans for that day, he wrote the date down in his planner. He was interested in what sort of books “Sayokyoku” would put out, but even more than that, he wanted to see what sort of person the memo block’s author was.
Keiichi had been planning on reading a novel he’d brought from home while minding the store, but he held off. If he didn’t read the prose written in these notes today, he would never be able to. As he flipped through the pages, he thought about why they had chosen those particular words. Was it an unconscious choice, or did it have to be those words?
He pulled the notebook he used to record his reading out of his bag and wrote down the date and where he found the memo block. Then, he titled it “Sounds of the Heart,” and let his ballpoint pen race across the page.
The rain pounding the asphalt was gradually getting heavier. Just as Keiichi ran inside Frère, he heard thunder crash.
“I’ve got no luck.”
He watched the relentlessly falling rain from inside the building. Praying that it would just be a passing shower, he combed his completely straight hair back and calmed his breathing.
The note saying that there was a cat inside was on the door. He looked up the staircase to the second floor, but the office light was on. Was Haruka teaching the new shelf owner how to take care of the store? Keiichi quietly opened the inner door.
“Good evening.”
The sound of the rain slamming against the glass overlapped with the worker’s voice, drowning it out somewhat.
At the register counter was a petite woman, whom Keiichi greeted. She must have been the owner of Sayokyoku. Her features were youthful, making her look like a high schooler, but she was probably in her early twenties. She had a calm air about her and wore a navy-blue dress and black-framed glasses. When he saw her pin-straight bangs, he imagined she must have straightened them with a flat iron.
As he looked at the books on the tiered shelf, he heard a bell at his feet. Sumi had come over to him from wherever she had been hiding. He bent down and held out the back of his hand to her, and she rubbed against it.
Now that Keiichi thought about it, he realized that he hadn’t seen Haruka. Where had he gone, leaving a person who wasn’t used to tending the store and a literal scaredy-cat alone?
Keiichi looked around the shelves. Triple Sec only had three books left on it. The rest had sold within five days. Back when he’d first started owning his shelf, he’d thought that even selling a couple a month would be good, so this was surprising. Still, he was thankful that there were people who were interested enough to pick one up. Renting a shelf at a shared bookstore was one of the little ways he could show his fandom as a booklover.
The Hammock Cat was selling steadily as well. He picked up a book from the shelf. It was a book about urban design, with a photo of the streets of Paris on the cover.
Rintarou was unaware of this, but his broad interests and ability to accept things so honestly was a strength. If he managed to get an interviewer who could pick that sort of stuff out of a conversation, then he shouldn’t have any trouble getting a job. The kid was worrying about it, but it really felt like he just needed to meet the right people.
Keiichi decided to buy the book he was holding, to contribute to Rintarou’s sales. It might not have been a book he would have usually picked up, but knowing the seller’s background made him interested. It felt like that alone made it exactly the sort of book you’d buy at Frère.
Just as he was about to head to the next shelf, he heard thunder roar. He looked over to the window to see the wind was blowing the pounding rain against it, making it shake like a curtain. The woman minding the store was watching it from her spot behind the register counter.
Bending down, Keiichi peeked at the Sayokyoku shelf. The memo block was gone, and there were now two handmade books with red paper covers. They were bound using a method called “four-hole binding,” where you would poke four small holes along the spine and sew them together with string. From the sags in the binding string and the bends in the spine, he could tell at a glance how shoddily made they were. They were clearly a small-scale publication by the creator.
He looked the book all over, but there was no title written on it. There wasn’t one on the pricing card either. When he flipped through the pages, he found the author’s name on the table of contents. It said “Sayaka.” She’d made the books.
When he stood up with one of the books in his hand, he heard the sound of footsteps behind him.
“Do you live in the area?”
Turning around, he found Sayaka standing nearby. She was clutching a navy-blue foldable umbrella, the same color as her dress, in her hands. “It’s really coming down out there,” she said simply, pushing the umbrella toward him.
He didn’t remember there being any spare umbrellas in the store, so was she giving him her own? Baffled, Keiichi answered calmly, “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“But the book. The one in your hands, I wrote it,” she said, frowning with a serious look in her eyes.
Keiichi nearly laughed in shock, turning his head away. Here, he’d thought she was sacrificing herself by giving a stranger her umbrella, but it was to protect her book.
“If the rain doesn’t stop soon, I’ll just come to get the book tomorrow,” he said, gently turning her down. Her gaze remained focused on the floor, hands shaking as she clutched the umbrella. Maybe his height was making him look intimidating. Intentionally softening his voice further, he asked, “You bound these yourself? That must have been difficult.”
He’d thought that maybe talking about something she was interested in might help make her less nervous, but Sayaka raised her face, opening her tightly sealed lips. “I think whether it was difficult or not depends on the person doing it.”
Well, yeah. Was she answering in a general sense rather than a personal sense because she didn’t want to reveal how hard she’d worked? Or was she trying to say that she wasn’t going to answer anything about herself?
“I’ll read this, then.”
When he headed for the counter, she followed behind him, slipping behind the register. When he asked how much it came to while pulling out his wallet, she just handed him the book, telling him that she’d give it to him.
“That’s a bit…”
Keiichi pulled out the sales card from the books, put them on the register, and placed the added sum on the coin tray. She nodded and started tapping away at the calculator to make sure it was correct. She then messed up, started again, and messed up a few more times.
Thinking him watching her was the problem, he looked away, only to see three of the books from Triple Sec stacked under the register. The sales cards were already removed. Haruka almost never read novels, so he was pretty sure he hadn’t bought them. That meant she had.
“Um. I’m Kajiwara, the shelf owner of Triple Sec. Those were off my shelf, right? Thank you.”
She turned back to face him, completely flustered and her gaze swimming nervously. It almost felt like she hadn’t wanted him to see the books at all.
“There’s a piece of paper at the very back with my impressions, so give it a read once you’re finished if you like.”
He’d said it with a smile, but Sayaka’s eyes started welling up. She apologized, voice quivering as she turned away. She then took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. Sniffles soon followed.
Wait. Did I say something to upset her?
Keiichi thought back over what they’d said so far, not knowing how to continue. Still turned away from him, Sayaka wordlessly shoved the drink menu his way.
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ll just be on my way.” He had no idea why she was crying, but it looked like it was his fault. He’d refused the menu in an attempt to be considerate, but it was still pouring rain outside. “Is there anywhere I could leave my books for now?” he asked.
“Please order a drink. I want to talk to you,” she begged, voice still teary.
He’d thought she would’ve wanted him to leave ASAP, but it seemed he was mistaken. He ordered a coffee, then took a seat at the reading counter. He looked out at the rain pounding the Shinjuku Gyoen Park. The blurry trees outside the glass were lit by streetlights, and he could see Sayaka making his coffee in the reflection.
Keiichi looked down at the book in his hands. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to read it right there. He’d have to say something to her about it, and he didn’t want to provoke her emotions any further. But in saying that, he was also hesitant to read anything else.
As he just stared out the window, he heard the sound of a bell approaching him and saw that Sumi had come to sit near his feet. He reached down and scratched her head. She was sure letting him touch her a lot today. Had she come out because she sensed how awkward the mood was?
Sayaka appeared in the window’s reflection, carrying his coffee on a tray. Sumi slipped under the counter, curling up at Keiichi’s feet. The woman apologized for the wait, passing him his cup. She then held the tray to her chest as she stood straight up beside him.
“Thank you.” When he turned toward her again, he could see that her eyes were still a bit red.
“It’s actually not the first time I’ve bought books from your shelf,” she suddenly said, lips pulled tight. Her eyes narrowed, and she combed her fingers through her bangs a few times. “I’ve been coming to Frère to buy your books for a while, even before becoming a shelf owner myself. I wanted the impressions you’d write.”
“Those are just add-ons,” Keiichi said, inwardly shocked. He’d thought his books had been selling fast lately, but had she been the buyer?
“The way I always read books is just by comparing them to what I know to determine if I like them or not. I never even thought about what the author was trying to write.” The reason she read like that was because she was trying to supplement what she didn’t have with what she read. While she’d respected the people who wrote the books, that wasn’t all.
“I think it’s fine for people to read books different ways. I write out my impressions like that, but it’s not like I think I’m an absolute authority or anything.” Keiichi wasn’t just saying that for the sake of it—that was his honest belief.
“I wanted to read books like you do, Kajiwara-san. But I can’t. I’m afraid to. When I try to think of what the author was feeling, it’s like their thoughts are invading me, or something.”
“Their thoughts are…invading you?” Keiichi couldn’t help but repeat.
He had thought that by sounding out the author and pseudo-experiencing a life that he would never have known, that he could gain new views. He’d never thought of it as an invasion of his thoughts.
Having new questions brought up against something he’d thought of as normal, Keiichi groaned. By trying to see all sorts of authors’ viewpoints, did that make her feel like she herself was just a hodgepodge of them?
“When I read, I wonder what I would have done, and it’s like I’m digging deep into myself or something. It wasn’t until just recently that I realized I was someone who couldn’t read books as anything but my own interpretation, even though I want to read things in a way that gets close to someone else like you do, Kajiwara-san,” she explained.
“I don’t know if I’m getting close to an author at all. I don’t know what they thought writing it. From an author’s point of view, I might have missed the point,” he countered.
“Even so, I think the authors would absolutely be happy about your impressions,” Sayaka said, putting power behind the words. “I mean, as much as you might want to know a person, you never will. You can’t even know yourself completely. So I think it’s enough that you face them and try to understand them. I think it saves them.”
This time, she spoke as if she was carefully choosing each word.
Keiichi thought back to one of the lines he read from her memo block. “All humans are surrounded by a membrane. No matter how many words you exchange, or how much you pound their chest, you can never rip through.” He chewed over the words once more in his mind.
“Isn’t it obvious that you would need to face someone if you wanted to know them? Though, whether you can understand them or not is a different story,” he said.
“Huh?”
Sayaka’s double-lidded eyes widened behind her glasses, and she went silent. Her gaze was pointed at Keiichi, but her thoughts were far, far away.
“Um, Kajiwara-san, you…” she began, looking as if she was about to say something, before shaking her head and opening her mouth once again. “You really like people, don’t you?” Her tense expression finally softened. While he stood there baffled, she declared that he absolutely did.
Honestly, hearing someone say he liked people didn’t really feel right. It might have been that in his efforts to look at other people, he hadn’t looked very deeply at himself.
Sayaka stood there with her lips opened slightly, staring him right in the face with no reservations. But it was as if she was looking his way, yet thinking about herself; it was that sort of look. Some line triggered something in her, and words flowed through her mind, heading in a new direction. Maybe you couldn’t create works without that much happening.
Keiichi listened to the rain as he waited for Sayaka to return to the world he was in.
“I always despair once I finish writing,” she suddenly said. Though it felt abrupt, when he put her actions along with the faces she made, her pace didn’t seem off at all. As he made little sounds to let her know he was listening, she sat down off to his side, one seat between them. She might have forgotten she was minding the store at all, because she leaned forward, resting her chin on her palms with both elbows on the counter. Her eyes were looking outside.
“I’d wonder why that was the only way I could express things, even though it wasn’t really that. I write, and erase, and sometimes I end up not being able to do it, but… When I get sick of it all and throw it all away, I’m always relieved, like ‘Ah, now I don’t have to worry about it anymore.’ But why is it that I write again? I mean, if I didn’t write anything, then I wouldn’t despair,” she said.
“Could it be because you enjoy the time you spend thinking about how to write something?” Keiichi suggested.
“Huh? But I’m just despairing that whole time.”
“Yeah, but…” It felt like, maybe, she needed that time. “Okay then, if you were to stop writing, what would you want to do?”
Sayaka’s gaze dropped to the counter as she fell into thought, then after a moment she said, “I don’t know. There was a period of time where I stopped writing. Just as soon as I seriously thought that I didn’t care anymore, all of the words I had been holding on to just fell apart. Back then, I was desperate, trying to figure out how to get them back. I want to give it up when I do it, but when I lose it, it’s all I want to do. Futile, huh?”
She continued, her eyes swimming nervously, explaining that despite her return to writing, it felt different somehow. Maybe that was why she made her work into a book, so she could leave that judgment to someone else.
“Kajiwara-san, do you ever see an author’s bad points when you’re reading a book? Have you ever felt like they were hopeless?”
“I’m not really sure what sort of person would be hopeless. It’s the same, whatever I read. I don’t want to read a book and judge them on whether they’re good or bad. I honestly just want to hear the author out,” Keiichi answered.
Sayaka simply answered with “I see,” falling back into thought with an anxious look on her face. She might have been getting spooked by the idea of someone reading her writing.
“Does Miss ‘Sayokyoku’ want her writing to be read by tons of people?” It might have been a weird question to ask someone who had already made a book of her own works, but that was the only thing he wanted to know.
She sat up and faced him. She was silent for a while, then said, “I’m just desperate while I’m writing, and I made those books because I was convinced that I had to. But I’m sure I want them to be read,” she said slowly, as if she was talking more to herself than to Keiichi.
A bell rang at their feet. Sayaka let out a little screech, jumping out of her chair. She rushed over to Keiichi and grabbed him by the arm. “Th-the cat…!” She had her head turned away but was still looking down at her feet as if she was worried about Sumi coming any closer.
Sumi just looked up at Keiichi, sitting back down where she was. She was a scaredy-cat in the first place, so while she might have run away, she wouldn’t jump at anyone.
Noticing Keiichi’s stare, Sayaka gave him a stiff smile. When Sumi walked out from under the counter, she backed away, keeping some distance. It seemed she wasn’t good with cats. Why had she chosen Frère as the place she wanted to sell her books, knowing they had a store cat? He had tons of questions, but he figured he’d learn the answers eventually. They were both shelf owners, so they’d have other opportunities to chat.
“Ah, the rain stopped.” Sayaka pointed out the window. It had been raining so hard that they could hear it in the store, but they’d been so absorbed in their conversation that they’d forgotten.
“Well then, I’ll be taking this book home. I’m going to read it,” Keiichi declared.
When he did, Sayaka covered her mouth with both hands and teared up. She might have only made two copies, but it had taken courage to put it out there.
Keiichi took a single sip from his coffee cup before standing. Sumi followed him to the door and sat at his feet.
“I’ll be back again,” he told her.
Seemingly understanding what he’d said, she didn’t follow him outside.
Sayaka had gone back behind the counter and was writing something. Could it have been a continuation of those memos? If it was, he definitely wanted to read it.
“See you later.”
He gave her a nod, hand on the door, and she looked a little nervous before deeply bowing her head to him.
The rain had stopped, and it had gotten colder. Keiichi walked out onto Shinjuku Dori and headed toward Yotsuya. Just before the five-way junction’s crosswalk, he headed down one backstreet. When he found the sign, he looked up at the building. The protruding sign on the second story said “Authentic Bar @TEN.”
After climbing a narrow staircase where you might just barely be able to pass someone else, he pushed the door open. He then heard a familiar voice welcome him.
It was a small bar, with six seats at the counter and three tables. Uneta wore the same thing he’d worn at the City Hotel’s main bar: slicked-back hair, a black suit, and a bow tie. He’d had his work-smile on his face, but it stiffened once he recognized his new customer.
Urged to sit down, Keiichi sat near the middle of the counter. The back bar was lined with whiskey bottles. The shelf of reserved bottles had the drinks Uneta’s regulars enjoyed, but there was something off about it.
“I’ll take a gin and tonic.”
As he looked at the bottles, Keiichi ordered his first drink to learn the bar’s tastes. Uneta pulled a condensation-covered bottle of No. TEN out of the fridge. It was a dry gin characterized by its notes of flavorful citrus and delicate taste.
“You surprised me,” Uneta commented, slapping a smile back on his face. “I never thought you’d come here. Someone told me you were working as a bartender in a shot bar in Golden Gai. Busy there?”
“To a certain extent. But it’s a cushy job, since my friend owns it.”
“It’s a waste. Your skills would be treasured anywhere you went.”
Had he always been the type to give compliments like this?
“I like the environment I’m in now. I can read books openly there.”
“Now that you mention it, you were always reading before your shifts. What have you been reading lately?” Uneta went on to talk about one of his regulars being a booklover. He’d had a booklover regular back at City Hotel too, but he’d never asked Keiichi about it, so why now? The feeling that something was off got stronger.
Keiichi kept up the chat while he watched Uneta work. His movements were smooth, showing that his muscle memory knew exactly what to do. But having watched Uneta work for so long, he couldn’t help but notice the differences.
“I heard that you quit after getting sick. Have you not recovered completely yet?”
When he asked that, Uneta smiled. His voice gradually got less tense and turned into a deep sigh. “No pulling the wool over your eyes, huh, Kajiwara?”
“I thought something was wrong the moment I saw your back bar.”
Uneta’s specialty was cocktails, yet he didn’t have liqueurs.
“The truth is, I’ve still got a little numbness in my right hand from the stroke two years ago,” the man explained as he set Keiichi’s gin and tonic in front of him, opening and closing both of his hands. It wasn’t something you’d notice from looking. “Thanks to my rehab, it doesn’t have any effect on my day-to-day life. Dunno what’ll happen next time I go down, though. That’s why my bar’s name is @TEN. Ten years left.”
“Not really something to joke about.”
“It’s not how long I have left to live but how long I can keep running the bar. I might be fine now, but if something else happens and the paralysis worsens, then that’ll be the end. Even now, I don’t think I can shake like I used to.”
The simpler the cocktail, the bigger difference that skill made. You’d know by the tiniest change. Even prepping the ice required making fine adjustments to match the customer’s tastes and the climate that day. It was because Uneta had honed his craft so much that he couldn’t get over the fact that his sensation not coming back meant he couldn’t control his movements like he used to.
“Sure, I might be able to manage one or two drinks, but I can’t make cocktails for a living as I am now.”
“Gonna have to start from scratch, then,” Keiichi joked, though his face was serious.
Uneta let out a loud laugh. “Looks like you can talk back properly now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it always looked like you never asserted yourself, and just lived letting everything roll right off of you. Maybe there was no helping it working in an environment like that.”
When Keiichi’s glass was empty, Uneta asked what he wanted next. Keiichi asked for his recommendation, and the other man pulled out a bottle of Talisker with no hesitation.
Back when Keiichi had first been assigned to the main bar, Uneta had asked him what his favorite whiskey was. Keiichi had answered “Talisker” without ever having tasted it before, because it had been the preferred drink of a famous author—that and it was the only name he knew.
He remembered something I said years ago?
Sliding a glass of Talisker cut with the same amount of mineral water in front of Keiichi, Uneta made himself a drink. Then, he walked out from behind the bar and put the “closed” sign on the door.
“So, what brought you here today? We weren’t close enough for you to want to have a chat, and you probably weren’t worried for my health. I opened my own bar, so you must’ve known I was living in my own way,” Uneta asked, sitting down beside him.
Keiichi didn’t think it was because he’d heard that Uneta had opened his own bar from Haruka. He wouldn’t have come just because of that.
“Someone I met today said I must like people.”
“I see,” Uneta said, playing with his glass.
“I meant to go to my bar, but my feet brought me here.”
“So you had something on your mind.”
Their eyes met.
If you kept people at a distance, you could live safely. Good things wouldn’t happen, but on the flip side, bad things wouldn’t happen either. If you looked down at everything, then whatever happened, whatever anyone said to you, you would stay unmoved. It was the only way Keiichi could protect his heart.
One sentence from Uneta made him start reading books differently. He’d been such an influence, and yet Keiichi hadn’t faced him. But the book impressions that he’d written had connected him to Sayaka, and he’d been led here. Why was that?
“I’d always wanted to ask: Were you the reason I could never get moved away from the main bar?”
Not only was the food and beverage department always understaffed, but being a bartender required specialist knowledge and skills. Keiichi had resigned himself to the fact that it wasn’t that simple to move positions, but he was still stuck there for a long time.
Uneta didn’t deny it, just gave him a wry smile back. “I thought you should keep on being a bartender.”
“Why?”
When Keiichi had told him that he was quitting, he hadn’t told him what he was doing next, but Uneta hadn’t tried to stop him. On his last day, they’d given each other an empty “good job” and had never spoken to one another from the heart.
“You said you wanted to cook, and I didn’t know where you’d go in the future, but whatever you did, I believed you’d need what you learned from working as a bartender,” Uneta explained. “The most important thing when dealing with people isn’t matching their mood or humoring them with clever words. It’s just facing them sincerely and wanting to know them. I didn’t want you to forget that. You were a quick learner, and everyone piled praise on you.”
“You thought I’d let that go to my head?”
“I didn’t, but I wasn’t sure. I don’t remember how long you’d been working the counter then, but do you remember when someone said, ‘Kajiwara-kun makes better cocktails, so I’ll come on the days Uneta is off’?”
“Uh, it was Okuhara-san.”
That was one of Uneta’s regulars, who would stay at the hotel at the beginning of every month because of work. Keiichi hadn’t done anything special, but Okuhara had taken a liking to him immediately.
“I told him not to compliment you yet. That’s the only advantage youth gives you, making up for what you don’t have. Once you hit a certain age, it becomes obvious that you’ll have skills. I didn’t want you to abandon what was really important.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“Because you’d think I was jealous of you.”
So you went ahead with the option that would leave me with a scratch on my heart? Couldn’t you have done it in another way? Keiichi wasn’t satisfied with his explanation, but it was possible that since he’d developed a habit of seeing the bigger picture, the words might not have gotten through to him.
“You told me that I wasn’t suited for this job if I wasn’t interested in people, didn’t you? I just couldn’t let that go, and I kept on thinking about it as I worked,” Keiichi said.
“You took it that hard?”
“Of course I did. That’s why I’m still working as a bartender,” Keiichi retorted, intentionally making an indignant expression.
“I didn’t think you were the type to be so frank about your feelings,” Uneta commented, laughing cheerfully. When Keiichi quipped that he was the one who should’ve been saying that, he laughed even louder.
“Uneta-san, while I was working at the main bar, I was doing hydroponic cultivation at home.”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to be a chef, so I thought that if I didn’t know how the ingredients I used were grown, then I wouldn’t be able to select them on my own. So first, I tried growing mini-tomatoes.”
Uneta listened, not even bothering to make noises to prove it.
“While they were putting down their roots and growing vines and leaves, they sucked up enough water to wet the tank for two days. But once they’d flowered and bore fruit, they barely took in any water at all. They just stayed where they were, quietly waiting for their seeds to be carried away. Though seeing as we were inside, their seeds didn’t go anywhere.”
It seemed like Uneta didn’t really get what he was talking about, because he gave Keiichi a searching look. When Keiichi saw that, he realized that he had the same habit and wondered if he’d gotten it from the older man.
