“They had a baby boy,” Mrs. Soeda said. “And as planned, they named him Shin Koyasu. It was an easy delivery, and the baby was very healthy. This was the first grandchild for the Koyasu family, and during his early childhood, the whole family doted on him. Each day was a happy one for Mr. Koyasu and his wife. Their life was stable, with no problems to speak of, and his wife had grown used to life in the town. I hadn’t moved here yet myself, so I only know things indirectly, things I heard about later on from people in town. The people who told me this, though, were all trustworthy, so I believe my information is accurate. In a word, there was no hint of trouble whatsoever in Mr. Koyasu’s life, with everything going smoothly.”
Mrs. Soeda closed her mouth at this point, her eyes blank, and stared down at her hands on the lap of her skirt. A simple gold ring twinkled on the ring finger of her left hand.
But those happy days did not last long, did they, I mused. Her slightly trembling mouth seemed to want to say that.
“But those happy days did not last long. Sadly,” Mrs. Soeda said, as if reading my unspoken thoughts.
The boy had his fifth birthday in the middle of May, a lively celebration (incidentally, Mr. Koyasu was forty-five then, his wife thirty-five). The boy received a little red bicycle as a birthday present. He’d really wanted a large, long-haired dog (the boy was crazy about the dog in the story Heidi), but his mother was allergic to dog hair, so they held off on a dog and bought him a bike instead. But it was a cute little bike, and the boy loved it. When he came back from kindergarten every day he’d hop on his bike, with its training wheels, and happily pedal around the garden. He loved to sing and was always singing some song as he rode around. Sometimes nonsense songs he’d made up.
One evening, as his mother was preparing dinner in the kitchen, she could hear him singing outside the window. For her this must have been the happiest time of all—twilight in spring, listening to her five-year-old singing as he merrily pedaled around on his bike.
But as she was preparing a stir-fry, she found that the saltshaker was empty and was momentarily distracted as she searched for the salt she’d purchased. She didn’t notice for a while that she no longer could hear her son singing. The moment she suddenly realized this, with a start, she heard the screech of a large truck slamming on its brakes. And the dull thud of something being struck. The succession of sounds seemed to come from right in front of their house. This was followed by an eerie silence, as if all sound had been sucked away. Reflexively she shut off the gas range, slipped on sandals, and rushed outside. And went out the front gate.
A large truck sat diagonally across the road, blocking it, after slamming on its brakes, and in front of its tires was a smashed and twisted little red bicycle. Her child was nowhere to be seen.
“Shin!” she screamed. “Shin-chan!”
There was no response. The door of the truck opened, and a middle-aged driver stepped out. His face was deathly pale, his whole body trembling.
The child had been thrown to the side of the road some twenty feet away. The impact with the truck had been fearsome, and his body must have been sent flying like a rubber ball. His tiny unconscious body was frighteningly light, like some limp discarded shell. His mouth was half open, as if he had been about to speak but hadn’t gotten the words out, his eyelids shut. A thin line of drool had dribbled down from his mouth. His mother raced to his side, picked him up, and quickly checked his body for injuries. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere, and she felt slightly relieved. At least he isn’t bleeding.
“Shin-chan!” she called out to her child. But there was no response. His eyes stayed shut, not moving at all. His hands dangled limply. She wasn’t sure if he was breathing. Or if his heart was beating. She brought her ear close to his mouth, trying to detect any breathing. But she couldn’t feel anything.
The truck driver came over and stood beside her, obviously shaken. He clearly didn’t know what to do, what to say. He just stood there, trembling all over.
She carried her child into the house, laid him on the bed, and called for an ambulance. She surprised herself how calm she sounded. She gave her correct address, telling them a five-year-old child had been a victim of a traffic accident in front of their house and they needed an ambulance immediately. The ambulance and the police soon arrived, sirens wailing, the ambulance carrying the boy and his mother to the hospital. The two police officers and the truck driver remained behind for an on-site investigation.
As she nestled close to her child in the ambulance she wondered whether she’d turned the gas off at their house. She couldn’t recall. She remembered nothing. That doesn’t matter now, she told herself, shaking her head a few times. Yet she couldn’t shake the thought of the gas stove still on. That might have been necessary for her at this moment, to keep thinking about whether she’d shut off the gas as she sat next to her unconscious child. To keep from losing her mind.
