Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

about seventeen or eighteen years of age—with his one good eye that shone with a particular slyness. That face appeared in a commemorative photo that had been taken at the foundry in Hachinohe. Monoi stared at it, and realized with a bit of surprise, Even back then, I can already see a glimpse of the fiend.

The following morning, Monoi had Seiji cremated at the city crematory and, carrying the urn with his remains and the memorial tablet both wrapped in a cloth, he returned to Haneda shortly past two in the afternoon. On the glass door of the pharmacy, across the notice that the lady pharmacist had posted to announce the store’s temporary closing, the words In Mourning were written messily and ostentatiously. Before doing anything else, Monoi gave a bucketful of water to the wilted morning glories. Then he went inside, where he set the urn and the tablet atop the altar. He burned some incense, struck the gong, and joined his hands together in prayer. He gazed at the small altar, so crammed that it resembled the corner of the hearth in his birth home in Herai, where the seven members of his family had slept on top of one another.

Since he had only dozed a little the night before, Monoi took a nap for about an hour, after which there was a relentless stream of neighbors who came by, saying, “Who else passed away?” and “Let me pay my respects.” Monoi received them in his usual way, offering beers and glasses of cold saké, but with so much on his mind, he hardly listened to the nostalgic reminiscences of the old fogies with nothing better to do.

In the early evening, the owner of a neighborhood eatery came to pay his respects, so Monoi ordered two sets of grilled eel over rice, and by the time he found the right moment to slip away from the pharmacy on his bicycle, it was just after six. The sun had yet to go down. The steel door of Ota Manufacturing had been left open, though there was a closed for obon holiday notice taped on it. He found Yo-chan hunched over beside the work desk at the far end of the room, apparently sanding something with a file. When Monoi peered down at Yo-chan’s hands, he saw that he was beveling the edge of his cutting tool’s blade and the corners of a chip breaker. It was detailed handiwork that measured no more than 0.05 millimeters long. Monoi had taught Yo-chan how to do this ten years ago, recommending that he do it whenever he had spare time in order to avoid getting nicks on the tool blades, but back in the day when he had been swamped with work at the factory, the truth was that Monoi rarely kept up with it himself.

“Koh came by around noon,” Yo-chan said without even looking up. “He wanted to know what I think about you.” His shoulders wobbled a little as he snickered.

“And what did you say?” Monoi asked him, but whether Yo-chan never had any intention of responding or he had already forgotten that he had been the one to start this conversation just now, he just kept silent, moving the whetstone with his oil-covered hands. Even though work had slowed in the recession, Yo-chan was still at the factory at least twelve hours a day, and when he had no jobs to do he sharpened tools and milling cutters one by one, so that the equipment here was almost insufferably shiny.

“Go and wash your hands. Let’s eat this eel.”

“I’ll go buy some beer.”

Yo-chan went out and was back in about three minutes, setting three cans of Hinode Supreme and two to-go cups of saké on the work desk. Monoi laid out the bento boxes of grilled eel, still nice and warm, on the desk and the two of them toasted—Monoi with the saké and Yo-chan with the beer—and began to eat. Outside the open door of the factory, the early evening breeze had finally started to cool down.

Monoi still wondered just what Koh had said to Yo-chan, having apparently come sniffing around so soon after receiving his call last night.

“What did you tell Koh about this old man?” Monoi asked him again.

With a mouthful of rice, Yo-chan replied, “I said you’re between good and evil.”

“You’re probably right. Who do you consider a good person then?”

“The lady who cooked the meals at my institution, I guess.”

“Oh?”

“After we aged out of the institution, she would send each of us a postcard like clockwork every year, but it seems she passed away last month.”

Yo-chan took out a postcard from the pocket of his workpants and showed it to Monoi. The postcard had arrived the day before, judging by its postmark. It was an invitation to a memorial that would be held at the institution, and the woman, whose last name was Kimura, had apparently died at the age of sixty-nine. Monoi didn’t know what to think about this good person, a stranger who had died at the same age that he was, and he had even less insight into the mentality of the young man who was faithfully carrying around the postcard.

Returning the postcard, Monoi said, “Actually, my elder brother passed away yesterday. I cremated him just this morning.”

Yo-chan’s chopsticks stopped moving at this news. He stared at Monoi.

“Don’t worry, he was adopted into another family when I was young, I can hardly even remember his face anymore,” Monoi quickly added.

After a while, Yo-chan said, “Koh’s grandmother has cervical cancer. She only has a few days left, apparently.” After another long pause, he murmured as if the thought had suddenly occurred to him, “Nothing but funerals lately.”

Now that Yo-chan mentioned it, Monoi agreed that, indeed, this summer had seen many deaths. “Did Koh say anything else?”

“Said he’ll come by tonight after work. He wants to discuss something with you.”

“Is that so?”

If that was true, Monoi thought, Koh’s response came a little too