Chapter 7: The Box

Gautier went upstairs and came back down with a wooden box under his one arm.

It was the size of a bread crate, with a rope tied around it in a knot that had gone gray with dust.

"They gave me their things to carry up the mountain road," he said. "When I came back down, nobody asked for them."

He cut the rope with a kitchen knife and lifted the lid.

On top lay a man's wristwatch with a cracked face, stopped at twenty past seven.

Under it was a yellow-and-black keychain shaped like a snarling tiger.

Ryota picked it up.

The Hanshin Tigers had sold that exact keychain at Koshien Stadium for twenty years.

He used to sell secondhand ones at the shop for three hundred yen.

Under the keychain was a hundred-yen coin, dated the seventh year of Heisei.

Under the coin was a school notebook with a soft blue cover and a tiger drawn on the front in ballpoint pen.

"Nobody in this kingdom can read a word of it," Gautier said. "I've looked at it every few years for thirty years."

Ryota opened it.

The handwriting was round and fast, and the first line was in the same Osaka dialect his mother spoke.

My skill is Haggle. They laughed at me.

He had to put the notebook down on the table for a moment.

"What does it say?" Gautier asked.

"It says they laughed."

He read on, translating out loud, while Gautier sat across from him with his hand flat on the table.

She'd run a takoyaki stall in Shinsekai, under the tower, for nineteen years.

She was forty-four, divorced, and had a son in high school who never answered her texts.

At the appraisal she had seen the crown's side of the oath hang empty in the air, the same as Ryota had.