Her son was in a coma for three days at the hospital, then his heart and lungs gave out, and he quietly took his last breaths. The cause of death was a blow to the back of his head that had struck the curb when the truck had hit him and sent him flying. It was a completely quiet passing, with no bleeding or visible changes to his body. Death came suddenly, before one could think about it. He must not have felt any pain. Mercifully, one might say. Though that was no consolation to his parents.
According to the statement by the truck driver, when the child on the red bicycle had suddenly dashed out from the gate into the road, he’d slammed on his brakes and turned to the right, but not in time, and the child collided with the end of the bumper. The road was a fairly narrow one in town, so the driver wasn’t driving that fast, within the speed limit, but since the boy had suddenly run in front of him, there was nothing he could do. But I am so, so sorry, he said. I have a small child myself, and I can feel the pain his parents must be going through. I don’t know how I can ever apologize for this.
The police investigated the skid marks on the asphalt, which backed up the driver’s statement that he hadn’t been speeding. Involuntary manslaughter charges were filed against him, though it was hard to fault him for being careless. For some reason the child must have raced out the gate onto the road, his head full, perhaps, of some childlike notion. Or perhaps he wasn’t used to the bike yet and lost control. There wasn’t much traffic in front of their house, but still it was dangerous, and he’d been strictly warned to stay behind their fence and never venture out onto the road. And the gate must have been shut and latched.
The parents’ grief was, of course, unimaginable. The child they poured their love into had abruptly vanished. That newborn, healthy life—that warmth and smile and joyful voice—had been snuffed out in an instant, like a tiny flame in a sudden gust of wind. Their despair and sense of loss was awful, and hopeless. When she learned that her child had died the mother went into shock and collapsed, unconscious, and afterward cried her eyes out for days on end.
Mr. Koyasu’s grief was no less profound than his wife’s. At the same time, he felt a strong need to protect his wife. She sunk deep into shock, almost completely losing her will to live, and he knew he had to somehow save her. Of course, she’d never again be like she was (he knew that was impossible), but he had to try to pull her up onto something close to level ground. She couldn’t mourn her child’s death forever. Life, after all, was a long, drawn-out struggle. No matter how much sadness there was, how much loss and despair awaited us, you had to steadily move forward, step by painful step.
Day after day he consoled her, encouraged her. Stayed close to her, speaking as many comforting words as he could think of. He loved her deeply, and wanted her to recover, if only a little. Wanted her to find the will to go on living and once more show him that bright smiling face he so missed.
But as much as he tried, she remained sunk in a deep, dark abyss. It was as if she were shut away in her room, the door bolted from the inside. From morning till night she barely said a word to anyone. Whatever he said, whatever he tried to say, the hard shell around her rejected his words. When he tried to touch her, she cringed, as if some unknown man were groping her. This made him desperately sad. It was like a double punch of sadness—first to lose his precious child, and now to be on the verge of losing his beloved wife.
He grew anxious, afraid not just that she was lost in a profound sadness but that the overwhelming shock had made something inside her snap, mentally. Yet he didn’t know how to handle this. He didn’t think he could easily find a doctor who could resolve her problems, the sadness that created profound issues arising deep within her psyche. As her life’s companion, it was up to him to heal these raw emotional wounds. There was no other way. No matter how much time it took, or how much extraordinary effort.
After a month of almost absolute silence, one day, out of the blue, as if a spell had been broken, she suddenly burst into speech. And once she started speaking, she didn’t stop.
“I really should have bought him a dog like he wanted,” she said quietly, her voice monotone. “If we had bought the dog then we wouldn’t have gotten him that bicycle. I told him we couldn’t get a dog because I’m allergic to the fur. So we gave him a bike. That little red bicycle as his birthday present. But don’t you think he was too young for a bike? We should have gotten him a bike after he started elementary school. And because of that, because of me, he lost his life. If I hadn’t been allergic to dog fur, he wouldn’t have been in that accident and wouldn’t have died. He would still be with us, alive and happy.”
That’s not true, he said, doing his best to convince her. You’re not to blame at all. That’s mixing up cause and result. I was the one who suggested we get him a bike if we couldn’t get a dog. It was my idea. Everything just happened that way. It’s nobody’s fault. No one’s to blame. It was simply a series of unfortunate events. You can only mark it down to fate. Going over all the little details at this point won’t bring him back.
