Chapter 1: Young, Robert F. The Dandelion Girl. Shueisha Bunko.Part 1

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The gla.s.s door at the entrance shook lightly from the freezing wind outside. Although the indoor heating should have warmed the area, my breath was still coming out white. Maybe this building was just too old.

It was morning; the store had just opened for the day. There were barely any customers, and I was standing behind the counter, quietly tying hardcover books together with a cord. There were random volumes of old literature collections, old diet magazines, and reference books with no covers, none of which were actually worth anything.

—Well, I didn’t know enough about books to make bold statements like that, but I was capable of making rough a.s.sessments.

My name is Goura Daisuke. I’m an employee at the Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia, a secondhand bookstore that quietly does business in Kita-Kamakura. The seasons had changed twice since I started working here five months ago, and today was the 26th of December. It was almost the end of the year.

The Ofuna market district had been bustling with Christmas activity yesterday, but I didn’t have the chance to be involved in any of it. I had to work overtime until late in the evening and didn’t get back home until after everything was over. Christmas was the single busiest day of the year for the bookshop, so there really wasn’t anything I could do about that. Everyone did their annual cleaning this time of year, so there was always an increase in the number of books that customers brought in to sell. We now had an overwhelming number of books that still needed to be dealt with.

I say we, but I was really only following instructions since I was still learning the ropes. The shop owner was the one who actually decided what to do with the books.

“Nuu—”

I heard a strange noise just as I set the bundle of books on the counter in front of me. I looked towards the shelf for out of print books and saw a customer wearing a down jacket. He was looking up with a puzzled expression; he probably wasn’t the one who’d made that noise. It obviously wasn’t me either, and that left the only other person in the shop.

I turned to look behind me.

Biblia was a fairly small store, but there was still a lot of s.p.a.ce behind the counter relative to its size. It was necessary in order for us to organize the books we had in stock and to manage mail orders. There were several rows of books piled up like a wall, high enough to completely hide anyone sitting behind them. In fact, there was someone hidden behind them.

Two old volumes of girls’ manga had been haphazardly placed on the wall of books. Nis.h.i.tani Yoshino’s Olympus Laughs and Cousin Alliance. It seemed like the person behind the wall was piling them up…what on earth was she doing?

Before long, the cover of the manga she was holding came into view from behind the wall of books, followed by a figure wearing a white high-neck sweater. She stayed seated in her chair, but sat up to stretch widely with the book still in both of her hands.

She was a beauty well suited to the thick framed gla.s.ses she wore on the thin bridge of her nose. Her eyes were so tightly shut that her forehead creased, and the tips of her long black hair touched the floor.

From the way she bent backwards, I could clearly see the contours of her body. Not being aware of how other people would see her was one of her bad habits.

Her pressed lips opened just slightly.

“Nuu—”

That person making strange sounds as she stretched was the owner of Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia. Her name was Shinokawa Shioriko, and she had recently taken over the shop, which had been founded almost fifty years earlier.

Although she wasn’t much older than I, who had only graduated from college this spring, she was also a “bookworm” who held an unparalleled knowledge of old books.

She cricked her neck and seemed exhausted from managing web orders on the computer all morning. I watched her for a while until her eyes opened with a snap behind her gla.s.ses. She suddenly became aware of my presence.

“Ah….”

Her face flushed bright red and she hid behind her book. I didn’t think there was anything to get so embarra.s.sed about, but she had an extremely shy personality that didn’t quite suit someone in the service industry. Barring the times when people came in to sell books, she often made me deal with customers. Shioriko usually hid herself with her computer behind the wall of books and managed web orders and the like.

“Umm…did you want me to take these books to the storehouse?”

At my voice, she peeked out from behind her book and looked down at the bundle I was asking about.

“N-no…could please you put them in the car instead?

“The car…you mean the van?” I asked.

Books that weren’t out on the shop floor were normally kept in one of the rooms in the main house.

“Yes…I was thinking of taking them out to the market….”

“The market…you mean the one in Totsuka?

“Yes.”

“The marketplace” was officially called the Vintage Book Exchange Convention.

There were many different regional vintage book a.s.sociations formed by bookstores that did business in the same area. The Vintage Book Exchange Convention was a system that allowed member stores to trade amongst themselves.

If someone had books that weren’t selling well in their own shop, they could put them up in the convention-owned meeting hall and invite people in the same industry to purchase them. The specific convention they belonged to didn’t matter, there were no problems with going to other marketplaces and trading there.

I looked at the calendar on the wall and tomorrow, Monday, December 27th, was circled in red. Biblia was a.s.sociated with the Shonan branch of the Kanagawa prefecture a.s.sociation, which meant that we used the western vintage books convention building.

Tomorrow was the last day a convention would be held in 2010.

“Tomorrow’s the day, I see,” I said. “It’s my first time going to the Totsuka book exchange.”

We came into a large quant.i.ty of manga last month, and at Shioriko’s instruction, put them up for sale at the Tokyo book exchange meeting. Her reasoning was that it would be better to present them in Tokyo, where there were more specialty manga stores.

“No…tomorrow’s actually…we haven’t finished organizing the books we got the other day. We’ll have to wait until the first meeting next year before they can be taken out to the marketplace.”

I was a little disappointed. Even if it was for work, I was hoping the two of us would be able to go somewhere together.

“I see…” I nodded and got back to work.

“Ah, Daisuke.”

Shioriko called to stop me and held out a single book.

“Please add this to the bundle as well.”

She talked quickly without looking at me, and withdrew behind the shadow of her book. The plain slipcover she gave me had a book with a gray colored spine. It was Sakaguchi Michiyo’s Cra Cra Diary. I was told it was a series of essays by Sakaguchi Ango’s widow reflecting on their married life.

She bought another copy?

This was a special book for Shioriko. It was one that even she, who loved books more than anyone, couldn’t bring herself to like. Even so, she bought the book time and time again, only to dispose of it each time.

