Chapter 4: Fourth Floor

Nanami worked until six on Saturday, and Iwase did not look up once.

She got home with her feet aching and found a folded paper crane on her doormat.

Inside the crane, in careful brush writing, were seven words.

"Fourth floor. The bath is hot. Bring nothing."

She stood in the hallway with the crane in her palm and her heart going.

Then she climbed two flights of stairs in her work flats and knocked on the door of 401.

It opened before her knuckles touched it.

Ria stood in the doorway in a thin white cotton robe, with her hair twisted up on her head in a pin.

Behind her, the whole top floor of Tsukimi-so opened out, wooden and warm and lit by paper lanterns.

It was one enormous room with old tatami and a wall of shelves full of ledgers.

Ria took her hand without a word and led her through it to a sliding door at the back.

Beyond the door was a bathroom as big as Nanami's whole apartment.

There was a tub of pale cypress wood long enough for two people to stretch out in, and it was steaming.

The air smelled of wet wood and something sweet and spiced.

"My bath," Ria said, and her ears were pink. "I have not had a guest in it since your grandmother. We took turns reading aloud."

"Obaachan came up here?"

"For forty years, on Wednesdays." Ria's smile was small and crooked. "She read me crime novels. She always guessed the murderer by page twelve."

Nanami laughed, and something in her chest loosened that had been tight since March.

"Will you undress?" Ria asked. "You are tired. Let me look after you."

"No," Nanami said. "Sit down, Ria."

Ria blinked.

"Here, on the stool. I'll wash your hair first."

"That is not in..."

"Clause five," Nanami said. "The tenant washes the landlady's hair. I'm making it up, and it's going to be law."

For a moment Ria looked completely lost.

Then she sat on the little wooden stool with her back to the tub, and untwisted the pin.

The wine-red hair fell all the way to the backs of her knees.

Nanami took her jacket off, kicked off her flats and rolled her sleeves.

She filled a wooden basin with hot water and wet the hair slowly, from the roots to the ends.

She worked in the soap with both hands, her thumbs pressing circles into the base of that small skull.

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