“I was shocked. I knew how vegetables grew, but you know all the sayings, right? ‘Your efforts bearing fruit,’ ‘a tree is known by its fruit,’ ‘in the flower of youth’—they’re all positive things. But once a plant has flowered and borne fruit, it’s over. Life is putting down roots in a new place and growing all over again,” he explained, eyes naturally drawn to Uneta’s right hand.
“Kajiwara, is that supposed to be your idea of encouragement?” the other man asked, looking confused.
“I don’t think it’d be a bad thing to build up your skills all over again. I’ve inherited the technique you had before, after all.” As Keiichi spoke, he was shocked at how smoothly the words came out of his mouth. Had he reconsidered his feelings toward Uneta, or did their face-to-face talk here change things? “Life is short, y’know? Might be better to acknowledge what you can’t do and enjoy it upfront.”
And Uneta probably couldn’t do that. He’d get on one track and never be able to stop himself at “just a bit.” Keiichi was aware that they had the same mentality. And it might have been because Uneta realized that fact that he’d been so strict with his training, to test if he could feel gratification in a job that was always halfway, with no end or completion.
“Kajiwara, you should do what you want now while you can. You can’t guarantee that tomorrow is going to be the same as today. You never know what might happen.”
“I do nothing but what I want. Come to my bar next time. I’ve started offering some food lately.”
Putting the shop card for Undecimber Garden that doubled as his business card down on the counter, Keiichi drained his Talisker, then left the bar.
By the time he started seeing the neon lights of Kabukicho glow, the streets were already overflowing with people looking for somewhere to eat and drink. No matter what sort of person passed them by, no one ever looked back. Shinjuku, the city where so many different people gathered that individuality didn’t stand out. When he saw the crowds, he felt like he’d come home.
Once he arrived at the Undecimber Garden in Shinjuku’s Golden Gai, he unlocked the door. After hanging up his coat, he leaned over the counter to flip the switch for the indirect lighting. The five counter seats were illuminated. Behind them was a bookshelf filled with novels that featured cocktails or whiskey.
Keiichi pulled a book stand off of the shelf and set Sayaka’s book on it.
“Let’s get started.”
Slipping behind the counter, he rolled up his sleeves and secured them with an armband. Today’s first drink would be a cocktail in the image of this untitled book.
He grabbed a wide-mouthed saucer-type champagne glass off of the back bar shelf and thought about Sayaka’s serious eyes. Her plain appearance might have been a shell to hide her passion.
Keiichi set the shaker’s body on the counter. He measured out Tanqueray, Dita, Gran Marnier, and fresh orange juice with a measuring cup, dropped a bar-spoonful of grenadine syrup, and mixed it up. Then he filled it to the limit with pure chipped ice before placing a strainer and the top on the shaker in that order.
From then on, it was a timed match. He placed his right thumb on the top, his left thumb on the side, and his middle finger on the bottom. He shook it up and down, paying attention to how the ice moved as he gauged the temperature of the drink with his fingertips.
Holding the glass’s base down with one hand, he poured the cocktail into it. It was an Amapola, a cocktail for adults in love that was vivid orange, like the evening’s glow. It was a drink Uneta used to frequently make for one of his regulars at the main bar.
The regular was a woman who had a bit of a thing for Uneta. He must have felt the same, but whenever she came to the bar, he’d always prioritize making it a place that she could rest, making sure not to step too close. She’d come to ask for advice about going independent out in Okayama, but seeing her go from being uncomfortable in formal wear to rocking it made Keiichi impressed by how obviously love could change people.
Taking a sip of the drink, the notes of lychee shot through his nose. As it slipped down his throat, the sour bitterness of the orange and the sharpness of the dry gin chased after it.
“How many years has it been since I’ve really gotten the right recipe?”
He never would have expected that he’d willingly make one of Uneta’s cocktails. Keiichi tucked the hair that was too long to settle back behind his ears.
Finishing off the drink, he enjoyed the feel of the paper as he opened the book. Sayaka’s words flashed through his mind. You couldn’t ever know even yourself completely, so it’s enough to just face other people and try to understand them. The words made the things that were hidden in the clouds clear. Just what was she so worried about, when she had the insight to guess something that wasn’t there correctly?
I’ll support you so that you can keep on writing. He hadn’t even read one word yet, but he felt that way.
Chapter 4: Tracing the Words
Chapter 4:
Tracing the Words
WHY DID I PUT SOMETHING LIKE THAT OUT into the world?
As she gazed at her reflection in the mirror from the styling chair where she sat, Ninomiya Sayaka remembered the events of the previous night.
She’d gotten so deep into writing that her brain had shorted out, and she’d slept most of the day and into the evening. Unable to spring up the energy to go buy something to eat, she chewed on breadsticks as she lounged on her futon, only for a notification to pop up on her smartphone. It was a book intro from the reviewer she adored, who would post something every Wednesday, just as the date changed.
Excited, she opened it up. Propped up on a book stand was an untitled four-hole bound book. As soon as her eyes fell on the paragraphs of text, Sayaka reflexively threw her phone away from her.
The books he reviewed were always novels officially released by publishers. To think that he’d post about a personally made book with only a couple of copies in existence—that wasn’t even a novel at all.
She walked around her room uselessly, but her mind was blank. Figuring that feeling some cold air on her might cool her wound-up emotions, she frantically pedaled around late-night Shinjuku on her bike, but all that did was kill both her stamina and time. She even forgot to breathe. Nauseated by the feeling of her head being squeezed, she cried, and was stopped three separate times by police officers for questioning. They had mistaken her for a drunkard who couldn’t find her way home.
He always wrote words that highlighted a book’s good parts. He would read several books from the same author to try to fathom what the author was trying to look at, what they truly wanted to write. Sayaka wanted to meet him and talk to him. She wanted him to read her books one day. She adored him enough that she would murmur his name randomly, but ever since she’d thrown her phone last night, she hadn’t unlocked the screen even once.
“Ninomiya-san, are you all right? It doesn’t sting, does it?”
Hearing a kind voice, Sayaka looked up. The slender stylist, wearing a pale-purple knit sweater, was looking at her in the mirror. Her eyelashes fluttered with every blink of her eyes. She had such a gorgeous air about her that just being reflected in the same mirror made Sayaka feel awkward.
“Ah, I’m okay.”
Sayaka softened the frown that had been on her face and pulled her lips into an awkward smile. The stylist gave her a soft smile back just like usual, so she was relieved.
She had come to the salon today to get her hair dyed for the very first time. Seeing as the stylist was the one doing all of the work, while Sayaka just sat there, she kept getting lost in thought.
The stylist loosened the wrap over Sayaka’s hair, saying that she was worried about the dye hurting her scalp, since that could happen when your scalp was sensitive, even if the dye wasn’t actually touching it.
“Were you writing in your head, Ninomiya-san?”
“No, I was just spacing out because I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Sayaka explained.
“I’m going to leave this on for a little while longer, so you can nap if you’d like. But if you feel some tingling, or like something doesn’t feel right, don’t hold back and tell me immediately, all right?”
Sayaka nodded, absentmindedly looking at the white teeth peeking through the stylist’s lips. Sayaka met Kasugai Satoko during her job-searching in her third year of high school five years earlier, and she had kept on visiting Salon Blan ever since. If Satoko ever quit and started working elsewhere, or opened her own salon, Sayaka had decided she would follow.
Ever since she was a little girl, Satoko had hated going to the salon, because even just the feeling of a pin in her hair, or an elastic or brush touching her scalp made her feel something close to pain. No matter how much she complained to the stylist, they’d always brush her off with a “just hold out a little bit longer” and a forced smile, while her mother would apologize for her daughter being so finicky.
Once she learned that she had a lower pain tolerance than other people, Sayaka had started enduring it. It was because of this that the worst things would come out of her mouth once she was pushed over her limit, and she knew she’d hurt a lot of people over the years.
Sayaka had been snippy with Satoko at the beginning too, but once she knew the stylist was someone who could be considerate, she’d left her in charge of the styling she’d carefully requested for years, and even let her guard down and talked about her writing. Now, Sayaka was no different than a pet who relaxed around its owner and slept belly-up. The amazing thing about Satoko was that she was bighearted enough that she’d accept everything, letting the things she didn’t know stay unknown.
“Kasugai-san, I finally made a book,” Sayaka admitted, stopping Satoko in her tracks as she was about to step away after checking on her dye.
“Huh?” Satoko turned, expression morphing into a smile. She was the only one Sayaka had ever told about her desire to collect her writings and release them as a book. “That’s amazing! What’s the title?”
“It has no title. I thought a lot about that at the beginning, but I felt like my writings would just turn into a pile of whatever the title was, so…”
“I see,” Satoko replied, nodding in admiration. She rolled over a round chair used when cutting hair and sat down right beside Sayaka.
“Do you remember how I told you about that reviewer I adore?” Sayaka continued.
“Um, his name was Keiichi-san, right?”
The sound of his name shook Sayaka’s eardrums, and her cheeks started getting hot.
“He read my book. And it looks like he put his impressions of it up on social media…”
She said “looks like” because she had seen tons of words on the screen when she’d gotten that single glimpse of it, so she wasn’t actually sure if they were his impressions or not.
Sayaka trailed off, and Satoko stared her in the face, eyes sparkling with questions.
“What did he write?”
“I haven’t actually read it yet. Just thinking about what he might have said is terrifying.”
“Didn’t you tell me before that he was someone who read deep into the text with his reviews? Maybe he understood what you wanted to write more than anyone else could?”
Yeah, that was possible, but there was no guarantee that it would be the same this time as it always was. There were parts that even Sayaka herself wasn’t sure what she was writing. It was because she trusted his gaze that she was afraid. He might directly point out things that she didn’t want to see.
“Will you read what he wrote for me, Kasugai-san?”
“Huh? But…”
“I haven’t been able to use my phone at all. Right now, the first thing I’d see when I unlocked the screen is his review.”
Sayaka took her smartphone out of the pouch with her valuables sitting in front of the mirror. After unlocking it with her thumb, she shoved it into Satoko’s hands, gripping her own on her lap.
Satoko scrolled down the screen, expression serious as she read. Sayaka felt like she sat there forever, doing nothing as she waited.
“I want you to read this yourself, Ninomiya-san,” Satoko said, still looking down at the phone.
“Huh? What the heck does that mean?”
The words came out of Sayaka’s mouth sharply, and she slapped a hand over her lips. The customers and other staff all looked her way.
Satoko continued speaking, not bothered in the least. “I haven’t written my impressions on any books since I was in school, so I don’t know how hard it is to write like this, but…I think Keiichi-san wrote this while reading it all over and over again. It’s that sort of carefully thought-out writing. Which is why I think he’d be happy if the words reached you.”
Expression serious, she added that she wasn’t sure what exactly he was pointing out, since she hadn’t read the book herself, but it made her interested.
“I felt a bit touched reading it. It was so sincere. Though it’s probably weird to feel touched reading a book review…”
“It’s not weird at all! I understand completely!” Sayaka replied, putting energy behind her words.
While he seemed indifferent while speaking face-to-face, Keiichi was someone who could write words that resonated in your heart. That was exactly why she wanted to know about him, just like he wanted to sound out authors.
“Okay, it’s your turn now, Ninomiya-san. I think you’ll be fine reading it. I think it was written with love,” Satoko said, putting the phone back in Sayaka’s hand.
Eyes barely open, Sayaka squinted at the screen. Keiichi’s icon had changed at some point. The last time she’d checked, it had been a pile of his read books, but now it was a photo of an orange cocktail.
“It’s nerve-racking, huh? I always get nervous when I see my name in a review of the salon, so I think I understand how you feel, just a bit. But please, do actually read it. Even if it’s at home where you’re relaxed.”
Sayaka worried for a moment, but in the end, she slipped her phone back in the pouch. She just couldn’t gather up the courage.
“Where could I go to buy your book, Ninomiya-san?” Satoko asked. It seemed she was interested after reading Keiichi’s review.
It was all well and good that the stylist knew that she wrote, but having someone read your work came with equal parts happiness and embarrassment.
“I’m renting a shelf at a bookstore. The shop is like a collection of tiny bookstores, and the format has been getting more popular lately.”
Just as Sayaka was about to explain, Satoko piped in with, “Oh, I know what you’re talking about! A shared bookstore, right?”
While the format was starting to get coverage on various types of media, including television, there were still plenty of booklovers who didn’t even know what shared bookstores were. That’s why it was surprising that Satoko knew, since she’d mentioned before that she didn’t even own a bookshelf.
“How did you know?”
“It was last month, I think? A client told me about one, and I went to see. It was a bookstore called Frère, across the street from Shinjuku Gyoen Park.”
“That’s the one! That’s where I’m renting my shelf!”
The two of them raised their voices at the coincidence.
“It’s a wonderful store, isn’t it? Lately, I’ve been visiting it on my breaks, since they serve coffee too. I’ll search for your untitled book next time I go! I was speaking with the owner, Haruka-san, a bit ago, and he mentioned that more and more people are getting interested in reading books produced by the authors themselves, without going through a publisher. And now that I think about it, the client who told me about Frère in the first place really liked him…”
Satoko added that some of the other staff visited it sometimes, turning and pointing out one of the assistants. Said assistant came over and mooned about how Haruka’s natural celeb-like aura was great, which surprised Sayaka, since she’d never looked at him like that. When the assistant asked for her opinion, she said he wasn’t her type at all.
“I’ve got curly hair, so seeing other people’s curly hair bothers me. Sakurai-san’s hair is always so messy. It’s tangled!” the assistant said, looking to Satoko for confirmation.
“Huh? Isn’t that just that sort of hairstyle?” The stylist dodged the question with a smile, standing from her chair to check Sayaka’s hair again. She didn’t comment on Haruka’s hair at all. She wouldn’t empathize with one person and leave the other hanging.
“Yep, it looks like it’s ready. Let’s get it washed out,” she said, leading Sayaka to the shampooing station. Once she had sat down and leaned back, Sayaka heard the sound of water near her ears.
There were people who visited Frère to buy books made by individual writers that they couldn’t buy anywhere else. How did they look at those books? Did they compare them to books written by professional writers in normal bookstores?
The sound of water made her remember that rainy day. When Sayaka closed her eyes, she remembered the sight of Keiichi’s back as he sat at Frère’s reading counter. She had wanted to talk to him for years—she had even become a shelf owner at Frère for a chance at it. She was overflowing with things she wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t get most of them out; she was only chatty in her head. And once he was right in front of her, the words hid, and no matter how hard she tried to pull them out, they wouldn’t show their faces.
Sayaka had followed Keiichi’s reviews for longer than she had been buying his books at Frère. She’d been doing it since he first signed up on social media for his reading and posted his first review eight years earlier. Every time she looked back on the past, bitter feelings bubbled up. Back then, Sayaka had been in her third year of junior high.
As Sayaka looked down at the school grounds from her window seat, she heard the sound of the classroom door slamming open.
“This is amazing! You might be a genius, Sayaka!”
Nakahara Mai, who was in the class next to theirs, ignored the boy asking why she couldn’t open the door more quietly and headed straight for Sayaka’s desk. Sayaka stayed in her chair as she looked up at the other girl’s brightly colored hair, almost transparent in the light.
“Yeah, you told me that with an annoying number of messages during class,” Sayaka said.
“Who are you calling annoying?” Mio responded with a smile, bonking her friend on the head before restarting her praises.
Sayaka was too embarrassed to get a single word of thanks out, and Mio pulled the notebook full of Sayaka’s poetry that she’d borrowed earlier in the day out of her bag.
“They’re great, like you’ve got all of your feelings right out there. I can’t understand anything about the poetry in our textbooks, but I get yours! If someone like me who only gets like thirty-five points on any Japanese test gets them, then I’m sure they’ll be a hit with the whole world!” she claimed confidently.
As Mio pushed her to write more, Sayaka tried to hurry her into heading home. She didn’t want her classmates to know too much of her business. Standing up, she grabbed the other girl’s arm and pulled her out of the classroom. Then, she dragged her to the school’s back gate.
It was early June, the season of humid heat before the rainy season began. The humidity stuck to Sayaka’s skin. Despite it being a melancholic period where she had to worry about her hair going every which way, there was one thing she’d been enjoying lately: observing the hydrangeas growing in the shadows of the back gate. They were just starting to bloom. In May, they’d still been little green bumps. In the beginning of June, their stiffly closed buds opened, and now, the colors were starting to bloom on the tips of their petals.
“Hydrangeas are like love, aren’t they?” Sayaka murmured, making Mio stop in place and look closer at the flowers.
When they were just starting to bloom, their petals were colorless. As the days passed, they each took on color in their own way, spreading their petals.
When Sayaka explained what she meant, Mio asked if there was someone she liked—and she was right on the money. But Mio didn’t try to pry any deeper, continuing on to say that that was the reason Sayaka’s poetry was so good.
Mio was a bundle of unnecessary comments, always blabbing whatever she was thinking about, so this was unlike her. It was because she was so overly sensitive to romance that Sayaka immediately realized why her poetry had made such an impression on the other girl.
“You like Saitou, don’t you, Mio?” Sayaka asked confidently.
They were always together, so she could tell who had caught her friend’s eye. But it should have been the same for Mio, which was exactly why she didn’t ask who Sayaka liked—she didn’t want to hear the truth, that her best friend was in love with the same person as she was.
“Why don’t you confess to him?”
Sayaka continued before Mio even had a chance to open her mouth. She really thought that way. Whatever the case was, Sayaka had no hopes for herself, since she would never do anything but watch him from afar. After school, she’d sneak a peek at his track and field practice through the classroom window. During class, she’d wish she could touch his straight, refreshingly buzzed hair, record his quiet laughter inside her heart, and burn the sight of his profile as he looked at the blackboard into her eyes. Her feelings were faint, something you couldn’t call love.
“You’d be okay with it?”
“With what? Just because you confess doesn’t mean you’ll actually date him,” Sayaka retorted with a straight face. Mio shot back a complaint, voice deep, as if she was spitting out all her gloomy feelings, and the two friends laughed.
They were in different classes, but Mio was already friendly with Saitou, so it might actually go fairly smoothly. Even if they did start dating, Sayaka would still be Mio’s friend. It was because she’d decided that that she’d pushed her, but the next words out of Mio’s mouth smashed her resolve to pieces.
“I’m sorry, Sayaka. When I read your poetry, I knew. I knew that you were writing about Saitou. Until then, I hadn’t looked at him that way, but when I read your poetry, I ended up getting pretty serious.”
The way Mio spoke made it sound like she’d discovered his charms, noticing a side of him she’d never seen before. Sayaka was shocked, seeing Mio blush like that.
You’re kidding. Those feelings are mine. It’s because you don’t know how I felt spinning those words together that you can steal someone else’s feelings so easily.
Oblivious to the rage Sayaka was shaking with, Mio took her hand and thanked her.
A short while later, Mio and Saitou started dating, and Sayaka threw away all of the notebooks full of poetry she’d written. If she was just going to feel like this, then she wasn’t ever going to write again. That was what she’d thought then. She wanted to move away from poetry, so she could forget those bitter memories.
It wasn’t until summer break that she realized that not a single word would rise inside her mind and that she really couldn’t write. The moment she decided she would stop writing, she had let go of what little talent she had.
Frantically, she tried to think of why she couldn’t write. She wondered if, maybe, her feelings of not being able to forgive Mio had stolen her words. Had the idea that showing others her poetry would lead to pain been imprinted in her mind and made her reject them? Had she really even liked Saitou, or was he just a subject for her to write love poetry about? Once she started thinking about all of these questions, she couldn’t believe anything that came out of her.
Panicking, Sayaka made herself a social media account for her reading. When she decided she wanted to recover her words, she had the idea that touching other people’s works and writing reviews might help. She followed the accounts of everyone else who made an account around the same time, and among the people who followed her back was Keiichi.
“I mainly read novels. Nice to meet you.”
Despite her never greeting him, he sent her an overly serious comment like that. Her first impression of him was that he must’ve been new to social media. As she read the reviews he regularly posted, she was impressed by how deeply he read into the details. After two months, Keiichi had more than ten times the followers she had.
Sayaka tried reading the same books as him. She didn’t know why, but even if she wrote out impressions that were the complete opposite of his, she didn’t feel like his interpretation was absolutely impossible. They didn’t make her feel bad or wrong. Keiichi didn’t reject anyone else’s feelings. That was why it felt that reading his reviews kept her own heart safe.
On the day that she first met him, there had been a sudden rain shower, just like the day she spoke to him at Frère. It was a year earlier, a coincidence that was like destiny.
The sky had suddenly roared, and rain began falling. Sayaka held down her bangs as she pulled along her bike with its bent basket. Why did all these bad things have to happen one after the other? She’d fallen down the stairs, damaged her beloved bicycle, and now it was raining.
As she despaired, she picked a place at random to slip inside and wait out the rain—which turned out to be Frère. The moment she stepped inside the store, the rain started falling in earnest, and she was relieved to think that she could waste all the time she needed reading there. She’d known that a shared bookstore had opened in the area, but this was her first time inside.
The person watching the store that day was a lanky man, probably around 180 centimeters tall, who wasn’t flashy but still drew your gaze. He had straight black hair and wore simple clothing: a white jersey-cloth shirt, black pants, and a beige shirt on top. He’d given her a little nod when their eyes met, and despite his lack of smile, it wasn’t like he was putting up a wall between them. It didn’t feel like he was someone who didn’t like talking either. He had a unique air to him, one that she found hard to describe or compare.
“Um, which shelf is yours?”
When Sayaka asked that, he walked over to her, pointing out the shelf labeled “Triple Sec.” It was full of books she’d read recently. Surprised by the coincidence, she picked out one she hadn’t read yet and brought it to the register. She couldn’t bring herself to look him in the face, so she just stared at his hands on the counter. He must have been a methodical guy, because his nails were trimmed so short that she couldn’t see any white at the tips, and it made her want to hide her own untended hands.
“There’s a page with my impressions on the book on a sheet of paper in the back, so if you’re interested, try reading it after you finish,” he said before turning around and offering her a navy-blue folding umbrella. “You don’t have to give this back. I brought it, but I’ve never used it.”
When she accepted it, she saw that it really was brand-new, with no signs of use. She decided to take him up on his offer.
Once she arrived home, she immediately opened the book she bought. There was one sheet of paper folded at the very back. The moment she read his impressions, she felt like she stopped breathing. This was supposed to be the first time she’d read it, and yet she knew who wrote it.
She opened her social media and looked at Keiichi’s list of read books once again. Every single book that had been on that shelf had been one that he’d read.
Sayaka quickly looked up the meaning of “triple sec.” Apparently, it was derived from an orange liqueur called Cointreau. It meant “triple dry” in French. In reality, it was a metaphorical expression in comparison to the very sweet white curaçao, and triple sec wasn’t actually all that dry.