I took the book out of the slipcover and began flipping through the pages. The book was in good condition and there wasn’t any writing on the inside. In other words, this wasn’t the book Shioriko was searching for.

Ten years ago, Shinokawa Chieko left her daughter a copy of Cra Cra Diary and disappeared. Her enormous knowledge of books surpa.s.sed even her daughter’s, and with her quick wit, she was not someone to be underestimated.

I felt for her that she was still only a child. Being s.n.a.t.c.hed away from her mother before she even reached four years of age was too sad. I was afraid to look at her dark round eyes—afraid I would remember her. Perhaps even now, I was hardening my resolve not to see her again for who knows how many years.

My eyes fell on a pa.s.sage from Cra Cra Diary. The author already had a daughter before she got married to Ango. She left the child with her own mother and ran away to be with him.

Shioriko took the book itself to be a message from her mother—that she must have run off to be with some other man. The book was later put up for sale at the market without her ever reading through its pages.

However, there was the possibility that her mother had left a direct message to her daughter somewhere in the book. Shioriko was now trying to find the book she once lost so that she could know for sure.

Since the book had yet to appear in her search, there was a good chance that someone still had it. Of course, there was also the possibility that it had been thrown away.

…I was already crying.

Even if without a stupid mother like me around, you still have your kind grandmother. I’m sure you’ll feel lonely; I know I will also miss you dearly. Perhaps you’ll one day understand my feelings when you grow up. I am prepared to bear all of your resentment, but know that I only want you to grow up healthy. Although I’m ready to leave you behind, you mustn’t cry when you remember me.

I spoke to the child in my heart and murmured.

She decided to leave her daughter for a long time even knowing that she would be making her daughter lonely and that she would be resented. She frankly wrote her thoughts on it with an almost cruel honesty. Did Shinokawa Chieko also have thoughts like that?

That person is Shinokawa Chieko…our mother.

What came back to me wasn’t the voice of Shioriko, but that of her younger sister, Ayaka. I’d previously found a painting on the second floor of someone who had a striking similarity to Shioriko—Ayaka was the one who told me who the model was. She was a student at a nearby prefectural high school and was younger than Shioriko by about ten years.

If Shinokawa Chieko disappeared ten years ago, it would have been when Ayaka was just about ready to start elementary school. It was similar to Cra Cra Diary in that she would have had to grow up separated from her mother.

Shinokawa Chieko, huh.

Since her surname was still Shinokawa, she must not have been removed from the family registry. Of course, it could also be that Ayaka called her that out of habit.

Thinking about it now, what was the relationship between their parents like? I hadn’t heard a single word from the Shinokawa sisters. What did the previous store owner, their father, think of his wife’s disappearance?

I wanted to know even more about this woman named Shinokawa Chieko. Knowing more would mean that I’d be able to understand Shioriko better. Part of the darkness she carried in her heart was related to her mother, who had disappeared—

I suddenly started to feel dizzy; I’d been staring at the pa.s.sage in Cra Cra Diary while I thought. Although I did have an interest in books, I couldn’t read text for very long. It was something like a condition. The relationship between me and Shioriko, one who liked listening about books and one who became talkative only when it was about books, was perhaps good, but a relationship tied together with books somehow didn’t feel right. I didn’t think it was fine for things to be this way forever.

I felt someone’s presence at the counter when I closed the book and put it back into its case.

I looked up and saw a man in his 30’s holding out two books. It was the customer in the jacket who had been in front of the shelf for out of print books. The two books he had were Select Annual SF Masterpieces 2, published by Sogen Mystery Bunko, and Strange Tales, published by Bunshun Bunko. Neither of the books had covers and they weren’t worth much.

“Thank you very much.”

The man said nothing. We occasionally got customers who didn’t like to talk. While there were many extremely chatty customers who came to the shop, there were also many who were quite reserved.

“Pretty cold out today, huh.”

I tentatively struck up a conversation and the man’s eyes went wide for a moment. Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to remember who he was. I wasn’t someone who had an especially good memory or anything; this customer had almost accidentally left an impression on me. It was because he had the same large build as me as well as a similar hairstyle. There weren’t many people I could see eye to eye with.

I put his books into a paper bag and handed over the change for his payment.

“Are the ones on that shelf the only out of print books you have?” The man suddenly spoke up. This was unusual for him.

“Ah, yes. That’s right.”

“Are there any plans to replenish stock after this?”

“Were you looking for something in particular?” I asked.

I thought he was trying to point something out, but the customer shook his head.

“N-no, I just thought there weren’t many good books is all.”

He left it at that, sounding disappointed, and left the shop with his books.

I paused my work and went to the paperback corner. Pay attention if a normally quiet customer complains. It was something my grandmother, with her long years of experience running a diner, had taught me. Quiet customers only said something when they couldn’t take it anymore.

This doesn’t look too bad…

I was puzzled. Many of the books we dealt with were old out of print publications. There were some open spots on the shelf, but it didn’t feel like the books had changed from before. The situation didn’t seem too terrible.

“We certainly don’t have much selection…” I suddenly heard Shioriko’s voice nearby.

She had come out from behind the wall of books at some point and was standing next to me. She held a cane in her right hand to support herself. Shioriko had been injured in an incident involving the first print of Osamu Daizai’s The Late Years half a year ago, and her leg had yet to fully heal.

“Really?” I asked.

She put her fist to her mouth. It was a habit of hers when she was thinking.

“Um…which books did that customer buy just now?”

I told her the t.i.tles and Shioriko’s expression clouded even further.

“I knew it, there’s no way we can continue like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“The books that are selling are the ones we’ve stocked recently. No one’s really buying any of the other books.”

“Ah…”

Now that she mentioned it, I supposed it was true. Having stock go stale was a problem in and of itself.

“If we don’t rotate our merchandise…”

I was thinking along those lines as well, but there weren’t actually many options. Unlike other book stores, secondhand stores couldn’t choose what types of books they got.

