“Oh, Mr. Tojima.” Natsumi’s eyes sparkled. “What’s up? Why are you here so early today?”
“You know how it is. Things happen.” Shusaku Tojima pulled out a chair at a four-person table near the door.
Natsumi darted toward the back of the restaurant. “Dad, Mr. Tojima’s here,” she yelled in the direction of the kitchen.
“Shusaku?” Yutaro Namiki looked up from his cooking. “How come?”
“I think something happened.”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. It wasn’t anything serious.” Tojima was waving his hand from side to side in an extravagant gesture of depreciation. “You don’t need to pass on everything I tell you to your dad, Natsumi. The important thing is to bring me a bottle of beer.”
“Coming right up,” said Natsumi, taking a bottle out of the refrigerator.
“What was the problem, then?” Yutaro Namiki shouted from the kitchen.
“Oh, nothing serious.” Toshima waved his hand again. “A piece of machinery was acting up. We couldn’t do our jobs, so I closed up shop early.”
“Acting up?”
“One of the food freezers. It broke down.”
“A freezer? Again? Didn’t you tell me about one of the employees getting injured when one of your freezers broke down a few months ago?”
“It was a different freezer this time. We got in touch with the manufacturer; they said they can’t do anything till tomorrow. It’s a disaster. This is a busy time of year for us.”
Yutaro liked to describe Tojima as his “best bad friend.” Smoking, drinking, betting — the two of them had done all sorts of “bad” things together, going all the way back to elementary school. In high school, they had regularly ditched school to go to pachinko parlors.
Like Yutaro Namiki, Tojima had also taken over the family business. In his case, it was a food-processing business.
Tojima was in the habit of dropping into Namiki-ya for a bottled beer and a snack on his way back from work. He typically showed up at around eight o’clock.
Natsumi brought the beer, a glass, and an appetizer to Tojima’s table.
“As long as it’s only from time to time, it may be good for you. Overworking’s unhealthy.” Natsumi poured Tojima his beer.
Tojima grinned as he picked up his glass.
“Natsumi, my dear, only you would say that. My wife is more like, ‘You said you were busy, so what are you coming home for?’”
Natsumi laughed.
“She’s not joking. She’s deadly serious. I ask you, is that how a woman should treat her lord and master?” Tojima picked up a piece of the burdock root with his chopsticks. He caught sight of something and his eyes focused. “Ah, I see the poster’s ready.”
Natsumi turned to the wall behind her. “Yes, Ms. Maya delivered it yesterday.”
On the wall was an advertising poster for the local autumn festival, which was due to take place any day now. It was a photograph from the previous year’s parade showing a cluster of people dressed up as characters from fairy tales and children’s stories marching cheerfully along the street. The Kikuno Story Parade was now a popular event, and people traveled a long way to see it.
Ms. Maya was Maya Miyazawa. She was the daughter of the family who owned Miyazawa Books, Kikuno’s biggest and best bookstore. She was a director of the local neighborhood association and the chair of the parade’s executive committee.
“I can’t believe it’s been a year. Time really does fly,” said Tojima solemnly.
“I’m excited about it. Apparently, they’ve come up with a new gimmick specially for this year. The preparations are even more difficult than usual, Maya says.”
“Are you lending a hand, Natsumi?”
“Maya asked me to come and help, but only when I have the time for it. Last year, I was doing face painting for the kids, stuff like that.”
“You just help out? You don’t take part in the parade?”
While most of the participants in the parade were cosplayers from all around Japan who had gone through the official application process, a team from the Kikuno shopping district had the automatic right to take part. Last year, they had performed a tableau from the tale of Princess Kaguya. They had done a great job re-creating different scenes from the story: the princess being discovered inside a shining stalk of bamboo as a baby; the five princes who come to ask her for her hand in marriage; and her climbing into the moon envoy’s palanquin to leave Earth for good. Much to their relief, they were awarded third place. Since they represented the host district, everyone involved was determined to place in at least the top five.
“I’m not so keen on performance,” Natsumi said.
“Why not? You’d enjoy it. You young people have got to take part. Besides, Natsumi, we need a pretty girl like you to boost the beauty quotient. There was this fantastic performance some years ago. There was this enormous conch shell and halfway through the parade, it opens up and out pop all these mermaids. It was sensational—” Suddenly, Tojima broke off. He froze, his mouth hanging open and eyes darting to and fro. He realized he’d said something quite unpardonable.
Thank goodness for that, Natsumi thought. She had been wondering how to get Tojima to shut up. Pretending not to have noticed anything, she applied herself to rearranging the bottles in the refrigerator. When she glanced back at Tojima, he was drinking his beer and looking rather shamefaced.
A moment later, there was the sound of footsteps on the staircase and Machiko appeared in the restaurant.
“Oh, good evening, Mr. Tojima. You’re here early.”
“Yes, I knocked off early. A man’s got to play hooky now and again.”
“Well, you just relax now,” Machiko said, and headed for the kitchen. Looking at her as she walked off, Natsumi wondered whether her mother had overheard Tojima from the top of the stairs. She had probably waited for him to stop talking before coming down.
Natsumi had very clear memories of the parade Tojima had been talking about. It was the parade of four years ago. Natsumi, too, had been surprised when the mermaids suddenly emerged from inside the shell.
Saori had been so beautiful that Natsumi could hardly recognize her own sister.
A little before half past six, there was a clattering sound as the door opened and a customer stepped in. Even though Natsumi had her back to the door, she had a pretty good idea of who it was. There was one customer who always came at this particular time on this particular day of the week.
She turned around to see the person she’d expected settling down at the end of an empty six-person table.
Natsumi took him a cool towel to wipe his hands. “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” said the man, smiling and nodding. He had on a pair of rimless glasses. With his lean, hard physique, he looked younger than his fortysomething years.
“Would you like a beer to start?”
“Sure. And the usual after that.”
“The takiawase. Very good.”
Natsumi went back to the kitchen to relay his order. Then, she placed a bottle of beer, a glass, and an appetizer plate on a tray, and took it all back to where the customer was waiting.
He had taken off his jacket and was reading a magazine. There were some gorgeous 3D patterns on the page he was looking at. “Oh, they’re lovely,” gushed Natsumi as she put the beer bottle and the glass on the table.
“Aren’t they just?” The man looked rather pleased with himself as he held the magazine out for Natsumi to look at. “What do you think these are?”
“They look like pieces of paper folded into complicated shapes.”
“Good guess. It’s origami. The idea is to take one large sheet of paper and fold it with maximum efficiency into the smallest possible shape. It’s important that the process not just of folding it up but of opening it back out should be as simple as possible. Why do you think that is? The materials you’re looking at here are not paper; they’re solar panels for use in outer space. You load them onto a rocket in their folded-up state, shoot them into space, and then unfold and make use of them there. The Japanese art of origami inspired this technology.” After delivering this enthusiastic speech, the man looked at Natsumi to gauge her reaction.