Slipping into a liquor store right before it closed, she bought a bottle of Cointreau, opening it up as soon as she got home. She poured it into a mug and got tipsy off of the scent that reminded her of freshly picked mikan oranges, then finally took a sip.
The moment she did, her throat burned. She felt a mass of heat transform into pain, dropping straight from her esophagus into her stomach. Scared, she went to grab some water, but then she felt something change in her body, and she stopped in place. She couldn’t breathe properly. Her head was spinning, and she couldn’t even get up.
Oh no, this might be the end. When she felt that her life may have been in danger, words flowed through her for the first time in seven years, and she could clearly see everything she’d left undone in her life. Sayaka grabbed the memo pad on her table and wrote out all of the words in a flurry.
“Have you been busy with work lately?” Satoko asked in response to Sayaka’s unconscious sigh.
Sayaka’s mouth was open, but no words were coming out. It took her a few seconds to realize what she was being asked. “Oh, no. If anything, I have a lot of free time lately.”
While she tried to stuff her memories back down into their drawer again, Satoko kept on talking, asking if she was right in remembering that Sayaka would be busier in the new year, and Sayaka just gave her a vague answer.
She’d just quit her job as an office worker at an accounting firm that she’d gotten through the placement center the week before. But it wasn’t as if there’d been a particular person she disliked there. The employees didn’t talk poorly of people when they weren’t there, and no one had lectured her for how she lived her life. They even gave out snacks at three in the afternoon. Despite the fact that she knew it was rare to find such a great place to work, Sayaka felt like she was suffocating there.
She wasn’t interested in talking about the weather, special sales at the supermarket, or what dramas were airing on TV. The idea of spending the next few decades spending all of her time smiling and agreeing made her think it wasn’t the life for her.
“Do you drink, Kasugai-san?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Hmm… It isn’t like I can’t drink, but I don’t drink much,” the stylist answered. Seemingly catching what Sayaka wanted to talk about, Satoko smiled, shooting back, “Oh yeah. Keiichi-san had a cocktail for his icon, didn’t he?”
“I was wondering if you knew what that orange drink was. I’ve only ever been dragged along to drinking parties at izakaya, so I’ve never been to a proper bar. I wonder what that drink was called.”
“There are apparently tons of different cocktail recipes. I heard that only a sliver of them are written in books, but there are as many recipes as there are stars in the sky. You could try taking the picture to a bar and asking about it?” Satoko suggested.
“If there’s that many recipes, they might not know.”
“But if you go to one that mainly serves cocktails, the bartenders there supposedly have from three to five hundred different recipes in their heads.”
“I see. Then I might be able to find someone who knows about it if I asked.”
It would be much easier to just go ask Keiichi himself than go to a bar on her own, but then Sayaka would have to explain how she got his social media details when he hadn’t given them to her. The fact that their meeting at Frère wasn’t her first encounter with him and that she’d been chasing him on social media would come out.
“Anyway, I’ll look into it. Why don’t you drink, Kasugai-san? Because you don’t want to lose control?”
Drying Sayaka’s hair with a towel, Satoko smiled. “Oh, it’s not anything as cool as that. I get super sleepy when I drink, so I prefer coffee or tea. Maybe it’s because I want to feel at ease?”
So even people like her whose emotions are stable want to feel at ease? That’s a bit strange.
And for some reason, Satoko said that Sayaka was amazing. Sayaka had no idea what could be amazing about her. If it was that she didn’t want to lose control of herself, that was wrong. She’d thrown her job and life out the window, writing from dawn to dusk trying to get back what she’d lost—so on that point, she’d lost control ages ago.
As they returned to the mirror, Sayaka saw her hair had turned a vivid orange color, just like that cocktail photo. Once it was dried using the hair dryer, the color looked even more intense. The black of her untamed eyebrows stood out.
Satoko put a hand to her chin, staring at Sayaka through the mirror. “The plan was to go from here to pink beige, right? But I just had this little idea that it would look really cute if we layered it with a slightly deeper orange. Might spook you every time you look in a mirror for a while, though.”
Keiichi’s icon was already in Sayaka’s brain, so she didn’t hesitate at all. “Let’s do that. I want it orange.”
Satoko called her assistant over and gave her new instructions. New dye was prepared, and the second round of coloring began.
“Can I tell you something, Ninomiya-san?” Satoko asked, smile on her lips for some reason. “I have a favorite shelf owner at Frère.”
“Huh?”
“The salon has upgraded to tablets, so I really hadn’t read anything in ages. But lately, I’ve realized how good paper books are.”
Apparently, on her first visit to Frère, she’d chanced across a photobook that spoke to her and had started visiting just for that shelf.
“It feels a little different than buying a book from a normal bookstore, or even a second-hand bookstore, when you know the person who’s read that book. It’s fun imagining what the shelf’s owner liked about each book as you look at their shelf, isn’t it? It’s like peeking into the bookshelf they have at home. When I read books before, I thought that it was just me and the author. But it’s so strange now, feeling the presence of the other people who read the book.”
“I understand! I understand that completely!!” Sayaka agreed, giving Satoko some firm nods. “What’s the name of that shelf?”
“The Hammock Cat,” Satoko answered.
“Oh, I don’t think I know that one.”
To tell the truth, Sayaka wouldn’t have been able to recognize the name of any other shelves. She’d gone to Frère a number of times before renting her own shelf, but Keiichi’s shelf was the only one she’d ever really looked at.
“Someone told me that if you write your impressions of the books you bought in the notebook on the reading counter, you’ll sometimes get a response from the shelf’s owner. Lately, I’ve been enjoying chatting to the owner of The Hammock Cat through it. His name is Shirane-san, and he’s a university student who loves kitties!”
Satoko was much more familiar with how to enjoy a shared bookstore than Sayaka. On her first day minding the store, not only was there a cat there, but the person she admired showed up out of the blue, so the notebook was the furthest thing from her mind.
“So now, I’m going to be going to the store to visit the next time he’s on duty!”
“Oooh!” Sayaka’s voice got louder than she intended.
Apparently, this Shirane guy only watched the store once a month. When Satoko wrote in the notebook that she’d like to meet in person again someday to chat, he came out suggesting that he’d take his next shift on a day she had off. She looked happy, hoping they’d be able to talk a lot more next time, but the fact that the guy was going that far probably meant that he had a thing for Satoko.
The stylist was beautiful enough that even a fellow woman like Sayaka could lose herself in admiring her. She was as calm as the still sea and had a wonderful smile, and even though she would open her heart to anyone while they spoke to her, she was mysterious enough that you had no idea at all what she did once she got off work, so she made you wonder.
“It’s so interesting how many different ways to meet people there are,” Satoko said as she finished putting in the foils. She let Sayaka know she’d leave them on a little bit longer before stepping away once more; it seemed she had overlapping appointments. The writer could hear her cheery voice as she chatted with someone else at a distant station.
If Sayaka wrote her impressions of the books she read in that notebook, would Keiichi actually respond to her? While she daydreamed about what they might say, she didn’t have the courage to do it.
When the timer went off, Satoko came rushing back to wash Sayaka’s hair again. She then dried it and finished styling it all at once.
“You look so cute, Ninomiya-san!”
Her hair was a deep orange that looked translucent in the light. Seeing the brilliance of it made her feel lighter. Satoko brought over the makeup box, drawing in her eyebrows with a color that suited her hair, and putting some eyeliner on her. The stylist had taken back her bangs to expose more of her face, so they wouldn’t block her vision even if she looked downward.
I look like a completely different person. She desperately wanted to show off her new self to someone.
Satoko showed her off with a wave, and Sayaka headed to Frère. Before she went inside, she peeked in the window and saw Haruka at the register counter. Her eyes shot to the doorway, and she started shaking as she noticed the sign warning of a cat inside posted there.
Once, when she was a child, a cat had jumped into her room through a window the moment she opened it. Before she even had a chance to be surprised, it bit her, and her hand swelled right up. The memories of the pain and how she was laid up for days was stuck in her mind.
She decided not to go in today. Just as she was about to turn to leave, her eyes met Haruka’s. When he started walking toward the door, she couldn’t run away anymore.
“Hello! You can come inside, if you’d like,” he said.
Sayaka was confused at him smiling and greeting her like it was their first meeting. Haruka looked a bit confused too.
“Um. I’m Sayokyoku’s owner, Ninomiya.”
“Whoa, I didn’t recognize you for a minute there,” he said with a laugh. “But I did think you looked familiar!”
His surprise immediately turned into a grin, and he gave her tons of compliments on her new hair. Normally, she would have wanted to deny them as soon as he started, but maybe because she liked her new style so much, a smile rose to her lips instead.
Stepping inside the store, Sayaka first tried to confirm where the cat was, but she couldn’t see it, which made it even scarier because she didn’t know where it would attack her from.
“Oh yeah. A customer came by recently, looking to buy your book after seeing that review. Good for you! Gotta get lots of people reading it, since you put so much work into making them.”
Sayaka wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“If you meet with any other shelf owners, you should show them your book,” Haruka added. “There are other people who want to make their own books, and a ton of people who want to get their hands on them. It’d be good for you to try chatting with them.”
“Actually, on my first day taking care of the store, Kajiwara-san came in and bought my book. We talked a bit too,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if what they did really counted as talking. The thought came to her while she was speaking, and she tilted her head in consideration.
“I see. So that’s why Keiichi was like that,” Haruka nodded in understanding, noting that the other man had only been posting books on his social media lately, not giving his impressions on them. “Your shelf is empty now. I know making the books is hard, but you should bring some more sometime.”
“Ah, I actually brought a copy with me today,” she replied, pulling it out of her bag. As she squatted down to put it on her shelf, she saw a long, furry something and unintentionally screeched. She dropped the book on the ground, running over to Haruka and clutching his arm. “It’s there!”
“Oh, sorry. You weren’t a fan of cats, were you?”
When Haruka called out Sumi’s name, the cat peeked out from the shelf. After looking around, she slinked out, the bell on her collar ringing as she walked over to her owner. Sayaka frantically put some distance between them.
“Ninomiya-san, you should keep your shelf filled with your books. She tends to slip in there when it’s empty.”
Up until then, she’d avoided putting much on her shelf because she was afraid of people reading her work, but it seemed that she couldn’t do that anymore.
Sayaka heard voices from outside of the store and saw a group of five teenagers, all with black hair and wearing gray blazers. Their school must have had a rule against wearing their uniforms wrong, because all the girls had skirts below the knee but one, who was likely breaking the rule by folding her skirt to make it shorter.
When they walked inside, she ended up greeting them with Haruka. The students all gave a cheerful greeting back, as if they were visiting another school with their club, instantly making the store cheerier. City folk who’d grown up being told not to talk to strangers would’ve had a hard time responding like that.
Haruka walked over to the students. It seemed they were on a school trip from Okayama. They might’ve come in because they’d seen the sign advertising tourist info. When Haruka asked them where they’d been in Tokyo so far, they opened up to him immediately.
Sayaka could only watch from afar. She was impressed with Haruka’s communication skills, but the fact that the students could give such clear responses to every question he asked impressed her too. Back when she was a high schooler, all she did when a store employee spoke to her was look away. She could barely even remember where they’d gone when splitting into groups on school trips. The last time she’d had anyone she could call a friend was in junior high.
“This lady here is an author. She’s Sayaka-san, owner of the shelf named Sayokyoku. She was just dropping off one of her books.”
Before she knew it, Haruka was explaining the concept of a shared bookstore. When he brought her into the conversation, she took a step back. The high schoolers were giving her a curious look, probably taking an interest when he called her an author. Their eyes immediately went to her freshly orange-dyed hair before dropping to the book she held in her hands.
Sayaka was about to correct Haruka and say she just wrote things, and that she wasn’t special enough to be called an author, when…
“I know that book!” one of the girls, who had long hair and determined eyes, piped up. She was the girl with the short skirt, who had a different vibe from the rest. She went into detail, saying that Sayaka made the book by hand, which shocked Haruka too.
“Keiichi-san wrote a review on it, right? I remember it, because it’s been so long since he wrote down his impressions on something rather than just showcasing what books he bought.”
Sayaka was shaken. Keiichi had a big following on social media, but she’d forgotten that meant he had fans in the real world too.
“Huh? Did you come here because you knew that Keiichi rents a shelf here?” Haruka asked.
“That’s right!” the girl said, raising her hand. “I’ve loved Keiichi-san for a long time!”
Her smile was pure. She explained that she’d come across his account when she was worrying about what to read in the mornings in junior high and had been reading the books he showcased there ever since. She’d been disappointed when he stopped writing thorough reviews, but someone posted about “something that was inside a book from a shared bookstore named Frère” and uploaded a picture of some handwritten impressions. They didn’t have any info on who wrote it, but she immediately knew that Keiichi had written them. She could tell from the contents of the review alone, just like Sayaka.
“So that’s why I decided I had to come here on our trip!” she said, wrapping up her explanation.
There were only so many places that students could go on their own during the trip. Each student got to pick one single location for their group to go to, and she’d picked Frère. She must have been really passionate, picking a bookstore when she’d come all the way to Tokyo instead of seeing something like the metropolitan government or the autumn leaves at the Shinjuku Gyoen Park.
“Ahh, over here. This is it!” the girl cried out in glee when she found Keiichi’s shelf. She quickly pulled out a book and flipped through the pages. When she found his handwritten impressions, she hugged it to her chest, saying that she finally found it. She giddily bragged to her friends that this was what she’d wanted to get, no matter what.
Saying that she wouldn’t be able to come back to Tokyo for a while, she grabbed every single book off of Keiichi’s shelf and brought them to the counter. Even though they were mostly hardcover, she didn’t even glance at the prices. The boys in the group teased her for using her entire personal budget on books, but she just kicked them before asking the girls to spot her if she didn’t have enough. When she fussed about wanting a handwritten sales card as a souvenir, Haruka dealt with it.
When she learned that the war fund she’d brought for books was three hundred yen more than she needed, she quickly ran back to the shelves and grabbed a cooking recipe book that happened to be just that much. She then pulled a sturdy-looking paper bag and some cushioning packaging out of her backpack and began wrapping her books. She must have been prepared to buy everything Keiichi had out before she even got there—she was all ready.
“It’s a pity that I’m here taking care of the store today instead of Keiichi. Do you want me to call him and ask if he can come see you? I’ll tell him you came all the way from Okayama.”
When Haruka offered that, the girl squeed with glee. However, the other students didn’t look very on board, concerned that staying any longer at Frère would mean they wouldn’t get to visit the other places they wanted to go.
Did that mean that Keiichi was somewhere close enough that he could just come if he was called? While Sayaka stood there, secretly a little hopeful, the students checked their plans and discussed what to do. They eventually decided that they couldn’t spend any more time at the store.
“Aww, I wish I could just live in Tokyo. I want to go to university here instead of Osaka,” the girl said, hugging her bag of books.
“If you do come back to Tokyo, become a shelf owner here. You’d be able to chat with Keiichi whenever you want.”
Haruka started passing his card out to every student there, telling them to give him a call if they came to Tokyo and wanted to know where to visit, where to stay, or whatever. That made even the boys, who’d looked bored, brighten up a bit.
“What sort of person is Keiichi-san?” the girl asked.
“What sort of person is he? Hmm, I dunno. I’ve known him for too long to know how to answer that.”
The girl kept on shooting out questions, asking his age, and confirming that he was male. When Haruka gave her a little peek at a picture on his smartphone, she cried out a “dang!” She then let out a screech too, as if that hadn’t been enough. As she swore that she’d definitely get into a university in Tokyo, the other high school students took a peek at the phone screen too. The boys started teasing her, saying, “Someone like that’d never pay you any mind, Mizuki.”
“Um.” Sayaka walked over to the girl who was called Mizuki, holding out the book she’d just brought to the store that day. “Read this too, if you want. You can have it.”
It didn’t have his handwritten impressions inside, but it was still a book that Keiichi had read that she couldn’t get anywhere else. It had to have some value to the girl.
“Huh, really?” Mizuki cried, beaming.
Up until then, Sayaka had been afraid of people reading her work. She couldn’t believe she was doing something this forward in spite of that. Maybe it was because she’d been told that Keiichi had given it a review that would make her happy.
She wasn’t sure if the high school girl would read her nameless book. She just thought it would be interesting if one of her books made the journey all the way out to Okayama. Books were like messages in bottles, but they would be carried to unknown places by someone’s hand.
The high school students all bowed, saying thank you before they left the store. Sayaka could see them horsing around outside through the glass window. As she gave them a wave, Haruka told her she did a good job, and she relaxed the tension that was in her shoulders.
“They had so much energy. High schoolers are so young,” she murmured.
Haruka smiled. “Here I’ve been trying to keep that high-schooler vibe going, but the fact that I looked at them and thought that they were so small must mean that’s that. I’m nearing the end of my twenties, anyway. You really don’t notice youth until you look back, huh?” he commented softly, stretching and saying he felt like life was on fast-forward now. “Makes you panic. I’ve still got so much I want to do, and yet it feels like the curtain’s falling on my life.”
“What the heck?” Sayaka blurted.
“You don’t think that way?”
“No, I don’t.”
Sayaka had her hands full just dealing with the present, so much that she couldn’t even imagine what tomorrow might bring, while Haruka was thinking about who he’d become in the future. Anyone looking at him could only consider him a success, having started a business so young, so she was shocked that there was anything more he could even want. She also realized that she wasn’t thinking about anything but writing, so she wondered if it would be a good idea for her to start feeling a sense of panic about her future.
“But it’s amazing how popular Keiichi is. I wish he’d share some of that popularity with me,” Haruka said.
“Is he really that popular?”
“Yup. But a lot more guys like him than girls, since he’s just so nice.”
He explained that they’d been classmates in junior high. When Sayaka heard that he’d always had that same sort of vibe, she imagined what it would have been like to be in the same class as him at that age. Would she have been able to talk to him while he sat in the classroom reading? Or would she have just watched him from afar?
“Does Keiichi-san work somewhere close by?”
She knew it wasn’t good to pry into his private personal life, but she asked anyway, the floodgates opening as she lost against her curiosity.
“I manage a bar too, and Keiichi takes care of it.”
“Huh? Where?”
“It’s within walking distance. The bar is called Undecimber Garden. We’ve got books there too. Keiichi is the one who picks them out, so you should visit it sometime.”
Adding that Keiichi used to be a bartender at the main bar in Shinjuku’s City Hotel, Haruka handed her the bar’s card. Apparently, it was behind Hanazono Shrine, in a place called Shinjuku Golden Gai. She’d known the name, but she’d never been there; she didn’t even have anyone to go with.
But if she was going to see him, she wanted it to be today. Satoko had done her hair and makeup, so at the very least, she looked better than she normally did. The last time they’d met, she’d looked awful, having left home looking like she’d just rolled out of bed. She wanted to overwrite his memory of her.
“Is it open today?”
“Yep. It opens at eight, but he’s usually there by the evening. He goes in pretty early to get the food prepared and do some reading. If you’re gonna go today, do you want me to let him know that Sayokyoku’s Ninomiya-san is coming to hear his review firsthand?”
“No, you don’t have to do anything more.”
Considering how long it took Satoko to read the review, he must have written enough already. Plus, she wouldn’t know how to respond.
“Even if you didn’t wait until tonight, he’d probably still let you in,” Haruka said. “He sometimes opens early when one of his regulars or acquaintances shows up.”
The sound of a bell rang out as Haruka’s cat, Sumi, came out from under the register counter.
“You’re okay with coming out when there are only one or two customers now, but you still hide when more people show up, huh? You’re so timid.”
“A cat? Timid?” Sayaka asked.
“Cats are just like people. Each one has a different personality,” Haruka said, scooping Sumi up with one hand. “Wanna try petting her?”
When Sayaka reached her hand out, the cat pressed herself further into Haruka’s chest, trying to get away from her. Maybe it was because Sumi was so scared that she didn’t want to let Sayaka out of her sight, because she kept her eyes on Sayaka’s hand, even though her face was turned away. Recognizing a bit of herself in Sumi, Sayaka laughed. The cat didn’t attack her; she just tried to make herself smaller.
Oh, so she’s tame.
The moment Sayaka touched the cat, she felt her warmth. Sumi was much warmer than a human.
“I don’t want her hiding in my shelf anymore, so she’ll need to get more used to people. She’s the store kitty, so she should be near the window so people can see her from outside. I’ll do my best so that she can live outside of my shelf too.”
This time, Haruka was the one to laugh. The moment his hold on her loosened, Sumi slipped down onto the floor. Normally, she would have bolted straight to the Sayokyoku shelf, but perhaps she had understood their conversation, because she jumped on top of the reading counter instead, waiting for the next customer to come.
“This is just if you do go, but can you tell Keiichi to bring more books, since his shelf is empty now? Also, let him know a high school girl from Okayama came. You don’t have to tell him I showed her a picture, though. He’d definitely get mad at me.”
“I want to see the picture too, actually.”
Swearing her to secrecy, Haruka took out his phone and showed Sayaka the picture of Keiichi he had. It was taken two years earlier, when he’d still been working as a bartender at the hotel. He was holding the shaker, wearing a white shirt and black suit. Keiichi looked like a completely different person, with his hair up and slicked back. She stood there staring until Haruka’s voice cut through her trance.
“If it’d be too hard for you to talk to him one-on-one, then it might be a fun idea to go on a day it’s busy. You’d be able to see him make all kinds of cocktails,” Haruka suggested.
“I’ll go now.”
She’d been given a mission, so she had no choice but to go. Haruka might’ve said it to make her think that way. When she thought about how her interest in Keiichi was so obvious that Haruka had to worry about her, she felt a bit depressed, like she’d failed, but it was too late now.
Leaving Frère, Sayaka started walking toward Shinjuku. From Yasukuni-dori, it was as if she was sucked into Hanazono Shrine, the place of the gods at the entrance to the city of the night. On either side of the yellow-leaved ginkgo-lined path to the shrine were several stalls. Further in, she could see a great number of lanterns. Now that she thought about it, it was the season for the Tori-no-Ichi.
The Tori-no-Ichi at Hanazono Shrine was one of the three great festivals in the Kanto area. On the large-scale second day, the stalls would be lined up on the sidewalks from near Seibu-Shinjuku Station to the shrine, and there would be so many people there that you could barely walk.
The day after tomorrow was the third festival, and it looked like they were all getting ready for the eve. There were menus written in English, and stalls lined with souvenirs. The foreign tourists were watching curiously, wondering what was being set up.
“The Tori-no-Ichi, huh?”
Sayaka walked along the approach to the shrine, stepping on the fallen leaves. In the past, she’d looked forward to the festival every year, and yet she’d completely forgotten about it this year.