“I think we’ll need to go to the market tomorrow after all.” Shioriko decided.

“But didn’t you say we’d have to wait until next year to sell the books?”

“We’ll still do that next year….but the market isn’t just for selling your own books, you know…”

That made sense. There would be many other bookstores presenting their products at the market—they weren’t just there to sell things, they could buy things, too.

“We might just be able to find a bargain.”Part 2

The following day was just as windy.

We set out for the vintage book exchange in Totsuka at about ten in the morning. Vehicles that couldn’t fit in the parking s.p.a.ces were supposed to be lined up in front of the building, so I parked the van at the very end of the line and walked to the building with Shioriko.

The convention hall was in an old four story building; the market was held on the second floor. I could see people coming and going through the open window.

Cra Cra Diary, the book Shioriko was searching for, suddenly popped into my head. It had been sold at the market along with other books from Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia a long time ago, and had apparently been purchased by some bookstore. There probably wasn’t anyone who’d remember where a cheap book like that ended up though. If there had been, then Shioriko would have already found it. All traces of the book stopped at this building.

“Let’s get going.” We crossed the street together.

Shioriko’s gait was more certain now than it was when she was discharged from the hospital. Slowly but surely, her leg was starting to recover.

We saw some trolleys for transporting books lined up at the building entrance. The entrance also functioned as a smoking area, it seemed. There were ash trays scattered here and there.

I saw a man near the entrance with thin, wiry hair glaring at an ash tray as he smoked a cigarette. His hooked nose and glaring eyes were certainly eye catching and gave off an intimidating aura. Metal-framed gla.s.ses kept his unkempt hair in place.

Suddenly, I felt a tug on my jacket. Shioriko had stepped behind me and was lightly pulling on my sleeve. It seemed she was bad at dealing with this particular person and didn’t want him to notice her.

Still, it wasn’t like she could just walk past him without saying anything at all.

She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and walked up to the man, bowing deeply. I followed her lead and also lowered my head.

“Ah…M-Mr. Hitori, it’s been a while…”

Hitori was evidently the name of his store. Bookstore owners were often addressed by the name of the shop they managed. I looked carefully at the nameplate on his chest and saw the words Hitori Bookstore printed on it. The name somehow sounded familiar.

Mr. Hitori didn’t bother acknowledging Shioriko’s greeting. He simply stubbed out his cigarette, pulled out another one from his coat pocket, and lit it.

What’s this old guy’s problem?

It seemed I was the only one appalled by his behavior. Finished with her greeting, Shioriko leaned on her cane and hurriedly entered the building.

Perhaps they had all just left or something, but there was no one sitting at the receptionist desk when we got there. Next to the desk, however, there was a shallow wooden shelf that held a number of nameplates. The nameplates were for all the stores that would be partic.i.p.ating in the vintage book exchange. Shioriko picked up two “Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia” plates and handed one of them to me.

“Please pin it somewhere clearly visible.”

“Ah, of course.”

Excepting special occasions, the only people allowed into the building were vintage book a.s.sociation members. The nameplate was proof of that membership.

What’s this?

I tried to pin the badge to my chest and was perplexed. Flipping it around, I saw that there was no pin. Was there some sort of special way to fasten it?

“…looks broken.”

The owner of Hitori Bookstore raised his voice. His irritation showed even on the wrinkles in his eyebrows. It was as if he was telling us to quickly get out of his sight.

“Thank you very much.”

I quickly thanked him, but he didn’t even bother looking at me.

“We can borrow this…”

Shioriko picked up one of the doc.u.ment clips scattered on the counter and handed it to me. I used that to affix the nameplate to my belt buckle. It didn’t look great, but there was nothing I could do about that.

We tried waiting for the elevator at the end of the short hallway, but it never came down, and we had no choice but to use the stairs.

“Did something happen between you and that guy?”

I asked as we slowly ascended up the stairs. That Hitori seemed to dislike her a lot.

“A lot happened apparently and there was some bad blood between them…him and my mother, that is.” Shioriko answered quietly. “That’s why I don’t think he likes me either.”

“…”

I thought I could understand. Shioriko’s mother was the type of person who would do anything when it came to business. In the events concerning the purchase of Fujiko Fujio’s The Final World War, she even proved herself capable of breaking the law. It would come as no surprise if she also had disputes with other people in the industry.

“I’m not good with Hitori either…but I do still visit his shop often.”

“Eh? Why is that?”

She turned around at the stair landing. Her eyes shined behind her gla.s.ses and her pale face was tinged with a hint of red. It was almost like her depressed tone just now had been a lie.

“It’s because their selection is incredible! Hitori Bookstore deals mainly in mysteries and science fiction, but they also have an impressive number of magazine back issues and related material. It’s quite famous among enthusiasts in Fujisawa.”

I finally remembered when she mentioned Fujisawa. Of course I felt like I’d heard the name before; I had also visited once with her before.

“Is this by any chance the bookstore in Tsujidou? The one we stopped by one our way back last…”

“Yes! That’s the one! Wasn’t it amazing!?”

Shioriko nodded deeply and leaned forward, looking like she was about to fall.

“Now that you mention it…”

I ended up accompanying her last month as a result of a little bet we made. It couldn’t be called a date, but I did drive her around the prefecture to the bookstores she wanted to visit. Hitori Bookstore was one of the shops we stopped by on our way back. It was next to Tsujidou station in Fujisawa city.

The shop wasn’t much bigger Biblia, but the way the books were arranged from corner to corner was impressive. None of the books were stacked on the floor, and each one was wrapped in wax paper and neatly stored on a shelf.

Shioriko spent a lot of time looking through the shelves from end to end and eventually bought what seemed like a mountain of old books. The person at the register at the time was a middle-aged lady working part time. The shop owner did not show himself even until the very end. He might have deliberately stayed out of sight that time.

“Does he also act like that at the shop?”

“Hitori rarely ever says anything to me, but he does at least give me the right change.”

