It’s my day off from work, and I’m walking the same familiar street. It may be sunny, but it’s still a cold February afternoon. The sky is a soft blue with pale clouds drifting by that look like they were painted with watercolors. I feel warm in the gloves Momoko gave me.
Today, there’s a feeling of calm in the air again as I walk through the neighborhood of bookshops in Jimbocho. The people I pass on the street walk at a leisurely pace. I go down a street lined with low buildings and turn onto a side street. And then, just as I expected, I hear someone loudly calling my name.
“Takako!”
I quicken my pace out of embarrassment, and as soon as I get close to the source of the voice, I start to protest. “I told you already—please don’t shout my name in the middle of the street!”
“Why though?”
“Haven’t I told you it’s embarrassing?”
But no matter how often I say it, my uncle will always cause trouble like this. Still, hearing his voice, a part of me feels a sense of security too. This is a place where I belong. A place where I’m welcomed. That’s how it feels.
“How are you?” my uncle asks with a big smile on his face.
“I’m good.”
“All right, then. Got cold, didn’t it? Come on, I’ll make us some hot tea.”
“Okay.”
The Morisaki Bookshop has remained open, keeping its usual hours, ever since the day my uncle reappeared at the shop. It’s open for business every day, from morning till night, just like before.
When my uncle initially reopened the shop, he looked at me, on the verge of tears, and whined, “What am I going to do? I’ve had zero income because I’ve been closed for more than a month.” But despite his griping, there was a bit of excitement around the shop for a while after it reopened. Having heard the rumors, the regulars—Sabu chief among them—started coming by one after another every day. Thanks to which, my uncle’s first essential duty after reopening was bowing to each of them to apologize for closing the shop. They were obviously happy, and there wasn’t an angry customer among them. My uncle seemed happy to be warmly welcomed back by his many regular customers. The look on his face told me there was no need to worry about him anymore. Of course, he is never going to get over Momoko’s death. He’ll never fully recover. Yet my uncle has decided to look ahead. He’s decided to take in the sadness with everything else and keep moving forward.
There’s been a little change too on my end of things. Wada and I are getting married soon. We’ve already introduced each other to our parents, and now we’re looking for a new home. Actually, part of the reason I came to the shop today was to deliver that news. However, my uncle still seems hostile to Wada, and when I casually bring up his name, he suddenly launches into a solemn speech. “What’s going to happen to the secondhand book business with the rise of electronic dictionaries and the downturn in the publishing industry?”
Good grief. This guy can bore you to death with this stuff. If Momoko were here, I’m 100 percent sure that’s what she’d say. It feels like Momoko’s sitting right here, drinking tea with us.
“Well, my uncle’s just that kind of guy, isn’t he?” As I turn to where Momoko should be and give her a wry smile, my uncle looks at me with his mouth wide open, and says, “Huh? What?”
“Nothing,” I lie and smile. “Hey, do you remember when we went to the summer festival together?”
“The summer festival?”
“Yeah, when I was a kid. Didn’t we go to one together?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess that’s right. We could hear the music, and you just had to go see it.”
“That’s right. And we ate ice cream from a convenience store and went home.”
“You’re right. That’s it. It was a sad night.” He laughs a little, recalling what happened. “But what makes you suddenly think about it now?”
“When Momoko and I were talking at the hospital and she asked me to do something for her, we talked about that night.”
“Oh really?”
“She said she wished she’d been there with us.”
“Oh.”
“I think about that day a lot.”
“You do?”
“I do. That’s all I wanted to say.”
The two of us sip our tea at the same time. I think of the expression on Momoko’s face in that moment. My uncle, for his part, seems to be remembering something too. A slight smile forms at the edges of his mouth.
The two of us share this quiet moment thinking of her, and then the door opens with a soft sound. When I turn to look, I say “Hmmm?” aloud in spite of myself. The face that appears in the opening of the sliding door belongs to our mysterious regular: the old man with the paper bag. It’s been a long time since he’s come in.
The old man carries a paper bag full of books; the look on his face as he comes inside is the same as ever, but I stare at him like I’m ready to devour him with my eyes. That’s because the sweater he’s wearing is not his usual ancient artifact. It might be the same ashen color, but the one he has on now is a fairly gaudy substitute with a great big deer head stitched into it. On top of that it’s new and there’s not a single frayed hole in it.
What’s even more surprising is that when the old man has rummaged through the shelves and brought several books to the register, he turns to my uncle and starts talking to him. “What’s this? You’ve got things in order again, huh?”
This guy has not once opened his mouth to speak in all this time, no matter what.
Even my uncle looks a little bit surprised.
“Thank you very much. We were closed for a brief period,” he says apologetically, as he scratches the back of his head.
“I thought you went out of business,” the old man says in a low voice as he fidgets. Without waiting for my uncle to respond, he takes his books, stuffs them into his bulging paper bag, and abruptly leaves the shop.
My uncle and I leave the shop too, as if lured outside by the old man, and stand side by side watching him walk away with unsteady steps.
Overjoyed by our unexpected customer, I say to my uncle, “He looked healthy, didn’t he?”
The old man gets farther and farther away until he’s finally out of sight. It’s cold outside with a chilly breeze, but the little street is lit up in the afternoon light.
“Ah, that was nice.”
“He must’ve come by when you were closed.”
“Yeah, I feel bad about that.”
“New sweater though, right?”
“It was new.”
“It was gaudy though, right?”
“It was gaudy.”
“You think he couldn’t wear the old one anymore so he got himself a brand-new one?”
“Takako?”
“Sorry, I know. Don’t pry, right?”
“Right.” My uncle nodded forcefully. He went on talking as if he were admonishing himself. “This is a bookshop. We sell books.” The look on his face was cheerful, a little proud.
A writer I like left behind a passage like this in one of his books: “People forget all kinds of things. They live by forgetting. Yet our thoughts endure, the way waves leave traces in the sand.” Deep down, I hope that’s true. It gives me great hope.
A plane crosses the sky in the distance, leaving behind it a freshly born cloud.
“Hey, Uncle, see that cloud behind the plane?” I pointed to the sky, and my uncle looked up and squinted at it.
The cloud kept growing longer, drawing a bright white line all the way across the pale blue sky.
Here in Tokyo’s neighborhood of secondhand bookstores is our little bookshop. It’s full of little stories. And it holds within its walls the thoughts and hopes and feelings of a great many people.