But she heard nothing of what he said. It didn’t register at all. She just kept on repeating her claims, like an endless tape loop. If we had bought him a dog then, like he’d wanted, we wouldn’t have gotten the bike, and then he wouldn’t have died…and on and on.
She also fixated on the fact that she’d run out of salt while cooking. I should have realized I’d run out, I should have known where I’d put the new salt I’d bought. It’s all on me for being careless. Because I ran out of salt I was distracted and didn’t notice he’d stopped singing. Just because the saltshaker was empty as I was making a stir-fry. Something as stupid as that snatched my child’s precious life away forever. And then I couldn’t even remember if I’d shut off the gas.
Even if you hadn’t run out of salt that wouldn’t have prevented the accident, and the gas was most definitely turned off. No matter how many times Mr. Koyasu explained this to her, she wasn’t convinced. Whatever he said, she droned on endlessly about the dog and the bike, the salt and the gas. She wasn’t addressing anyone but herself. These were but empty echoes ringing out in the dark cave that had arisen within her, and Mr. Koyasu could find no space to intervene.
He felt that everything was headed in an awful direction and nothing he did could change it. He had no idea what he should do, how he should approach her. He was at a complete loss. His wife went on forever repeating the same things, completely ignoring and spurning any words of consolation or encouragement. And she refused to let him lay a finger on her. Her sleep was shallow, her waking self hazy and uncertain.
This requires time, Mr. Koyasu thought, steeling himself. This is a problem that only time will solve. People can’t do anything about it. Sadly, though, time was not on his side.
Unprecedented heavy rains fell at the end of June. The river quickly swelled and was about to overflow its banks. The river that flowed outside town turned from a gentle stream into a raging muddy brown torrent, sweeping branches and trees downstream.
One morning during this time (it was a Sunday) when Mr. Koyasu woke up after six, he didn’t see his wife beside him in bed. The rain was noisily lashing the eaves. Worried, he searched their house, but she was nowhere to be found. He yelled out her name, but there was no response. He had a bad feeling. His heart thumped in his chest. He had no idea why she would leave the house this early, in this driving rain. Since she wasn’t inside the house, he could only think she’d gone out.
He put on a raincoat and rain hat and went outside. Wind from the mountains tore through the trees. He searched in the garden, checked the perimeter of the house, but didn’t see her. He reluctantly went back inside to wait for her to return. Even if she’d gone out for some reason, she couldn’t walk around in this weather for long, in a storm this terrible.
But she didn’t return. He went into their bedroom and pulled back the covers of her bed just to check. And instead of her, he found two long scallions lying there. White, thick, splendid scallions. She must have placed them there. He was, naturally, shocked, and frightened by the sight.
Why scallions?
Something was weird, something was wrong. By putting two scallions in her bed, what was she trying to convey to her husband? (This was, unmistakably, some kind of message for him.) As he stared at this uncanny scene, Mr. Koyasu felt chilled to the core.
He immediately called the police. The officer who answered happened to be an old friend of his. Mr. Koyasu summarized the events. When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t find her anywhere. I don’t know where she went. I can’t think of a single reason why she’d go out in this terrible wind and rain at six o’clock in the morning. He didn’t venture to mention the two scallions left in the bed. The officer wouldn’t understand, and it would only cause more confusion.
“I know you’re worried, Mr. Koyasu,” the police officer said, “but your wife must have had some reason for going out. I’m sure she’ll be back before long. Let’s wait a bit more and see.”
Unless there was some obvious crime, the police wouldn’t get involved for something like this, Mr. Koyasu realized, so he gave up, thanked the officer, and hung up. There must be plenty of wives who, after a fight with their husbands, blew up and left. In most cases they’d cool off, they’d come back home. The police couldn’t very well get drawn into each and every marital rift.
But even after eight she hadn’t returned. Mr. Koyasu threw on his raincoat and rain hat again and ventured out into the rain. Lashed by gusts of wind, he wandered aimlessly through the neighborhood, but his wife was nowhere to be seen. No one else was walking this early on a Sunday morning, in this weather. Not a single bird was flying. Every living creature had taken cover, it seemed, waiting for the storm to pass. He gave up and went back home, sat down on the sofa in the living room, and, glancing at his watch every five minutes, waited for his wife to return until noon. But she didn’t come back.
I’ll never see her again, Mr. Koyasu thought. Or, rather, he knew it. Instinct told him so. She’d gone somewhere he couldn’t reach. Most likely forever.