“Isn’t that a given?” It would be a crime if he didn’t give her back her change.

“You might be wondering why I go so often.” Shioriko suddenly turned around right as she began climbing up the stairs again. She was still obviously excited.

“It’s because their selection is just that amazing!”

Searching for books took precedence over everything else it seemed. I’d have expected nothing less from the bookworm.

—

The meeting s.p.a.ce on the second floor was a lot wider than I thought it would be.

There were long tables set up in equal intervals, with piles and piles of books piled up on them. I saw shop employees turned buyers, walking around and weaving their way through the narrow s.p.a.ce between tables.

“Anyway…let’s take a look around.” Shioriko took the lead and walked out to the a.s.sembly hall.

She was met with an “It’s been a while,” or a “How are you today?” each time she pa.s.sed someone. They were lighthearted greetings like those of family members that hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Shioriko herself frantically returned all their greetings.

It seemed that everyone knew each other by sight here. People made small talk as they carefully perused the products piled high on the tables.

There were all sorts of products put up for sale. The relatively new books and manga stood out, but there were also plenty of literature collections and scholarly works. There were old car catalogs, and old world maps, and even what looked like a graduation alb.u.m from the Taisho era on display. Not only that, there were adult magazines with DVDs and 18+ fan magazines on display as well. There were also things here and there that I wasn’t sure should even be allowed to be sold here.

“Did I ever give you an in-depth explanation of the marketplace?” Shioriko asked.

“Ah, no, you haven’t. At least not explicitly.”

All I knew was that it was an event for people in the secondhand books industry to buy and sell books with each other. This was only the second time I’d been to a marketplace.

“Alright, I’ll give you a proper explanation then. We don’t want to hinder others, so let’s come over here.”

She pulled on my sleeve and walked towards the window. This was the window I saw from the road earlier. The cars lined up in rows below reflected sunlight off their roofs.

“There are several ways to do transactions at this convention. What’s happening now is known as ‘bid placing.’ The buyers look at the books put out for sale and, when they find things they’re interested in, write the amount they’re willing to pay on a slip of paper.”

She began her explanation with an uncharacteristic lack of hesitation. It was almost like a switch had been flipped—Shioriko’s personality changed completely whenever the subject turned to books.

“Every stack of books has an envelope next to it…like for example, that table right over there.”

She looked towards the piles of manga stacked high on the table closest to us. There were about 30 books wrapped in cord on the table. They were arranged in stacks of four so that the spines were visible. I saw many recently serialized young adult manga like GANTZ and Berserk among them.

A yellow envelope, with the words “set of four” written on it in pencil, was attached to the centermost bundle. Numbers like 4 and 9 were written right under that.

“The ‘set of four’ part refers to the number of books that are up for sale. Bundles of books are called sets. That set has four books, so it’s labeled ‘set of four.’”

I nodded. So some stores sold young adult manga in sets of four. A young shop employee stopped in front of the books and began inspecting the manga from top to bottom. After a while he s.n.a.t.c.hed a blank form, scribbled on it with a pencil, quickly folded it, and inserted the paper into the envelope.

“I’m guessing he placed a bid just now?” I asked Shioriko after the shop employee left.

“Correct. He saw a book that he wanted and put his bid in the envelope. The person with the highest bid wins the right to buy the item. Of course, the money will go to the store that put the books up for sale.”

“How come the store names aren’t written on any of the envelopes?”

I asked her about something I had been curious about for a while. The envelopes all had a general description of the books along with the quant.i.ty. There were also some other numbers that I didn’t understand.

“The point is to hide the names of stores that put out items. There are two numbers on each envelope. One refers to the item itself and the other refers to the store that put it up for sale…”

She pointed to an empty desk alongside the wall.

“Whenever someone wants to put up some books for sale, they first need to fill out a registration form over there. Then, they drop the form into the locked box next to that desk. The shop’s name is written only on that registration form, so there’s no way to tell which products belong to which store.”

“I see.”

But I wasn’t the one who spoke up. A thin man with a black high neck sweater had appeared next to us without me noticing. His short, black hair was neatly parted, and he had a thin beard and wore metal-framed gla.s.ses. He looked like a peevish modern j.a.panese teacher, but was wearing a bright red ap.r.o.n for some reason.

“I see even Shinokawa properly teaches people from time to time.” He nodded seriously, sounding impressed. He seemed a little older than Shioriko.

“Ah, Renjou, good morning.” Shioriko greeted him with a smile.

“Is your leg starting to heal?”

“Yes, it’s much better now.”

She looked towards me as she was speaking. I turned to “Renjou” before I could be introduced and lowered my head.

“My name is Goura Daisuke. I’m an employee at Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia.”

“Ah, I’ve heard the rumors.”

The man stared at my face. Just what kinds of rumors had he heard? There was an uncomfortable silence.

“My bad. I never gave you my name. It’s Takino Renjou, written with the characters for lotus and cane. It’s kind of a strange name…I won’t mind if you laugh.” Takino Renjou smiled broadly as if inviting me to laugh, but I had no intention of doing so. I was more surprised by the fact that Shioriko had called him by his first name. I did remember her saying that she rarely had the opportunity to call members of the opposite s.e.x by their first name—

No, if she said rarely ever, then there had to be at least a few.

“Renjou is the son of Takino Books in Kounandai.” Shioriko explained.

“We used to visit each other’s houses often when we were kids.”

Their parents were probably close as people in the same industry. Kounandai was two stops away from Ofuna on the Negishi line, and it wasn’t very far from Kita-Kamakura either.

“My younger sister and Shinokawa went to the same girl’s school. They were the ones that got along really well, me and Shinokawa weren’t like that. I was just an extra.”

“Not at all…you also helped me a lot, R-renjou.”

Shioriko earnestly denied it.

“No, I didn’t do much. Really.” Renjou looked at me seriously. He had noticed the delicate relationship Shioriko and I had and was teasing me a bit.

“So what brings you here today? Are you looking for books to buy?”

