By 5:30 p.m. I could hardly even feel my legs. I was officially beat. The multiple breaks they’d given us hadn’t made much difference; this was much harder than I was prepared to work. I wasn’t sure if I was getting paid for this or not yet, but it was definitely the sort of extended manual labor that I should have gotten paid for doing. I went searching for Hayase, hoping to ask her if I could be let off the hook a few minutes before six o’clock, when out of nowhere, I felt something warm and metal pressed up against my cheek. It was Hayase, surprising me with a can of hot coffee.
“Good hustle out there,” she said. “Here, take this. You’ve earned it.”
“Thanks,” I said, accepting the warm beverage. “So listen, um… I’m really sorry to bail on you like this, but I should probably be heading home soon…”
“Sure, no problem. I was just about to tell you you’re free to go, actually. But come around back with me for a few minutes and drink that coffee first, will ya? I wanted to give you a little token of my gratitude before you leave.”
A token of gratitude, eh? What might that be?
I was pretty intrigued, so I followed Hayase around to the back of the booth, where I immediately plopped down on the ground to give my weary legs a rest. I cracked open the coffee can and poured the warm liquid down my throat. It had the perfect amount of sweetener, and to my parched throat it tasted like the nectar of the gods themselves. After I’d downed almost half the can in one gulp, Hayase hunkered down and took a seat beside me.
“You really came in clutch today, Funami,” she said. “You hardly made any mistakes at all, and you’re a damn quick learner, besides. You wouldn’t happen to be interested in working at my family’s liquor store after you graduate, wouldja?”
“Err… Maybe? Let me get back to you on that one.”
“Heh. Now there’s a ‘no’ if I’ve ever heard one. Don’t sweat it, though, I was mostly joking.” Hayase pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket, popped one in her mouth, and puffed it to life with the help of a long-necked barbecue lighter. “Whew… Looks like we had another successful year, huh? Hard to feel that excited about it when all the proceeds are going straight to the shrine, though… Oh, wait. You don’t mind me smoking, do you?”
“Nah, you’re fine,” I said.
“Okay, phew,” she exhaled, allowing herself to release the smoke she’d been holding inside her lungs. There was an awkward pause in the conversation after that, so I decided to take another sip of my coffee. As I did, I glanced over at her out of the corner of my eye. Now that I got a good look at her, I realized Hayase was actually quite traditionally attractive in spite of her punk rock exterior. I could see how a girl with her natural beauty could have been Akito’s high school girlfriend, though being the student manager of the baseball team likely didn’t hurt her chances either. I was wondering what their relationship dynamic might have been like when Hayase turned to look at me again.
“Well, thanks for all your help today,” she said. “You really did me a solid, and you sure did a great job filling Akito’s shoes.”
“Hey, don’t mention it… Wait, what was that about Akito?”
“Oh, did I not bring that up already? Yeah, he was originally gonna be helping us run the booth again this year, but then he wasn’t able to for obvious reasons… We were gonna be a little shorthanded until you showed up and offered to help.”
“Wow, that’s… Yeah, I had no idea…” I admitted. This revelation filled me with a lot of complex emotions. “You two must’ve stayed pretty close through the years, huh?”
“Nah, not really. Nothing like how inseparable we were in high school, at least.”
“What was he like back then?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Oh, man. He was the coolest kid in school. Like, pretty much celebrity status. Everyone looked up to him, whether they admitted it or not.”
“Yeah, for sure… I definitely remember that,” I nodded. Even I knew all about him back then, and I was the biggest loser in my junior high class.
“Oh, sorry, were you asking more about what he was like behind closed doors? Yeah, I mean, he was pretty much your standard teenage egotist, I guess. Very full of himself, extremely competitive and a sore loser at the same time. He did walk the walk, to be fair. Not sure I’ve ever known a harder worker than him.”
“Huh. Interesting…”
“Well, until his shoulder injury, that is.”
“…Sorry?” I blinked, turning to face her.
“Huh? How come you’re acting like you’ve never heard about this before?”
“I’m serious. I’m not sure that I have…”
“Man, you’re a weird one. We literally talked about it yesterday. You brought it up.”