“Her body was discovered at two o’clock that same afternoon when a fireman went to check the level of the river,” Mrs. Soeda said. “She’d apparently thrown herself into the river. She had been swept over a mile downstream from her house and washed up there, entangled in driftwood at a bridge retainer. Her legs were tied up with nylon rope. She must have tied them together herself before jumping into the river. She’d been bashed around as she was swept downriver, and her body was covered with bruises and cuts. The autopsy showed she’d swallowed sleeping pills, though not a fatal dose. A mild sleeping sedative a doctor had prescribed. She’d gathered all the sleeping pills she could find, bound her legs, and then she must have leaped off the bridge near their house and into the river. The cause of death was drowning, and the police determined later that it was suicide. Everyone around her knew she’d been deeply depressed ever since her child’s accident, and there was no doubt whatsoever it was suicide.”
“The river she jumped into is the one that flows in front of my house?”
“That’s right. As you know, it’s usually a beautiful, gentle river that doesn’t overflow, but once there’s a heavy rain, water from the mountains nearby rushes down, quickly filling it up, and it becomes dangerous and raging. Like an angel transforming in an instant into a devil…Occasionally a child will be swept away by the river. Unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes you can’t imagine how dangerous the current can get.”
She was right—I couldn’t imagine the river that violent. Normally it was so peaceful looking, quiet and pretty.
“Everybody in town’s hearts went out to Mr. Koyasu,” Mrs. Soeda continued. “He and his wife got along so well and seemed such a happy family—no, they didn’t just look it, they actually were the epitome of a happy family. A beautiful young wife, a healthy, cute little boy, financially all set. Nothing clouding their lives. But that bright, ideal family fell to pieces in an instant. Mr. Koyasu lost his son, and then only a month and a half later, he lost his wife. Neither was his fault. It was nobody’s fault. A pitiless fate snatched them from him and carried them away. Leaving him behind, all alone.”
Mrs. Soeda stopped at this point and was silent for a time.
“How many years ago was this?” I asked a while later, to break the silence. “When his boy and his wife died?”
“Thirty years ago. Mr. Koyasu was forty-five then. And he remained single until he passed away. Naturally there were attempts to get him to remarry, but he turned them all down and went on living by himself. He did all the housework and never even hired a cleaning woman. He ran the family sake brewery competently enough, but never showed much enthusiasm. He just kept a calm eye on the whole operation to make sure that nothing upset the status quo. He avoided associating with others as much as he could. Other than going back and forth between his home and the company, which was nearby, he rarely ventured out. On the monthly anniversary of his wife’s and son’s deaths—the days of the month they passed away—he never failed to visit their graves, but other than that, the townspeople never caught sight of him. No matter how much time passed, he never recovered from his child’s and his wife’s deaths.”
His bedridden father finally passed away, and Mr. Koyasu decided to sell the family business to a large corporation that had been, for some time, intent on purchasing it. The family brewery didn’t go in for mass production, but since it had steadily maintained its high-quality sake over four generations, its brand was nationally known and they were able to sell the brand and the entire facility for a high price. Workers who had been there for years were given a generous retirement package, and Mr. Koyasu divided the proceeds from the sale fairly, according to how much stock each family member owned. He was well liked and trusted (and everyone was aware how his personality made running a business an awkward fit), so no one raised an objection to the negotiations. After all these payouts were subtracted from the sale, Mr. Koyasu was left with the remainder of the profits, as well as his parents’ home, and the long-unused brewery.
“He was finally released from the family business he never enjoyed, and now, as a free man, he could live a semiretired life,” Mrs. Soeda went on. “He wasn’t all that old, but he led a quiet life shut away in his home. He had a few cats and spent his days almost entirely reading books. For exercise, he went for walks in the mountains. He’d see someone he knew on the street and would smile and say hello, but never seemed to want to go any further. And then his actions became somewhat eccentric.”
Eccentric—the word surprised me, and I couldn’t help but frown.
“Eccentric perhaps is too strong a term,” she added, seeing my reaction and seemingly rethinking her choice of words. “If this were the big city it might be just put down as a little odd, but this is a small, conservative town and it struck people as bizarre. First of all, he started wearing that beret that his niece had bought him as a souvenir. Mr. Koyasu had apparently asked her to get one for him. After that, he never left the house without it. That in itself might not qualify as eccentric—how should I put it?—but when Mr. Koyasu had that beret on there was an unusual feeling about him. There’s no stylish person in this town who’d wear one, so he definitely stood out, but it went beyond that. There was an air around him, I’d venture to call—alien. It was as if by wearing that beret he was no longer Mr. Koyasu but a different being altogether…I know it’s an odd way of putting it, but do you see what I’m getting at?”