“Yes…I realized we didn’t have any good out of print books in stock and…”

“Out of print…” Takino muttered. “Yeah, they’ve been very hard to come by these days. I guess that’s because people find it easier to sell books themselves on the internet.”

“Is that so…I see. That’s a shame.”

“I did see some today though.” Takino added.

“Eh? Where are they?”

“Over there.”

He started walking without even asking us to follow. He seemed to be a very carefree person. Shioriko and I followed after him.

“So where did you and my sister go to drink on your last day off?”

Takino looked over his shoulder and asked Shioriko.

“Ah…Ryuu said there was a bar she found recently, in Yokohama.”

“She’s a handful when she’s drunk. Sorry if she caused you any trouble.”

“Oh, she’s not like that at all…”

I was shocked by their conversation.

“Shioriko, you drink?” I whispered to her. I started working at Biblia half a year ago and never heard anything about that. I had just a.s.sumed that she never drank alcohol.

“I’m not really good with alcohol, but I do like going out a lot.”

That’s how it was. I regretted my carelessness. Had I known this earlier, I wouldn’t have worried so much about how to invite her out.

“Um…in that case, next time why don’t we—”

“Here we are.”

Takino stopped walking, and my invitation was cut off. We had arrived at a table in the corner of the convention hall with books lined up in stacks of five.

“Wow…”

Shioriko’s face suddenly lit up. She put her hand on the edge of the table and brought her face closer to the book spines.

“These are nice aren’t they? They’d be good in our store.”

I also stared at the piled up books next to them. About 70 percent of the books were by Hayakawa and Tsogen publishing, and the rest belonged to other publishing houses. There were also some Sanrio SF books mixed in among them. The envelope near the bundles had “Science Fiction Publications” and “Sets of Five” carefully written on it.

“The topmost books look really good. I even see books that could probably sell for more than ten thousand yen.”

“Are they all science fiction?”

“There’s fantasy, and also horror books… like this, for example. We’ve even sold it at our shop before.”

She said that and put her finger on the spine of the topmost books in the bundle. There was Shadow, Shadow on the Wall by Theodore Sturgeon, and Other Days, Other Eyes by Bob Shaw. The books leaned forward at her touch, perhaps because of how loosely they were bound.

“Were these really purchased from Biblia?” Takino asked.

“They might have been…if one of our customers wanted to sell their books though, I would have liked them to bring it back to us…”

Shioriko sighed. It seemed we didn’t just need regular customers to buy good books, we also needed them to sell good books as well. The store wouldn’t have well-stocked shelves otherwise.

Takino suddenly wrapped his arms around our shoulders. He brought his face close as if to wedge himself between us. I thought he was going to say something, but he had a faraway look in his eyes and didn’t move. It didn’t seem like he was trying to huddle together.

“Um, what is it?” I asked.

“The truth is, I put out these books two days ago.” He whispered.

“I bought them from a customer when I was watching the shop last week. We don’t normally deal with these kinds of books, so I bought them to sell at the market.”

“What kind of customer were they?” Shioriko got caught up in the mood and lowered her voice.

“It was a plain woman with gla.s.ses and short black hair. The type that really looked like she loved books…her address was in Hongoudai. Sound familiar?”

“No…”

“Then I guess it wasn’t one of Biblia’s regular customers. Well, bid on them if you’d like.”

Takino said that as he was about to leave us, but Shioriko called out to stop him.

“Renjou, does. .h.i.tori know about these books?”

I remembered the grumpy looking man we met at the entrance. He would probably desperately want these out of print books, since his store specialized in science fiction and mystery novels.

“I didn’t see him at the convention hall today…is he here?”

“We saw him smoking a cigarette near the entrance.”

“I see…in that case, he might have put his bid in sometime yesterday. That guy was here yesterday to put up some of the products from his shop for sale, you know. He’s kind of hard to miss.”

Takino left it at that and went off somewhere else.

“…Hitori will pay a high price for books like these. We’ll need to be prepared in order to win this bid.”

Shioriko pinched the envelope that had “Science Fiction” books written on it. It looked like she was estimating how many bids where in there by the thickness of the envelope.

“There seem to be many other shops besides. .h.i.tori interested in it. It’s fairly popular.”

She tightly closed her eyes. It looked like she was making mental calculations.

That’s when I noticed a white haired man wearing a grey coat standing near the convention hall door. It was the owner of Hitori Bookstore that we happened to see earlier this morning. He was glaring sharply at Shioriko.

I felt a chill along my back. I knew that he had a bad relationship with Shioriko’s mother, but there was a chance that he also held resentment towards her daughter as well. I stood between him and Shioriko to hide her and blocked his glare.

He noticed me returning his gaze, and with an angry scowl, once again disappeared from the a.s.sembly hall.

“Daisuke, is something wrong?” Shioriko had opened her eyes again at some point.

“…no, not really.”

“Could I ask you to write down the price I’ll tell you on the bid slip? I can’t do it while holding the cane.

“Ah, of course.”

I took one of the bid slips on the table into my hand. There were similar bundles of small memo papers at every table.

I thought about the owner of Hitori Bookstore while Shioriko instructed me on how to fill out the form. Just what had happened in her mother’s—Shinokawa Chieko’s time? It couldn’t be that they just didn’t get along; there had to be something more to it. Perhaps it was something that Shioriko herself was not even aware of.Part 3

The unsealing of the bids began at 11am.

That said, bidding didn’t stop for the entire convention hall. Sections were closed one at a time so that the envelopes containing the bids could be opened. The lots would then go to the highest bidder and the winning shop would be announced.

Once the first section was done, they would move over to the next section and begin the unsealing process there; bidding could still continue in the other sections in the meantime. Shioriko and I only were only interested in the out of print books from before, so we waited for the bids to be opened in our corner of the convention hall.

Red and white poles, similar to those used at construction sites, were set up between the tables. After that was done, the convention employees split up into groups of two or three to open up the envelopes one at a time. Takino, who we had spoken with earlier, was among them.

