My uncle and I got into a fight.
It was the first time in all the years we’d known each other that we had ever had a real fight like this. And yet the reason for this fight and the issue we fought over were fundamentally stupid.
It began with the aforementioned trip.
After I hit upon the idea at the Saveur, I immediately went home and selected several promising-looking hot springs resorts online and arranged everything so that once they made their choice, I would make the reservations.
Then on the afternoon of my day off, I headed over to the Morisaki Bookshop, bubbling with excitement.
“Wait, aren’t these all weekdays?”
“It’s fine. There are a lot more openings than on the weekends. And you could use some time away from the shop.”
“But I can’t close the bookshop.”
I’d been expecting that response. “I knew you’d say that,” I told him proudly. “I will look after the shop for you.”
The truth is that I had a bit of an ulterior motive for my plan. With Satoru and Momoko away, they’d naturally need someone to look after the shop. I had secretly been wanting to spend a few days there. Of course, if I’d asked my uncle, I could’ve stayed on the second floor above the shop whenever I wanted, but that would be a completely different thing. Even if it was for a short stay, I wanted to manage the shop from morning till evening, and then spend the night in that room upstairs that made me nostalgic now. That way I could soak it all in, and there’d be no one to shout, “Where’s Roy?” and ruin the mood. My uncle could let his weary body get some rest, and to top it off, I could enjoy myself. It was two birds with one stone—at least it should’ve been.
“No way. You’ve got your own job, Takako.”
“My days off match up, so it’s okay.”
“Well, we’ll take you up on your generous offer then, Takako,” said Momoko, who had been listening nearby. “How thoughtful of you.” She had a gleam in her eye and seemed as pleased as I’d expected.
“Hey, don’t just decide for both of us,” my uncle grumbled.
“What’s wrong with the idea? It’s good to take a day off every once in a while. Besides, Takako’s gone to a lot of trouble. She wants to do this for us.” Momoko gave his cheek a good pinch as if to say, What a hardhead.
“Nope. It’s out of the question,” my uncle insisted stubbornly, even as his cheek turned red. “I mean, what’ll we do if something goes wrong?”
“So you won’t even go on a day the shop’s closed?”
“That’s right. Next week I promised Yoshimura I’d go to buy stock from his place in Saitama.”
“Then a regular weekday should be fine. If it’s just a day or two, even I can take care of things. Please have a little faith in me.”
“Absolutely not,” my uncle flatly refused.
“But why not?”
“It’s hopeless,” Momoko said, throwing her hands up. “When he gets like this, there’s no sense in talking to him.”
I’d prepared myself for a little resistance, but not this level of stubbornness. Although I might have had a slight ulterior motive for my offer, I truly wanted to show how grateful I was to them by giving them some time off. I stared at my uncle with resentment, feeling profoundly disappointed.
“You really hate the idea that much?”
“Hate it? What’s out of the question is out of the question.”
“God, I can’t stand you!”
“It’s out of the question!”
“Stop acting like little kids, you two,” Momoko interjected, looking at us in disbelief. “If that’s how you feel,” she added, “then Takako and I will go together like last time. Besides, I’ll have more fun with her than I will with whatever this is.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He really was pouting like a spoiled child. But I can be stubborn too. And I was going to make him take time off and go on that trip.
For a very, very long time, my uncle and I went back and forth, repeating these meaningless replies again and again—“Go!” “Out of the question!”—until the original intention faded away, and we were just butting heads, each refusing to give in.
I don’t know if there’s ever been a more meaningless fight in the world.
In the end, I shouted, “That’s enough!” and walked out of the shop, fuming. I got carried away and shut the door behind me as hard as I could, and the sound it made was so much louder than I expected that I was taken aback, but I walked away pretending nothing had happened.
The day after all that, I met up with Wada. It was our first time seeing each other in four days. Naturally, we’d arranged to meet at the Saveur. However, on this particular day, Wada showed up with an oddly stiff expression on his face. Then, as he was about to take his seat, he suddenly asked, “Can we talk for a second?”
I flew into a panic. What on earth could it possibly be? I’d been expecting us to spend some quiet time together tonight, so this caught me completely by surprise. “Huh? What is it?” I asked nervously.
“Could we change tables?” he asked, also looking quite nervous. That made me feel even more uneasy.
“Um, is this a good talk . . . or a bad talk?” I asked, preparing myself for the worst.
“A good talk? No, I don’t think so.”
What could I do? What had I done? As I started to panic, the thought of my stupid fight with my uncle vanished from my mind.
“W-w-where are we going?”
“Um, I don’t know. What should we do? This spot is fine, actually. It’s nothing important.”