I didn’t offer a response. I just tilted my head a fraction as if to show I wasn’t quite sure. Yet I did have a sense of what she was trying to convey, vague though it might be.
One thing was true—for someone with Mr. Koyasu’s appearance, a beret was an unusual look. Sometimes it seemed less like he was wearing the beret than the beret was wearing him. But he didn’t seem to mind that at all. He seemed to welcome it—as if wishing that he himself had disappeared, leaving the beret behind.
“And then, on top of this, the pièce de résistance, you might say, the skirt made its appearance. It’s unclear what led up to this, but one day Mr. Koyasu started wearing a skirt instead of trousers. Or, I should say, he only ever wore a skirt, never trousers. Talk about shocking the townspeople. There’s no rule, of course, that men can’t wear skirts, and it’s entirely up to them. The Scots, as you know, wear kilts. Even the Crown Prince of England wears one from time to time. A man wearing a skirt doesn’t harm anybody, doesn’t cause any trouble. There’s no reason to make them stop wearing them. But in this little town for Mr. Koyasu—a prominent figure in town, a man in his sixties, intelligent, with a certain social standing—to walk around town, bold as brass, in a skirt was astounding.
“No one knew why he felt he had to wear a skirt. Rumors flew that he was losing it mentally, that he wasn’t all there. But no one asked him straight out, Why are you wearing a skirt, and not pants, around town? He was, after all, a wealthy man who contributed economically to the town. He was cultured, a calm and amiable man, well liked. You couldn’t very well confront a person like that with such a rude, direct question. So people simply remained puzzled, felt awkward about it. Wondering what was going on with him.
“Of course, everyone could well imagine that the deep hurt of losing his son and wife, one right after the other, was the main cause of his eccentricity. Since up till then he’d always dressed normally and lived a normal life. But the strange thing, one might say, is that after he started wearing this odd get-up, beret and skirt, his personality did an abrupt about-face, and he became much more cheerful than before. Like a window that’s closed for a long time is thrown wide open, letting spring sunlight stream into a gloomy, damp room.
“He started leaving his house, strolling around town, greeting and talking to people he came across. This seemed to mark the end of his life as a recluse, reading books all the time. People in town welcomed the sudden transformation. They were relieved and pleased to see this change in him. If he grew more cheerful like this, more social, more able to hold a friendly conversation, then who cared if he dressed a little oddly? It didn’t hurt anybody. People figured that the passage of time had eased the deep pain of losing the people he loved. And this was good news for everyone. This is what everyone wanted to think—that time solved most problems. Even though this wasn’t the case.
“So people in town came to accept Mr. Koyasu’s eccentricities as his personal way of doing things that, though a bit deviating from the norm, were well within the boundaries of what was allowed. They were free expression of one’s thoughts and beliefs, and were, so to speak, harmless quirks. Some people just pretended not to notice. They made sure, when they ran across him on the street, not to stare at his get-up, or look aside, either, and when children pointed at him, yelled that he looked like a freak, and followed after him, they scolded them and made them stop.
“All the same, children were drawn to him. He’d be simply walking down the street and, like the tale of the Pied Piper, would enchant little children. And Mr. Koyasu himself seemed to enjoy this. When children followed after him, dazed looks on their faces, all he did was smile. Possibly remembering his own child he’d lost in the accident. Not that he ever spoke to the children or played with them.”
“In the end, the Pied Piper took all the children away from the town. Isn’t that what happened?”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Soeda said, a hint of a smile playing about her lips. “The citizens of Hamelin hired this flute player to get rid of the rats in town, but after he drove them out, they didn’t pay him what they’d promised, and as revenge he used the sound of a magic flute to gather all the town’s children and lead them off to a deep cave. The only child left was a little lame boy who couldn’t join the procession. So in the end, the flute-playing man became a kind of ominous magical being. Mr. Koyasu never intended to harm anyone, of course. There was never a hint of that. All he did was honestly, sincerely, follow his own feelings, as he understood them. He had no ulterior motives or point to prove. He didn’t care if anyone was disgusted with the way he looked, or if they ridiculed him, or if someone found it enchanting.