“Come to think of it, why is Takino also working?”

“He’s working as a manager today.”

“Manager?” I replied with a question.

“The vintage book exchange is usually run by managers, people who are sent out from shops affiliated with the a.s.sociation. This often ends up being a learning opportunity for those just getting into the industry, since they get to work with so many different shops. I used to be a manager myself until last year.”

She stopped at last year, which was when her father had pa.s.sed away. She probably no longer had time to commit to managerial duties after she started managing Biblia alone.

“…this marketplace and a.s.sociation is unique to the used books industry in j.a.pan. They say it was based on the bookstore guilds of the Edo era…but I’ve heard that cooperative trade guilds like this aren’t very common in the west these days…”

A thought suddenly occurred to me as I listened to her explanation.

“Do you think I could also be a manager?”

Shioriko paused slightly before replying.

“I believe you could…if you plan on continuing to work at Biblia for a long time, that is.”

My words got caught in my throat. I couldn’t clearly say that I wanted to do it.

“Ah, it looks like the bids were unsealed. Let’s go take a look.” Shioriko grabbed her cane and started walking.

The reason I started working at the shop wasn’t because I wanted to work at a bookstore. There was the fact that I hadn’t been able to find any other job, but more than anything else, I was drawn to this peculiar bookshop owner and the books she talked about. I didn’t even have the ability to read books in the first place.

I couldn’t confidently say that I was the right person to hire for the job, or even if I’d be able to do it right at all. It was the conclusion anyone would have come to.

“Ahhh,” Shioriko’s shoulders dropped as she stood in front of the bidding envelope by the out of print books. The entry with the highest bid had been posted, but it wasn’t the one we had submitted. The name “Inoue” was scribbled right next the numbers on the slip.

“…that’s. .h.i.tori’s name.” Shioriko said. In other words, Hitori Books had won the bid and Shioriko had lost.

“It looks like he also put in a three-bid…”

There were three separate numbers lined up on Hitori Bookstores’ bid slip. All of them five digits. According to what I was taught earlier, people could enter multiple bids if they were bidding on an expensive lot. The rules here at the market had it so that a maximum of three bids could be put in for lots worth 10,000 yen or more—that was what we called a “three bid”. Shioriko and I had also put in a three-bid earlier.

“Yes, and we lost to his high-bid…what a shame.”

“High-bid?”

“The highest amount in a three-bid is called a high-bid. After that come the mid-bid, with the lowest amount being called the low-bid….look at this please.”

Shioriko pointed to the highest number amongst the three. Someone else had drawn a circle around the number. In other words, the lot had been won with Hitori’s high-bid.

“Hm?”

Now that I looked at it, the entry with “Inoue” written next to it wasn’t much different from the amount Shioriko had asked me to write earlier—there was only a difference of 10 yen. We would have won had we increased our bid amount by just a little.

“We lost by just a hige…” Shioriko said bitterly.

“Hm? hige?”

I felt bad asking her so many questions, but there was too much industry specific jargon that I didn’t understand.

“Units of 10 yen are called higes”

“My plan was to put in a bid that was 1000 yen higher than what Hitori was likely to submit just in case, but it seems I misread him…”

“Maybe he correctly guessed the bid we were going to put in.”

Just like the way we tried to predict the bid Hitori was going to put in, Hitori must have guessed ours.

Shioriko however, shook her head.

“I don’t believe that’s the case. Hitori put his bid in yesterday it seems…this was purely due to a difference in buying power.”

Shioriko disappointedly touched the spines of the books. The opening of the bids was more or less completely done and people around us were beginning to take their items. Coming here turned out to be a waste of time.

A white haired man wearing a coat appeared and almost b.u.mped into the table as he stopped his trolley next to it. Shioriko’s shoulders shook in fright. It was the owner of Hitori Books, Inoue.

“What are you doing?”

“No-nothing real—“

“Keep your hands off my books.”

Shioriko took a step back at his threatening voice.

“I-I’m sorry….ah!”

Shioriko lost her balance and I hurriedly supported her. It was too easy for her to fall over if she wasn’t careful. I glared at Inoue who was now loading his books onto his trolley.

“We were looking at the bids. Are there any problems with that?”

Inoue stood straight up and stared intently at my face. His brow was wrinkled even further in disagreeableness.

“You must be Goura.”

“Huh?”

Why did he know my name? I didn’t remember ever introducing myself to him.

“You should be careful around that woman.”

He didn’t even wait for a response and pushed his trolley away, leaving the convention hall.

“What was that guy talking about?”

I didn’t know what he was trying to say. Why did I need to be careful around Shioriko?

“W-well….umm…Daisuke…”

“Yes?”

“I’m alright now…people are staring at us.”

I came back to my senses. I still had my arm wrapped around her lower back from when I stopped her from falling over. Shioriko’s face was bright red and she was looking at her feet.

“Ah, I’m sorry.” I quickly let go of her.

“Oh, here you were, Shinokawa.”

Takino pushed his way to the crowd and approached us.

“The books that Biblia put up for sale ended up being a bō.”

“…huh?”

Shioriko’s eyes went wide. It seemed something unexpected had happened.

“That can’t be right…”

“But they’re right over there. That pile of hardcovers.”

Since I couldn’t understand what was happening, I had to cut into their conversation.

“….excuse me, but what’s a bō?”

“They’re lots that didn’t get a single bid after they were put up for sale, but…” Shioriko answered.

I could now see why Shioriko was confused. That didn’t make any sense because Biblia hadn’t put anything up for sale this time.

“Umm…Renjou, are you sure that it belongs to us?” Shioriko asked.

“Yeah, the product registration paper had Biblia written on it. Follow me.”

We followed Takino over to the other side of the convention hall. There were barely any books remaining on the tables. I had no idea where they got the board from, but some shop owners had begun playing shogi in the corner after they finished putting away their merchandise.

“Here they are.”

