8

The next morning, the fair weather returned. Ragged clouds drifted across the clear autumn sky. The puddles glittered in the bright morning light.

“It’s not going to rain today, right?” Mr. Ījima said from the other side of the street, not sounding all that confident.

“I don’t think so, but . . .”

“If it does rain today, and I ever hear about Satoru going on a trip again, I’ll use every ounce of strength in my body to stop him,” Mr. Ījima said as he went back to getting ready to open. I couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.

Fortunately, however, the sky kept my fears at bay. Thanks to which, business was much better than the day before. From the morning, there was a steady drip of customers coming and going. I even sold a Hideo Kobayashi volume with a price tag of five thousand yen.

Then, sometime before noon, I had an unusual visit from a pair of girls who looked like college students. They both vaguely resembled each other, but the one in the flowery dress had an expensive-looking single-reflex camera hanging from her neck. They each carefully examined a single book, then asked me if I could recommend anything. After a great deal of thought, I suggested Tōson Shimazaki’s Before the Dawn. It seemed to interest them and they bought it.

As they were leaving, the girl with the camera said in a polite tone of voice, “Would you mind if I took a photograph?”

“Oh, not at all,” I said. The girl’s eyes lit up, and she immediately started taking pictures of the shop.

“Um, can I take one of you as well?”

I reluctantly sat down in the chair behind the counter.

Perhaps because I had too stern a look on my face, she said timidly, “And, um, could I ask you to just look the way you usually do?” But there was no way I could do that in front of the camera. For the most part, when I have time to myself at the shop, I sit there with a dazed look on my face. Getting my picture taken like that would just mean making a fool of myself. In the end, I made up some excuse and stepped back, and basically fled to a corner of the shop.

“To tell the truth, I’ve liked the feel of this store for a while, and I’ve been wanting to photograph it,” the girl told me as she clicked away at the shutter. The girl who came with her stood smiling beside her. They were cute and they seemed really nice.

“Wow. Is that right?”

“It’s got a style to it. And the atmosphere inside is really wonderful.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said nonchalantly. I guess you could say that there’s something special about the atmosphere inside an old wooden building. Though my original impression the first time I came here was simply that it was falling apart.

“But, there’s always, kind of . . .”

“A weird old guy who’s hard to talk to?” I said with a wicked grin.

The girl seemed flustered. “Oh no, not, I mean . . . well, yeah, actually.”

“I’m not surprised.”

I laughed out loud, ignoring the blank looks on their faces.

“You’ve been incredibly helpful. Thank you so much. We’ll be sure to read the book too.”

After the girl had finished shooting, she thanked me politely, and the two of them left the shop.

Things like that kept me pretty busy, and before I knew it, it was nighttime. After I checked the ledger and put the day’s take in the safe, I finished a simple cleanup and closed the shop. And in a complete change from yesterday, for some reason my uncle never even called once that day. Had he finally started to trust me? I couldn’t help feeling something was missing. In the end, I finished preparing to close, then went out so I could buy ingredients for dinner.

That night, Tomo was coming over. When I’d told her that I’d be staying at the shop again after such a long time, she said she just had to come by after work. Back when I lived at the shop, she came to see me many times and had fallen in love with the place.

Since she was coming over around nine, I used the time until then to prepare a dinner that I’d learned from Momoko when she lived here. Momoko still made lunch for my uncle, which meant that there was already rice and seasonings there.

It was a menu of pure Japanese food, passed on directly from Momoko: stewed chicken and hijiki seaweed, fried tofu, salt-broiled mackerel pike, miso soup with deep-fried tofu and turnip slices, and rice with red shiso. There was only one gas burner, so cooking took more time than expected. I was impressed that Momoko was able to make such delicious food every night with a setup like this.

At exactly nine, I heard a cheerful voice call out “Good evening” from the back door, and I went downstairs to welcome Tomo.

“Ooh, something smells good.”

“I’ve just been cooking. You haven’t eaten yet, have you? I thought we could eat together.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose . . .”

“Not at all. I have to eat anyway.”