When she was in junior high, she had always come with Mio. Her friend would say she would choose what to eat after checking out all of the stalls, dragging Sayaka, dizzy from the crowds, from one end to the other. When she would tell Mio she was tired and wanted to go home, Mio would talk her into staying, saying that she might get some inspiration for her poetry. In the end, Mio would always make her stay out late into the night.
The wind blew on the memories, and her scars slowly disappeared. They would be painted over, and she’d move forward.
She slipped through the lines of torii leading to the inari shrine sitting quietly at the edge of the grounds. It was a spot famous for matchmaking. When she’d been lured into a trap by the sweet scent of the Cointreau, and convinced that she was going to die, all she could think of was writing, doing nothing but pulling all of the words that had been scattered out before her. She wanted to be able to think that the seven years of suffering that it had taken before she could write again had been a necessary time for her.
Ringing the bell, Sayaka put her hands together. Once she was done praying, she stopped in front of the stone steps leading to the Golden Gai. There was something that she had to do before she left.
She turned back. “God,” she said, putting a hand to her chest so that her heart wouldn’t stop, no matter what happened. Then, she pulled her phone out and slowly read through the review she hadn’t been able to read before. She had planned to read through it once again from the top after she finished, but by the time she reached the end, the letters on the screen were blurred.
“Oh no, my makeup is going to get washed away.”
Pressing down on her eyes, she sat down to the side of the stone steps.
All she had done was write down her indistinct impatience and her swaying emotions, yet Keiichi had written that it was clearly love. Her feelings were carefully scooped up, dropping into her stomach as she understood. It was a sensation she’d never felt before. She had never known that having even just one single person try to understand her would give her this much courage.
It’ll be okay. If I use these words to support me, then I can keep on writing.
For some strange reason, the courage to live welled up inside of her.
She would thank Keiichi properly for the review. Then, she’d give him back the foldable umbrella he’d lent her a year earlier and be honest about how she had always admired him and chased after his reviews. Would he realize who she had been thinking about when she wrote that book? She wanted to know.
Chapter 5: The Everyday, the Special Days
Chapter 5:
The Everyday, the Special Days
SHE COULD HEAR LOUD VOICES OUTSIDE OF HER room. It sounded like her granddaughter Mizuki had returned from her school trip to Tokyo.
Reluctantly leaving behind the suspenseful drama she’d been watching, which was nearing the end, Ishiie Emiko got up from the sofa. She took the gray stole she’d had covering her legs and wrapped it around her shoulders as she left her room, feeling she should at least get a look at her granddaughter’s face after not seeing her for five days.
Holding the railing, she carefully walked down the stairs. Having seen friends in her age group injure themselves out of the blue, she’d started feeling like she had to tell herself that she was elderly. Next month, she would be turning seventy. Even when her emotions were rushing her, there was a little lag between when she thought of an action and when her body actually moved, so she had to be especially careful when descending stairs.
The moment Emiko opened the door, she saw Mizuki and her daughter, Mayumi, standing there glaring at each other.
“I’ve already decided I’m gonna go to a university in Tokyo!”
Mizuki’s high-pitched voice pierced Emiko’s eardrums. Despite getting scolded daily about how the way she wore her school uniform was indecent and being told to stop, her skirt was still rolled up short around her waist.
“Give it a rest. If you want to go there so bad, then you can just get a job there after you graduate, can’t you?” Mayumi shouted back at her daughter, undaunted. Here she’d been waiting excitedly, having cut work short so she could be home when Mizuki got back from Tokyo today, so what happened?
“If I’m gonna go to Tokyo to work, then it’d be the same going there for university,” Mizuki countered.
“Quit doing nothing but having your nose stuck in a book and get your grades up high enough that you can go to university in the first place! Your grades in your last school year aren’t the only thing they take into consideration when recommending you. Your grades up until then count too.”
“You’re so annoying!” Mizuki said, pouting as she looked away.
As Emiko stood there flustered, watching them go at each other, Mayumi looked over to her for help with a frown on her face.
“Listen to this, Mom: Mizuki used all the allowance she’d been given for her Tokyo trip on books instead of buying even a single souvenir for us! Unbelievable, right? She can buy books anywhere!”
“I can’t buy these books just anywhere. They’re special!” Mizuki insisted before slamming the living room door open. Grabbing the luggage she’d left in the entranceway, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. She was going to hole herself up in her room.
Mayumi heaved a sigh, cleaning up the tea set she’d had ready on the dining table. She must have really wanted to relax and listen to her daughter talk about her trip.
Emiko walked over to her. “Mayumi, we gave her that money, so does it really matter what she spent it on? Mizuki was so happy before she left, talking about a bookstore she really wanted to visit in Tokyo.”
“Going to Tokyo and buying books is one thing, but I told her! I told her that since her grandma gave her lots of money to spend, she absolutely had to buy you a souvenir as thanks. And yet here she is with nothing, saying that she wanted the books no matter what!”
“I didn’t need a souvenir. As long as Mizuki’s happy, I’m—”
Mayumi interrupted her, shaking her head. “It’s the fact that she never thinks of anyone but herself that bothers me. All she had to do was buy one fewer book. Apparently, she had so much luggage on the return trip that she’d needed to convince her friends to let her put her stuff in their bags. Why is she so reckless when she’s already in her second year of high school?”
She kept complaining, saying forget Tokyo, she could barely let her go to Osaka for university. Emiko thought the situation was heartwarming, the fact that Mizuki had friends who she was close enough to ask to do that. But that wasn’t something she should tell Mayumi. If Emiko negated her, then Mayumi would lose faith in her parenting skills.
“Want something to drink, Mom?”
“I’ll get something for myself. You must be tired from work.”
“I’m fine. Here I’m always making you do all of the housework, so I’d have no right to be here in this house if I didn’t make tea at the very least. How about I break out that new tea?” Mayumi said, opening the cupboard above the sink and pulling out the can of Darjeeling.
Mayumi and Mizuki had been fighting for the past few years. Emiko had hoped that Mizuki’s school trip putting some distance between them might do them some good, but it looked like five days hadn’t been enough time.
Emiko gazed at her daughter’s back as she stood in the kitchen. Her hair, cut shorter than her shoulders, was bundled up. The length was the same as it had been for ages, overlapping with her memories of her in junior high and high school, when she would help her with the chores. But now, there were white hairs mixed into the bunch. She would turn forty-seven on her birthday next month.
Mayumi worked at a chilled-food manufacturing company. After a sudden promotion in the spring, she’d become the chief of the product development section and was thus coming home later than before. Seeing as she was at the age where menopause began and her body was changing, she got tired more easily, so Emiko was doing her best to take care of all of the household chores. If she didn’t, Mayumi’s perfectionist ways were liable to force herself to do even more.
Six years ago, Mayumi had gotten divorced and moved back home with Mizuki, who had been in elementary school then. The two had lived outside of the prefecture, and Emiko had invited them to live with her so she could help out, thinking that it would be difficult for Mayumi to work and raise her daughter all alone.
Emiko had lost her husband after his long battle with illness around the same time, so having her daughter and granddaughter by her side had saved her. She’d expressed how thankful she was so many times, but Mayumi would always just dodge it.
Pouring the tea into a teacup, Mayumi sat down across from Emiko, but she must have still been thinking about Mizuki, because she was off in her own little world.
“How is work going? You’ve been having to study even after getting home at night, haven’t you? Hasn’t it been harder than it used to be?”
“Of course I’ve gotta study, if my job needs it. I need stimulation and knowledge if I’m gonna wring new product ideas out of my brain. If I didn’t pick up the latest info myself, then I wouldn’t even know what was new,” Mayumi replied, putting both elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands. “I came home early today, so I still have work to do.”
“Mayumi, how about we go for a trip to relax once things have settled down at work, all three of us? I mean, we could go to the Yubara Onsen, like we did when we celebrated Mizuki getting into her high school. It’s close, so we’d be able to relax.”
“Nah, impossible. Mizuki would never go anywhere like that these days. She’s a high schooler now. She’s beyond the age that she’d be happy to go on a family vacation.”
“Really?” Emiko asked, reminding Mayumi about how much she’d enjoyed it the previous year’s spring.
Mayumi countered that Mizuki had changed completely since then. “Mom, why don’t you go on a vacation with some of your friends? You can take a break from doing the housework once in a while. You must be tired, doing it all every day.”
Emiko wanted to shoot back that that wasn’t the point, but she figured that retorting would do nothing but tire her daughter out, so she just brushed it off, saying, “I guess you’re right.”
Once they were done drinking their tea, Mayumi cleaned up the cups and headed back to her own room beside the living room, without giving any comments about the taste of the new tea.
Emiko climbed the stairs to the second floor and went to Mizuki’s room. When she knocked, her granddaughter gave her a listless “Yeahhh?”
“It’s Grandma. Can I come in?”
“Go ahead…”
As she opened the door, it hit something hard. Mizuki’s open luggage was blocking Emiko from opening the door all of the way. Twisting herself sideways, she slipped through the crack.
Mizuki, who’d been laying face down on her bed, put a bookmark in the book she was reading and set it beside her pillow. It seemed she’d started reading without cleaning up first. Her clothes and flat iron were still in her bag, but she’d taken all of the books out and piled them on the floor. There were fifteen, all hardcovers.
“Wow. You brought all of these books back from Tokyo?”
“That’s right.”
They must have been heavy. “Couldn’t you have mailed them back to the house instead?” Emiko asked.
“Nope. I’d rather get one more book than pay for the shipping, and if I didn’t bring them home with my own hands, I couldn’t be sure what would happen to my precious books.”
Apparently, the luggage she’d gotten her friend to take for her was everything but her books. If she loved them that much, then there wasn’t anything else she could say.
When Emiko asked if she could see them, Mizuki sat up with an enthusiastic “Yes!”
Emiko picked up the book on the very top. It was one she’d been interested in after seeing it at a bookstore recently, a novel set on an island. It was about a high school girl who was abused by her parents and committed suicide, and her best friend, another girl who had tried to fight for her friend’s sake, but left the island after things had been covered up. The story began from a dramatic opener, and when she returned to her home island twenty years later, she would meet a man who fled from the city for some mysterious reason.
“If you wanted books, I would have driven you to the bookstore in my car,” Emiko said.
The old bookstore near their house had closed down for good, but there was a large bookstore at Okayama Station that they could get to by car. She had taken Mizuki there before, but maybe Tokyo’s were on a different scale?
“I know this book. They sold it in Okayama.”
“Look, Grandma, this isn’t just some normal book.”
Mizuki put her hand out, asking her to pass the book over. After Emiko gave it back, Mizuki opened it to the last page. Sandwiched there was a piece of notepaper.
“A letter?” Emiko asked.
“Someone’s impressions of the book,” Mizuki explained.
Emiko couldn’t read what it said, since she’d left her glasses in her room, but the paper was covered in words right to the edges. “Goodness, they’ve written a lot. Who wrote it?”
“The person I like.”
When Emiko lifted her face in shock, Mizuki laughed out loud.
“You know how I told you that there was someone on social media that I was using to get book recommendations? He’s the one who wrote his impressions. He’s a shelf owner at a bookstore in Tokyo.”
“Shelf owner?”
While Emiko was feeling bad that she didn’t know any of this, Mizuki showed her a picture of the bookstore where she’d bought the books, which was called Frère. It was a stylish store with a glass front that you might mistake for a café at first glance, with shelves split into square sections. Each of these different shelves was rented out by a different person, and the people running them as tiny bookstores were known as shelf owners.
Mizuki’s target was one of the shelf owners at Frère. She told her that she’d bought every book that had been on his shelf. It seemed that she wanted the handwritten impressions sandwiched at the back of the books no matter what.
“Then I suppose you can’t just buy them anywhere,” Emiko said as she grasped the full picture. “It’s like how you’d want to talk to someone else about things like what they thought of certain scenes, huh? That might be interesting.”
“Right? I can read tons of people’s impressions online, but it’s like how there are some things you wouldn’t say unless you were talking with someone face-to-face. That’s the sort of feeling I want. I don’t want just anyone’s impressions. I want his.”
Mizuki showed Emiko her bundle of sales cards. Each of them had one line introducing the books in the margins. Apparently, they’d also been written by the shelf owner in question. She bragged about how she’d gotten the store’s owner to give them to her.
This must have been what people called “fangirling.” Like how one of Emiko’s friends would fly all over the country following a singer they loved.
“Then I suppose you met that shelf owner?”
“It’s not that easy. But now that I’ve got these books, I have something to message him about. If I talked to him without any other good reason, I’d get bashed.”
Mizuki excitedly explained that Frère’s owner had told her to become a shelf owner there if she ever came to Tokyo. That must have made her pretty happy, because she just kept on talking nonstop. Emiko just listened and nodded along. In any case, she could tell that her granddaughter had spent her money in a way that she felt was worthwhile. That was much better than if she’d bought souvenirs from Tokyo purely out of obligation.
“Y’know how when you’re reading a book and something doesn’t happen like you expect and you get annoyed? But if you look back at it after reading his reviews, then you can see it in a completely different light. He never writes badly about any book, but it’s not like he’s forcing himself to write nice things about it even though he didn’t like it. It makes you accept it more naturally, or like, makes it calming to read or something. Ahh, I love him!”
She talked about how she would read his impressions when she was tired from studying or angry after an argument.
“Oh yeah. Grandma, you like books too, right?”
“I do.”
“Try reading one of these books. Keiichi-san’s impressions are amazing!” Mizuki said, encouraging her to take any of the books from the pile.
Emiko picked out a thin, string-bound book. The feeling of its Japanese paper made her feel nostalgic. The cover had no title.
“Ah, Grandma, that one doesn’t have any impressions inside. An author I happened to meet while we were at Frère gave it to me. A lady with orange hair. Apparently, she made it herself!”
“She made a book by herself?”
That was possible?
“I read it on the Shinkansen home, but I didn’t really get it. I mean, since Keiichi-san gave it a long review online, it’s probably got a lot you can get from it, but it’s not a novel, so…”
Works with mixed reviews made you more curious than works that everyone said were amazing. They made you want to read it for yourself to see what sort of book it was.
“Can I borrow this?” Emiko asked.
“I’ll give it to you, since I didn’t bring you back a souvenir and all.”
Mizuki’s tone was normal, but she might’ve really been worrying about that all this time. Even if her actions and thoughts didn’t match up, she was thinking in her own way.
“Oh yes, I heard you say you wanted to go to a university in Tokyo?” Emiko asked, changing the subject.
“I do,” she replied, voice clear as she sat up straight. “Y’know… Hasn’t Mom been talking kinda weird lately? Why is she fine with me going to Osaka but not Tokyo? I’d be leaving home either way.” Mizuki scowled as she let out her complaints.
“The farther away you are, the harder it gets to go to you if anything happens.”
“If what happens? Like if I get sick, or hurt? I’ll be fine. I can manage alone.”
“I’m sure Mayumi is just worried about you.”
“I didn’t ask her to worry about me. When I was in Tokyo, it just came to me. It was like it was calling to me. I’ve been to Osaka a bunch of times, but I’ve never gotten that feeling there.”
“I see.”
“I’ll be fine on my own. I can make friends quick anywhere too. Ahh, I want to go back to Tokyo,” Mizuki sighed, as if it was the place she truly belonged.
“Well, you’re still only in your second year of high school. You’ve got plenty of time, so you can think hard about where you really want to go.”
Even if Emiko was to try to speak from Mayumi’s view right now, it wouldn’t get through to Mizuki. She would probably understand one day when she was in her mother’s shoes, but they couldn’t help the fact that no matter how much everyone might tell her that parents are supposed to worry about their kids, and that having someone worry about you was a good thing, she wouldn’t get it right now. Adults might want to speak from their own experiences, but most things wouldn’t click until a child actually got to that age.
“Hey, Grandma…” Mizuki suddenly began, tone wheedling.
“Hm?”
“Am I still in my ‘rebellious phase’?”
“I don’t think you’re rebelling against your mother, just saying that you want to do what you want to do,” Emiko said gently, getting a nod back from her granddaughter.
“That’s right. Mom blames everything I do on me being in my rebellious phase. That ticks me off. Can you ask Mom when I’ve ever rebelled against her, and if it’s really so bad for me to state my opinion?”
Asking wouldn’t get the point across. If anything, it was more likely to deepen the fissure between the two. If someone had no intention of accepting criticism, nothing would get through to them. It might have been frustrating to watch, but Emiko couldn’t join Mizuki in blaming her mother.
Borrowing the book, she headed back to her own room. The suspenseful drama she’d left going on the TV had ended and been replaced with tomorrow’s weather forecast. Turning it off, Emiko put on her reading glasses and opened the book.
“So this was written by someone named Sayaka-san…”
The prose began after a chapter title of Day 1, with the strange theme of “Medama Curry.” It told the tale of the author waking up early and her struggle attempting to cook something she wasn’t used to.
Medama curry was made by dicing toasted bread and topping it with curry from a pouch, cheese, and quail eggs before toasting it all. Apparently, it was named that because the two little eggs lined up next to each other looked like eyes.
The author didn’t know how long to cook it for and kept on peeking into the cloudy toaster oven over and over. The scent of spice spreading around the room softened her nerves, and she grabbed the searing-hot dish with her bare hands, burning herself. In that moment, she felt loneliness from the fact that she had no one to get angry at, and no matter how hot it was or how much it hurt, no one would laugh at or worry about her.
The author was jealous of the garden table set with two chairs that the apartment across the way from them had on their veranda, and Emiko couldn’t help but laugh at how the author ate her breakfast while imagining the streets of Paris.
The author worried about tiny things and daydreamed, and reading it was like peeking into her brain itself, giving Emiko the sensation that she was actually experiencing the everyday life inside the book. The prose was strangely charming.
“It’s so cute how interesting it is.”
A smile rose to Emiko’s face naturally. The author had an abundance of sensitivities; her point of view was novel.
Did Emiko have any friends who thought like her? She brought up the faces of each one in her mind. When they saw each other in the street, they’d talk about their health and their families. They would go shopping, get meals ready, watch TV, and sleep. When you lived a similar life to someone, you could empathize with a lot of things, but that was it.
If you escaped the boring days where you just repeated the same things over and over again, instead of living alert to lots of things, then she was sure everyday would seem like it was shining.
Turning the pages, Emiko closed the book. What if she wrote down her impressions and put them inside, like the ones Mizuki showed her? She pulled a notepad out of the drawer, and she tried writing out her love for Medama Curry. Writing it down properly was hard, even if it ended up short. An hour passed before she realized it. But when she thought about how the author must have worried while writing it, then even that time felt precious.
Emiko suddenly remembered the garden table set she had stored away. Leaving her room, she silently snuck downstairs. Her husband had bought it when he was still healthy, dreaming of life where they’d utilize their veranda and garden. It had been winter then, and after using it to freeze while they drank tea two or three times, she’d forgotten about it completely.
Opening the storage closet under the stairs, she saw that it had ended up overflowing with Mizuki’s things. She stepped in the spaces between objects, heading further inside. Behind a winter coat that never got used anymore was a folded table and some chairs.
“See, it really was in here.”
Feeling nostalgic, she went to pull it out, only for…
“What are you doing in here at this hour, Mom?” Miyuki asked suspiciously, peeking inside the closet.
Putting her book in her bag, Emiko left the house two hours earlier than usual. She’d taken the same route to walk to and from the supermarket for the past ten years for her health, but today, she decided she’d try going a different way.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve walked around here. I always go straight for the highway, whether I’m walking or driving,” she mused to herself.
Feeling the wintery chill in the blowing wind, she slowly strolled toward her destination. The road was thin, and the sidewalk was only just big enough for one person to walk on, so she had to pay attention to not only cars but bicycles too. Accidents where people got badly hurt by falling into the irrigation channels along the roads was a common occurrence here.
Okayama City’s Minami-ku, where they lived, was an area that had rice paddies spread all across the plains in the past. The irrigation channels had been made to supply the fields with the water necessary to grow the rice, and now, with most of the rice paddies turned into housing, these water channels remained, stretching over a wide area.
Emiko usually walked along the highways to be safe, but as long as you avoided the times where students and workers were walking them, the back streets weren’t all that dangerous. It felt nice, seeing the water.
It had been a long time since she’d last admired the trees in gardens as she walked. Vivid winter flowers decorated each of the houses.
“Are those pansies? But they’re a bit small. Violas maybe?”
As she stopped and looked at the flowers planted together in the gardens, a little bird flew right before her eyes. It was a Japanese white-eye, who stopped at the camellias deeper inside the garden. The bird stuck its beak inside the flower, drinking its nectar. Emiko smiled as she watched it, only for a bulbul to come and chase it off in an instant. In nature, it seemed that physical size had a direct link to strength.
“Poor dear. Life must really be hard for little birds.”
Restarting her walk, she found another bulbul in a different house’s garden. It was hanging from a mandarin tree, opening a hole in a fruit’s skin to eat the flesh inside.
“Oh, it’s eating a mandarin. But I guess there must be less for them to eat when it gets cold.”
Emiko watched it eat for a while until it flew away. But then she was surprised when another white-eye came out, as if it had been lying in wait, sticking its beak into the hole in the mandarin and beginning to eat while keeping a careful eye on its surroundings. Could it have been waiting for another bird to put a hole in it? It seemed that the white-eye was putting the bulbul to work for it.
“Nature is amazing. I always head straight to the supermarket, but…”
She’d thought that she knew almost everything about the area, having lived there for so long, but she hadn’t known anything about these animals living so close to her.
“Oh my, here?”
Between the tiles on a house’s outer wall, Emiko found a chrysalis about the size of her pinkie fingertip. When she knelt down to look at it, there were even more underneath. They must have been keeping themselves safe from the wind and rain in that little gap. She felt as if she’d found out where all of the butterflies she’d see appearing out of nowhere in spring came from, and things became more enjoyable, little by little.
“This must be all thanks to that book from Tokyo.”
Once she started thinking about how all of these little beings lived their lives, she realized that her own life was just a tiny part of the activities cycling on Earth. Emiko was astonished by how Sayaka noted all of these things that she herself hadn’t thought of in decades. When she considered that, unlike her generation who had worked themselves so hard trying to have even a bit of a better life, people nowadays paid such careful attention to feel and think about so many things as they lived. It was so novel.
Back when Mayumi was a child, she’d been the sort to always notice the small things. Emiko had forced her own loose views on her, thinking that life would be hard for her like that, saying that she didn’t have to think about those things and that everything was fine. She had pressured her to act cheerfully. Could she not have raised her in another way, respecting her sensitivity? Her intent had been to empower her to live and grow strong, but how had Mayumi as a child taken her mother telling her not to sweat the small stuff?