They were old paperbacks stacked on top of a table near the window. They were mostly practical guides, like sample letter collections, a guide on marriage customs, and accounting certification books. A good number of them were badly yellowed and it didn’t look like even a single one of them was worth buying.

“What is this?” Shioriko asked in a whisper.

Takino said Biblia had put out these books, but she didn’t recognize them at all.

“Most of these were published about ten years ago…” She muttered to herself with her eyes shut.

“Either way, I’d like to clear this table. Could you quickly get them out of the way?” Takino was leaning on the window with his hand on his chin.

“But these books aren’t even ou—“

Before she could finish her sentence, Takino, who happened to be looking out the window, opened his eyes wide.

“Ah, I’m sorry! It looks like someone’s about to park illegally!” His loud voice rang out in the room.

As soon as he said that, the shop owners in the convention hall rushed over to the window to see what was going on. Shioriko and I moved to the end of the aisle. Now that he mentioned it, most of the cars were parked in the street today. We looked at each other now that our conversation had been cut off midway.

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“What should we do indeed…” Shioriko also looked like she was at a loss.Part 4

Organizing the counter was the first thing I had to do when the shop opened for the day. I cleared out some s.p.a.ce and set down the books we ended up picking up from the book exchange. The storeroom in the main house was full, so there was no choice but to temporarily keep them in the shop.

A day had pa.s.sed since the convention ended, but we still didn’t know where these books had come from. The a.s.sociation didn’t want to keep them, and disposing of the books would cost money. It wasn’t like throwing the books away without knowing who they belonged to was an option in the first place though.

The a.s.sociation decided to have us hold on to the books until they sorted this out, since the books belonged to us on paper, at least. Not only did we fail to get the out of print books we wanted, we also ended up getting stuck with a heap of books that weren’t even fit to sell. Then, we even got stuck with a parking ticket on the van since it was parked on the road. Talk about getting kicked while we were down.

Still, I was curious about who could have put the books up for sale in Biblia’s name. It was hard to believe this could just be a mix up in the doc.u.mentation, but I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would do it on purpose. Not even Shioriko, who was good at solving mysteries like this, could say she knew.

I crouched and stared at the books on the counter. Shioriko’s mother apparently had the ability to understand what kind of person someone was just by looking at the books they owned. I didn’t have the same ability, of course, but I figured that there might be something that could be found by looking at the covers.

My impression hadn’t changed much from when I first saw them. They were just a bunch of practical guides in terrible shape. That being said it’s not like there was nothing noteworthy about them. There were several t.i.tles that dealt with antiquarian books in the heap. t.i.tles like The Art of Antiquarian Books, Registry of out of Print Books and Introduction to Used Books in Your Town. That was to say, the person who left these behind was someone who was interested in old books—

No, that makes no sense…

I shook my head and stood up. Those were the characteristics of the person who originally owned the books, not the characteristics of the store that put them up for sale. There was no point in looking at things from that angle.

Then, the door leading to the main house opened and Shioriko appeared. She was wearing a knit dress with a thin ribbon on her chest today. She looked cuter than usual, but also less cheerful than she usually was.

“Please put these books in vinyl covers and put them out on the floor. The price has already been labeled.”

She sighed and handed me a department store bag with eight or nine books in it. They all had price labels affixed to them in various spots.

“Where did you get these”?

“They’re out of print books that I took from my room…I already have duplicates and brought them here because they looked like they’d sell. There should be other books like this, so I’ll also bring those down later.”

In other words, she was pulling these books from her own personal collection. She must have decided to let go of them to fill the shelves. I emptied the bag and laid the books out on the counter. There were mystery and science fiction books like F.W Croft’s The Groote Park Murder and Anna Kavan’s Julia and the Bazooka. I had the vague feeling that I once saw her reading Julia and the Bazooka when she was still in the hospital.

Hm?

There was also a strangely showy book among them. It featured an ill.u.s.tration of a young girl wearing a white dress under the t.i.tle The Dandelion Girl, which was written in pink text. According to the subt.i.tle, it was the second part of a foreign science fiction masterpiece collection, which meant it wasn’t written by a j.a.panese author. Looking at it carefully, I saw that it was published under Shueisha’s Cobalt imprint. I thought they focused mostly on books for middle and high school girls, but it seemed they also had books of value in second hand stores.

I looked over the book to check the price label attached to it—8,000 yen. This was easily the most expensive book among them.

“Why is this particular book so expensive?”

“Ah, that book!”

Shioriko’s voice suddenly rose sharply.

“That’s because it has Robert F. Young’s The Dandelion Girl in it! It’s a truly amazing story that even has elements of time travel in it!”

She shook her closed fists as she spoke. Shioriko always had a switch flip whenever she talked about books, but seemed to be especially excited this time. I guess she liked this story a whole lot.

I was also now excited and leaned forward. Time travel meant going back or forth in time. Of course I’d be interested.

“So do the characters go to the future or the past?”

“To the past I suppose…but it’s not the main character that travels through time. The protagonist is a very ordinary middle-aged man who happened to be staying at a mountain cottage for the summer holidays. His wife had something urgent come up suddenly which left him so bored that he didn’t know what to do with himself. It was on one of those uneventful days that he met a beautiful girl with blonde hair and a white dress on a nearby hill.”

I looked down at the cover of the book. So this was that girl. The dress kind of resembled the clothes Shioriko wore, but the color of her hair was completely different.

“The girl told him that she came from 240 years in the future using a time machine that her father built. She liked that hill in the protagonist’s era and time traveled back to the same period every day. From the perspective of those living in the protagonist’s era, it looked like she just happened to appear on the hill. Do you know what she said during her first meeting with the protagonist?

Shioriko brought her face closer to me, as if she were telling me a secret. I could see her eyes twinkling with excitement with her face so close to mine.

“Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you.”

My heart was pounding.

“T-that’s pretty nice. It’s amazing.”

