“No, it’s fine. They probably wouldn’t sell over there either,” Rintarou answered. It’d hurt if the other man ended up asking why he was even renting a shelf, but he didn’t want to go so far as to steal someone else’s rightful spot.
Arms crossed, Keiichi stared down at the books on the work cart, asking which ones Rintarou had brought in to stock that day. In response, the student took the books he’d brought out of their paper bags and lined them up on the cart.
“None of them are anything special,” he said, intending to sound modest about his choice of books, but…
“So they’re nothing special, huh? That’s why they won’t sell,” Keiichi concluded with a sigh. The polite tone he’d been using until then vanished.
Unable to read the man’s emotions in his gaze, Rintarou’s words got stuck in his throat.
“Why’d you bring these books?” Keiichi asked.
“Huh? Why? Because I thought someone might want them,” Rintarou replied.
“And who would that be?”
The university student went silent at Keiichi’s calm probing.
“Well then, what sort of person did you imagine picking up this book when you decided to bring it in?” Keiichi continued.
The reason Rintarou couldn’t reply despite wanting to wasn’t due to the fact that he was being put on the spot for an answer. It was because he didn’t actually have an answer.
“If you want to sell books here,” Keiichi started, picking Sumi up from where she’d silently approached him, “you should only stock books you have an attachment to. You can tell from looking at a shelf whether they’ve just stocked whatever books they’ve finished reading, or if they’ve stocked ones they want other people to read too.”
“Can people really tell?”
“I can, at least,” the man said finally.
Hearing Keiichi say that so resolutely, Rintarou couldn’t bring himself to put out the books he’d brought that day. As he stood there silently, the other man pointed at the photobook the student had brought.
“Ah! That one is…” Rintarou finally remembered that putting the photobook out was the reason he’d come to Frère that day in the first place. “I wanted the lady who bought one of my books a bit ago to get it. It’s part of a series, and this second volume here is my favorite. This is the only book here I’m attached to.”
The words flowed out without any pause. When Rintarou stated that proudly, Keiichi smiled for the first time.
“I see. Then you wouldn’t want anyone but her buying it.”
“But stocking a book for one single customer in particular is no good from a business standpoint, is it? And it’s not like the other shelf owners would know what’s going on if someone came in and told them they were the person a book was on hold for,” Rintarou said.
“Then how about you do something so that person knows it’s for them without writing it straight out?” Keiichi suggested, giving Sumi a gentle pet on her head before lowering her back to the floor. “Let me show you a good way to do that,” he continued, staring straight at Rintarou.
Once Rintarou got home, he opened his desk drawer. Pulling a simple, lined pad of Japanese paper out, he placed it beside the photobook. He’d brought it home for now after hearing Keiichi’s advice. He was going to write out his impressions of the book.
On his first attempt, he miswrote a kanji you’d learn in the lower grades of elementary school while trying to write the title. On his second attempt, he’d tried to write carefully but ended up accidentally skipping a character in the author’s name, which meant he immediately had to go on to attempt three.
“Damn, my writing is so bad… I’m always typing my stuff with a keyboard rather than writing it by hand. Was handwriting always this difficult?”
His hands were shaking from nerves, and his letters were warping. At the rate he was going, he’d go through his whole pad just from rewriting.
“Okay, wait, just calm down. There’s no way I’m getting this written in one pass, anyway.”
Deciding to write a rough draft to decide where he’d write what, Rintarou pulled out some of the paper he had for writing his reports. He read through the photobook again. He then pulled a poetry anthology off of his shelves, wanting to write something smart. It was supposed to have given him some inspiration, but time just kept on passing while his mind stayed empty.
There was a meow behind him—Chiyo was crying, despite the fact that it wasn’t mealtime.
“Okay, okay.”
Getting in the way when you were trying to work was a special skill cats possessed.
Standing up from his chair, Rintarou crouched down beside where Chiyo lay lounging on the hammock. He stared at his bookshelves while petting her back, only for her to quickly sink her claws into his arm. The spotted cat then slowly stood up and left the room. He could hear the light pitter-patter of her feet going down the stairs.
“Why, Chiyo-san?”
While Rintarou was rubbing his arm, Kimiko called up to him from the first floor. He stuck just his head out of his doorway and yelled, “What?” back.
“We’re eating out tonight. You’re coming too, right?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m fine. You guys go without me.”
“Why? We were going to go to that place you love, the spot with the delicious xiaolongbao buns near the Shinjuku West Exit.”
“I’m fine. I’m not going,” he repeated. He had other things he needed to worry about right now.
“Do you have a shift at your part-time job?”
“No. I just have something I need to do, so you two go by yourselves.”
“Should we get sushi then?”
Rintarou wilted. What they were going to eat wasn’t the problem. How many times would he have to repeat that he wasn’t coming before she gave up?
Niimi had apparently been close by, because he heard him say something. He must have convinced Kimiko to back off, because he heard the living room door close afterward.
First things first. He had to write out his impressions on the photobook and then return to Frère to put his books back out. His shelf was currently empty, so he wanted to get back to the store within the day if possible.