“Ishiie-san?”
Hearing someone call out to her, Emiko looked up. The head of the engineering firm two houses down was looking at her with worry.
“You okay there?”
“Hmm? Ah, yes, I just found something interesting here.”
“Something interesting? Here?” he repeated, confused.
When he said that he was worried she wasn’t feeling well, seeing her crouched down to the side of the road, a smile spread across her face.
“I had just been looking at the flowers and thinking about how pretty they were, only to see bulbuls and white-eyes flying about.”
“Oh, I see. My mistake.”
She told him that she was exploring the neighborhood today, instead of walking along the highway like she usually did, and he let her know that the house next door to him had bell tree dahlias blooming.
It made her fed up with herself, wondering where in the world she ever looked while she was walking. She’d lived here for so long, and yet there were so many things she’d never stopped to look at.
Restarting her walk, Emiko passed by a house that was getting demolished. She tried to remember what sort of house had stood there before. With the water canals left from ages past, their town was peaceful. It used to have more rice paddies, but most of them had transformed into housing before she even realized it. As the people of the area grew older, fewer and fewer people would live here. There were still new homes being built at the moment, but it wasn’t as if those properties could be turned back into rice paddies just because they didn’t need the land anymore, and there was no one to manage them either.
“I can’t blame Mizuki for wanting to move to the city. She has a future ahead of her, after all.”
As she wandered whimsically through the empty streets of the residential area, she found a brand-new wooden signboard on a road lined with old houses. It said “Sumika Bookstore,” and an arrow on it was pointed toward a house with a tiled roof on the other side of the irrigation canal. There was a concrete block laying across the canal as a bridge, but the house itself didn’t have any signs on it.
“This seems to be the place.”
Emiko crossed the bridge out of curiosity. The entrance was a sliding door, but it had frosted glass in it, so she couldn’t see inside. Just as she was about to backtrack after worrying for a moment, she noticed a brand-new wagon next to the house, covered by a cloth underneath a camphor tree. She knew she shouldn’t touch anything without permission, but she was nosy, and when she pulled the cloth away, the wagon was full of books.
It had all sorts of different types. Picture books, historical novels, cookbooks… There were even some coverless paperbacks. On top of them was a piece of paper marking them as 200 yen each.
“So this really is a bookstore. Sumika Bookstore, hmm?”
Just as she was about to pull her smartphone out of her bag to look it up, the glass door opened with a rattle, and a woman with short hair walked outside. She looked like she was around forty, and she wore a boatneck black jersey shirt with wide-legged light gray pants, giving off a sophisticated air.
“Hello. Come in, if you’d like! This is a store.”
Invited in by such a bright voice, Emiko stepped inside. It was a small shop, and she could see all the way to the back from the entrance. The walls were lined with shelves that reached the ceiling, but most of them were still empty. The floor was covered with cardboard boxes.
“I’m sorry, were you still getting it ready?” Emiko asked.
“Technically, we haven’t officially opened yet,” the shopkeeper replied. “I was just so happy that the books had arrived. I decided to open up, seeing as the weather was so nice.”
The woman told her about how she’d had the house’s entranceway and parlor renovated to make it into a store. The renovations had finished two weeks earlier, and she was gradually building the shelves and putting out the books. Their official opening date was in a week. She handed Emiko a business card, on which was the name Ono Junka.
“I was in Tokyo until a while ago. Did a U-turn and came back out here to be an entrepreneur.”
She’d been born in Okayama City but graduated from university in Tokyo and gone on to work there. After she quit the company she worked with and went freelance, she came back to Okayama to work at her own pace.
“So you have another job, outside of the bookstore?” Emiko inquired.
“I’m a web designer. I figured I’d use this place as an office and sell books. But it isn’t like this is going to be something I work at in my spare time. I can’t do a good job when I’m always worrying about earning money, so I’m going to base my income on the bookstore.”
She went on to say with a brilliant smile that even if she didn’t earn much, she’d still consider the bookstore her main job. It seemed that she had no intention of quitting being a web designer, even if the bookstore got rolling.
“That’s amazing. There are so many different ways to work nowadays,” Emiko said.
“There are actually plenty of people working jobs they like while also working in another trade,” Junka explained. “Even so, I actually fretted for a few years over whether I should open a shop here.”
“It isn’t easy to open a store alone, after all. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t have known where to start, or who to ask about it.”
While nowadays, you could look up anything on the internet, there was just so much information there that sometimes you didn’t know what to trust.
“When I was still in Tokyo, there was this bar I would visit every weekend after I was finished with work. The bartender there was always so nice, listening to me. He’d casually introduce me to so many different people. If it wasn’t for those relationships, I might never have made up my mind. Connections are so important, even when you’re working alone,” she said softly.
“I’m sure that opening the store up today was another opportunity,” Junka continued with a smile. “So have a little look around. It’s all cardboard boxes, but let me know if there’s anything you want.”
Emiko went ahead and looked around the store. It was small, but it had a wide selection of books of all genres and for all ages. Among the books displayed with their front covers facing out was one of the novels that Mizuki owned. They had both newer, popular books and old books.
Lately, she hadn’t bought many books, finding reading ones with small text would make her eyes tired. But when she opened a paperback, she noticed that the text inside was bigger than it used to be. She decided to try reading something again.
She would have to tell Mizuki about this store. She would definitely be happy to learn that there was somewhere nearby where she could buy books without having to go all the way out to Okayama Station.
Despite it being a week from officially opening, the shelves right near the entrance were still empty. What sort of books were going to go there?
Just as she wondered that, Junka passed her a flyer, adding, “If you’re interested,” with a smile. Emiko pulled her reading glasses out to look and saw the words “Looking for Shelf Owners.”
“Shelf owners, like at a shared bookstore?” Emiko asked.
“Oh my, you know of them?”
“My granddaughter told me about them just yesterday, and so I looked them up.”
The night before, Emiko had done a search on the computer and read a few news stories. They wrote that not only was there the sort of store that Mizuki visited that was made up completely of rented shelves, but that the model was spreading in other ways too.
There were independent bookstores renting out a portion of their shelves, and also other cases where cafes and general stores would put up some shelves. The format worked well with small businesses, and because the rent from the shelves was a constant income, they were linked to supporting regional stores.
She had thought that since they were mostly spreading in big cities that she would never run into one, but to think that there was a store so close by where you could become a shelf owner.
Emiko pulled out the book she’d carried with her as a companion on her walk. “My granddaughter actually got this book here from an author at a shared bookstore in Tokyo.”
When she passed it over to Junka, the other woman touched the cover, flipped it over, and looked at the spine. “Wonderful. This is handmade. But your granddaughter must be quite passionate if she visited a shared bookstore during a school trip. She must be enjoying books in a number of different ways.”
“She might even want to become a shelf owner here.”
Mizuki had been so happy when she talked about how she was invited to become one if she came to Tokyo, after all.
“Really? I’m planning on opening the store tomorrow the same way as I did today, so if you’d like to visit together, feel free.”
Emiko decided she’d tell Mizuki when she got home from school that day. There had been several boxes full of books Mizuki had finished reading in the storage under the stairs that she’d looked in the night before, so she shouldn’t have any problem with stock. It would be tough for her to pay the monthly fee with the allowance she got every month, so Emiko could pay for her, and they could run it together.
“I’m planning on having Sumika Bookstore stock books that fit the needs of the people in the area, but aside from that, I’m thinking of paying for my own shelf to become a shelf owner too. There are some things I’d like to put there that can’t be expressed with anything other than books.”
Junka said that there were a lot of people interested when she mentioned it, and more than half of the shelves were already taken.
Emiko felt confident that this store would be wonderful. She’d heard about the concept of shelf owners from Mizuki the night before and brought a book she’d gotten from a shared bookstore on her stroll down another route that she never usually walked, only to find this bookstore. It was almost like fate.
After buying a paperback, she left the store. Once she got to the supermarket, she headed to the rest area before she did any shopping. Sipping a coffee from the self-serve café, she read part of the book she’d just bought.
She’d thought that maybe she’d spent too much time on her detour, but she was shocked when she looked at the clock on the wall. It was still only around the same time she’d usually be getting ready to leave her house. The day hadn’t ended yet, but she felt accomplished, as if she’d gone on a day trip.
After she finished her shopping, Emiko took her usual route home. She’d been out for a long time, but for some strange reason, she wasn’t tired at all.
Once she got home, she started getting supper ready, still feeling a bit giddy. She’d bought bread and quail eggs, planning on making the medama curry she’d read about in Sayaka’s book. Mayumi would probably say she wanted rice, but Mizuki might try eating it with bread out of amusement.
Just as she’d put the curry in the pressure cooker and was almost finished with her preparations, she heard a “I’m home!” from the entranceway. Mizuki ran into the living room, still carrying her bag.
“I’m tired. Totally pooped. Sooo exhausted.”
She sat down on the couch, going limp with her head against the back of it. She’d had a day off school after getting back from the trip, but she’d gone in for the afternoon for club activities.
“We’re having curry today, Grandma?”
“Yep. Would you like bread or rice? I’m going to have bread and make that medama curry.”
“That’s from that book, right? I’ll have bread too. You liked the story that much? Our taste in books are completely different,” Mizuki said with a laugh.
When Emiko started toasting the bread, Mizuki jumped off of the couch and moved to her grandmother’s side. That was odd of her. She usually didn’t move until the food was all ready.
“Hey, Grandma? When I was at that shared bookstore on the trip, I bought a cookbook.”
“A cookbook?” Emiko repeated without realizing. Had she started thinking about how she would live alone this early after going to Tokyo?
“It was full of stuff that I guess anyone could cook, but all of the recipes looked like they’d be a pain in the butt. The first page had oyakodon, but I couldn’t do it. I mean, I probably could if I really tried, but it was all knife work.”
“You get used to it.”
“But when I read the book I gave you, the author had been so flustered just heating up curry in a pouch. It gave me the hope that I’d be able to live somehow, even if I didn’t have as much of an ability to function as her.”
She added that Sayaka hadn’t just had orange hair but orange eyebrows and eyeliner too, and it didn’t seem like she could live on her own at all.
“Was there a time when you couldn’t cook yet?” Mizuki asked.
“Of course. Everyone starts out that way.” No one could do it all right from the beginning.
“Then, did you teach Mom how to cook?”
When Mizuki asked that, Emiko’s hands stopped. When Mayumi was a child, she would come up to her mother while she was cooking and watch, and sometimes help out, but she didn’t recall ever teaching her how to make anything or telling her what she used for seasoning. She was pretty sure Mayumi had said she learned how to hold a knife in home economics, but she must have looked up everything else on her own.
“I would answer when Mayumi would ask what I was doing, but I might not have ever taught her properly.”
“Mom’s been too busy to cook ever since she and Dad divorced and we came to live out here, but she was good at it. That’s why I figured you must’ve taught her.”
“Would you like her to cook sometime when she has a day off?” Emiko asked, wondering if she was longing for her mother’s cooking, but Mizuki shook her head.
“It’s fine. Your cooking is better, anyway. I was just wondering if there were any recipes or whatever that’d been passed down through the Ishiie family. I’m sure Mom must’ve just remembered how your cooking tasted and reproduced it herself. Aww, the Ishiie family traditions might die out with my generation.”
Mizuki opened the toaster oven without even waiting for it to signal that it was done toasting, grabbing the bread with her fingertips. She threw it at a plate, crying about how hot it was and looking at her red fingers. She hadn’t even known how hot freshly toasted bread was.
“I’ll handle it from here,” she declared.
She put the bread on a cutting board, holding it with the tips of her fingernails as she chopped it up before putting it into a heat-resistant dish. Putting the curry on top, she checked with Emiko about the right amount.
“That should be fine,” Emiko said with a nod. “You know how the curry was a bit difficult to spread over the whole thing? I actually made it a little dryer than usual.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I didn’t think it would taste as yummy if the bread soaked up all the liquid.”
“Ahh, that’s a good point.”
As she nodded, Mizuki spread the shredded cheese and cracked the quail eggs on top. The piles of cheese ended up turning into slides, shuttling the eggs off to the sides, and she laughed as she watched. Realizing that she had to pay attention to how she topped it from the curry stage, she used a spoon the next time to make indents before cracking the eggs. She’d failed on the first one but succeeded with dish number two.
After she put the heat-resistant dishes in the toaster oven, she grabbed the salad from the fridge. Sitting down, Mizuki craned her neck to watch it cook.
“You know what, Mizuki? On my way to the supermarket today, I found a bookstore. They’re renting some of the shelf space out, and they’re looking for shelf owners.”
“Huh? Seriously?!” Mizuki cried out, eyes wide. When Emiko laid the flyer on the table in front of her, she picked it right up, sighing in wonder a few times. “It’s near the supermarket? I don’t remember seeing any new stores around there.”
“It’s in the residential area. There’s houses on both sides of it. If you go once, you’ll know the way right away. They said they’d be open tomorrow too. Would you like to come with me?”
“I will! I don’t have club tomorrow.”
The two promised to go after lunch the next day, and Mizuki pulled out her phone to look up Sumika Bookstore. It seemed she was interested in Junka’s past, with her being born in Okayama but going to university in Tokyo and then working there too. It was important for Mizuki to interact with adults outside of school and at home. She might even be able to learn some things from someone who’d actually lived in Tokyo.
“What sort of books did they have?” Mizuki asked.
“They haven’t opened officially yet, so I’m sure they’ve got a lot more coming in, but they had one of the books you’d bought. It’s a small bookstore, but they might stock the same sort of books you usually read.”
“Hmm. I’ll try checking it out,” Mizuki said lightly, getting up from her chair and moving in front of the toaster oven. Watching her squint inside through the window made Emiko imagine how Medama Curry’s author Sayaka had done the same, and she smiled.
Once they were finished cooking, Mizuki gave her grandmother the one she’d done well, saying that she was fine with the one with lopsided eyes as she took a picture of it. Scooping up some bread and curry with her spoon and putting it into her mouth, Mizuki smiled. She started talking about how cooking in books always described the smell and mouthfeel of the food in a way that made you hungry, even without any pictures. She looked satisfied.
Just as they were finishing up their meal, they heard Mayumi call out from the entranceway. It seemed she’d gotten home earlier than usual today. Emiko stood up, turning the stove back on.
“Curry? You don’t make that often.”
It seemed that the smell of the spices had wafted all the way to the front door, and as soon as Mayumi walked into the living room, she peeked in the pot.
“It’s fine every once in a while, isn’t it? Mizuki and I had it with bread instead of rice.”
“What, bread? Why?”
Emiko explained the medama curry, but Mayumi just said that normal rice was fine and gave Mizuki a meaningful look as she ate.
“I’m going to go get changed. Wearing a suit is so stuffy,” Mayumi said, leaving the living room and heading to her own.
Mizuki must have rushed to finish her meal, because she spoke up while standing, putting her plate in the sink. “Thanks for supper, Grandma. It was good. I wanna eat it again.”
Saying all of that quickly, she grabbed the bag she’d thrown on the floor and hurried out of the living room. She rushed up the stairs, the sound of her footsteps fading as she went. Mayumi then walked back in, as if they’d traded places.
“Where did Mizuki go?”
“She finished eating and headed back to her room.”
“Hey, Mom? You need to tell her to change when she gets home. The fact that she always messes up the pleats on her skirt when she rolls it up is bad enough, but it’ll get ruined if she sits on the sofa wearing it. No matter how many times I tell her, she never listens.”
Mayumi had been scolding Mizuki about it ever since she first started wearing a uniform in junior high. She sighed, saying she was tired of having to remind her.
“Mizuki knows,” Emiko assured her. “She’ll do something about it once someone comments on her messy skirt and she gets embarrassed.”
“But it makes me seem like a parent who lets her get away with everything.”
Turning off the stove, Emiko scooped out some rice and got Mayumi’s curry ready. After she put it on the table, she changed the topic.
“Ah, that’s right,” she said, sitting back down. “There’s a bookstore opening nearby. And they’re renting out some of their shelves. They say anyone can start selling their books.”
She continued, explaining the shared bookstore Mizuki had gone to in Tokyo before putting the flyer looking for shelf owners on the table. She waited for a response, but Mayumi just kept on giving her a stern look.
“Mizuki and I are going there together tomorrow afternoon,” Emiko continued. “Ono-san, the owner, is from Okayama but went to university in Tokyo and got a job there too. She can probably tell us about it more in detail, and there were some books it looked like Mizuki would like.”
“You’re buying her more books, when she already bought so many on her trip?”
“Once she knows where it is, she’ll be able to walk there on her own. They’ll be able to order books for her as well. It might come in handy.”
“She’s already so selfish now. If you spoil her further, then…” Mayumi stopped herself, heaving another sigh.
“Mizuki needs some breaks too,” Emiko said.
Her granddaughter had said that she’d bought those books in Tokyo because she wanted the impressions the shelf owner left in them. That she’d read how he wrote about accepting the authors as they were and put herself in their place. Mizuki was stressed too.
“And if she ends up failing to get into university because of all these ‘breaks,’ she’ll end up going wild,” Mayumi said, somewhat exasperated. “And besides, all she does is read, so you don’t need to encourage her. She won’t even do the simplest things I ask, she just does whatever she wants instead.”
Saying that, she flipped the flyer over.
There were some books that wouldn’t resonate with you unless they came to you at a certain time. The experience of becoming a shelf owner was the same thing. Would it really be okay for her high school life to come to an end with her doing nothing but study for entrance exams?
“Anyway, now is not the time. I’ve got the school telling me that it’s already too late if she hasn’t started studying seriously after summer of her second year. And now it’s already December, so we can’t be sure if she’ll make it even if she gives it her all. You don’t know how things are for students prepping for exams, Mom. You didn’t get it when I was trying to get into university either. You’ve always been a dreamer, like you’ve never had your feet on the ground.”
What she meant was that even though she was leaving the housework to her mother, that was it. She didn’t trust her. Emiko stayed silent as she listened.
The reason Mayumi had come home after her divorce wasn’t because she wanted help with raising her daughter. Emiko knew that it was because Mayumi was worried about her mother, since she’d relied on her husband for so much in life. Mayumi had always been a kind girl, worrying about others more than herself. She hadn’t changed a bit in that regard. Emiko had thought she understood that, so why was it that they were at odds so often these days?
“I suppose,” Emiko said. “You might be right, that I’m a dreamer. But Mizuki is just like you, looking ahead and thinking of things on her own.”
Mizuki was trying to think about what she needed to know to live on her own. She was trying to learn to cook so she would be ready.
“Oh, yeah. Why’d you eat bread with your curry today?” Mayumi changed the subject, noticing that the mood had gotten heavy.
It was because she’d read about it in a book, and it had stimulated her five senses. But Emiko couldn’t say that, since it would put them back on that touchy subject, so she feigned whimsy, saying that she’d just felt like it.
Sumika Bookstore’s sliding door was open wide, and there was a sign showing it was open for business that wasn’t there the day before. The wagon of sale books that had been under the camphor tree had been moved to right beside the entrance, ready for customers.
As Emiko and Mizuki crossed over the canal and stood in front of the store, Junka appeared from inside.
“Please, come in!” she greeted them. “And thank you for coming today, Miss Granddaughter, even though you must still be tired from your school trip.”
Junka had a friendly smile on her face. As she finished her simple greeting, she opened a cardboard box and took out a book.
“I thought you might like this, Ishiie-san. It just came today.”
The book was the size of a paperback, but it had no cover. Seeing it bound in a way that you wouldn’t often see at a bookstore, it came to Emiko—this was a book that hadn’t been released through a publisher, just like Sayaka’s book.
“This is just like the one I brought yesterday, isn’t it?” Emiko asked.
“Yep! This author is good. There was a store that carried their works when I was still in Tokyo, so I’ve been reading their stuff since then.”
Apparently, the writer lived in Okayama City, and Junka had decided she’d stock their books when she opened her own store.
The opportunity to experience another’s unrefined creativity was precious. It was something you couldn’t feel when buying the ordinary, mass-produced books. These self-bound books had this rarity to them, that if you didn’t buy them as soon as you found them, you’d never come across them again, making booklovers take notice of them too.
Already being well aware of the existence of that sort of work, Mizuki was scouring through the store’s books as she listened to them talk.
“Mizuki, you can rent a shelf here.”
“Yeah…”
She nodded, looking back to the shelves of paperbacks. Emiko had thought she’d be happier knowing that she could become a shelf owner, but her reaction wasn’t very enthusiastic.
“Which shared bookstore was it that you visited on your school trip?”
“It was called Frère,” Mizuki replied, using a formal tone that was much more polite than what she used at home. “It was in front of Shinjuku Gyoen Park.”
“Ahh, Sakurai-san’s store. It’s in a great location, isn’t it?”
“You know it?” Mizuki cried out, voice getting higher.
“Back when I was still in Tokyo, he told me about how renting out shelves worked. Neither of us had previous experience in working at a bookstore, so I figured I might be able to use him as a reference, his point of view included,” Junka explained, apparently having been to the store a number of times. “It’s interesting how Frère is a tourist info center at the same time, isn’t it?”
“When I visited, he told us all about what we should see in Shinjuku and what yummy restaurants were nearby where we were planning on going next,” Mizuki said excitedly, remembering how fun it had been.
“Come on, Mizuki. You’ve still got a chance at renting a shelf yourself if you do it now!” Emiko tried to encourage her once more, while they were talking so fervently, but Mizuki slipped up beside her to whisper in her ear.
“Grandma, even if I leave some books here, who in the world is going to come buy them? No one passes through this way.”
The way she was so cool about it was something she’d gotten from Mayumi.
“It’s fine,” Emiko said. “As long as there’s a sign out, people will notice. I noticed, didn’t I?”
Junka laughed, apparently having heard their secret conversation. “My store isn’t in as great of a location as Frère is, but I wanted something that would fill in the town’s blank spaces.”
As the median age of the area rose, more and more homes were ending up empty. Without anyone to take care of them, the buildings would age, which would cause more issues with crime and fire prevention, thus speeding up faster population. But by opening a store here, then more people might become interested in opening up their own little business. Junka had thought that far ahead.
“I’m hoping that I’ll be able to help out any other people who want to open their own small businesses like this, while working on getting the word out about this place. Plus, I’m planning on making this shop not just a bookstore but a community space as well. All the shelves have casters on the bottom, making them easy to move and so we can create an open area. I want to use that space for workshops,” she explained, demonstrating the movement of one of the shelves. “And if the store gets too cramped, then I’m thinking I can have that inner wall taken down and expand things into the dining room and kitchen.”
Despite how interesting Junka’s ideas were, Mizuki’s expression remained stiff. Maybe she wasn’t interested in becoming a shelf owner anywhere but in Tokyo.
