I don’t know any of the names. For that matter, my English isn’t good enough to even read them. Are these non-Japanese bands? I peek into the cardboard boxes on the tables; inside are a lot more record jackets, although they are a little smaller than the ones on the racks. Guess they come in a bunch of different sizes.
I pick up a few of them.
Here Come the Judge (Pigmeat Markham)
Superrappin’ (Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five)
…Still not ringing any bells.
I look at Cherry, only to find that he has pulled out one of the record jackets from a box. He puts his hand in the jacket and pulls out the contents, revealing a black disc—a record.
“Are these all records…?” Cherry seems overwhelmed.
“Is this your first time here?”
He has been working at Sunnyside far longer than me, so I sort of assumed he’d come here a few times before.
“The first time going in,” Cherry says, putting the record back in its box. I see. No wonder he’s in a state of shock.
“This record… I’ve listened to it the most out of anything.”
Mr. Fujiyama’s voice echoes in the dimly lit store. He is sitting at the counter, staring at that record jacket he always holds on to.
“Over…and over…”
He sounds really lonely. I walk closer to them. Cherry seems to think this is unusual behavior for Mr. Fujiyama. He slowly begins to walk over, and I follow.
“I…want to hear it again.”
When we get to the counter, I can see Mr. Fujiyama’s shoulders shaking.
“If I could hear it again…I could remember…”
“…Remember what?” I ask, bending my knees a bit to make eye contact.
“I don’t want to forget…but I can’t remember…”
It isn’t quite functioning as a conversation. His shaky voice makes my heart ache. He has this record he cherishes so much, and he believes that if he hears it, it’ll help him recall something. But he has no idea where it is, and he keeps looking and looking, but to no avail…
“I can’t remember…”
Tears begin to fall from his tired, downtrodden eyes. I find myself rushing to Mr. Fujiyama’s side, hugging him around his shoulders. When he looks at me, another tear spills out, and I almost start crying myself. He slowly holds his record jacket out to me. I fight back my tears and take it.
“Thank you.”
I stand up and examine it with Cherry, who has come to my side. This is my first close-up look at it. Having it in my hands, I’m surprised at its size. It is a square paper jacket about the size of two school notebooks. The front has a pink background with a white circle in the middle the size of your palm. Surrounding the circle, on the top half, is some text:
“YAMAZAKURA…”
The word yamazakura, or mountain cherry blossom, is written in a bold font. Is this the title…? I tilt the jacket a bit, discovering that the circle is actually a little uneven. I touch it with my hand.
“Oh, it’s a hole…”
The white circle is actually just a hole. It looks white because that’s the color of the inner cardboard.
I turn the jacket over to look at the other side.
“Aw, cute…”
Again, I can’t help but say it. The other side is a photo of a line of cherry blossoms and…a big electrical tower, I guess? But what draws my attention is the woman standing there. She is probably around twenty, with long, poofy hair, a flower-patterned dress, and an English-style flat cap. It must have been a windy day because she has a hand over the cap so it doesn’t fly off. She has this cute, kind of bashful smile, and the way her floral dress flutters along with the cherry blossoms in the wind adds to her smile. You don’t see this kind of fashion these days. It’s probably an old record—maybe this look was more popular a while back?
One more thing makes me curious. The woman’s smiling with her mouth wide open, and something really big sticks out from there. She has buckteeth. But she’s so cute, too…
I bring the jacket closer to my face to examine it in detail, as if peering through a microscope. Then my gaze falls on the side of the jacket. Something is poking out of it a little, a piece of paper about as wide as my little finger. I grab it and pull it out of the jacket. It is longer than I expected—as long as the jacket, in fact. It is a really flimsy piece of paper, cut into a strip that is meant to go around the jacket, it seems. It is folded, and when I turn it over, I see a part of the photograph from the back cover, along with a number that I assume was the price.
“What’s this thing?”
I hand it to Cherry. Some kind of bonus to go with the record? I don’t know enough about this stuff.
“Sakura petals, they fade on the wind without…”
Cherry’s voice is at a whisper.
“…a word of farewell.”
He is chewing through each word. I don’t know what he is talking about, but when I look sideways at the strip of paper I handed him, I finally understand. That sentence is printed vertically on the paper strip—Sakura petals, they fade on the wind without a word of farewell.
“…A haiku?”
The five-seven-five rhythm is clearer when Cherry says it, but he doesn’t answer the question. His expression becomes even sterner than before.
“Sakura petals, they fade on the wind without a word of farewell.”
Now he is speaking even more softly than before, almost like he’s talking to himself.
Something feels odd to me this time. The intonation of the word sakura isn’t like before. The first time around, it was sakura as in cherry blossoms, but this time it feels more like Sakura, his name.
Cherry still looks kind of gloomy; now doesn’t seem like a good time to ask him questions. His head is down, eyes closed, and he is totally silent. Around him is the same invisible barrier I’d felt when we first walked home together. I’m really curious about the “sakura” thing, but I can’t ask about it…
The small store feels stifling now, like it is caving in on us. I wait patiently for Cherry’s next words.
“…I’m gonna look for it.”
He says it quietly but forcefully, like he is releasing all his breath at once. Then he looks up and shows the strip of paper to Mr. Fujiyama.
“I’ll look for your record, too, Mr. Fujiyama!”