Tomo and I first got to know each other and became close back when she was working part time as a waitress at the Saveur. The first time I met her I had a sense right away that we could be friends. When I told her that later on, to my delight she said she’d felt the same way at the time. Since then, we’ve developed one of those rare friendships that are hard to come by. There was something in the way she talked that felt calm and reserved. Her black hair was shiny and her skin was pale white. If you looked up the entry for a traditional Japanese beauty in the dictionary, the picture would look something like Tomo. And moreover, she was talented. She had studied Japanese literature in graduate school. I’d heard she was working now as a librarian at some college. Today, she was wearing a stylish black dress and a silver necklace with a bird motif. It struck me that she seemed to have an innate sense of what clothes suited her best.

With Tomo’s help, I spread out all the dishes I’d prepared on the low dining table. It was quite cramped with the two of us eating there, but it was the best we could do.

After Tomo sat down in front of the dining table, she looked around the room. “Ah, it’s been a long time since we’ve been here together,” she said emphatically. “It’s such a relaxing spot, isn’t it?” She was quick to notice the book I’d left on the windowsill, Hyakken Uchida’s Train of Fools, which I’d started to read the night before after getting into my futon, hoping to feel like I was going on a trip too.

“Oh, I’ve read this too,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

Train of Fools is a travel diary written in the 1950s. In the book, the writer sets out on a trip, with no particular purpose and no particular destination in mind. He just somehow finds himself leaving on a trip. And so the trip becomes an end in itself. There’s something funny about this man, who’s already past sixty, earnestly committing himself to carrying out a plan that simply popped into his head one day, though strictly speaking, the plan is both meaningless and pointless. There’s a richness to the writing; the sentences flow like water. Reading them, you get to savor the feeling of traveling, and as a bonus you get a glimpse of the customs and culture of the era.

“Hyakken Sensei is wonderful, isn’t he?” Tomo said with a smile.

I could tell how deeply she loved his writing by the way she’d automatically called him Sensei.

“He’s the best. And his companion, Himalayas. They’re too adorable together.”

“I wanted to be on the trip with them.”

“They’re so hard to please though. Don’t you think if you actually went it would be a disaster?”

“But they’re so cute—and they seem like pretty cheerful old guys,” Tomo said with a sweet smile. There was something so maternal in that smile that it startled me.

Tomo chewed her food slowly as she ate. For some reason, I always tended to rush impatiently through the meal, so this time I followed her example and ate slowly. She said she hadn’t eaten Japanese food in a while. She tended to prefer spicy food. She’d always been a light eater, and since she’d been busy at work she’d gotten in the habit of eating whatever she could throw together. Seeing her across from me breaking out into a smile and telling me how delicious it was, I couldn’t stop myself smiling in return.

We talked about a lot of things over dinner—about our jobs, about the books we’d read recently. We were always emailing and calling each other on the phone, but it was a joy to talk face-to-face like this. Even after the meal was over, we stayed at the table talking.

“But being a librarian is perfect for you.”

“A college library’s nice, but my real dream was to work at the National Library.”

“Oh, that’s the library that has every book that’s been published?”

“Exactly. But I flunked the exam for the job.”

“Really? What a shame.”

“The place I work now might not be big, but the library does have a collection of old and important texts. I get a thrill out of it. Still, sometimes the youthful exuberance of all those college students can get a bit overwhelming,” Tomo said. Her voice had a gentleness and a maturity about it. Even the way she used chopsticks was elegant—all that remained of her mackerel pike was the head and the bones. There was nothing to praise about what I’d left on my plate. She must have been raised well, I said to myself. In fact, I’d heard that Tomo’s family ran the biggest construction company in the area. Basically, she was the boss’s daughter. “It’s not as nice as it sounds,” she insisted.

“What do you mean ‘youthful exuberance’? There’s hardly any age difference between you and them.”

“I guess I’m no longer that exuberant.”

“Haven’t you found any college guys you connect with?”

With a girl like Tomo at the library reception desk, there were probably lots of students who were crazy about her. I let myself imagine some male student who saw Tomo in the distance and fell madly in love. But Tomo quickly dispelled my delusions.

“No, not at all. But what about you? Are things going well with Wada?”