“Renting a shelf and paying monthly will also help protect a local bookstore like this,” Emiko said, trying to show off the knowledge she’d gotten off the internet. But as she did, Junka crossed her arms and groaned.
“But a bookstore can’t survive on that support alone,” she said. “It isn’t enough to only surround ourselves with people who already love books. If we don’t get people who have stopped reading, or haven’t been interested in reading before, to realize how fun it is, then things will end up tapering off. Which is why I want to widen our scope, so that books become something closer to people.”
That was why she’d said the day earlier that she wanted to put some things that couldn’t be expressed as anything but books on her shelf. Emiko felt inspired, as if she’d felt the other woman’s passion…
“Hey, Grandma, I just thought of this, but if you’re that interested, why don’t you rent a shelf for yourself?” Mizuki suggested, nudging her grandmother’s arm with her elbow.
Sumika Bookstore’s opening was five days away. Emiko had been reading through all of the nostalgic books she had on the shelf in her room so she could have the books she’d put on her shelf ready to go. She’d chosen a number of books, but she felt like they weren’t enough, so she went to the big bookstore near Okayama Station to find some things to stock from the new books there.
She had never chosen books based purely on what she wanted to sell. And it wasn’t like she could simply put books out there. If they didn’t catch anyone’s eye, then it was as if they weren’t out at all. She walked through the store, observing how they displayed their books.
Normally, she would be delighted with herself if she found a good book, as if it was her achievement, but she realized it was really because the bookstore had worked hard to get the book into the hands of someone who needed it. In the past few days, all sorts of things she’d assumed were obvious truths were being overwritten.
Emiko had named her shelf “Ke no Hi,” or “The Everyday.” It was a term to contrast “hare no hi,” which was used to describe days that were special and once-in-a-lifetime.
How would she fill up that empty little shelf? At first, she had just planned to fill it with books she liked, but she had decided to stock books connected to the reason she became a shelf owner in the first place. Books that made you notice your everyday life and gave it color. She wanted people to experience the same sort of little coincidental links that she’d experienced herself.
Other than just books, Emiko bought herself some new clothes for the first time in a while. When she did nothing but walk back and forth between home and the supermarket, she never felt like enjoying fashion. But when she thought about the new encounters that would be in her future, she felt like she couldn’t stay subdued like a seventy-year-old. Winter was just around the corner, and she wanted to wear colorful clothing.
After making a short stop home to drop off her things, she headed straight to Sumika Bookstore. As she opened the glass door, Junka greeted her cheerfully. The locations of the books inside changed every day. Looking around, she could see the traces of trial and error on the shelves.
“I’ve brought books. Would it be all right if I put them on my shelf?” Emiko asked.
“Go ahead!” Junka replied.
Emiko set the books she’d just bought on her shelf. As she put her recommendation on the bookstand that she’d borrowed from Junka, it felt like she’d made it look somewhat put together. But when she compared her shelf to the display another shelf owner had made with high and low points, she also felt as if she still had far to go. She decided she’d bring in a cloth to put on her shelf tomorrow. She’d also gotten a suggestion to display her shelf’s concept, so she made up her mind to write it out on a postcard or something and bring it back with her.
“You’ve done a great job choosing books, and the shelf itself looks like it’s coming along too,” Junka said, checking the books Emiko had put on her unfinished shelf.
“Really, I want to have someone read the book that Mizuki gave me. But there’s only one copy of that, so I can’t go selling it.”
Even so, she wanted to talk about it with someone else who’d also read the book.
Junko cocked her head and considered this. “Maybe we could get all the shelf owners together and do a public reading. We’d probably need permission to do it, though. Would you like me to get in contact with them? It would be a great opportunity to let them know your impressions of it.”
“In contact? With the writer?”
“Um, maybe it’d be better to just ask Frère’s owner,” Junka said thoughtfully. “I’m sure that if we just tried to contact the author herself, she wouldn’t know what to do with it. And I figured I’d be reaching out to the owner with more questions at some point anyway.”
“Would it be all right?”
“I would think he’d be happy.” Junka added that if she did contact him, then she could send Sayaka a letter through him.
While Emiko didn’t have the sort of pretty voice that people would want to listen to, a public reading would let other people know about Sayaka’s writing, even though there was only one copy.
“I tried adapting the medama curry that was in the book at home, and it was delicious, so I’d like to tell her about that as well.”
“Hey, Ishiie-san. How about we try making a little booklet, with your impressions of the book and a little illustrated recipe? We can make a little folded book out of a single piece of paper.”
Junka kept making new suggestions, one after the other, causing Emiko’s head to spin. They were all things she’d never thought about before. She wrote them down in a notebook so she wouldn’t forget.
It was then that a younger lady walked into the store holding a paper bag. She turned out to be another shelf owner. Apparently, she lived in the neighborhood and was in her first year of working as an adult. The books that she lined up on her shelf were fabric-bound paperbacks. When Emiko asked where she’d bought them, the woman said that they were commercially available paperbacks that she’d rebound herself with fabric. Emiko was amazed.
To think that not only could people make their own books from nothing, but they could remake books that had already been sold! When the lady told Emiko about her experience making lots of other things, like hardcovers and Japanese binding methods, she got even more interested.
“Once we’ve done the public reading and made the recipe booklets, why don’t we try Japanese bookbinding next? A lot of the shelf owners look like they’d be interested in it, so it would be fun to do a workshop!” Junka said.
She was making even more suggestions, but Emiko hadn’t even finished her own shelf yet. All she could do was write down everything that was being said, but her hopes for all the fun things that they would do in the future and her worries about what would happen if she didn’t live up to their expectations all mixed together, making her feel like a student with a ton of homework to do before school began.
After leaving Sumika Bookstore, Emiko headed to the supermarket to do her shopping for supper. As she picked up some bok choy, she worried about what sort of book she would make. And as she was picking out leeks, she remembered how smooth handmade Japanese paper was and had the inspiration to use some paper made in Okayama as traditional handicrafts.
It was funny, thinking about how that morning, she’d just been worrying about what books to put on her shelf, yet by evening, here she was considering what type of paper she’d use for her first book. Just how long had it been since she’d last had this much fun?
When Emiko was a child, she loved going to new places and doing new things, just like Mizuki. Mayumi always said that her mother never changed. If that was true, then just when and where had she forgotten her real self?
Once she’d passed her life’s point of no return, she had just wanted to live a peaceful life, where she could feel the little bits of happiness that came from helping out her daughter and grandchild, and watching over them. She’d been convinced that once you reached a certain age, you had to give up the part of the main character and take up a supporting role.
But once the childhood where she simply did as she was told ended and she stepped into adulthood thinking she was finally free, she started raising a child. And when things finally calmed down after that, she was raising her granddaughter as well. There was joy in that too, of course, but it also made her wonder just where her own life was.
It was now that she was free that she needed to go searching for it. The book that had made the trip all the way from Tokyo was her heart’s support. It would give her the strength to start new things.
Just as soon as she finished her shopping and arrived home, Mizuki came running down the stairs, coat on and with her wallet in hand.
“Grandma, let’s go shopping! Take me with you!”
“Huh, right now?”
Emiko assumed her granddaughter wanted new clothes to go out in, but her destination was the supermarket.
“But I’ve just come home from the supermarket. What was it that you wanted?”
“There’s something I want to cook.”
She told Emiko it was a recipe in the cookbook she’d bought in Tokyo. She’d been reading through it, thinking everything looked like a pain in the butt to make, but she’d found something she thought even she could make. Seeing as Mizuki was so eager, Emiko had no choice but to whip her own body into action.
“Want to take the car?” Emiko suggested.
“No, let’s walk. I wanna talk to you,” Mizuki said.
Having her say she wanted to talk put Emiko on guard about what the topic would be.
After putting her groceries in the fridge, they left the house, walking together along the same road that she’d just come home on.
The sky had still been bright when she’d headed home from Sumika Bookstore, but now it was starting to get dark. There were more cars out on the road now too. Seeing as it would be dangerous walking on the roads of the residential area now, they walked along the highway.
“Isn’t this your first time making supper yourself?” Emiko asked.
“Ah, you might be right. I mean, even if I don’t cook, you’re always at home, and you cook for me whenever I’m hungry. There was no need for me to go out of my way to make something that’ll turn out yucky.”
If Mizuki had decided that her cooking would taste bad before she even started, then that would indeed make her want to do it less. Just what had gotten into her today?
“Do you want to learn how to cook for when you’re living alone?”
“What? No.”
Her granddaughter immediately denied this. According to her, she wasn’t very worried about that, having learned that even someone like Sayaka, who was bad at cooking and everything else, could manage existing somehow.
“You’re gonna be busy, since you’re a shelf owner now. So I thought it’d be good if I could cook.”
“Huh? Just because I’m a shelf owner now doesn’t mean that I’ll be taking care of the store or anything, so you don’t have to worry about it. You’ve already got so many things you need to do yourself, Mizuki.” Mayumi had asked her mother to tell her daughter to study too.
“But you’ve been so busy these past few days. Trying to do stuff like carefully picking out what books you’re gonna stock takes a long time, doesn’t it? And you wanna make a book or something yourself someday, right?”
“You’re right.”
“Wha, seriously?” Mizuki yelped, eyes wide. The two looked at each other, then began to laugh.
Exactly what part of this girl was incapable of thinking about anyone but herself? What had changed in her, to make her unable to enjoy a family vacation? Every year, she got a little taller, a little more interested in fashion, and longed a little more for the city. She might have changed, but Mizuki was still Mizuki. At her core, she hadn’t changed a bit.
“Anyway, the reason I want to cook is for your sake.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s for Mom’s sake too, but…” As soon as she mentioned her mother, her smile disappeared. “Mom, she’s…” she started, looking down at her feet. “Hasn’t she been super tired lately? She’s always cranky and always sighing. I hate it more when she sighs at me than when she gets mad at me. Ever since her job changed, she’s been working overtime a lot more often, and she even works on her days off.”
“She said that there’s a lot she needs to remember. That it’s tough at the beginning.”
“I’m thinking it might be my fault too. If I wasn’t here, then she wouldn’t have to be cranky all the time.”
Her words pierced Emiko’s heart. Maybe this was one of the reasons Mizuki wanted to go to university in Tokyo.
“But, I mean, I can’t leave home right now anyway. So I thought at least I could do something for Mom’s sake. You’re gonna be getting busier now, but you’ll help me out today at least, right?”
“Of course.”
When Emiko said that, Mizuki gave her a bashful smile, saying, “Thank goodness. She’s always looking like a demon when she’s complaining that I do nothing but read, so I figured I could get back at her by learning something useful from a book. Great idea, huh?”
“She might be shocked silent before she can be happy about it,” Emiko said with a chuckle. “So, what are you making?”
“Something mega simple that has to taste good. I’ve gotta get it perfectly prepared before Mom gets home,” Mizuki said, picking up her pace.
After getting most of the preparations for supper out of the way, Mizuki went back to her room to study until Mayumi got home. As Emiko was washing the cooking utensils, she heard the sound of the key in the front door turning. Mayumi was home.
“Huh? You guys haven’t eaten yet?” she asked when she peeked into the living room, eyes wide as she looked at the table all set.
“It seemed she wasn’t that hungry, so she’s doing her homework first,” Emiko explained.
“Wow, that doesn’t happen often.”
It wasn’t good to lie, but Emiko told herself that it was for the sake of making Mayumi happy.
“Oh yes. You know that shelf owner business I mentioned a few days ago? I ended up signing the contract instead of Mizuki.”
“What, you did?”
Emiko told her all about the shelf owner she’d just met that day who bound her own books, that they were going to have a public reading, and that she was going to try making her own book, and Mayumi looked at her with a baffled expression.
“What’s up with you, Mom?”
“I just suddenly felt like I should try something new.”
“Aren’t you just getting scammed? Like, someone you make friends with there could make you buy something super expensive or something.”
“At the very least, the store’s owner and the other shelf owner I met today weren’t the sort of people to do that. They both have their own aspirations.”
Despite Emiko’s reply, Mayumi’s tone just got harsher, saying that her mother didn’t know how to be skeptical. That people would use classes or people who’d moved home to start businesses to sell beauty or health products, and once they’d gotten friendly with someone, they would sell them insurance or get them to invest in fraud.
When her mother just nodded along, impressed that people would even consider doing all of those things, Mayumi slapped a hand to her forehead and sighed. It was clear from her frown that she was trying to hold back her quiet anger.
“I’m not talking about other people here, Mom. Just cool your head for a minute. You only just heard about this shelf owner business after Mizuki came back from her trip. Before that, you hadn’t been reading at all. You watched TV instead because you said your eyes were getting tired. No matter how you look at it, this is all too strange.”
For the first time in her life, Emiko felt like she understood how Mizuki felt. More than the feeling that living in Tokyo clicked for her, more than her ideas, feelings, and curiosity, her mother was prioritizing safety, and it felt like she was nipping everything off at the bud.
This was the part of Mayumi that Mizuki hated. Emiko had thought she understood, but she hadn’t. The person telling her to “think hard about it” didn’t know a thing about what they were talking about and made no attempts to understand it. That was why their words were shallow. Seeing her past self in Mayumi, Emiko smiled wryly.
A person’s most available example for raising children was their own parents. Even if they didn’t consciously think about how they’d been raised, it had an effect. When they weren’t confident with themselves, they would even mimic the things they’d hated.
“There are tons of things I still don’t know,” Emiko conceded. Then she added, “But even so, right now, I’m having fun meeting lots of people and getting excited.”
“Something is wrong with you, Mom. You sound like Mizuki. You’re almost seventy!”
Just as Mayumi was shaking her head…
“Do it, Grandma.”
Mizuki, who’d slipped into the living room without them noticing, stood beside Emiko. Eyebrows narrowed, she glared at her mother.
“I went to that bookstore with Grandma, and it wasn’t the least bit sus. I’ve been to a shared bookstore before, and I know what sort of people are interested in it and gather there. No one was pushing her to become a shelf owner. She thought it over herself and chose to do it. Why won’t you believe in her?” Mizuki pressed further, saying, “All you do is reject things, Mom. All you do is say no to everything.”
Mayumi forced a smile as she tried to argue back. “No, I don’t. I just want you both to think hard before you decide on things, instead of getting carried away and—”
“It’s ’cause you don’t have anything you want to do, Mom,” Mizuki cut in. “That’s why you don’t understand Grandma and me, and try to get in our way.”
The expression on Mayumi’s face changed instantly. Her lips tightened as she held back her anger, clenching her fists tight, but Mizuki pressed on.
“It pisses me off how you think that you’ve gotta work all because of me. If you want to make excuses about how you don’t have the time for hobbies, then you should—”
Mayumi suddenly raised her arm in the air, and Mizuki shut her mouth, realizing she’d gone too far. Emiko realized that this was bad, but she was already too late. Mayumi had slapped Mizuki across the face. And right after the dry smack rang out…
“What are you doing?!” Mizuki cried, voice loud enough to echo through the whole house as she grabbed Mayumi by the hair.
“Wait, stop, please!”
Emiko rushed in between them, pushing Mizuki’s arm down. Her granddaughter kept on glaring at her mother, looking like she was about to cry.
Why is all this happening?
“Mayumi, go up to your room. Quickly!”
Her daughter stood there stunned, looking as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. She finally headed back to her room, not meeting either of their eyes. The moment Emiko let go of her, Mizuki started to cry.
“I’m sorry. Me holding you back like that must have hurt.”
In all the fuss, Emiko had been gripping onto Mizuki’s arm harder than she thought she ever could have. Her fingers had left red marks on Mizuki’s wrist, and as she rubbed them, her granddaughter shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
Murmuring that as if to no one in particular, Mizuki bolted out of the living room and up the stairs.
Emiko flopped down to the floor, her heart still racing. She knew that Mizuki accusing her mother of not having any aspirations had hurt Mayumi deeply.
Mayumi had loved books in the past, to the point where she couldn’t think of anything else when asked about her hobbies. When she was little, Emiko and her husband had decided something: Their daughter was a girl who didn’t want any toys when they offered to buy her anything, but she loved books, so they would buy her lots of those, at the very least. She always picked them out herself, and would never even look the titles her parents would suggest. She was quiet, and not very good at putting her opinions into words, but she definitely had her own thoughts.
When she and her husband had split, Mayumi had put a lot of effort into her job, knowing that she had to raise Mizuki with her own power. The reason she’d come back to her family home had been because she thought that living near her mother was showing her devotion to her parents. Emiko knew that the reason she let her do the chores instead of doing them herself was because she wanted to give her a reason to live.
As they aged, a child and their parents would switch positions. But no matter how old they became, and even if they couldn’t do everything that they used to be able to do, parents would keep on watching over their children with the same unchanging love. Would it be all right for Emiko to show that love?
Standing up, Emiko headed to Mayumi’s room. When she called out to her from outside, the door opened. Mayumi was still in her suit, seemingly not having sorted out her thoughts yet. She was pale, looking down at her feet.
“It’s all right.”
Wrapping an arm around her, Emiko rubbed Mayumi’s back. Ever since she was little, even when she was hurt enough to cry, her daughter would hold back, saying nothing. Whenever that happened, Emiko would do this, staying with her until she calmed down.
“After you get changed, let’s eat supper. I know you aren’t in the mood for it, but Mizuki cooked tonight. She wanted to eat together, all three of us for once.”
Mayumi looked up. “Mizuki did?”
Up until then, Mizuki wouldn’t even put the rice in the rice cooker when asked to help. She was probably thinking about that.
“She bought sea bream and soaked it in salted kouji. She prepared some side dishes too. I didn’t do anything but watch her from the side.”
As Emiko told her about how her daughter had tried hard at cooking, Mayumi crouched down on the ground, head lowered. Telling her to get changed, Emiko left the room to go call for Mizuki.
It seemed she’d already gotten over the incident earlier, because she came right down to the kitchen when called, pulling the sea bream that she’d had resting out of the fridge. While it cooked on the fish grill, she got out the salad, boiled greens, and cutlery, going back and forth between the kitchen and the living room.
Once Mayumi came out, Mizuki told her to just sit down and wait. She didn’t need to help today.
“Grandma, c’mere.”
Emiko walked into the kitchen when called, and Mizuki was poking at the fish with the long chopsticks, asking if it was cooked yet while looking it up on her phone. Kids these days were so strong, with their knowledge on how to utilize handy things.
When everything was done, Mizuki sat down at the table. Once they were all there, she repeated the fact that the three of them hadn’t eaten all together in a while, even on the days they were all off. The three put their hands together and started their meal.
Mizuki was usually the first to dig in, but she was watching them. Noticing that, Mayumi, who usually started with the salad, broke the sea bream into little pieces. It was cooked all the way through, and the piece of white meat she picked up was steaming.
“This is good,” Mayumi said. “The meat is so plump. How did you do this?”
“Huh? I just soaked it in salted kouji. It was easy,” Mizuki said, looking away. When Emiko looked closer, she noticed that, despite the fact that her granddaughter hadn’t started eating yet, her fish was already in tatters. She had used her own meal as a test subject, stabbing into it and ripping off the skin as she worried about its doneness.
“Salted kouji, huh? I don’t think I’ve ever done that,” Mayumi said.
Then, Mizuki told her with a strong voice that she’d bought a cookbook while she was in Tokyo. Mayumi looked up in shock, before saying, “I see,” and starting to eat again.
“But the recipe called for yellowtail, not sea bream, didn’t it?” Emiko asked. The supermarket had both fish, but Mizuki had gone right for the sea bream from the get-go.
“Hey, Mom? Do you know what ‘ke no hi’ means?”
“Ke no hi?” Mayumi repeated, tilting her head in confusion at Mizuki’s sudden question.
“You know how people say that certain days are ‘hare no hi,’ special days, right? ‘Ke no hi’ is the opposite, ordinary days like today, where nothing happens,” Mizuki explained, fearlessly bringing up the topic that had started their fight. “Everyone celebrates the special days, but I think the everyday is more important. We should really be celebrating the everyday.”
“If we go along with Mizuki’s logic, then it’s wonderful how every day would be celebrated,” Emiko said, voice as bright as she could make it.
“Quit it. We’ll go broke if we eat sea bream every day,” Mayumi shot back in her usual tone.
Mizuki huffed out a breath. “Today is a special day, though, since Grandma’s become Ke no Hi’s shelf owner. But the everyday is what’s more important. That’s why we’re having sea bream.”
“Wait, I’m getting all mixed up, here. Special days, the everyday…” Emiko fretted, putting a hand to her chin in thought. Mayumi and Mizuki looked at each other and laughed. But that only lasted a moment before silence fell over the table. The two were giving each other searching looks.
“Mizuki, I’m sorry about before,” Mayumi said, bowing her head first.
“It’s fine. I was in the wrong. I know you need to work for my sake, and that you’ve had to make opportunities to study on your own personal time.”
Mayumi laughed listlessly. “No. I don’t feel like working for my family’s sake is an obligation like that. I do it because I want to. It’s more important to me than my hobbies. But we can’t go on like this, can we?”
“Why don’t you read a book, Mom?” Mizuki suggested. “You know, sometimes I get worked up before tests and stuff, but when that happens, I read just one short story instead of a long one. Sometimes, reading a book calms you down more than just wallowing in thought. Sometimes you find a hint to whatever you’re worrying about too.”
“It’s not like I don’t read. I occasionally buy e-books.”
“What? You never mentioned that!”
“If I told you I read too, then I couldn’t get at you for doing nothing but reading. From my point of view, you get so into them that I worry.”
“That’s ’cause I’m not just into the books. After this, I’ll have you read my fave’s impressions.”
“Your fave’s impressions?” Mayumi asked, confused.
“Later,” Mizuki replied, then turned to Emiko. “You’ve gotta eat it before it gets cold, Grandma!” urging Emiko on.
Emiko broke up the salt-kouji-soaked sea bream with her chopsticks. It had only been soaked for an hour, but the meat had become so soft, bringing out its sweetness.
She really can do it on her own.
As she chewed her fish, Emiko’s eyes started to sting, and she sniffled.
“Oh no, Mom, what’s wrong?” Mayumi stood from the table, grabbing a box of tissue.
“Why are you crying, Grandma? Did us celebrating you move you to tears?”
Contrasting her fretting daughter, her granddaughter just laughed joyfully.
Even looking back at her age, she didn’t know if she’d gotten raising a child right. But now, she could feel like it was fun, even if she wasn’t sure. People changed little by little to match their heart’s growth, though that growth might be a bit hard to see when you’re with them every day.
“Hey, Mom. Can’t Grandma be a shelf owner? It’ll be fine. I’ll be going to the bookstore with her too. If I think there’s anything fishy going on, I’ll tell the owner.”