Whatever she was referring to, it must have been something I hadn’t experienced yet. I waited for her to finish disposing of her cigarette butt in her portable ashtray before probing further.
“So how’d he hurt his shoulder?” I asked.
“Again, I already explained all of that to you. And like I told you yesterday, this stuff really isn’t fun for me to talk about, so I’d prefer not to have to repeat myself,” she said. Then she stood up, pulled a thousand-yen bill out of her wallet, and passed it down to me. “Here. I know it’s not much, but think of it as a small token of my gratitude. Don’t spend it all in one place, now.”
“M-much obliged,” I said. A thousand yen for a full day’s work? Seriously…? That’s hardly enough to buy myself dinner. I resisted the urge to let out a heavy sigh and simply folded the bill in half and slipped it into my pants pocket.
“Anyway, thanks again for all your help today. You really saved my ass. We’d be happy to have you back, if you wanted to help us out again next year.”
With that, Hayase waltzed off and let herself back inside of the booth. I had absolutely zero intention of doing the same amount of work again next year without proper compensation, but I did appreciate the few new tidbits of Akito-related intel. I’d never heard anything about a major shoulder injury. When did that happen? Sometime after I moved to Tokyo? For a pitcher like Akito, a serious shoulder injury could be enough to end his entire athletic career. What really piqued my interest, though, was the way in which Hayase had brought it up.
“Not sure I’ve ever known a harder worker than him… Well, until his shoulder injury, that is.”
This, to me, made it almost sound like his entire personality changed after the injury. I remained there on the ground for a while, groaning as I tried to make sense of it all. Then it hit me—I’d been sitting here far longer than I intended to. I checked my cell phone, and sure enough, only five minutes remained until the next Rollback. This was bad; I had to hurry up and get away from the festival grounds if I was going to test my hypothesis.
I shot up to my feet and guzzled down the rest of my coffee in one gulp, tossed the empty can in a nearby waste bin, and made a beeline for the exit, being extra careful not to bump into anybody as I ran. I was nearly there, and with plenty of time to spare, when I heard a voice say the name “Akito” mere inches from my ear. I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew I needed to get going, but my curiosity was too strong to bear. I turned around and saw two young men standing in line for yakitori skewers who seemed to be discussing Akito. I could afford to spare a minute or two, so I inconspicuously got in line behind them and eavesdropped on their conversation.
“Yeah, he still owed me a pretty big chunk of change too,” said one of the guys. “Guess I won’t be seeing that money ever again.”
“Aw, seriously? He swindled you too?” said the other. “I mean, I knew he’d run up some ungodly tabs at a number of bars, but…damn.”
“Wait, are you kidding me? That’s what he used my money for? Goddammit, Akito.”
“Well, I dunno, actually. Word on the street is, he got himself involved in some pretty shady organizations over on the mainland, if you catch my drift. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was in some serious debt or even getting extorted.”
“Holy crap, man. How does a guy like that go from hero to zero in no time flat? Yikes.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Akito, in debt to and involved with the mob? No way. The Akito I knew would never stoop to being such a lowlife. I found myself rooted to the spot, unable to stop listening despite how ludicrous it sounded. If what they were claiming was true, then I couldn’t help but wonder if it might be related to how he broke his shoulder. I decided to stick around and listen in on their conversation a little bit longer, but at that exact moment, I heard the six o’clock chime begin to play.
Uh-oh. Time’s up.
Hoping in vain that I could still make it out of the festival grounds somehow, I took a few steps back so that I could turn around—only to accidentally trip over the leg of another customer who’d just gotten in line behind me. We both went falling backwards in spectacular fashion. Immediately, I stood back up, turned around, and tried to apologize.
“S-sorry, I wasn’t paying atten—”
My breath caught in my throat. I realized then that I recognized the bright red, intoxicated face of the man on the ground in front of me. He was the very same middle-aged drunkard who’d tried to pick a fight with me right after the second Rollback. He growled in pain, then glared up at me from where his butt had hit the ground. This wasn’t looking good for me; at this rate, we would get into the same exact fight all over again. I needed to hurry up and apologize before—