“So this is both a bookstore and a tourist info spot?”
“Yes. The store’s owner has had their hands in different businesses since he was a student. He said he was the one who made these flyers too,” he explained, eyes traveling to the staircase on the other side of the glass entranceway. He added that the second floor was for the owner’s company.
The flyers had the creator’s profile included on them. Sakurai Haruka, a restaurant consultant, born and raised in Shinjuku. They mentioned that other than restaurant management, he also managed a tourist bureau and bookstore.
Something that Satoko had noticed from chats with clients at the salon was that many people weren’t specializing in just one field anymore, instead working with a variety of things. When she thought about how the bookstore was owned by someone that curious, she understood why it had such a peculiar vibe.
Once everything had been picked up, the employee gave her a bow in thanks before circling around behind the register.
While she’d only intended on taking a little peek inside the store before going shopping for clothes, the more Satoko heard about the bookstore, the more interested in it she became. She slowly perused the shelves, starting from the entrance. She hadn’t been to any bookstores lately, much less bought any books herself.
She used to drop into one a few times a month to buy magazines for the salon or hair catalogs, but two years earlier, the salon had invested in tablets so that they could read the digital versions instead. Having lost her reason to go to any bookstores, she hadn’t read anything at all in a while.
I wonder what’s popular nowadays?
Each bookshelf had books of all different sizes and genres lined up on them. As she wondered about how they were all sorted, the employee grabbed a few off of a shelf and started putting them out on the tiered display platform. There was a book on job interview secrets, one of easy recipes for people who lived alone, the original novel that a popular movie from a few years earlier had been based on, manga, art collections… All sorts of different books.
One book slipped out of the employee’s arms and onto the floor. A fantastical foggy forest photo inside captured Satoko’s gaze.
“May I have a look at that one?”
“Yes, of course!”
After he handed her the book, Satoko began to flip through it. It was a photobook of foreign scenery. The cobalt blue at the end of a single path through a wasteland captivated her as she continued to turn the pages. The wind blew through her body, the blue sky painting over the bookshelves, and the building walls, spreading far and wide. She’d never seen any of the places in the photos herself, yet they all felt nostalgic somehow.
Satoko let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
Her first visit to Hokkaido had been on a high school trip. As she had stepped out onto the tarmac at New Chitose Airport, she felt as if the wind had called out to her, and looked up. She was shocked to see a blue sky with nothing to block her view, before looking down at her feet. The only thing touching the ground was the bottom of her shoes. It was the first time she realized that humans lived in the sky’s domain. She’d felt somehow floaty for the rest of her trip, glancing up at the sky a number of times.
Living in Tokyo, all you ever really saw was the ground or buildings. Even if you threw your windows open, you’d only ever see your neighbor’s home, and all that would catch your eye on a walk outside were the bright store displays you passed.
Back in Hokkaido, the sun rose from the horizon before staining the sky red as it sunk down the opposite side, bringing the night. The Earth’s natural rhythms had set her heart alight more than any other tourist attraction she could ever visit. And yet she’d somehow forgotten an experience that struck her through the heart.
Satoko took the book up to the register counter. There, the male employee took the price card out of it to show that it was one thousand yen.
“Huh? But the back…” She was pretty sure that the price on the back cover was a lot higher. “Is this secondhand?”
“Um, it’s actually my book, so it’s not really secondhand… Or wait, that does make it secondhand, doesn’t it?” the man said, scratching at his face.
What does he mean?
“I know I said the store’s owner was up on the second floor a minute ago, but each of the bookshelves here are managed by different people. It’s called a shared bookstore,” he continued.
“Shared bookstore?” Satoko had never heard that term before.
The male employee slipped out from behind the counter and headed to the shelves. Then, he turned back to her, pointing to one of them. “This is my shelf. Bit more like a box, though.”
Apparently, Frère was a collection of tiny bookstores, where every shelf was managed by a different person, each of whom paid a monthly fee for their shelf space. Those managers were called “shelf owners,” and they took turns minding the storefront. It seemed that the shop format was spreading quite quickly lately.
“Oh, I’ve heard of general stores who rent out shelves for people to sell their handmade goods. So there are bookstores that do the same thing!”
Satoko nodded in understanding, but the employee’s eyes widened in surprise, seemingly having not known that there were general stores like that.
“All of the shelves actually have their own proper names,” he explained. “They can be pretty hard to see with all the books in the way, though.”
There was a business card-sized sign stuck to the side of the shelf. His was called “The Hammock Cat.”
“Oh, the kitty!” Satoko exclaimed, turning back to look at the carrier, which had stopped shaking, seemingly because the cat had worn itself out.
“Um, would it be all right if I let her out now?” the employee asked hesitantly.
“Yes, of course.”
When she smiled back at him, he looked a bit bashful, sneaking up to the bag. The cat meowed, much calmer than before. She was pressing her face against the mesh. As soon as he unzipped it, the silky-furred cat poked her head out, looking at Satoko with her bright yellow eyes.
“Sorry about that, Chiyo-san,” he apologized as he reached out to pet her.
Chiyo knocked the employee’s hand away with her paw and jumped out in one smooth motion. She looked all around at the store, then guardedly began to walk.
“Thank you for teaching me about all of that, even though you were in the middle of taking my payment,” Satoko said.
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” the employee nodded, heading back behind the register. Once he’d finished ringing her in, he handed her a café menu. It turned out that the store had a capsule-type coffee maker, and customers who spent over a set amount would get a drink for free.
After Satoko placed her order, she headed over to the counter facing the Shinjuku Gyoen Park, sitting at a chair on the end. October would soon be over. The trees were changing color as the seasons crept closer to winter.
Relaxing in the warmth of the sunbeams coming through the window glass, she began turning the pages of her newly purchased photobook one by one. It might have been a bit of an exaggeration to say that she’d met the book, but it was one that she never would have found by herself in her entire life without coming here, with the warm spring breeze blowing outside and the sunlight surrounding the flowers blooming on the side of the road. The photos she gazed at entwined themselves with memories sleeping deep within her heart.
As Satoko soaked in refreshing new feelings, the employee brought her coffee over.
“This is a wonderful book. Really good!” she gushed, unable to stop herself from speaking to him. She’d never felt like this while looking at photos before. She didn’t know how to properly express the glee in her heart, only managing to repeat the words “really good” once more.
“Actually, I fell for that book as soon as I saw it too. It’s a complete coincidence, but it was published on the same day as my birthday, so I’m a little attached to it.”
“If you’re attached to it, then why did you give it up?” Satoko asked.
“Um, it’s because I liked the book that I wanted someone else to know about it,” he replied.
Satoko was shocked to hear that. He’d let go of a book he liked so that other people could discover it. She’d never even considered the possibility.
“I’d always thought that the reason people sold their books was because they didn’t need them anymore,” she murmured.
“There are definitely some books like that. I’ve got books I’ve left laying around because I had no room on my shelves and just kept forgetting about them, and books I bought intending on reading them but missed the right time, or series where I read one book and ended up buying a bunch of the other volumes at once… My house is just bursting with them.”