“Um, yeah, I guess,” I said, flustered to find myself the focus of the conversation.

Right at that moment, my phone chimed like I’d timed it perfectly. I looked and saw it was a text from Wada. Would I mind if he visited me at the shop for a little bit? He was about to call it a day and leave the office.

“Wada says he wants to come over. Is that okay?”

“Absolutely, sure. I want to meet him.”

I’d talked to Tomo a lot about Wada, but the two had never met. So, it seemed like a good opportunity. Let’s invite him over. Although the room was too small for three people.

Tomo’s here, I said, but come over.

Less than ten minutes later, we heard a voice shout “Hey!” from outside the window.

“Welcome,” I said to Wada, who had just made it up the stairs and come into view.

“Good evening. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Tomo said, with a huge smile on her face.

“Oh, Miss, um, Ms. Tomo, I’ve heard so much about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you as well.” Wada bowed quickly to Tomo.

“You don’t need to call her ‘Miss,’” I said laughing, but in response to Wada’s earnestness, Tomo straightened her posture and bowed in return.

“No, the pleasure is all mine.”

“Wada, you already had dinner, right? I’m sorry. We ate everything. If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve prepared a plate for you.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I’m heading home in a bit.”

Wada seemed restless for some reason. He was sitting there in a formal posture in one corner of the room. When I asked him why, he said he was just excited because it was his first time coming to the second-floor room.

“But it seems wrong to barge in and have a look around without the owner’s permission.”

It seemed like he was trying desperately to suppress his urge to lick every surface in the room.

“You say that, but then you came over anyway, didn’t you?” I said, astounded.

“I let my curiosity get the better of me. But I was wrong to cross that final line. One mustn’t give in to passion at the cost of courtesy. Moreover, there’s a high likelihood that Mr. Morisaki hates me.” There was a look of anguish on Wada’s face now, but he hadn’t budged from his stiff, formal posture.

“You’re just as funny as Takako said you were.”

“Right?”

We nodded our heads in agreement as we struggled desperately to keep from laughing.

“What? What’s funny about me?” Wada asked earnestly, in another display of how serious he was by nature.

We couldn’t take it anymore, and the two of us finally burst out laughing.

It was a lively night, a complete change from the night before.

When it was nearly time for the last train of the night, Tomo had to leave, and Wada decided to leave with her. I wanted to get a little air too, so I went with them part of the way.

After we said goodbye to Tomo at the entrance to the subway, I immediately turned to Wada and asked him what his impression of her was. “Tomo’s wonderful, isn’t she?”

“Oh, sure she is.”

Deep down, I had been nervous about how Wada would respond to meeting Tomo, but mostly he just seemed indifferent. On the one hand, I was relieved, but I was also disappointed that he hadn’t quite seen how wonderful she was. I was proud to call her my friend. Why couldn’t he see how charming she was? It irritated me.

Wada, however, kept talking and looking rather confused. “It’s just that she . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, but it’s like she’s there, but she’s not really there.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe she’s the kind of person who’s used to being alone. Or rather, it’s like she’s the kind who prefers to remain alone.”

“You think so? I don’t get that sense from her at all.”

What Wada had said was so unexpected, I could hardly grasp it.

I’d always thought that Tomo was the kind of cheerful girl that anyone would love.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s her way of protecting herself. I’m not sure how to describe it. It might be because I can be like that myself that I was able to pick up on it. It’s like the moment we laid eyes on each other, I had a sense she and I were the same type of person. I don’t know. It’s probably just that she was nervous meeting me for the first time. Sorry. Forget I said anything.”

As I listened to him, I was less concerned about Tomo and more concerned about Wada.

What he was saying at that moment . . . I’d secretly sensed that he hadn’t completely opened his heart to me. I realized I was right, and it made me feel lonely.

Wada stopped ahead of the traffic signal on the avenue and said, “This is far enough. I can walk back from here by myself.”

“Or you could spend the night at the shop?” I asked, pretending I was joking.

“I couldn’t. That’s the owner’s . . .”

“That’s okay. I understand,” I said, cutting him off.

His answer was so obvious, I couldn’t even be disappointed. But the fact that the answer was obvious made me a little sad.

