“We’ve not seen him since, no.”
“Glad to hear it. Seeing him must have brought back horrible memories.”
“No.” Natsumi could feel her jaw clenching even as she shook her head.
The truth was that the mere thought of Hasunuma was enough to make her miserable. Now that he was somewhere in the neighborhood, fear rather than hatred was her dominant emotion; fear that perhaps he’d come back for revenge. Machiko, her mother, probably felt the same way, as she had advised Natsumi to go out by herself as little as possible. If Hasunuma was going to target anyone, she thought, he would target her.
Natsumi had no idea why Hasunuma was released instead of sent to jail. The anger and the loathing she felt for him hadn’t weakened, but chafing against the injustice and unfairness of it all was starting to wear her down. If the law couldn’t punish him — if that was an immutable matter of fact — then it would make more sense, and be less painful, to accept it and try to look to the future rather than looking back to the past.
If he wasn’t going to be punished, then at the very least she wanted him to go somewhere far away. She wanted to be able to forget that a man called Hasunuma had ever existed.
The report of a starting pistol brought her back to herself. The parade was about to start. There was a crush of people around them and they could barely move.
Eventually, they heard the distant sound of music. That had to be the first of the teams approaching. Everyone stood on tiptoe and craned their necks for a look.
Natsumi got up off the stool and tapped Yukawa smartly on the shoulder. “Professor, stand up.” She climbed onto her stool without removing her shoes.
Yukawa quickly did the same thing. “Using a stool as a stepladder: Now that’s a smart idea. This is great. I can see everything.”
He looked up the road over the heads of the people. A colorfully costumed group was slowly coming toward them, marching in time with the music. Natsumi pulled out a folded-up flyer from the pocket of her jeans. It was the program of the parade and gave the teams’ order of appearance.
“This must be the team from Kobe,” said Natsumi. “They came in second last year. Their theme was the Arabian Nights. This year it’s Beauty and the Beast.”
The team came close to their side of the road. First to parade by were the attendants, decked out as items of cutlery, crockery, and furniture. It was obvious that money had been spent on their outfits. The two main characters followed in the attendants’ wake. The costume of the Beast was magnificent. As for Beauty, not only was her ball gown splendid, but the young girl in the part was quite beautiful.
Up to this point, the performers had just been marching along and waving to the spectators. When they got to the center of the intersection, however, Beauty and the Beast started dancing together, while the household-item attendants started playing on their instruments. It was a famous scene from the film, and a cheer went up from the crowd.
“Fabulous,” exclaimed Yukawa beside Natsumi. “This is much more fun than I expected.”
“You see.”
“There’s just one thing, though.”
“What?”
“Copyright. This Beauty and the Beast has a striking resemblance to the Disney movie. I’m wondering if they got the proper permissions.”
“Really? That’s what occurs to you right now?”
Yukawa turned toward her, a puzzled look on his face. “What do you mean?”
“Well, timing aside, it is a serious issue. The performance this team put on last year, Arabian Nights, was an exact copy of Disney’s Aladdin, right down to the music. As far as I know, they didn’t get permission.”
“Did they get away with it?”
“It’s complicated.” Natsumi waggled her head. “The issue gets debated from time to time. Most people think that, strictly speaking, it’s piracy and it’s not allowed. On the other hand, this isn’t a commercial event, and this sort of thing is often permitted at Halloween. The municipal organizers decided to leave it up to the individual teams.”
“How does Kikuno itself deal with the problem? They’ve got their own local team, haven’t they?”
“Team Kikuno only puts on performances where copyright isn’t an issue — old legends, fairy tales, stuff like that. Or else things where the author’s been dead for decades and the copyright’s expired. Last year, they did Princess Kaguya.”
“And this year?”
Natsumi consulted the program. “This year it’s Treasure Island.”
“Robert Louis Stevenson, eh? That should be good. I wonder when they’ll be by.”
“Team Kikuno always brings up the rear of the parade. That’s the rule. The program says they’ll step off at around two this afternoon.”
“Two o’clock? Am I meant to perch up here till then?”
“You’re welcome to sit down and take a rest, if you get tired. After all, that’s what stools are for in the first place.”
“Indeed, it is.”
A series of teams then passed by. Many of the performances were based on popular cartoon characters and looked likely to run afoul of copyright law, just as Yukawa had said. Natsumi, however, preferred to believe that the original creators would just smile and let it go. The presentation of all the teams was polished and their enthusiasm tangible.
Natsumi felt her phone vibrating. It was her mother calling. Natsumi was startled when she saw the time. It was past midday.
“Sorry, Professor. I need to pop back to the restaurant,” Natsumi said. She had to shout because of the noise coming from an approaching sound truck. “I’ll be back here before two.”
Yukawa nodded and Natsumi climbed down from her stool.
There were already three groups of customers at Namiki-ya by the time she got there. Machiko, who was looking after them, frowned at her daughter, rolling her shoulders and sticking out her tongue in mock indignation.
The sound of up-tempo music filtered in from the street. There was a variety of tracks: theme songs from animated movies, nursery rhymes, classical music.
The customers came in an uninterrupted stream. From what Natsumi could make out of their conversations, all of them seemed to have a favorite team and only came to grab lunch after their favorite had passed by.
Natsumi was hoping to go and rejoin Yukawa around one thirty, which was the cutoff time for ordering lunch, but a customer came in just a moment before half past. She was a plumpish, middle-aged woman and seemed to be on her own.
“Are you still open?”
“You’re welcome to come in, but it’s already last order.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make up my mind quickly.”
The woman sat down and immediately ordered fried oysters and a few other dishes. The way she rattled off her order without even needing to look at the menu suggested she’d been there many times, although Natsumi couldn’t recall seeing her before.
Natsumi relayed the woman’s order to the kitchen, then told her mother. “Right. I’m going to rejoin the professor.”
The parade was approaching its climax. Watching a group of popular cartoon robots striding along out of the corner of her eye, Natsumi headed for the intersection where Yukawa was waiting.
The professor was standing on the stool, taking photos with his phone. His expression was so grave that it was almost comical.
“You look like you’re having fun,” said Natsumi, clambering up onto the stool beside him.
“Not so much having fun as learning a lot.” Yukawa pushed his spectacles higher on his nose. “All the teams are re-creating famous scenes from well-known stories. Naturally, though, everyone has different ideas about what the best and most famous scenes are. A few minutes ago, there were a couple of teams who had both taken the same animated movie as their subject but who performed two completely different scenes. It was really fun.”