Mizuki emphasized that the fact that she could clearly say what she was thinking to anyone was one of her strengths. That might’ve been something to worry about from Mayumi’s point of view, but she said, “Please do,” with a smile. She was letting go a bit, believing in them.
“I’ve got tons of books in my room, so I might get Grandma to put some of the books I’ve finished reading on her shelf and use the money from them to buy more books. I could even save it up to go to Tokyo for fun.”
“No can do, Mizuki. Grandma’s shelf isn’t for recycling,” Emiko said with a shake of her head. “I’ve decided I’ll only stock books that will make people’s everyday happy.”
“Whaaa? You were the one who told me to become a shelf owner in the first place!” Mizuki grumbled, having her plans crushed.
“Ah, that’s true.”
Right as she was about to get back to eating, a memory floated to Emiko’s mind. She quickly stood, grabbing the notepad from her bag. She’d suddenly thought of what she would write in her first book. When she finished writing and sat back down, both Mayumi and Mizuki were smiling again for some reason.
A week had passed since Sumika Bookstore’s opening. How was the little one-shelf bookstore “Ke no Hi” doing? Emiko hadn’t stopped into the store since going in to celebrate on opening day. Had any of the books she’d put out ended up in anyone’s hands? Mizuki had warned her that it wasn’t that easy to sell books, but she couldn’t help but hope.
When she nervously opened the door, Junka greeted her cheerfully.
“Bright colored clothes like that suit you, Ishiie-san! You look wonderful.”
“Really? It feels nice to be complimented.”
Emiko had been worried that her long, mustard-yellow cardigan and flower-printed skirt might have been too flashy, but spring had come early in her heart, and she wanted to wear something brightly colored. Strangely enough, she felt lighter than she had when she’d worn nothing but grays and black.
While she was curious about her shelf, she went to check on the new arrivals first, only for Junka to tell her that something had sold. It seemed that one of the books she’d bought from the bookstore in front of the station was gone, along with her very first folded booklet.
Emiko had had a tough time, recalling the long-forgotten memories of her relationship with her parents as a child, and the first time she cooked for her family.
She and her older sister had wanted to surprise their parents by making them dinner while their mother was out, but it was their first time ever cooking. They’d tried using the ingredients that their mother had set aside for that day’s supper, but they failed. They couldn’t look recipes up as easily as you could nowadays. They hadn’t realized that different things cooked at different speeds and had ended up frying their parent’s meals to a crisp. She’d felt so bad that she and her sister got to eat her mother’s delicious home cooking while sitting at the same table as them that she spent the whole meal in silence.
She’d shut the memory down in the depths of her brain out of embarrassment, but it had changed to a memory that she could feel the warmth of her parents’ love from, as they tried to accept what she and her sister had done without getting angry, and had eaten the meal they’d made.
To write was to remember. Even when remembering, you accepted things in a different way than you had when it actually happened, making you feel like you’d made a new discovery.
“The person who bought your book was a kind-looking lady. She was around my age, maybe a bit older. We chatted about a lot of things, like U-turn entrepreneurship and stuff, but she was surprised, saying, ‘So you can start new things no matter how old you may get,’ and it made me happy,” she said, adding that, strangely enough, most of the store’s customers had been women around her own age.
Maybe there were a lot of people who’d reached a turning point and panicked at their unchanging lives, wanting to change something. As she listened, Mayumi’s face flashed in her mind.
“Sometimes, there are periods where, as vexing as it is, you can’t do anything about it,” Emiko said.
Junka nodded in empathy, before putting her hands on Emiko’s shoulders from in front of her. “From this point on is the real deal for you, Ishiie-san. Let’s make a wonderful book, just like that Japanese-bound one Mizuki-chan brought back with her from Tokyo. I’m sure it’ll reach someone’s heart.”
It felt strange, thinking that her first book had already made its way into someone’s hands. It was comfortable, not knowing who it would go to.
After that, Emiko visited a little café she’d recently found before doing her shopping at the supermarket. Then, she would search for books that she wanted to stick in her heart, and then she would write.
The ordinary were the special days. Not a single day was the same kind of ordinary. And maybe feeling that would bring happiness.
Chapter 6: Memories of Ginkgo
Chapter 6:
Memories of Ginkgo
A BELL WAS RINGING AT HIS FEET.
“Sorry, Sumi. Just a little longer.”
Sumi kept on rubbing herself against Sakurai Haruka’s ankles while she waited for him to pry his eyes away from his computer monitor, but eventually she got sick of it and started meowing. When he looked her way, feeling her gaze, she looked back at him with her clear eyes. She was waiting for him to let her on his lap.
“You’re such a baby.”
Picking her up, he pet her under her chin, rubbing around her neck. Once he started touching her, his mind would go to the cat, even when he had work. His warmth must have felt nice to her, because she settled on his lap.
“Looks like you’re pretty used to this place now. I didn’t know what was gonna happen with you at the beginning.”
Back when he’d first adopted her as a rescue, he would leave her alone at home. But when he came back every day, he found her listless. He got worried and set up a pet camera, only to see her crying and searching for her owner all day while he was gone. After agonizing over it, he decided to bring her to work with him.
Petting his tabby cat with one hand, Haruka looked down at the letter spread out on top of his desk. It was from Ono Junka, the owner of Sumika Bookstore. At one point, he’d given her advice on how to design and run a bookstore. He’d thought the letter would just be her reporting that she’d opened, but there was more to it.
Included was a letter for Ninomiya Sayaka, the owner of the shelf “Sayokyoku,” with impressions of her book. The sender was a seventy-year-old woman who lived near Sumika Bookstore. You really never knew where someone would become a reader.
“It was that book Ninomiya-san gave to that high school girl who was on a school trip, wasn’t it? Amazing. I didn’t think it’d spread that far. You never know what’ll happen until you do it.” Haruka groaned as he typed up his email reply.
Sayaka’s book had gone to a high school girl from Okayama, who’d visited Frère for Keiichi’s shelf. The girl had given it to her grandmother in place of a souvenir, and that grandmother read it and was inspired to become a shelf owner at Sumika Bookstore. She wanted to do a public reading of it, to get other people to know Sayaka’s work.
“Does this sort of stuff really happen?”
It seemed like a coincidence, but maybe it wasn’t. Haruka had seen books loaded with someone’s feelings make their way into a reader’s hands in various ways over the year that he’d been managing Frère. People were linked through books. There might have been even more dramas being born that he just didn’t know about.
“If Mizuki-chan ever has another chance to come to Tokyo, please let me know. Not only can I give her an opportunity to speak with university students here, but I can arrange a place to stay, her meals, tours of small and shared bookstores, and accompany her anywhere she might want to go. Aaand…”
After finishing up and sending the email to Junka, Haruka spun his chair around and looked out the building’s glass front window. Seeing as he was on the second floor, he got a good view of the trees along the sidewalk.
He’d moved his company here one year earlier, wanting to be able to feel the seasons passing while he worked. He had originally only planned to rent the second floor, but the building’s owner had offered him a good deal on rent if he opened a business on the first floor. That was how Frère came to be.
The location was suited for a restaurant, but there were already several along the street. After fretting over it, Haruka had decided to open a bookstore.
Shinjuku was a wide-spread business district, but sometimes he thought of it like it was a remote island. The rent was high in this neighborhood, and it was difficult to both start a business and to keep it going. If a business didn’t make a profit, the owner would wash their hands of it and pull out immediately.
He understood that it was all unavoidable for the higher-ups in a company, having to run it and protect their employees, but buildings would go up in the spots that used to have small stores, a big business would try their hand with it, and then they’d quickly pull out. Haruka had seen this cycle repeat over and over again since he was a child, a cycle which led to the city’s local population losing access to things they needed.
The elementary and junior high schools he’d gone to had gone through repeated consolidations and declines, and his alma mater closed as well. Once they lost access to necessities, the residents would disappear too. The people born and raised in this city felt much more stifled than people from outside of it. That was the sort of place it was.
The bookstore that used to be near Shinjuku Gyoen Park, which had tried scaling down in order to survive for the sake of the locals, had closed its doors a few years earlier. People said that you could get anything you could ever want in Shinjuku, but year by year, it got harder to live here. Haruka had concluded that the people would have to meet their needs by their own hands. Frère was a bookstore where the residents of Shinjuku-ku would be the shelf owners.
“Time passes fast. Frère’s been open a whole year, huh?”
As Haruka stretched, Sumi jumped off his lap. Bell jingling, she walked toward the steps.
“Oh, looks like the shelf owner watching the store today is here.”
Still sitting, he rolled his chair over to the window. Outside the store’s entrance, Rintarou had put his backpack pet carrier on the ground and was rummaging through his pockets. It looked like he was searching for his phone. If he didn’t have it, then he wouldn’t be able to unlock the door.
Jogging down the stairs, he knocked on the door from the inside. Rintarou bowed his head a bunch of times apologetically. Haruka picked Sumi up with one hand before opening the door for him.
“Morning. If you forget your phone, don’t hesitate to ring the intercom. Even when I’m not upstairs, I can unlock the door remotely.”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking to myself that I absolutely couldn’t forget my phone, so I’m sure it’s in my bag somewhere.”
When Sumi heard a low meow from the backpack carrier, she responded, trying to slip out of Haruka’s arms.
“Anyway, come on in,” Haruka said. He slipped inside the entrance that led to both the store and his office and went inside Frère, putting Sumi on the floor. She was lurking around Rintarou’s bag, her curiosity piqued. She must have known what was inside.
Even now that he was inside, Rintarou kept on searching for his phone. “That’s weird. I really did have it.”
“Did you get changed right before you left?”
Lately, when the student had visited the store, he’d worn a down-filled jacket for the outdoors, but, curiously, today he was in a short beige jacket.
“Ah, now that you mention it…”
Rintarou stuck his hand into the side pocket of his bag. He smiled wryly when he found his phone there. It seemed he’d forgotten he’d stuffed it in there when he’d changed his coat.
“I’ll let Chiyo-san out. You go ahead with getting the store ready to open,” Haruka said, opening up the backpack’s top cover. On the other side of the mesh inner lid was a spotted cat. When he unzipped it the bag, Chiyo quickly jumped out, strutting around the store like she owned the place. Sumi ran after her like a kitten following her mother.
When Chiyo jumped lightly up onto one of the chairs at the reading counter, Sumi followed suit. She was reaching out, trying to make a pass at Chiyo’s tail. Chiyo didn’t like this and jumped back onto the floor, only for Sumi to chase her. The spotted cat fled, leaping onto Rintarou’s back as he crouched down and worked.
“Whoa, what? Is that Chiyo-san?”
Sumi wouldn’t follow her that far, just watching Chiyo as she climbed Rintarou’s back. She wanted to play.
Haruka couldn’t hide his shock, seeing the usually skittish Sumi being the one chasing someone else around.
“Having two cats around seems kinda great.” It let them play in a different way than they did with humans. “When’d they get this friendly?” Haruka asked.
Rintarou just tilted his head with an “I dunno.”
He’d thought it would take quite a long time for Sumi to get to the point where she could relax in the store. This was because Sumi was cautious and would hide inside the shelves whenever she got the chance. Maybe Chiyo’s presence was the reason she’d gotten used to it faster than he’d expected.
Rintarou grabbed Chiyo’s legs, trying to pry her off of his shoulders. But when she resisted by digging her claws into the backs of his hands, he slouched his back in defeat. When he crouched down near the floor, she finally jumped back down.
“Chiyo-san is a bit fierce and Sumi is meek, so I was a little concerned, but it looks like I had nothing to worry about. Maybe Chiyo-san just knows how to deal with lots of different kinds of cats, since she was a stray for so long.”
“Maybe she’s only fierce with you, Shirane-san?”
Haruka had been half joking, but Rintarou nodded, expression serious.
“That might be it too. I love her, but she must hate me because I don’t go at her pace. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately. Or rather, I’ve really noticed a lot of things lately.” As Rintarou spoke, he readied the cats’ meals. When he walked out from behind the register counter, they came running. “My mom’s not a bad person, but I’ve always thought she was a bit one-sided when communicating, ever since I was a kid. I always had a bit of a rough time with that, but lately, I thought, ‘Wait, am I the same way?’ I always tried to pay attention to how I was with other people, but I kinda relaxed around Chiyo-san. I was doing the same thing my mom does. Lately, I’ve been regretting it and trying to give Chiyo-san a little more space.”
“I see.”
It was not long ago that he talked about how he wanted to be out on his own soon, but something must have happened, because he seemed to be a lot more down to earth now.
“Chiyo-san needed some time on her own. Sumi’s shy, but once she warms up to you, she’ll be hanging all over you like a clingy girlfriend.”
“She was chasing Chiyo-san around too, after all. Looks like she’s become a proper store kitty before our very eyes. Whoops, I shouldn’t go stopping my hands because my mouth is moving,” Rintarou said, glancing down at his wristwatch. It was almost time to open. “I’m gonna go make up the window display.”
Taking a bunch of books off his shelf, he started lining them up on the tiered display. Lately, he’d been putting travel essays, books in various languages that he’d said he collected in different countries, and Tokyo guidebooks out. It seemed he’d realized that it was easier to get people interested in his shelf if he put things out that gave him a chance to chat with visitors.
He’d also put some extra effort into his own shelf display, hanging a little hammock from the top of it with a stuffed spotted cat inside. It was something unique that hadn’t been there when he first became a shelf owner.
Rintarou’s shelf was changing with every moment, and The Hammock Cat had gone from a shelf with books that almost never moved to one of the store’s most popular shelves. It had felt like even with work, passion moved people’s hearts more than anything else, and it seemed like it was the same with bookshelves.
“Oh yeah. Shirane-san, are you planning on going somewhere after this?”
“No, not particularly. Why?” Rintarou turned toward Haruka, giving him a quizzical look.
“I was just thinking you’ve got a different vibe today. Oh, today’s the day Kasugai-san is coming, isn’t it? You were going back and forth about it in the notebook.”
Just as Haruka was about to make his way toward the reading counter, Rintarou pulled him back by the arm, saying, “No, wait!”
The replies Rintarou wrote were always pretty long. Every shelf owner at Frère knew that he had a crush on her. There were even people who looked forward to coming and reading the exchanges between them.
“Kasugai-san is nice; she’s got such a gorgeous vibe,” Haruka added.
“She really does,” Rintarou said, smiling bashfully as if he were the one getting complimented. But then his expression darkened. “This morning, I didn’t know what I should wear, so I panicked and gave Kajiwara-san a call, but…”
“What, you called Keiichi?”
Haruka had known that Rintarou had gotten advice from Keiichi about what books to stock at Frère, and tips on job-hunting, but he was surprised to learn that they had connected beyond that. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand the relief that came from talking about tons of things when you got Keiichi in front of you, but…
“So? What’d he say?”
“He yelled, ‘How should I know?!’ and hung up on me.”
Haruka burst out laughing. Lately, Keiichi had said he’d been helping out at Uneta’s bar after Undecimber Garden closed at night. He would’ve been just getting to bed as the sun was rising, but the fact that he didn’t ignore Rintarou calling and waking him up, and actually said something, meant that he must’ve liked the kid a lot.
“Do I look weird?”
“You look good. But you would’ve been good just being your usual self, without getting worked up over it.”
When Haruka patted him on the shoulder, Rintarou smiled.
“Man, it feels like everyone’s having fun lately,” Haruka said with a sigh. “I wonder if I’m gonna meet someone like you guys too. I’ve got lots of connections through work, and I go out with people to have fun, but my relationships are wide and shallow. I’ve got no one I’m close with in private. Other than Keiichi, that is.”
He had given up hope, thinking that he didn’t have any time to meet anyone outside of work, but lately, he’d gotten to thinking that it had nothing to do with time. Rintarou had only met Satoko once and just spoke to her through messages in the notebook, and yet he had a closer relationship with her than Haruka, who’d exchanged business cards and spoke to her every time she came to the store.
“Sakurai-san, I know a good method,” Rintarou told him, voice brimming with confidence.
“Huh, what is it? Tell me!”
“You’ve got to become a shelf owner too.” He then went on to enthusiastically tell him that even if he couldn’t talk well, the books would accent his personality.
“I see?”
So the reason why Satoko was closer to Rintarou than Haruka, who’d spoken to her numerous times, was thanks to the power of books.
“After Kajiwara-san suggested it, and I started thinking hard about what books I put out, it all made sense. I’d thought I’d just buy any old book, but I wasn’t actually doing that at all. They all had similarities and points that drew me in. Once I realized that, I started recognizing what I was looking for. If you use books as a starting point to talk about your interests or background, conversations can get deep, even if it’s your first time meeting someone. And that can link pretty well with understanding yourself.”
As Haruka was impressed by how smoothly Rintarou had said that, the student bashfully admitted that it was his second time saying it. Apparently, the first was at a final interview for a job.
“Yeah, it worked with Kasugai-san too. I guess bookshelves feel kinda like matchmakers,” Rintarou mused.
“Wait, are you two together already?”
“No, no, not yet. I mean…”
Just as Rintarou started to babble out excuses, they saw a woman outside of the store. Speak of the devil; Satoko had arrived. She had on a long coat and a long skirt, wearing them well in a balanced silhouette. When she said hello with a smile, Rintarou’s face went red. You could tell from looking at him that he was in love, but what about her?
“Hello, Kasugai-san. You’re off today, aren’t you? Stay as long as you’d like.”
After greeting her, Haruka picked up the two cat dishes and went behind the register counter.
Matchmaking shelves, huh? That might actually be true.
While he was washing the dishes, he heard cheerful laughter and couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their conversation.
“Do you like sweets, Shirane-san?” a voice asked, ringing like a bell.
“Yeah? Sometimes.”
Satoko held the paper bag she’d been carrying toward the curious Rintarou. When she told him they were kitty tails, he peeked inside the bag, head shooting back up with a look of glee on his face.
“Sakurai-san, c’mere for a second. These are amazing!”
Why was he calling him over there when they should have been chatting just the two of them? Resisting the urge to burst out laughing, Haruka popped out from behind the counter. Inside the paper bag were stick-shaped donuts wrapped in clear film. She must have been thinking of Chiyo and Sumi, because there were a number that mimicked black tails and striped ones.
Satoko held the bag out, looking at Rintarou. “Um, do you not like donuts?”
“Huh? I like them,” Rintarou answered, confused. The two silently looked at each other.
“If you’d like, share these between you and Sakurai-san. I bought them for you,” Satoko explained again, only for Rintarou to take a step back in shock.
“I’m sorry. Here I’d thought you were just telling me there was a place that made cute cat tail-shaped sweets,” he said, bowing his head apologetically as he accepted the bag.
Resisting the urge to ask how in the world he’d interpreted it like that, Haruka thanked her.
“I actually had a question for you today, Shirane-san.”
Satoko pulled a book out of her bag. It was one she’d bought from The Hammock Cat, centered around pictures of the homes and townscapes of the world’s literary masters. It was a collection of introductions to authors’ works and how they’d lived. It was the sort of book that looked like it would be an introduction to world literature.
She wanted to know which author he liked best. It seemed she admired foreign scenery and wanted to read books written in those far-off places.
As Rintarou averted his eyes from Satoko as she looked at him, as if she was too bright to look at, the two cats appeared by their feet, helping pick up their dropped conversation.
Doesn’t look like he’ll need me anymore.
Haruka was about to head back up to the second floor when Sumi ran over to him.
“Sumi, you stay here and help Chiyo-san mind the store,” he said, bending to stroke her back.
When he walked a few steps away, her eyes stayed locked on the window. She eventually headed toward the reading counter, looking back a few times as she did. There was a little boy outside of the window, about three or four years old. He was peeking into the store, eyes wide.
“He must be here for the cats. We’ve got two here today, after all.” Haruka thought about bringing him inside, but he didn’t seem to have a guardian nearby.
For better or worse, the people who lived nearby didn’t pay attention to other people. While they’d treat anyone well without discrimination, they would do nothing as long as you stayed quiet. Picking up Sumi in his arms, Haruka headed outside.
“Do you like kitties?”
The moment he spoke to the little boy, he stiffened up, but he walked closer to Haruka as soon as he saw the cat. Haruka knelt down, telling the boy to pet her gently and showing him how. The boy hesitantly reached out, and the moment his hand touched Sumi’s back, he smiled.
“Were you on your way to Shinjuku Gyoen Park?”
“Yeah.”
The little boy’s backpack was packed full, slipping off his shoulders. Despite the fact that he was alone, he didn’t seem nervous. He probably knew the area well.
“What did you come to see?”
“The big ginkgo tree.”
“Do you mean the one on the promenade? The entrance that leads to it is nearby. It was pretty, wasn’t it? Who did you go with?”
As Haruka tried to indirectly get information out of the kid, a woman pushing a stroller ran up in a panic. Bowing and apologizing to Haruka, she pulled the boy’s hand and stood him up.
“Don’t leave Mommy behind just because you know how to get there yourself!”
Scolded, the boy pressed his lips together hard. He didn’t apologize.
Haruka waved to him as he left, looking back longingly a few times. His mother hurried him along.
“I get it completely,” he said to no one in particular. “I was the same sort of kid. I couldn’t do anything but what I wanted.”
Just as he was about to walk back into the store, his eyes fell on a golden ginkgo leaf that had fallen on the ground. He picked it up, spinning it around by the stem. The little boy must have brought it with him from the walking path. It looked pretty complete for a leaf that had been stuck to the bottom of a shoe.
“Oh, maybe it’s…”
He checked the date on his wristwatch. It might have been today. He’d go have a little look.
Haruka went back inside, lowering Sumi to the floor. He thanked her in his mind for helping serve to close his gap with the little boy, then headed back to his office on the second floor to grab his coat.
“I’m going out for a bit. Take care of the store.”
He headed toward the walking path from Frère. Just as he was coming out on the T-shaped road, he bumped into Keiichi.
His gaze was sharper than usual, and his lips in a straight line. He might have seemed cranky, but this was how Keiichi looked when he was fighting back sleepiness.
“Huh? What’s up? You going to Frère?” Haruka asked.
Keiichi went to answer but put a hand over his mouth, yawning instead. Then he started again, saying he was going to check on his shelf. He must have been worried about Rintarou, since he’d called him in a panic this morning.
“You?”
When Keiichi asked, Haruka pulled the ginkgo leaf out of his pocket.
“Do you know what day it is, Keiichi?”
“Huh? What day is it?”
“Come with me. It’s really close.”
Haruka started walking, and Keiichi followed him, stifling another yawn.
