“BOY, I WISH I COULD’VE GONE to that concert.”
“Do you now?”
“Real shame it didn’t work out.”
“No doubt.”
My name is Seigi Nakata. When this story took place, I was a run-of-the-mill college student at Kasaba University. At the moment, I was down in the dumps at my part-time job, a jewelry store in Ginza called Étranger.
I was supposed to have gone with my friend Shimomura to see a concert by a guitarist duo, but the show was canceled at the last minute. Some problem was discovered in the concert hall’s anti-earthquake protection, apparently. A little hole in an important section of a wall or something. The place could come down at any minute. Yikes. I didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if, by a stroke of bad luck, the wall collapsed in the middle of the show. It was a good thing the concert was canceled. Hopefully, the wall would be fixed soon.
It was the sensible thing to do. The safe thing. Safety first and all that. Yup, safety sure was paramount. It was so self-evident even a little kid could have accepted it.
And yet here I was, moping.
This would have been my first time going to a concert with Shimomura. I’d really been looking forward to having an opportunity to get to know him better. He’d mentioned a nice restaurant we could stop by on the way back from the show—grab a bite, shoot the breeze, and head home in a happy haze of how nice everything was.
That was how it was supposed to have gone. But for good, sensible, pragmatic reasons, our plans were completely and utterly trashed. Which really, really, really sucked.
There wasn’t anything I could do about it. Life happens, right? That’s what made it so much harder to break out of this endless slump—right in front of my kind boss, who had nothing to do with the concert or Shimomura. I’m so sorry, I thought. I was, when it came down to it, taking advantage of his kindness. His clipped, polite responses rang with tenderness, but it was past time for me to snap out of this funk. I forced myself to smile and brought my hands up to mouth level in a cheery gesture.
“Just kidding!” I forced myself to laugh. “Sorry about that. There’s nothing that can be done about it, so I should quit moping. Time to think of something fun instead! Instead of the concert—yeah, exactly. To replace the concert!”
“With all due respect, I would not recommend embarking on that exercise.”
I almost yelped in surprise. I had expected Richard to go “That’s nice” or whatever. Too late, I realized my boss wasn’t just letting all my self-centered whining go in one ear and out the other.
He studied me with the same clear gaze he reserved for customers. “The word replace carries a curious nuance. There is a subtle difference between ‘Give up on A in favor of B’ and ‘Choose B due to a lack of A.’ What you are proposing is similar to ‘Use B as if it were A,’ is it not?”
My head swam with the letters of the alphabet. Uh…
Richard was talking about definitions. Let’s start there. It was easy to grasp “Give up on A in favor of B.” Forget miso ramen and go for shio, right? That sort of thing happened all the time. As for “Choosing B because of a lack of A”—I got that, too, sure. If there was no miso ramen, shio would do in a pinch.
But what about using B as if it were A? How did that work with my ramen metaphor? After all, miso ramen and shio ramen were fundamentally different dishes. Saying they were all just ramen was a good way to get beaten up by ramen supremacists. It was just illogical. There were too many key differences. That was as true for ramen as it was for anything else.
What if I used a gemstone analogy? This was like passing off zircon as diamond or peridot as emerald. So…fraud?
Every gemstone had its differences, I thought, as I looked Richard in the eye. He must have seen my inner distress, because his expression softened.
“I see you understand.”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“There is no such thing as a perfect replacement. No two stones in all the world are alike.”
“…Yeah, I agree.”
“You must understand—I am not telling you to quell your displays of disappointment as, blessedly, we do not have any customers at present. You might say I play the role of a mentor of sorts in your life. Should you wish to get anything off your chest, you are perfectly welcome to do so now.”
“Does that mean I can whine as much as I want here?”
“Unless you have a more suitable location in mind, in which case I suggest you direct your distress there. However, I do not mind if you wish to vent your feelings to me.”
“…Is this a thinly veiled way to call me pathetic?”
“Nonsense. In Japan, is there not a cultural practice to mourn that which never came to be? I find the practice quite fascinating and noble.”
Mourning the intangible? Could one even mourn a concert? I had never heard of this concept before, and it sounded kind of inappropriate to me. But just then, it hit me, and everything made sense. I wouldn’t be mourning the concert. The memorial was for…
“…It’s too bad I couldn’t go.”
“Certainly.”
“It wasn’t just the concert. I was looking forward to the whole happy atmosphere. I’m not a superfan of the artists or anything—honestly, my pal Shimomura knows them better than I do. But I liked hearing him talk about them. I was looking forward to getting together with a bunch of strangers and letting our emotions run high over a shared experience. Listening to music with lots of people isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence, right? Really, the anticipation was the best part.”
“You certainly know how to make the most out of an experience. Very thrifty of you.”
“Is that meant as a compliment?”
“But of course. My apologies. Perhaps I worded it a tad impersonally.”
“No, don’t worry. I’m an economics major. I like that kind of thing.”
Richard made a slightly odd face. He frowned at me in concern?—Are you sure?—and I couldn’t help but grin. In the same way that looking at pretty things made me feel better, Étranger was an oasis for the soul. After all, Richard was always there, and he was always gorgeous.
“Maybe it is because I like getting the most bang for my buck. Once I lost the target of all my excitement, I didn’t know what to do with it. The thought of discarding it made me feel kind of guilty, like it would be going to waste, but I also felt like there wasn’t anything else I could do. Your suggestion of a memorial service was just the thing I needed to get my head on straight.”
“If so, then I suppose my conjecture proved correct.”
“Ooh! Get a load of that, folks. Now that’s something a mystery-solving jeweler would say.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware you were interested in becoming a variety show host.”
“Huh? You watch variety shows, Richard?”
Richard said nothing.
“Do you?”
“Purely to learn more about Japanese culture.”
The look in his eyes radiated disappointment. His voice was as chilly as a knife made of ice, and his smile was perfectly heartless. It told me Seigi Nakata was about to be sliced in two. I decided to drop the topic instead of swinging my baseball bat at this proverbial hornet’s nest.
Instead, I smiled brightly. It wasn’t a fake smile this time, either. “Thanks, Richard.”
He said nothing again.
“I mean it. I’m an only kid, so I’ve never been able to talk things through with a brother before. If I had an older brother…I bet it’d be just like this. Boy, do I feel great. Richard, remind me—do you have any siblings?”
“Our next customer will be here momentarily. Tea.”
“You got it.”