“But, it looks like he started going out with another girl right away. And that girl...is my best friend. I found out the other day.” Yeah, that girl was my best friend...or at least, I thought she was. She was one of the first friends I made in high school. We did everything together, and I really loved her. She even told me, “You and your boyfriend look really good together. I’ll watch him to make sure he doesn’t cheat on you, so don’t worry about going to Kyoto.” Did she get closer to him after I left? Was she glad that I moved away? I can’t believe he’d go out with my best friend. It’s so frustrating. So painful. So miserable.
I didn’t know what to do, but I wanted to go back to Saitama immediately.
“I see, so you wanted to rush back,” Holmes said with a nod.
Mieko smiled sympathetically, and said, “That’s understandable. But, what will you do when you go back?”
I clammed up. What am I going to do? I’ve asked myself that very question many times. “I...I want to see for myself. And I’ve got a lot of things to say to them! I want to tell them how awful they are, and that I’ll never forgive them! Because it really is horrible! It’s too cruel!” The dam holding back my emotions broke, and everything came rushing out. I never cried about it at home, because I didn’t want my family to worry. And I wasn’t close enough to anyone at my new school to talk to them about personal issues... I’d been enduring it all by myself, when really, I just wanted to scream and cry.
I slumped onto the table and cried loudly. Then, I felt a large hand gently stroke my head.
“Aoi, please look at this painting you brought—the one of the baby.”
Still sobbing, I slowly raised my head. The baby was drawn with gentle, curving lines. It was asleep, but it looked like it was smiling, too.
“Do you know about Hakuin?” Holmes asked softly, and I shook my head. I brought this painting because it looked like it might be valuable—I didn’t know anything about the artist.
“As I said earlier, Hakuin was a priest so renowned that he was compared to the likes of Mount Fuji. However, there was a time when he’d lost all his honor.”
“Huh?”
“When Hakuin lived at Shoin Temple, there was an incident where a daughter of one of the temple’s supporters became pregnant. The father interrogated the daughter as to whose child it was, and in a panic, she recalled that her father revered Hakuin and lied that it was his. She thought that he would calm down if she named Hakuin as the father. However, her father was enraged, and when the baby was born, he took it to Hakuin and shoved it at him, declaring, ‘You’re a horribly corrupt priest, getting my daughter pregnant. Now take this child.’”
“Wow... What did Hakuin do?”
“Even though the accusation was completely false, Hakuin took the baby without giving any excuses. After that, the people scorned him as ‘the corrupt priest,’ while he desperately searched for a wet nurse so that he could raise the child. The girl who gave birth to the child couldn’t bear to see this. Tormented by her sins, she tearfully told her father the truth. Shocked, he went straight to Hakuin to apologize. Hakuin merely said, ‘Ah, so this child does have a father,’ and returned the child without a single word of criticism towards the daughter or her father. Now, how do you think Hakuin really felt about this situation?”
I didn’t have an answer to his question. Hakuin was betrayed, falsely accused, and scorned, yet he didn’t defend himself and earnestly tried to raise the child. He then returned the child to the father who’d made the mistake. How did he feel about that...? Maybe he was angry at their selfish accusations.
Holmes gazed at the painting of the baby and said, “Perhaps the answer can be found in this painting?”
The baby seemed happy as it slept. All I could feel from the painting was “love”...
I gasped, and the tears came pouring again. No matter what unfair treatment Hakuin was subjected to, he would accept it and encompass it with love—even when things were forced onto him or taken away from him. I felt ashamed of my hatred and resentment and of my lack of forgiveness. Ashamed that I would sell my grandfather’s beautiful treasures just so that I could make complaints.
...But it still hurt. It was still unbearably painful. I couldn’t stop crying.
“Aoi, would you like to work here?”
“Huh?” I looked up in bewilderment at the sudden suggestion.
“You have a good eye for these things. Instead of selling off family treasures in secret, why don’t you work to earn your travel fare on your own?”
“B-But...”
“If, when you’ve saved up enough money, you find yourself still wanting to go to Saitama, then I think it’d be good to go and take the weight off your shoulders.”
When I looked at Holmes’s beaming smile, I felt something warm well up inside my chest. He was right. It was because I wanted to go back and give them a piece of my mind immediately that I thought I needed the money ASAP. I didn’t think I had time to work, and I overlooked a lot of things in my hasty, shock-driven actions. And now, it’s as though I’m being told that there’s a path prepared for me. I want to learn something here, under this mysterious man’s tutelage.
“Okay... Please let me work for you.” I bowed my head, and Ueda and Mieko both clapped their hands and congratulated me.
“Great. I was actually in search of an assistant,” Holmes said with a gentle smile.
I placed Hakuin’s hanging scrolls back inside the paper bag and bowed again. “Thank you so much for today. I look forward to working with you.”
“Likewise,” replied Holmes, and he bowed back.
“I’ll be on my way now.” I was about to leave the store, but I stopped and turned back, since something was nagging at me. I asked, “Um, why did you say that I have ‘a good eye for these things’? And how did you know where I live?”
Holmes chuckled in response and said, “The tea bowl that you stopped to look at earlier is called a Shino tea bowl. It’s one of my grandfather’s prized possessions.”
“What’s a Shino tea bowl?”
“It’s a national treasure from the Momoyama period—said to be a masterpiece that can never be replicated once lost. It would be valued at around sixty million yen.”
“S-Sixty million? Is it okay to put something so valuable on display?”
“This is a secret between us.” Holmes held an index finger to his mouth and grinned mischievously.
“But, I was also really impressed with that painting of Mount Fuji earlier. That was a fake, right?”
“Yes, it’s a type of replica called a reproduction. Taikan himself wanted more people to see his work, so he was very supportive of reproductions, even going as far as giving the creators the ink that he used. Since these works are recognized by the original artist, they have quite a bit of impact despite not being the real thing. I think that being impressed by it is another sign of your keen eye.”
“O-Oh. Okay then, but how did you know where I live?”
“Ah, well... I think you’ll find out soon,” Holmes said with an amused chuckle.
I’ll find out soon? Still confused, I gave my thanks again and left the store.
The sky was already growing dark. Sanjo’s main street was brightly illuminated, bustling in a different way than it did during the day. Well, time to go home... From now on, I’ll be working hard at this store.
On this chilly spring day, I felt a strange premonition—as though the events of today would shape my future.