Chapter 21: Daylight

The offer came on a Thursday, at ten in the morning, in a shop that smelled of ink.

It was a narrow paper shop under the Koenji railway arches, with brushes in jars and sheets of washi hung in racks to the ceiling.

The owner was an old man in a wool vest who had known Fumie for thirty years.

He had read the name on her resume twice.

"Four days a week, ten to five," he said. "You'd sell paper and brushes. You'd leave at five."

"I'd like to."

"You'd earn a third of what you earned before."

"I know."

"Can you live on that?"

Nanami thought of the flat that cost nothing.

She thought of the loan she would now pay herself, a little each month.

She thought of a woman upstairs who had never asked her to stay late.

"I can," she said. "I'd like to start on Monday."

She walked home along the tracks with her hands in her pockets, and could not stop smiling.

By noon she was in 202 with the door locked and her coat on the floor.

Ria was sitting on the kotatsu, in her cream cardigan, with a ledger open on her knee.

She looked up.

"You have a face on," she said.

"I have a job. I picked it myself."

Ria put the ledger down very carefully.

"Tell me everything. Tell me what you did well."

"I said I could live on a third of my pay. I said it without shaking."

"Good Nanami," said Ria, and slid off the table.

The window was open.

Nanami had opened it that morning for the air, and the persimmon tree stood bare outside with three orange fruit left at the top.

Noon sunlight fell across the tatami in a long clean block, and the cold air smelled of dry leaves.

Ria knelt in the middle of the sun and held out her hand.

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