He wanted to examine it more closely, but the escalator continued its descent and took him and Shino to the ground level.
Shino pulled his hand as vigorously as ever and headed for the ticket gate.
“Aaahh…”
He had no choice but to proceed with painful reluctance, but he couldn’t exactly demand his master to stop so they could look at the poster.
Masamichi walked on ruefully but still obediently, checking inside his bag with his free left hand to pull out his prepaid card…
About thirty minutes later, the two were standing in a taxi queue outside Kyoto Station.
Not that they had been waiting in line for half an hour after exiting the ticket gate.
Perhaps because it was a weekday, there weren’t that many people waiting for taxis.
But before joining the line, Shino had insisted on stopping at a department store in front of the train station.
“Is there something you want to buy?” Masamichi asked curiously.
“I’m buying clothes,” Shino immediately replied.
Masamichi had assumed that they’d spend half a day in Kyoto and head home in the evening, but it appeared that Shino planned to stay another night.
“Staying in this suit all this time gives me what humans call stiff shoulders. I’ll buy you an outfit while we’re at it. Humans are creatures that give off a foul stench when they continue to wear the same clothes.”
With these irrefutable statements, Shino headed for the men’s floor, quickly picking out something for himself and also for Masamichi.
Masamichi was appalled by how efficiently Shino took him to the employee changing room, where they put on their new clothes and then asked a clerk to pack what they’d been wearing in paper bags and ship them home.
“We can pick up underwear at a convenience store before we go to an inn,” he said as they waited for a cab. He was dressed in a cardigan over a cut-and-sewn top and dark gray tapered pants.
“Oh, okay. That’ll be fine. Um…thanks for buying me these clothes.”
“It’s my responsibility as your master.”
“Maybe that’s true, but you even picked them out for me,” Masamichi said, humbled.
Shino replied, “Left to your own devices, you’d be too shy to buy something decent, and you’d pick nothing but cheap items. It’s quicker for me to choose. Do you have something against that?”
Masamichi frantically shook his head.
“Not at all! This is super easy to move around in, and it’s perfect for the weather we’re having. I wanted to get changed, so it feels great. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“Oh, never mind. Thank you so much,” Masamichi said with a pained smile.
We bought our clothes at the same shop, so they…sort of match.
That was the reason for the troubled look that had been on Masamichi’s face since he’d put on his new clothes.
Of course, Shino wouldn’t have intended to wear matching outfits—the kind that family members or couples would coordinate. But it was still possible that he could have been biased in terms of taste.
Masamichi’s chinos were a very similar shade to Shino’s pants. The plaid flannel shirt he wore over his T-shirt had the same blue color as Shino’s cardigan.
I know I’m reading too much into this, and he bought everything at the same store because it was too much trouble to shop elsewhere, but our clothes sort of match in a mysterious way. But, oh well, it isn’t as if we’re wearing matching couples’ shirts or anything.
As Masamichi’s gaze darted between his and Shino’s outfits to compare them, it was finally their turn to get into a cab.
There were more and more cars, similar to taxis in London, at Kyoto Station. The one that automatically opened its rear door for them was an old-fashioned sedan.
Shino got in first and briefly told the driver to take them to Modoribashi.
The young driver looked a little doubtful. “Modoribashi? Oh, Ichijou Modoribashi. Yes, sir.”
Masamichi got into the car next to Shino, and the cab took off once they fastened their seat belts.
“So, you’re going to Ichijou Modoribashi. Are you a fan of Abe no Seimei? That’s unusual; his fans who go there are usually women.”
Shino didn’t respond at all, so Masamichi responded to the driver without understanding what he was talking about.
“Abe no Seimei…? Ichijou Modoribashi?”
“I’m sorry, was I mistaken? Are you unfamiliar with the subject?”
“Oh, um, Abe no Seimei was a famous spiritual medium, wasn’t he? I saw a film about him.”
Apparently, the driver had begun to wonder what was going on with them, because he now looked relieved as he nodded into the rearview mirror.
“Yes, that’s right. Seimei Shrine was built on the site of the former residence of Abe no Seimei. Female worshippers have been frequenting the shrine for several decades, influenced by manga and TV dramas. It used to be a quiet and lonely shrine, but it’s magnificent now.”
“Ah… It must be very popular.”
“That it is. I don’t know about the real Abe no Seimei, but he’s depicted as a really cool character in manga and dramas. Seimei Shrine also makes various Seimei-related items… Oops, maybe I shouldn’t put it that way. They have various amulets and such, which are also very popular.”
“I—I see.”
“And the bridge across the Hori River, right in front of Seimei Shrine, is Ichijou Modoribashi.”
“Ichijou is the name of a street in Kyoto, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. It’s in the northern part of what was the capital at the time.”
“What about Modoribashi?”
“I don’t know about the origin of the name, but they say Abe no Seimei kept a ghost under the bridge way back when.”
“…Huh.”
Masamichi took a careful glance at Shino as he responded to the driver.
The specter couldn’t have missed their conversation, but his face was devoid of expression.
Maybe it’s a story someone made up during a later generation…
Masamichi wondered about that, but he didn’t dare to ask Shino about the Heian period in a cab.
In the end, Masamichi ended up listening to the driver’s idle chitchat for almost twenty minutes.
“Okay, here we are,” the driver said in a cheerful singsong voice, and they got out and saw a magnificent concrete parapet with the bridge’s name, ICHIJOU, and MODORIBASHI inscribed in large letters.
A willow tree stood by the bridge, which was the only tasteful part of the scene.
The bridge was much more modern than Masamichi had expected. On the other hand, the Hori River was modest, narrower than the walkway built along its course, and the current wasn’t very impressive.
Shino went to the middle of the bridge and peeked below it, and Masamichi followed suit.