“I can’t blame Mizuki for wanting to move to the city. She has a future ahead of her, after all.”
As she wandered whimsically through the empty streets of the residential area, she found a brand-new wooden signboard on a road lined with old houses. It said “Sumika Bookstore,” and an arrow on it was pointed toward a house with a tiled roof on the other side of the irrigation canal. There was a concrete block laying across the canal as a bridge, but the house itself didn’t have any signs on it.
“This seems to be the place.”
Emiko crossed the bridge out of curiosity. The entrance was a sliding door, but it had frosted glass in it, so she couldn’t see inside. Just as she was about to backtrack after worrying for a moment, she noticed a brand-new wagon next to the house, covered by a cloth underneath a camphor tree. She knew she shouldn’t touch anything without permission, but she was nosy, and when she pulled the cloth away, the wagon was full of books.
It had all sorts of different types. Picture books, historical novels, cookbooks… There were even some coverless paperbacks. On top of them was a piece of paper marking them as 200 yen each.
“So this really is a bookstore. Sumika Bookstore, hmm?”
Just as she was about to pull her smartphone out of her bag to look it up, the glass door opened with a rattle, and a woman with short hair walked outside. She looked like she was around forty, and she wore a boatneck black jersey shirt with wide-legged light gray pants, giving off a sophisticated air.
“Hello. Come in, if you’d like! This is a store.”
Invited in by such a bright voice, Emiko stepped inside. It was a small shop, and she could see all the way to the back from the entrance. The walls were lined with shelves that reached the ceiling, but most of them were still empty. The floor was covered with cardboard boxes.
“I’m sorry, were you still getting it ready?” Emiko asked.
“Technically, we haven’t officially opened yet,” the shopkeeper replied. “I was just so happy that the books had arrived. I decided to open up, seeing as the weather was so nice.”
The woman told her about how she’d had the house’s entranceway and parlor renovated to make it into a store. The renovations had finished two weeks earlier, and she was gradually building the shelves and putting out the books. Their official opening date was in a week. She handed Emiko a business card, on which was the name Ono Junka.
“I was in Tokyo until a while ago. Did a U-turn and came back out here to be an entrepreneur.”
She’d been born in Okayama City but graduated from university in Tokyo and gone on to work there. After she quit the company she worked with and went freelance, she came back to Okayama to work at her own pace.
“So you have another job, outside of the bookstore?” Emiko inquired.
“I’m a web designer. I figured I’d use this place as an office and sell books. But it isn’t like this is going to be something I work at in my spare time. I can’t do a good job when I’m always worrying about earning money, so I’m going to base my income on the bookstore.”
She went on to say with a brilliant smile that even if she didn’t earn much, she’d still consider the bookstore her main job. It seemed that she had no intention of quitting being a web designer, even if the bookstore got rolling.
“That’s amazing. There are so many different ways to work nowadays,” Emiko said.
“There are actually plenty of people working jobs they like while also working in another trade,” Junka explained. “Even so, I actually fretted for a few years over whether I should open a shop here.”
“It isn’t easy to open a store alone, after all. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t have known where to start, or who to ask about it.”
While nowadays, you could look up anything on the internet, there was just so much information there that sometimes you didn’t know what to trust.
“When I was still in Tokyo, there was this bar I would visit every weekend after I was finished with work. The bartender there was always so nice, listening to me. He’d casually introduce me to so many different people. If it wasn’t for those relationships, I might never have made up my mind. Connections are so important, even when you’re working alone,” she said softly.
“I’m sure that opening the store up today was another opportunity,” Junka continued with a smile. “So have a little look around. It’s all cardboard boxes, but let me know if there’s anything you want.”
Emiko went ahead and looked around the store. It was small, but it had a wide selection of books of all genres and for all ages. Among the books displayed with their front covers facing out was one of the novels that Mizuki owned. They had both newer, popular books and old books.
Lately, she hadn’t bought many books, finding reading ones with small text would make her eyes tired. But when she opened a paperback, she noticed that the text inside was bigger than it used to be. She decided to try reading something again.
She would have to tell Mizuki about this store. She would definitely be happy to learn that there was somewhere nearby where she could buy books without having to go all the way out to Okayama Station.
Despite it being a week from officially opening, the shelves right near the entrance were still empty. What sort of books were going to go there?