I had no idea anymore what was going on. A minute ago, he seemed so nervous, now he was telling me it was nothing important. When he started, for a second I thought he might even be about to talk about getting married. Lately, my mother had been pestering me on the phone, always asking, “When are you getting married?”
I just realized I’d reached the age where you start to make your parents worry about that sort of thing. But this was apparently going to be a bad talk? It had to be about that. It was too terrible for words. I still wanted to be with Wada. I was still dreaming of being with him forever and ever. Or maybe he was keenly aware of that and felt pressured.
“You won’t laugh, right?” Wada asked earnestly, heedless of the fact that my mind had gone blank.
“I can’t be sure until I hear what you have to say, but I probably won’t laugh,” I said, but really, what was there to laugh about? You had to have some nerve to burst out laughing when the person you love has just started talking about breaking up.
“Understood,” Wada calmly agreed. There was no change in his expression.
And then he said something I absolutely did not see coming: “I’m thinking about writing a novel.”
“A novel?” The word reverberated inside my head, but its meaning would not register. A nah-vul . . .
“Yeah. Does that sound weird?”
“Weird? No, but is that what you wanted to talk about? That’s it?”
“That was it . . .”
I was ready to fall out of my chair. Wada could really be impossible to read sometimes. I was so exhausted by it all I ended up laughing.
“You laughed,” Wada said, looking stricken.
I tried desperately to explain myself. “It’s not that kind of laughter.”
“Not that kind of laughter? What kind of laughter are we talking about here?” he asked earnestly. It was no use though. We were totally out of sync.
I drained my glass of water and sighed. That somehow managed to calm me down.
“You said this was going to be the bad kind of talk so I was nervous,” I mumbled.
Wada looked back at me blankly.
“I didn’t say it was bad. I only said it wasn’t good.”
“Which means it’s going to be bad.”
“Is that right? I’m sorry. I just meant it wasn’t especially good news.”
“Wada, you can be a tiny bit strange sometimes,” I said sarcastically, trying to get him back for how nervous he’d made me.
“Really?” Wada folded his arms and pondered what I’d said.
We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere this way, so I tried to go back to what he’d said a minute ago. “You’re going to write a novel?”
“Yes,” Wada said, finally coming back to what he was saying. “Actually, I started writing in high school and wrote for almost ten years. But not that long ago, I’d completely stopped writing. Then I got to know you, Takako, and all the people who come to the Morisaki Bookshop, and I felt inspired again. Now I feel this irresistible urge to write a novel that takes place at the bookshop. I’m not aiming to win any awards, of course, or trying to become a professional writer. I thought my drive to write was gone, but then I realized I still had it, and I just feel like it would be a shame to let it all end without really trying.” He gave an embarrassed laugh.
Simple as I am, I completely forgot about what had happened a minute ago. What Wada said had moved me. It made me really happy that he’d opened up to me about what he’d been thinking about for some time on his own. Wada is always so earnest. Even if it wasn’t a big deal to me, it’s clear that he was really worried about revealing this. That alone made it important.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea. I want to help.”
“Really? I’m so glad to hear that. If it’s okay, I’d like to do some research at the bookshop, to gather some ideas.”
“Oh.”
“Is there a problem?”
“My uncle Satoru and I are in the middle of a big fight at the moment.”
“A fight with the owner? I’m kind of surprised that you got angry too.”
Apparently, he hadn’t noticed that I was a little angry with him a minute ago. But that wasn’t the only problem. My uncle hadn’t taken kindly to Wada, because he was my boyfriend. Right after we’d started going out, I’d brought him to the shop to introduce him to my aunt and uncle. My uncle completely ignored Wada, even when he greeted him. He stayed stock-still, acting like he was one of those see-no-evil monkey figurines.
“Do you think the owner dislikes me? Did I violate some bookshop protocol without realizing it?” Wada said, cocking his head to one side and furrowing his brow.
“No, not at all. That’s just how he always is,” I said, desperately trying to bluff my way through.
On our way home, Wada kept muttering to himself about how he’d always thought of my uncle as so bright and friendly.
Later, when I went to the bookshop alone and flew into a rage about my uncle’s attitude, my uncle yelled, “He isn’t the right kind of customer for the Morisaki Bookshop.”
Beside him, Momoko shook her head in exasperation. “Come on, you just don’t want him to steal away Takako.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. All I’m saying is that I can’t stand these pseudo-intellectuals. Guys like that are inhuman brutes who think nothing of leaving girls in tears.”
“Monsters?” I was beyond outraged now. I was dumbfounded.
