“Ah-ha-ha-ha! Those avid reader guys have always had trouble getting along with others, after all! That’s why they can’t even keep the peace among themselves.”
The next place I visited was a boutique.
The merchants wanted some of the clothes sold by the designers who lived in this area, so it was time for me to visit the Fashion Block. On the whole, the block had a gorgeous atmosphere hanging over it.
As I was doing my shopping according to my shopping list, a clerk quickly appeared and began a one-sided conversation. Well, that part’s not all that different from a normal boutique, is it?
“Just the other day, they were having an argument, two fellows from the same block! It’s really astonishing to see. They’re all so antisocial, they can’t hold back their words when they don’t like somebody. They really are a bunch of fools.” The boutique clerk sneered.
The next place I visited was the Perfume Block, lined with perfume stores.
It was a street that had an elegant atmosphere and a lovely smell.
By the way, the Perfume Block was located next to the Fashion Block.
“You were diffusing your aromatic oils again, weren’t you?! Would you stop that? The horrible stench soaks into my merchandise!”
“Huh? But I’d think you’d be grateful to have the smell of my merchandise on yours?”
One store was selling scents, while the other was selling things to wear. Apparently, they weren’t all that well suited to stand next to each other, and the owners of the stores were having an argument out front.
As I watched them fight, I went into a different store to purchase some perfume that was only sold there, or whatever.
“Wow, they’re really going at it!”
As she handed me a box with my perfume in it, the owner of the store was watching the situation in front of the other shops as if it had nothing to do with her.
The quarrel between the shop owners continued to heat up. They had each other by the collars, and it was turning into such an uproar that other shop owners and even customers were stepping in to stop it.
“Seems dangerous.”
I gazed at them absent-mindedly.
Come to think of it, I was told this was a dangerous place, but—
“Are there an awful lot of those sorts of arguments?” I asked.
“Hmm? No, not at all.” The store owner readily shook her head and answered me. “That’s quite a tame one.”
I turned my eyes toward the arguing women again.
“Get real. No one cares about your precious clothes shop atmosphere!”
“You shut up and don’t come near me! Your perfume stinks!”
The two shop owners came to blows. And the other shop owners around them rained down abusive jeers and shouts of encouragement on both of them.
I’d thought the crowd was going to jump in to stop them, but apparently the other women were just there to join in the fight.
……
That’s on the tame side…?
I was puzzled.
The shop owner beside me mumbled as she watched the fistfight that was steadily turning into a feud between two blocks, “This is awful. With people like that around, everyone’s going to think all of us in our block are like that, aren’t they?”
✦ ✦ ✦
But looking back on the quarrel (and fistfight) between the Fashion Block and the Perfume Block as I toured the rest of the city, sure enough, I came to realize that their fight might indeed have been on the mild side.
The conflicts in the other blocks were terrible.
For example, in the Painters’ Block, two painters were showing each other their works when they started to create some friction.
“Wouldn’t you say this composition of yours is an imitation of mine?”
“No, no, you’re the imitator.”
“What did you say?”
“Hmm? Looking for a fight?”
Though it could have ended there, other painters who had come running when they’d heard the uproar started to give their opinions.
“I’m not interested in who copied who, but personally, I prefer this one.”
“Oh, no, I favor this one.”
And so the quarrel developed into an argument about the quality of the paintings. As a result, they left the painters at the center of the whole thing behind and started an all-out brawl. To make matters worse, people from different blocks started butting in.
“Hey! Your buddies are over there fighting, and it’s your fault. How do you plan to take responsibility for that?”
It was like a scene from hell.
My goodness, how frightening, I thought, and I escaped in a hurry after purchasing the painting I was there to acquire.
The place I visited after that was the Weapons Block.
“The owner of the shop over there is a cheat!”
Someone told me it had been proven that the owner of a certain popular weapons shop was passing off weapons she had ordered from elsewhere as items she had forged herself. Well, that’s a big problem! Understandably, the other shop owners, hungry for justice, heaped criticism on her.
And the woman who owned that shop was cute, which was one of the reasons why some of the other weapons shop owners literally shielded her, and fighting broke out among the weapons shops. Then, because they found the behavior of those men revolting, women from other blocks heaped abuse on them, and men from yet other blocks mocked those women for being jealous of the cute woman, dragging women from yet other blocks into the dispute, and it turned into a really terrible spectacle. It was a total disaster, as if the whole place had been set on fire.
“What do you think, as another woman, Lady Witch?!” the man at the weapons shop asked me. He was practically brimming with self-righteous indignation.
Wah, I’m going to get dragged into this.
“Eh-heh-heh, I really don’t know, eh-heh-heh.”
I pretended to be a stupid girl who couldn’t even understand the meaning of his question and quickly made my exit. Then, after I escaped from that dangerous block where all sorts of weapons were flying about, the next place I visited was the Brawny Block.
It was the last place I was going to go shopping that day.
“I see. We certainly do produce our own original muscle drink here on the Brawny Block. Those merchants of yours have very discerning taste.”
The place where I inquired was a weight lifting specialty shop…or at least that’s what the sign said.
The spacious shop was lined with specialty tools for weight lifting and filled with sweaty men and women in the middle of their training. I could sense their enthusiasm for their training by the fact that I felt the humidity and temperature rise by ten percent as soon as I entered the store.
I showed the clerk my shopping list, and he immediately brought me the item I was looking for.
When I’d first looked at the list, I hadn’t really understood what exactly a muscle drink was, but apparently it was just an ordinary smoothie.
“This is the secret muscle drink we have here.”
“What kind of beverage is it?”
“It’s a magic drink that wakes up all the muscles in your body.”
“Interesting.”
I still don’t get it.
“Just now, I bet you thought, ‘I don’t get it.’ ”
“You could tell?”
“Of course I could… The muscles in your facial expression are telling me…”
“Interesting.”
What are they putting in that drink?
“By drinking this after training, it has the effect of building up your muscles. To give you an example, I guess you could say it gives you a body like mine.”
As he handed me the shopping bag, the clerk struck a pose.
At that point, I was ready to hurry and leave, but there was one thing weighing on my mind, so as I took the bag, I also asked him, “This area is quite peaceful, isn’t it?”
I remember fights breaking out basically everywhere in the blocks I’ve visited so far, but as far as I can see, there seem to be no such scenes here in the Brawny Block.
All I could see were men and women single-mindedly dripping with sweat. They weren’t even talking that much.
“I see. You are a keen observer, miss.” The shop clerk smiled. His face was tanned a golden brown. “Look over there.”
He pointed at some men who were posing toward the back of the shop. I could see that their exposed muscles were glistening. I assumed they were wet with sweat after training.
“No, that’s oil.”
Oil, huh?
“So then, Lady Witch, after seeing that, you must understand?” asked the muscle-bound shop clerk.
“I don’t really get it.”
“That pose is called ‘side chest,’ and it’s one that’s mainly used when showing off the pectoral muscles.”
“My question wasn’t about the name of the pose.”
“Oh, did you already know that? Sounds like you’re quite a body building connoisseur.”
“No, I meant I didn’t have any interest in that to begin with…”
And anyway, what’s a body building connoisseur…?
If anything, I was hoping to hear what you had to say to the question I asked.
I put that intention into my expression and stared at the clerk. As if he was once again picking up on my emotions from my facial expression, the clerk said, “Just as you suspected, Lady Witch, this neighborhood is comparatively peaceful.”
Nodding, the clerk told me the reason.
It was a very simple and clear reason.
“Actually, the people around here aren’t interested in anything except their own muscles.”
Now I understand.