“Good night.”

To hide what I was feeling from Wada, I turned on my heels and ran back to the shop without waiting for his response.

The next day, I was in a dark mood right from the morning.

I sat in my chair, staring blankly, lost in thought. Ever since I’d gotten to know Wada, my brain had been split in two, with the affirmative side of me and the negative side perpetually locked in debate. This morning that debate reached a boiling point.

I’d find myself reacting to every little thing he did or said, trying to gauge the depth of his love, and I’d think, What an annoying, clingy person. And yet the moment I fell in love, wasn’t that what I became?

On this point, my affirmative side tried to convince my negative side, This shows how much you love him, to which, my negative side promptly answered back, This is further proof of what an annoying person you can be. Today, once again, my affirmative side had the weaker position, and my negative side was in top form.

“Um . . .”

I was suddenly startled to realize someone was speaking to me.

I looked up, feeling flustered, and saw that Takano was almost hiding behind one of the bookshelves, looking my way.

“Wait, Takano, how long have you been here?”

“I just came in.”

Checking my watch, I saw it was almost noon. He must have come by on his break from the coffee shop. Takano was wearing only a T-shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves and a character printed on it who looked like a disintegrating Mickey Mouse. For some reason, he dressed lightly even in the cold months. Probably because in his heart he was still a boy.

“Say something when you come in. Or just don’t come in so quietly.”

“I’m sorry. I did say something, but you had this look on your face like you were deep in thought.” Takano was scratching his head, like he couldn’t figure out why I was mad at him. I was embarrassed because I realized that I was taking my frustrations out on him.

After I cleared my throat and regained my composure, I asked, “Is there anything you need?”

“I heard from my boss that you’ve been running the store since the day before yesterday.”

“That is correct.”

“So, um, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“That’s why I was asking. What is it?”

“Well, it has to do with Tomoko Aihara.”

“Tomo?”

Was this déjà vu? We had definitely been in this exact same situation before. I was alone in the shop, Takano came in, mentioned Tomo . . .

That’s right. Takano was in love with Tomo. Intensely so. Back then, Takano had asked me to act as a go-between since I was good friends with Tomo. But just as they were becoming close, Tomo quit her part-time job at the coffee shop to find a real job, and after that, there were no more signs of progress in their relationship.

I sat there at the counter with my head resting in my hand. “Really? What is it now?” I said, totally indifferently. To be honest, my brain was already at capacity thinking about my own situation. I didn’t have any interest in what Takano had to say.

“Could you please not sound so obviously annoyed?” Takano said, like he was losing his nerve. “You don’t know what it’s like. Your life is one happy day after another.”

“Wait a second. You came to the shop to tell me something. Don’t just sit there and sulk.”

“I can’t help but sulk after what happened,” Takano said and laughed a little at himself. What a gloomy guy, I thought. He was sulking in such a terrible way that I found myself recoiling a little. It was probably safer not to tell him that Tomo had come over the night before.

“But can I tell you something?” Takano let out a sad sigh after he asked the question. Then he started to tell me this story.

Even after Tomo quit working at the coffee shop, they kept texting each other (mostly about books). Still, Takano was always the one who texted her first, so to avoid bothering her, he made sure to let enough time go by between texts. But about two months ago, he sent her a text for the first time in a while, and not only did he not get a reply, the text itself never even arrived. After that, he tried texting her dozens of times, but he always got an error message in return, and they never reached her.

“Which means she must’ve blocked my number? I mean otherwise my texts should get through, right?”

I couldn’t believe Tomo would do something like that. Supposing she had, did that mean that Takano had done something truly terrible? As a test, I tried sending her a text right then: Thanks for coming last night. See you soon.

As expected, a “transmission complete” message appeared on the screen of my phone. I held up my phone to Takano, who stared at it like he was about to devour it with his eyes. He was silent for a moment, and then he looked up at the ceiling and yelled, “Why!?!?”

“Takano, do you have any recollection of, say, standing watch outside her home, or maybe sifting through her trash, or, I don’t know, bugging her room?”

I’d heard a lot of stories about people who were driven to act like that under the strain of a love they could never share with the object of their affection. But Takano turned all red and denied everything.