The walking path was called the Tamagawa Aqueduct, Naitou-Shinjuku Waterworks Promenade. It was the junction where the Tamagawa Aqueduct became the city’s tap water in the Edo Period. The path was created to remember the period where it had been the city’s water source. Along it were landscaped trees that let you enjoy the changing of the seasons. It was a place you could enjoy without buying a ticket to Shinjuku Gyoen Park. And while Haruka would suggest it to people who visited Frère, he hadn’t been there himself in a while, since he was always looking out at it from the window on the second floor.
As soon as they got on the promenade, they saw a crowd of people. They were all surrounding a huge ginkgo tree, gazing up at it and taking videos of the strange sight of its leaves dropping in unison, seemingly without the help of the wind. The ground around it was already covered in a golden carpet.
They could see children innocently stretching their hands out to catch the falling leaves. The little boy Haruka had met moments before had probably gotten one caught between him and his backpack while he was playing in much the same way.
Haruka stopped, standing off to the side of the path.
“You were talking about the falling leaves?” Keiichi asked.
“Of course you knew. I was surprised when someone told me that the leaves of a ginkgo tree would all fall off within a single day. Or rather, I thought they were lying. I’d always noticed the ground turn gold suddenly, but that was it.”
“This might be my first time seeing it myself. When I read about it in essays and novels, I couldn’t believe that it could really be a thing, so I looked it up, but…”
It seemed Keiichi’s drowsiness had been blown away as he looked up at the ginkgo tree.
“We’re lucky today. It’s been a while since I’ve last seen the leaves fall. I mean, it’s close, but I don’t pass by it every day, and you tend to not notice it when you’re walking by lost in thought,” Haruka mused. “Y’know, in the past, I wasn’t interested in nature at all. Shinjuku is all buildings wherever you look. There are residential areas, but it’s rare for a house to have an actual garden. And we’ve only got a few tiny parks in the first place…”
Haruka continued, losing himself a bit in the memory. “But once in the past, someone brought me here while the leaves were falling. She kinda forced me into it, saying, ‘It’s ginkgo day!’ I’ve had them in my mind ever since.”
“Kotono-san?”
Haruka was a bit flustered when Keiichi instantly said the name of the person he was thinking of but managed to feign composure.
“Yep, it was Kotono-san from Yurinoki!”
“That brings me back. How many years ago was it that we went to that café?”
When they were in high school, the two had visited the café that had had a store cat. Haruka’s real aim was to see the woman twelve years older than him who worked there part-time five days a week, but he hid his crush and pretended to be a cat lover.
Yurinoki was a café that had been in business for forty years on the west side of Shinjuku Gyoen Park, in a spot away from all the noise of downtown. It was on the street Haruka took to and from school, and he was curious about how he never saw a single customer despite it always having the open sign displayed, no matter how early in the morning or late in the evening he walked by. He wondered how it stayed open and had peeked in through the latticed sun door, only to spot something walking back and forth in front of it.
“A cat?”
As he knelt down, staring at the shadow in the glass, the door opened.
“We have seats open! Ah.”
A female employee peeked out, but as soon as she saw Haruka, her mouth closed. She had already judged that he wasn’t a customer.
He was seventeen, but he was skinny, and not very tall, so he was often mistaken for a junior high schooler. Normally, having someone mistake his age wouldn’t bother him, but for some reason he was miffed, and went inside.
There were six seats at the counter, eight two-seater tables, and not a single customer other than him. On the opposite side of the counter was a white-haired man who looked to be the owner, reading a newspaper. Right next to the entrance was a bookshelf with a paper sign that read “Free to Take.” It was lined with paperbacks, and on the very bottom shelf was a blue-eyed Siamese cat who looked very intelligent.
Haruka sat down at a table near the entrance, and the woman who’d let him in gave him a menu. She had strongly chiseled features, and light brown skin, despite it almost being winter, and seemed like she was suited for the ocean.
When he ordered blended coffee, she asked him if he liked cats. He’d never thought about whether he liked or disliked them, but answered that he did, only for her to ask if he wanted to give the cat a treat, holding out a skipjack tuna stick. It seemed she’d thought he was here for the cat.
“Her name is Alstroemeria. She’s super smart!”
“Is it because she reads a lot of books?”
“What? That’s hilarious. But maybe she does when me and the master aren’t looking. She does love sitting inside the bookcase.”
Her innocent smile, unfit for an adult, had captivated him. From then on, he kept coming to the café, and learned that her name was Kotono. He wondered why she had a job when barely any customers came there, but Yurinoki took lots of orders from nearby offices and delivered coffee and food. Kotono was the delivery staff.
Haruka invited Keiichi to come with him, telling him he’d found a café with books, and they started meeting up there after school. Taking advantage of the lack of customers, they would study for tests, read books, and loiter for hours. Eventually, the café started giving them cakes they were about to scrap or leftovers from lunch. While it was very kind of them, they felt bad every time they were given, so Haruka started helping Kotono with the deliveries sometimes, while Keiichi would help the master cook.
Once, when they were out on a delivery together, Kotono asked him, “Are you okay, coming to the café all the time? Don’t you run out of allowance?”
“Even if I didn’t come to Yurinoki, I’d just go somewhere else, so I don’t think it changes anything. I’ve been like this since junior high. But sometimes Keiichi comes over to my house, since we’re close.”
When she heard that, Kotono cried out in shock.
“Where did you go when you were in high school, Kotono-san?” Haruka asked.
“We’d all get together to chat and study a lot, so I guess food courts. We’d buy ourselves drinks and go to the park too. But around here, there’s not many places you can just sit and talk. Hanging out is different.”
If you didn’t have money, you couldn’t go out with your friends. Even if you were told to go to the park, the closest one was Shinjuku Gyoen. The other parks were small and crowded, and adults took all of the benches to smoke. So naturally, Haruka and his friends ended up going to a store when they wanted to get together.
“Haruka-kun, you can come to Yurinoki whenever you want. The café is always slow, and I like having someone to chat with. I know that the price of the coffee might make it a bit tough, but I’ll give you tons of freebies.”
“What are your hours, Kotono-san?”
“From eleven to eight.”
“That’s long!”
“The master gets in at eight in the morning. It’s normal for adults. You high schoolers have it so easy. You get an allowance, even if you don’t work.”
It wasn’t like Haruka was begging his parents for money. He was about to argue, but he shut his mouth. He wanted to tell her that he was using the dividends from the little investments he’d made in elementary school whenever he came to get coffee, but she probably would believe that even less than his reasons for hanging out at a café every day.
When he’d told his high school friends about it, most of them had thought that he was bluffing. They’d just laughed at him, saying he was flaunting his parent’s money. Keiichi was pretty much the only one who took him at his word.
“I guess I’ll stay at the café until eight today.”
“Why? Ah, this is the one, Haruka-kun!” Kotono said with a smile as she pointed at a building. Once they were all alone in the elevator, the subject changed to a delivery from the day before, and he lost the chance to say that it was because he wanted to talk with her more.
When they were finished with their delivery and were about to head back to the café, Kotono stopped, asking him to wait a second.
“Haruka-kun, there’s somewhere I want to go. Will you come with me?”
“Huh? When?”
“Right now.”
Haruka agreed, despite being a bit confused, and Kotono called Yurinoki and let the master know that she was taking her break.
The place they were headed was a promenade beside Shinjuku Gyoen Park. There was a crowd of people there, all looking up at the ginkgo tree. Despite the fact that there was no wind, the leaves were falling without any pause, making golden mountains on the ground.
“We made it. They started falling before I came into work today, so I was worried they’d all have fallen by now. It’s ginkgo day. Just like magic, isn’t it? Today, autumn ends, and winter begins. I wanted to show you this moment I love, Haruka-kun.”
Apparently, Kotono had learned how the ginkgo leaves fall from a poem two years earlier and had started walking the promenade before going to work around this season to catch sight of it.
As they watched the ginkgo leaves silently fall, they chatted about nothing in particular. He had time to tell her about himself, and how he felt about her. But all he could do was look at her profile from the side, staying silent.
“That café was why you became a cat lover, wasn’t it?” Keiichi asked, picking up a ginkgo leaf and spinning it by the stem with his fingertips.
“Now that you mention it, you might be right.”
Alstroemeria had originally been the cat of one of Yurinoki’s regulars. After they passed away, none of their relatives had been able to take her, so the master adopted her. He’d said that customers stopped coming once he made the café nonsmoking for the cat’s sake, so they started doing delivery.
“At first, I’d been interested in it because I wondered how it stayed open,” Haruka said.
Ever since he was little, whenever he’d go out to eat with his family, they’d start observing. The moment they liked a place, they would research what company ran it, or what the parent organization was, or if they were listed on the stock market. His family was one where they’d check out how a place was being run and chat about each of their observations as they ate.
“Your folks like thinking about that stuff, huh?”
“They really do. Whenever we stayed at a hotel, whenever we ate, even when we were on a trip overseas, it’d all be like an observation. Of course, I couldn’t think of anything else but getting out on my own.”
Becoming a restaurant consultant was a familiar job for Haruka to take, and he had decided early on that he’d make that his main focus and branch out from there.
“They’d been so good to me, but I just stopped going there all of a sudden,” Haruka murmured, only for Keiichi to give him a look like he wanted to say something. “I’m only saying it because it’s in the past now, but really, I liked Kotono-san, not the cat.”
“I know.”
He hadn’t said anything, but he’d thought that Keiichi would have noticed.
“But Kotono-san loved books and would always just talk to you,” Haruka added. “Just who was it who told me to join a band if I wanted to get popular?”
“Oh yeah, you had a guitar, didn’t you?”
At the time Haruka had an electric guitar set. While he’d enthusiastically recruited classmates to join his band, they’d broken up immediately after. He had barely touched the guitar since buying it. That much was obvious, seeing as he couldn’t even play one song.
“Well, whatever I tried didn’t matter,” Haruka said. “She had a boyfriend, after all. And when we were out doing deliveries, she’d get hit on, since she was so charming.”
One day, when Haruka had planned on matching the time he went home to when she got off so he could invite her out, her boyfriend had come to pick her up. He was in his mid-thirties and worked at an office nearby. The guy had showed him his adult composure, asking if Haruka and Keiichi were the rumored cool high schoolers he’d heard about. He remembered it had pissed him off to no end.
Wanting to get her attention, he stopped going to the café for a while. But once he’d stopped, it just got harder to go, and he started making excuses for not going, like how there was better coffee at home, and how he could laze around there without worrying about the time. Keiichi never really said anything about it, and he began hanging around Haruka’s house again.
Looking back, it would have gone better if he’d quit the mature act and started acting friendlier. He knew that well after interacting with cats.
“Thinking back, it was a pretty amazing place. When we’d go there for coffee and loiter around, the master fed us like we were just bonuses with the cat. Though both of us ate it as if it was nothing.”
Keiichi put a hand to his chin, looking a little bit upward. “I do the same sort of thing at Undecimber Garden.”
“Huh, really?”
“There’s one person who’s started coming when I’m getting stuff prepped in the evening, saying they can help by sampling the food. I didn’t ask them, but…I understand the feeling of wanting to feed someone when they’re there.”
“Oh yeah, you’re serving some food lately, huh?”
There were times when Keiichi would come in early and get food prepared. The acqua pazza Haruka had sampled not long ago had tasted like it came from a proper specialty restaurant. Keiichi was the type to get absorbed in things, and he would carefully select his ingredients, pursuing perfection.
Now that Haruka thought about it, Yurinoki might have been the reason Keiichi pursued a career in cooking. He’d been raised in a house with mostly absent parents and was good at cooking by junior high, but he didn’t so much enjoy it as consider it work. So when they’d graduated high school and he said he was going to a vocational school for chefs, Haruka had been a bit surprised.
Now that they were talking, Haruka sort of wanted to visit the café for the first time in a long time. But that desire would never be granted. All of the old buildings on that street had been demolished when the area around the station was being redeveloped.
Shinjuku was a city that had too good of a metabolism. While development in rural areas was more likely to get talked about, cities that were already developed would lose various businesses quicker. Not only were the places he remembered from his childhood gone, but the places linked to other important memories from his life had also disappeared as if they’d been evicted. But development marched on, and the city was new again. He was sure it would keep on happening forever.
Whatever happened to Kotono and the café’s master? He regretted the fact that he’d cut off their relationship without a word when they’d been so good to him.
After they watched the leaves fall for a while, they returned to Frère from the promenade. Haruka peeked in from the outside, checking on Rintarou and Satoko. They had a book open on the work table and were absorbed in their conversation. Rintarou’s gaze was softer than usual.
“You’re doing good, Shirane-san. Even though you’re up against a working adult woman.” He saw his past self and Kotono in the two lovebirds.
Haruka put his hand on the door, while Keiichi turned and walked away, saying he was going home because he was still tired. He really had just come to check on Rintarou.
As Haruka waved, telling him to have a good sleep, Rintarou came running out.
“Kajiwara-san!” he yelled, running over to him without even waiting for him to turn. When they were next to each other, the younger man told him something excitedly. Keiichi listened, eyes narrowed.
Satoko walked out of the store, calling out to Haruka as she stopped beside him.
“Shirane-san just got word that he’s been hired!”
“What, really?”
“They said that if he hadn’t been a shelf owner here, then he wouldn’t have gotten the job.”
At the final interview, Rintarou told them about how he’d experienced connecting with people after becoming a shelf owner at Frère. By owning a small business himself, he learned how difficult it was to continue getting sales, and it widened his view of working. It seemed like he’d utilized that new knowledge to his advantage.
Rintarou was bowing his head to Keiichi again. When Keiichi smacked him on the back, he stood up, and they exchanged a handshake.
“This is a victory for Shirane-san’s virtues!”
Satoko nodded in agreement.
“Shirane-saaan! Congrats!”
When Haruka waved at him, Rintarou finished saying goodbye and ran back over, grabbing Haruka’s hand in the momentum. After letting out a breath, he sunk down as if he’d let out all his tension.
“Thank you to you too, Sakurai-san. Having you tell me that it would be fine let me be confident during the interview. I’d always been convinced that anything I could do would be no use, and I couldn’t even believe in myself anymore.”
The fact that he could lay out his weaknesses without even worrying about how the object of his affections was right there was a sort of strength.
Satoko showered Rintarou with claps. “Congratulations again, Shirane-san. You’ll have to have a big celebration today!”
Rintarou didn’t react to her, even though anyone would have thought her words would make him the happiest. When Haruka shook his shoulders, thinking he’d blown an emotional fuse, the younger man stood up with a seriousness in his gaze that he hadn’t seen before, facing Satoko.
“Kasugai-san.”
Having her name said again, Satoko blinked, lips slightly parted.
“I’ve only just started my shift here, so today might not be the day for it, but… If you’re okay with it, would you tour bookstores with me sometime? I can help you look for the book I just recommended. And it’d be thanks for the donuts—or, no. It was thanks to the things you said to me that I realized a lot of things. Um, anyway, I just want to thank you,” he said, gripping her hand. Even though he might not have decided exactly when he’d do it, it seemed he’d decided that he would make some sort of move on Satoko when he finished his job search.
“Um, I’d like to go with you to bookstores. Maybe even once your shift ends here today. If you’ve got the time, why don’t we go look at that kitty toy I told you about? We can experiment with what she likes,” Satoko said, smiling.
It seemed like Rintarou either hadn’t expected her to say yes so easily or hadn’t thought of what would happen after he invited her. He was standing there, stunned.
Guess I’ll help him out.
“If you’d like, you could go now? I’m here today, so you can leave Chiyo-san. It’s a bit early, but you could go celebrate over lunch,” Haruka said, looking between the two.
Rintarou hesitantly asked Satoko about it, and when he saw her nod, he gripped both his hands into fists and closed his eyes like he was savoring his victory, squeaking out a “YESSS.” He curled his back, quietly raising his arms in triumph.
Haruka couldn’t help but smile at his innocence. “Take as long as you’d like. Don’t worry about the time, Shirane-san. Enjoy your feeling of freedom after the job hunt.”
Heading back inside the shop for now, Rintarou cleaned up the books and rang up Satoko’s purchase as he got ready. When he seemed like he’d never leave out of guilt, Haruka handed him his coat.
“Sakurai-san, I’ll bring you tons of souvenirs,” Rintarou said, gripping Haruka’s hand.
“I don’t need any souvenirs. Oh yeah, just before, I went to the promenade with Keiichi. The ginkgo tree’s leaves just started falling. They’re pretty, so you should go see them. Ginkgo trees are special, since their leaves all fall off at once. It seriously happens in an instant when the wind picks up, so if you want to see them, I’d suggest going there first.”
“I’d like to see them,” Satoko said, lifting her hand a little.
“Then let’s go to the promenade first.”
Rintarou put on his coat, and Haruka saw the two of them out. As he watched them walk away, he felt like the feelings he’d had at some point were rewarded, like he was getting a share of their happiness.
Haruka went back inside the empty store. His beloved cat was by the window with Chiyo, sunbathing.
“Now. Let’s get things going like usual here.”
As he stretched his arms toward the ceiling, two women who had been chatting in front of the store were lured in by the store kitties.
After finishing work and heading home, Haruka took Sumi out of her carrier.
“Good job today. You did great.”
He took off her collar as she rubbed up against him, before picking her up and heading to his room. After he got changed into some lounge clothes and lay down on the bed, she snuggled up in the space between his arm and his body. She knew it was warmer there.
If he hadn’t touched Alstroemeria in Yurinoki, then he wouldn’t have adopted Sumi, or even thought about bringing her into his store. After all, he’d thought of cats as animals that stayed in the house.
Maybe the ideas that came to you suddenly were from things you had experienced somewhere before. Maybe you only formed new thoughts from the things that floated up from where they’d hidden in your subconscious.
“The people I meet doing the job I do now will be connected to whatever I go to do next. I’m sure the things that don’t come true stay around forever. I feel like I’ve been unconsciously chasing after everything since becoming an adult.”
Reminded of something, Haruka sat up.
Back when he had stopped going to Yurinoki, Keiichi had kept on popping in every once in a while out of a sense of obligation. He’d given Haruka a letter from Kotono a little before Yurinoki had closed. At the time, he hadn’t thought that he’d be able to sympathize with her if he read it, so he’d stashed it away.
He opened his drawer, grabbing the case where he kept his letters. There was just one that was in a different partition than the others. It was a light-pink envelope with “To Haruka-kun” written on it.
Going back to his bed, he cut the seal with a paper knife. It was a long letter, three pages long. It was a notice that Yurinoki was closing and that after he’d started coming there to hang out, she’d looked forward to delivering coffee with him and that the time had been precious to her.
She must have heard from Keiichi that he was planning on opening a business after university, and that he would be working on deepening his knowledge on investments and management, because at the end, she’d written, “Someday, open a bookstore for me and Keiichi-kun that won’t close.” Just as he went to put the letter back into the envelope, he noticed that there was a ginkgo leaf inside. It might have been the same one she used as a bookmark.
Haruka flopped back onto his bed. He couldn’t reply to this letter now.
“It’s pretty late, but coincidentally enough, I opened a bookstore. Did Keiichi become a shelf owner knowing that Kotono-san was thinking like that?”
He’d left all of the shelves in Undecimber Garden to Keiichi, so he could have sold books there. But he didn’t.
“Here I’d thought I was doing whatever I wanted, but have I been carrying lots of people’s hopes without even realizing it?”
Inside this city that was always being reborn, he wanted to do a job that would save someone’s precious memories. And maybe it was because he knew how difficult that was that he could do it.
“Guess I’ve gotta keep this going now, huh?”
The reason the words “a bookstore that won’t close” had sunk right into his heart was because they were the exact words he’d needed right then. Maybe he was actually supposed to read that letter from Kotono now, rather than earlier.
“Anyway, I’ll take Shirane-san’s suggestion and become a shelf owner. Oh yeah, Ono-san mentioned that she was renting a shelf for herself in her own store.”
Why did she become a shelf owner? He wanted to ask how she differentiated the books she sold in the store proper from the ones on her shelf. She’d contacted him because they had a bond, so why not do something with Junka’s store?
“A traveling bookshelf, maybe? It might be interesting if for a limited time, we have shelves from our stores switch places, if the owners are interested. Ono-san seems like the type to like that sort of thing.”
Once he got thinking, the ideas just kept on bubbling up one after another, and Haruka got up. He sat at his desk, opening up his work laptop.
If Triple Sec went to Sumika Bookstore, would Mizuki buy out all the books again? Or would someone else support them this time? If Ke no Hi, a shelf themed around Sayaka’s book, came to Frère, he’d want to line it up beside Sayokyoku. What would Sayaka think of that?
Every time he had an idea, it would always float up along with someone’s face.
“Why am I here wishing that I’ll meet someone nice? I’ve already been blessed with more wonderful meetings than I deserve.”
As Haruka turned around, Sumi walked over to him as if she’d been waiting for him to call for her. He picked her up and put her on his lap. In the sunbeam-like warmth, happy memories from days past softly came back to life, and disappeared.
Afterword
Afterword
IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE I BECAME A SHELF owner at a shared bookstore. Every time I mind the store, many people ask me about how it really feels to be a shelf owner, and I’m amazed at how much attention bookstores as a community space still get.
I think that turning the act of buying a book into a form of communication is a type of entertainment that’s one of a kind. Until a book that’s on a shared bookstore’s shelf is sold, that book is still the shelf owner’s property. The way you imagine a shelf owner when you look at their shelf, like “I think I’d get along with this person,” or “What sort of person collected these books?” might be another peculiarity they have.
The thought that people would probably be amused if someone stocked a novel written about people’s involvement at a shared bookstore on a shelf at a shared bookstore was what made me want to write this book.
This book was published with the help of many people.
The illustrator, Wamizu-sama. Thank you for your lovely cover illustrations in succession after “Tea, Cats, and Magic Soup.” The scene where Chiyo jumped up on Rintarou’s shoulder was written after I saw the illustration. I love the times where we influence each other while creating a story’s world view.
And to my editor Saitou-sama, thank you again for your help. Maybe it’s because you’ve read the drafts I’d usually never let anyone else see, but now you feel like an old friend. Wanting to do a job that I couldn’t do with anyone else, I made one of the settings in this novel your home, Okayama. I got interested in the area after hearing you talk about the views with the irrigation canals, and I visited it myself. Feeling the city’s transition and getting a peek into the lives of the people who lived there made my imagination go wild, and I enjoyed it.
I also got some help from residents of Okayama with the dialect used by the three-generation family inside the story. I got even more help this time than I did with my last work, and a story I couldn’t have written alone was born.
To my family, who supported me while I wrote, and my friends, who didn’t desert me, even when long periods passed without us seeing each other, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And to the people who have read this far, thank you all so very much. This time I only wrote short stories, but I wrote them while paying attention to the little links between the stories, building up the slight changes in the everyday. I’d be thrilled if even a single word stayed in your hearts.
—SATORI SATORI, OCTOBER 2024