Shiba’s face wasn’t perfect. His double-lidded eyes were of slightly different sizes and his full lips, perhaps a tad too sensual, left an unbalanced impression. But their exquisite incongruity, together with his tender shifts of expression, gave off an uncanny sort of sex appeal, like a female impersonator dancing in the Kabuki theater. The scent of flower nectar seemed to follow him around, and his voice was strangely sweet as well and made her ears hum. Mitsuri was no expert in shiatsu massage, but she was pretty sure that if she squeezed him, pheromones would start to drip out of him like water from a sponge.
When Mitsuri sat with Shiba in his office for her job interview four years back, she worried that she had come to the wrong store. It was hard to believe that the man in front of her was a convenience store manager. But their conversation was normal, and there was nothing strange about the job description. She definitely recalled feeling confused, trying to process all the different signals coming into her brain.
As it turned out, Shiba was a typical hired manager, no more, no less. She wondered for a while if there could be something going on between him and the owner, due to his exceptional personal appeal, but the Golden Villa Apartments building was owned by a man in his seventies with a loving wife, which seemed to rule that out. Shiba could come across as a bit of a smooth operator, but he took his work seriously. In fact, one could say he worked too hard.
Mitsuri once asked Shiba why he took the job. After all, there must have been plenty of work where he could profit from his special hold on people’s feelings. She wasn’t knocking convenience stores, but it did seem like a waste of his charm, which some might call a special skill. With a telling smile, Shiba responded simply: “I like convenience stores.” Clearly there was something he wasn’t saying. She glared at him, thinking there had to be another reason, but she hadn’t yet managed to uncover it.
After seeing Ayumu off, Shiba slowly turned and smiled. “Good work today, Nomiya, Nakao.” But in contrast to Ayumu, Mitsuri’s and Nomiya’s expressions didn’t shift. “Thanks. You too,” they replied. The one essential condition for working at Tenderness was some degree of resistance to Shiba’s allure.
“Mr. Shiba, you’re here on your day off?” Mitsuri asked.
The owner let Shiba rent a studio apartment on the fourth floor of the building. With work just downstairs it was an easy commute, but Mitsuri always thought it seemed too close for comfort.
“It’s almost time for lunch. I was thinking I might join everyone.” Shiba gestured toward the room next door.
“Huh?” Nomiya cried out in disbelief. “Sir, don’t you want any privacy? You’re there all the time. Now even on your days off?”
“At this point we’re the only ones that offer the Yellow Flag Lunch service. So I got curious about how it’s going.”
“Oh, right. It was someone’s suggestion, wasn’t it?” asked Nomiya. “Um, what was the name? Itako? Sasebo? It was one of the commenters, I remember that much.”
“Niseko. It was Niseko.”
The founder and chairman of the Tenderness chain, a man named Horinouchi, had set up a PO box for suggestions, and the idea for the lunch service had come from a letter from the suggestion box.
The chairman promised the customers their voices would be heard, and actually read every letter that came in. Among these, one “Niseko” was a regular. Niseko’s opinions were spelled out carefully, down to the most remote details, each time. Things like “Branch X in Fukuoka is next to a boys’ school, so they should stock more sports drinks and oversized bento,” or “Branch Y in Saga offers a lot of toys and penny candy, so the neighborhood elementary school students are happy,” and so on. Whoever Niseko was, it seemed that he or she must travel all over Kyūshū for work, since their local knowledge was so extensive. This Niseko had written a letter asking if they knew of a movement called the “Yellow Flag Campaign.”
The original Yellow Flag Campaign was a program for seniors, in which people who lived alone hung a yellow flag from morning to evening on their balconies or rooftops—somewhere easy to see from outside—so their neighbors would know they were okay. If a flag wasn’t raised or lowered at the appointed time, someone who noticed the irregularity could visit the home and make sure its occupant was safe.
“Of course hanging a yellow flag is all well and good,” wrote Niseko, “but it also creates a risk: a person of ill intent may see the flag, and learn that the house is home to an older person on their own. If a person picked up a box lunch every day instead of hanging a flag, the risk would be reduced, plus they would have an additional benefit as well: deeper social interaction.”
The chairman was quite taken with this idea, and the Mojikō branch was selected for the trial program. On his orders, Shiba quickly made the rounds of the building’s residential floors, knocking at every door. Naturally, he signed up quite a few participants, far exceeding the minimum specified by headquarters, and they began to plan. The trial launched smoothly, with no major issues, and had grown to the point where it was slated to expand to other locations at the end of the year.
Mitsuri figured that since Shiba had put so much effort into getting everything up and running smoothly, he’d be ready for a break, but he still hung out with the seniors and acted as a conversation partner, even during his free time.
Nomiya was put out by the attention the letters received from the chairman. “Doesn’t it bug you that he calls Niseko his counselor?” he asked Shiba, looking annoyed. “You do all the real work.” But Shiba just smiled.
The women gathered around Shiba, blushing like young girls. He smiled at each one in turn and said, “Shall we go next door? If we stay here we’ll bother the other customers.”
“Yes, yes!” said the ladies, in their sweetest voices. “Mrs. Nakao, may we have the ladies’ bento lunches, please?”
“Yes, of course.”
Mitsuri took the check sheet and gave a quick scan of the ladies’ faces. As she checked them off the list, she listened to their chatter as they filed into the adjoining room. —Will reservations be open soon for summer eel? I’m going to order two. —Really? I’m getting five, myself. I’ll give a few to my daughter and her husband. —Oh, Mrs. Kimoto, is it okay to order that many? —Well, we’re getting eight, I think. —Dearie, you’ll eat with us, won’t you?
“That’s our Phero-Manager,” Mitsuri said under her breath. It looked like sales would be good again, if things kept on like this. She giggled as the door melody rang out once more, and glanced over as a man lumbered slowly in.