“With his change in dress, his body, too, underwent a transformation. He’d always had a slim build. (At least that’s what I’ve heard. When I first met him he wasn’t thin anymore.) After he began wearing the navy-blue beret, and grew a goatee, and started wearing a skirt, he put on more weight, and got obese. Nice and round. As if with the change in dress he took on a new personality.”
“Maybe he really did want to change his personality,” I said. “In order to make a break with his life up till then, and to put those painful memories behind him.”
Mrs. Soeda nodded. “You might be right. Very soon after that he actually did begin a brand-new life. When he turned sixty-five he donated the old, unused brewery to the town so it could be used as a library. This was about ten years ago. Around the time I happened to move to town.
“The public library operated by the town was deteriorating, and had been an issue for some time, but they didn’t have the financial resources to renovate the building. Mr. Koyasu was pained to see this, and he invested his own funds to drastically repair the old brewery and transform it into a library. He also donated his own extensive book collection. The brewery was an old wooden building, but it was sturdily built, with thick pillars and beams, and there were no structural issues. Repairs cost a considerable amount, and Mr. Koyasu paid for most of it himself. And then most of the salaries for the library staff, myself included, were paid from funds from the foundation that he established. As you know, the salaries aren’t very high, and it’s like we’re half volunteers, but even so, running the library through the year takes a considerable amount of operating funds. We need to purchase new books, and utility bills aren’t cheap. The town does provide a certain amount of subsidy, but it isn’t that much.
“So in fact this library is Mr. Koyasu’s own private library, but he doesn’t want it to be viewed that way, so he put out a sign that says z** town library. In theory, the library is operated by a board of leading local citizens, but that’s a formality. The board meets twice a year and there are never any questions or discussion over the accounts statement, which is basically rubber-stamped. Mr. Koyasu makes all the decisions, and no one ever objects. Since the library would never have come to be without his support and leadership.
“Maintaining the ideal library had long been a secret dream of Mr. Koyasu’s. To create a special, comfortable spot, to gather lots of books, and to have many people freely read them—for Mr. Koyasu, that was the ideal world. Or microcosm, you should say. When he was young he’d longed to be a novelist, but after he gave up on that dream, and subsequently lost his wife and child, building this library became the sole remaining hope of this life.
“And Mr. Koyasu had no immediate family to whom he would leave his assets. No wife or child, his mother having passed away after his father, with only his younger sister left, but she’d married into a good family in Tokyo and had received her share of the proceeds from the sale of the company, with no desire to inherit anything beyond that. Nor did he have the desire to live a life of luxury—instead, he lived a surprisingly simple lifestyle. Most of the proceeds he received from the sale of the company went into starting the foundation, and then to remodel the library, where he could be in charge. In a sense, his long-held dream was fulfilled, and he built his own precious little world.
“Over the next decade, Mr. Koyasu passed the days in that microcosm, though we have no way of knowing how peaceful and fulfilling he found this period of his life. He always dealt with us calmly, cheerfully, but who knows what he was actually feeling inside.
“Naturally he loved this library, which no doubt became his purpose in life. Being in this library made him happy—that much is certain. But whether this left him satisfied, personally I’d have to think otherwise. I have to think there was a deep hollow inside his heart. An emptiness that nothing could fill.”
Mrs. Soeda fell silent, lost in thought.
I asked her, “Have you been working here since the library was established?”
“Yes, I’ve been here nearly ten years. When we moved to this town, I heard that the new town library was looking for a librarian and I applied right away. Before I got married, I worked as a librarian in a university library and had the certification, but most of all, I really enjoyed that kind of work. I love books and am a kind of precise, methodical person. Working in a library suits me well. It was right here in this room, the head librarian’s office, where Mr. Koyasu interviewed me. And he seemed to like me. And ever since, I’ve worked under him. From the beginning I’ve been the only full-time staff member. It’s a pleasant place to work, and for a small town like this there are actually a lot of patrons, so it’s rewarding work. People who live where the winters are long and severe tend to read a lot. In many ways it’s been a rich and fulfilling ten years.”
“Yet about a year ago Mr. Koyasu passed away.”
Mrs. Soeda quietly nodded. “Yes, it was quite unfortunate, but one day, quite suddenly, Mr. Koyasu passed away.”