“Isn’t it? Anyone would fall in love being told something cute like that right? “

She smiled without a hint of concern, clearly unaware of what she herself was doing.

“…What happened after that?”

“The protagonist ended up accepting it as just her imagination and went along with it without denying her story. Through their everyday conversations, the protagonist quickly found himself falling in love with the girl almost half his age. However, one day, she vanished without a trace. The protagonist felt conflicted between his feelings for the girl and his feelings of guilt for his wife. The next time he saw the girl on the hill, she was wearing a black dress. ”

I thought for a moment.

“Was it because of her father’s funeral?”

“That’s right. Her father who made the time machine had pa.s.sed away, and she now had no way to make replacement parts. She explained that she might not be able to time travel again and would return to the present prepared for the fact that she might never see each the protagonist again…”

Shioriko’s expression suddenly shadowed over as if she had remembered something.

“My father liked The Dandelion Girl and used to read it often. That’s why I also wanted to have my own copy as well…it wasn’t easy to find, though.”

She slowly stroked the cover with her index finger. The Dandelion Girl was in such good condition that it didn’t look like she had obtained it so many years ago. It was clearly a book that she treasured a lot.

“Are you really alright with selling it?”

“I’m sure there are other customers who would also want it…besides, I still have one more copy.”

I swallowed my words. She still had one more copy of an out of print book that took her a long time to find. The remaining book was most likely a memento of her late father.

“…how does the story continue?”

“The girl promised that she would try her best to come and see him again, and then she confessed her love to the protagonist before returning to the future. She never appeared on the hill ever again.”

“Wha-, is that it?”

The story really didn’t have much of a payoff. Still, if she had come back, he might have ended up doing something immoral.

“No, there’s more. The story continues from there.”

I was even more interested in Shioriko’s story. How would the story continue if the girl returned to the future and couldn’t meet the protagonist again?

Just as I was about to urge her to continue and tell me what happened next—

“Heey, when are you guys going to be done?”

A voice called out from the open door into the main house. A ponytailed girl had sat down at the end of the hallway and had one hand resting on her chin. She had distinctively large eyes and tanned skin and was wearing an old jersey and some work gloves. This was Shioriko’s younger sister, Shinokawa Ayaka.

“I’ve been waiting since Shioriko asked me to help take out some books. We’re still not done with the end of year cleaning, you know. We still have to clear out the ventilation fans, polish the bathroom tiles, and repair the paper doors! There isn’t much time until the year ends!”

Come to think of it, Shioriko had said earlier that she was going to take some books off the shelf. It was probably inconvenient for her to do it herself because of her bad leg.

“Ah, Aya, I’m sorry…:

“Sorry, it’s because I asked Shioriko about a book.”

I apologized and Shioriko hurriedly shook here her hands in front of her.

“No, it’s not Daisuke’s fault, Ayaka….I always end up doing this and…”

“—It’s the same either way!”

Ayaka tore apart our excuses.

“Or rather, that doesn’t even matter! I just want to get this over with quickly! Shioriko, come with me.”

“O-ok…”

Shioriko disappeared into the main house, dragged away by her sister. Left alone in the shop, I picked up The Dandelion Girl and turned to the opening page.

The girl on the hill made Mark think of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Perhaps it was because of the way she stood in the afternoon sun, her dandelion-hued hair dancing in the wind; perhaps it was because of the way her old-fashioned white dress swirled around her long and slender legs. In any event, he got the definite impression that she had somehow stepped out of the past and into the present

Perhaps it was because it was a translated work, but the text definitely drew my interest. I missed the chance to hear the rest from Shioriko, but was still curious about how the story ended. I could read just the ending—no, that would be too boring. It was a short story, so maybe I’d be able to read it all in one go. But I was still in the middle of work, even if there were no customers at the moment.

The phone rang while I was still trying to make a decision. I picked up the phone, but before I could say the store name, the person on the other end began to talk.

“This is Takino from Takino books….err…is this Goura?”

“Ah, yes. Thanks for your help yesterday.”

“What’s Shinokawa up to?”

“She’s in the main house right now. Should I ask her to come?”

“Yeah, if you could…..actually, wait! I can talk to you instead; there’s no real reason to tell Shinokawa directly. Do you have a moment?”

I had a bad feeling about Takino’s serious tone. I gripped the phone receiver.”

“Of course.”

“There were some books you guys bid on yesterday. They were out of print books that Inoue from Hitori Books won.”

“Hm? Yes.”

We lost the bid for those books by only 10 yen. Had we won, Shioriko would not have had to put up her own books for sale.

“The truth is, Inoue just came to me. This is about those books.”

“He came…to your store?”

“Rather than saying he came, it would be more accurate to say he stormed in…this is quite a problem.”

“Did something happen?”

The bad feeling I had grew worse.

“Yeah, this has turned into an incident, more or less.”

“Incident…?”

“Ah, My bad. If there are missing pages, or pages have been cut, or someone otherwise finds an extreme deficiency with their items after they win a bid, we call it an incident. Kind of like finding out you have a defective item after you’ve already purchased it. It seems Inoue found that one of the books that was definitely in the lot when he put in his bid was missing when he returned after winning the bid. It was a fairly expensive book, so he came to me first to get information about the books that were put up for sale.”

“So is the book just lost?”

“I’m not sure myself, but Inoue is certain that it was stolen. I personally don’t think that’s the case though. The only people allowed to enter and exit the a.s.sembly hall are a.s.sociation members, and we all know each other by sight. There’s no way a theft could have occurred.”

Thoughts swirled in my head as I listened to Takino. I didn’t quite understand what he was getting at. What did this have to do with me and Shioriko?

Before that though, I had forgotten to ask an essential question.

“By the way, do you know which book is missing?”

“The Dandelion Girl, by Cobalt publishing, apparently. Have you heard of it?”

I couldn’t help my gasp of surprise.Part 5

“The Dandelion Girl…you mean the foreign romantic science fiction story?”

“Oh, you’re well informed. I heard that you didn’

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