“I’m worried he might make you cry. And why does he keep referring to me as the proprietor? It creeps me out. I can’t stand it.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Momoko said. “It’s about time for you to move on and let Takako go. And Wada seems like a really great guy. He’s tall and slender, and he’s about a thousand times better looking than you.”
“Under no circumstances will I allow him to enter the shop.”
“Hmmm . . . You used to be so cool when you said, ‘The shop is open to anyone and everyone,’ but now it turns out that you want to choose the customers?” I said coldly.
My uncle seemed at a loss for words. Then he repeated the phrase he always said when he was stuck: “People are full of contradictions.”
I was determined to help Wada write his novel no matter what. Wada seemed so happy when I offered. And when he was happy, I guess I was happy too.
“Please make up with the owner soon,” Wada said as we waved goodbye at the turnstile in the train station. “Not because of my novel, of course. Just because.”
The next day, on my way home from work, I stopped by the Morisaki Bookshop around closing time. I had come to make up with my uncle. It was a little annoying, but I didn’t have a choice. Besides, Wada had asked me to. If I gave in, that would be the end of it.
When Momoko brought up the idea of my uncle not going on the trip, he really seemed deeply disappointed. He had to go for her sake too. So I decided to try changing my strategy.
“Hey, Uncle?”
“What?”
The storefront was already shuttered, so I stuck my head in the back entrance and called out to him. His voice sounded wary. At night, the damp smell inside the shop was even stronger.
“Come on, can’t you let your guard down?” Forcing a smile, I tried to put him in a good mood by asking if he’d gotten any good books in lately. Whenever he gets talking about books, my uncle’s bad mood vanishes right away. It’s that simple. Soon he’d completely forgotten that we were fighting, and we were on our way.
“Oh, well, something came in yesterday that might be perfect for you.”
“Really? What?”
“It’s a classic that still hits home with readers today.”
My uncle pulled Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows from the stack and passed it to me.
“It’s an essay, right? What does the title mean?”
“Hmmm . . . if I were to grossly oversimplify it, I’d say that it’s about how we shouldn’t just pay attention in our everyday lives to where the light is. We should look at the shadows as well. And behind that idea is a whole aesthetic sensibility. And I guess there’s something about experiencing a Japanese sense of beauty. It all gets much, much deeper than that though. It might be a little difficult to read, but it’s such a good book, you should give it a try.”
“Thanks. I’ll give myself plenty of time to read it.”
“Give it a read now,” he urged, briskly leaning in. It seemed like he wanted to sit next to me while I read the book so he could explain it. I recoiled, pulling away from my uncle.
“I’m okay right now. I’ll read it carefully soon, someplace quiet and free from interruptions.”
“How come? If you want to read it now, I can open up the store again.”
“That’s why I was saying I want to read it somewhere quiet.”
“Where can you find a place quieter than here?”
Apparently, it never would have occurred to him that he was the one guilty of shattering the silence.
“So, about that trip,” I said, returning the book to the shelf. My uncle’s expression stiffened immediately, as if to say, Here we go again.
“It’s okay if you just can’t go,” I said as a preamble, though I didn’t believe that in the slightest. I lowered my gaze. “I feel like I always depend on you so much. I just wanted to do something to show my gratitude. So, I’m not asking you to do it if it’s not possible, but Momoko wants to go, and it would be great if the two of you could go spend some time together.” I said the lines I’d prepared in advance, putting as much emotion into it as I could.
“I want you to be able to keep the store open for a long, long time. And to do that, you have to remember to take time off. Otherwise, you’re going to ruin your health. And if you died from working too much, I think my heart might burst.”
Telling him all this was starting to make me uncomfortable. First of all, my uncle’s the kind of person you couldn’t kill if you tried. The idea of him overworking himself to death was too outlandish to believe. But he turned out to be ridiculously vulnerable to this approach. Sure enough, he was soon staring at me with tears in his eyes.
“Takako, you . . .”
“So, you understand what I mean?”
My uncle nodded several times, overcome with emotion. “Is that true? I really mean that much to you?”
“Well, that’s why you should go,” I said, losing no time.
“Ah, mmm-hmmm,” my uncle replied automatically.
“And take good care of Momoko too. How about next week? I’m available then.”
“What? Ahhhh.” My uncle reluctantly agreed, although looking at the expression on his face, he didn’t seem entirely convinced. My strategy had succeeded.
We left the shop and walked together to the station. The whole way, he kept mumbling, “Are you really sure you can run the store by yourself? I don’t know.”
I stood up straight and said, “Trust me,” showing him how confident I was.
Once night fell, it turned thoroughly cold out. I wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck. My uncle was grumbling beside me, his breath making hazy white puffs that hung in the air for a moment and then vanished into the night.