“What makes you think I could have anything to do with a crime like that? My boss is always saying that I have trouble reading between the lines, but I would never do something so awful to Tomo, let alone anything like stalking.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s so odd for her to do something like that, that I had to check. There’s no way a timid guy like you would pull a stunt like that.”

“Exactly!” Takano said, standing up a little straighter.

It was at that moment that Tomo’s quick reply came back. It must have been her lunch break. The text said, I want to thank you for dinner last night. Come over to my place next time.

Delighted, I replied, How about next week?

Takano watched me with a look of despair in his eyes.

“Why? But why? Why only you?” he whined. There was an urgency in his voice. But no matter how many times he asked me, I didn’t have any answer for him. Still, as I remembered how pretty Tomo had looked last night, I felt sympathy for Takano. If I were a man, I’d probably fall in love with Tomo too. And if one day she blocked my number, I’d probably spend a week in bed. Yesterday, I could only think about my relationship with Wada, but now, listening to Takano talk, I was fixated again on what Wada had said about her.

“Well, Takano, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to look for a book.”

“Heh?”

It was such a random, off-the-wall response that I practically screamed at him. How could looking for a book have anything to do with what was going on with Tomo? “There’s a book that Tomoko wants. It was a really long time ago, but she was talking to the owner at the Saveur, and she told him that there’s a book she’d always wanted to get, but she’d never been able to find it. I was, um, listening nearby.”

“What book?”

“I think the title is The Golden Dream. I’ve forgotten the name of the author, but it sounded like an old Japanese text, I think, probably a novel.”

“So your plan is to find that book and give it to her as a present?”

“The fourteenth of next month is her birthday, right? If possible, I’d like to give it to her then. I don’t know that much about books like that, but I was thinking that you might know more.”

Despite what Takano had said, I’d never once seen a book with that title in the shop.

“Well, let’s suppose you give her the book, what would you want her to do?”

“I don’t want anything in exchange. It’s only for my own satisfaction. I’m not trying to get her attention or win her over or anything. If she’s avoiding me, then we can pretend it’s from you.”

What Takano said seemed laudable to me. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he truly was thinking of Tomo. He reminded me of that song I learned in grade school, “Donna Donna,” about a calf being carted away from its mother. I’m sure the look in Takano’s eyes at that moment was the same as the calf “with a mournful eye” in the lyrics.

“Tomoko probably just thinks of me as some guy she used to work with at her old part-time job, but to me, her smile is the reason I never quit the coffee shop. It’s what made me able to go on working. So I want to find a way to express my gratitude for those years. I’ll be satisfied as long as it makes her happy.”

“Okay, I understand.” After hearing what he felt, there was no way I could refuse to help him. “In that case, I’ll help you look for the book. With the two of us, it shouldn’t be any trouble. I want to make Tomo happy too.”

“Thank you so much.” And with that Takano’s expression finally brightened a tiny bit.

That night, my aunt and uncle stopped by to check on things a little before I closed the shop. It would’ve been better for them to have gone straight to their home in Kunitachi, but my uncle couldn’t help himself. I proudly informed him that there had been absolutely no problems at the shop. Thanks to the effects of the hot spring, Momoko’s skin was even more lustrous than usual. “It was really fun,” she said as she handed me a gift box of hot spring steamed buns. My uncle, however, was standing nearby, looking gloomy.

“That reminds me. You stopped calling after the second day,” I said.

My uncle just mumbled “Yeah” in response. He looked a little unwell.

I was worried and looked to Momoko, who tried to explain. “It’s been so long since we’ve been on a trip. I think we’re a little bit tired. Don’t worry about him. He really enjoyed it.”

“Hmmm . . . really?” I thought it was a little odd, but I didn’t pursue the matter any further. If they both said they’d enjoyed themselves, then that was enough for me.

“Well, I can close up. Leave the rest to me.”

I wanted to fulfill my responsibilities right up to the end, so I had them go home first.

I had to work the next day too. My days at the Morisaki Bookshop had come to an end. I wanted to go on living at the shop, but instead I closed the shutter tightly and went back to my home and my normal life.