11/23/2010     Recent Events     Shinokawa Ayaka

It was pretty busy yesterday, so I’m going to write what happened together with today’s entry.

Biblia Books was closed for a holiday yesterday.

My older sister left in a car with Goura (employee). It looked like they spent the day wandering around the bookstores that my sister wanted to, but hadn’t been able to visit after she got injured.

She looked really cheerful this morning, so when I asked her if she was going on a date at breakfast this morning, she said “Don’t make fun of Daisuke like that, it’s rude.” and scolded me with a scary face.

As far as my sister was concerned, Goura had kindly offered to go around visiting bookstores with her in the course of one of their conversations.

She really hates talking about things like love and marriage.

That’s why I can’t tell her. I can only write about it here.

I’m sure Goura planned for it to be a date. I think it’s because he really likes my sister.

Speaking of which, I remember being pretty worried when he started working at the store.  I couldn’t believe my sister, who wasn’t good with people, had hired him herself. He’s really huge and kinda has a scary expression, so I thought that he might have tricked her somehow.

But after working with him in the store for a while, I saw that he was actually a timid, hardworking, ordinary guy. He listens to what other people have to say and is even better at customer service than me.

I can’t say it to his face though, so I can only write it here. From my point of view, Goura’s the type of person who’s easily swayed by people, especially women, in a higher social position than him. Even though he’s built like a warrior, his personality’s more like that of a chamberlain.

The two of them came back later in the evening and my sister was in a really good mood. The visited bookshops in Yokohama and Kawasaki, and apparently even stopped by Tsujidou on their way back.

She bought two boxes worth of books and the one who carried them to entrance was, of course, Goura. He seemed a little tired, but his eyes were strongly sparkling. Maybe seeing how happy my sister was made him pleased as well. Yep, just like a chamberlain.

I told my cla.s.smate, Kosuga Nao about it when she came to hang out in my cla.s.sroom for lunch today and she told me it was because my sister’s no ordinary person.’

Nao always has a tense expression on her face whenever I talk about Shioriko. She’s a regular customer at the shop, but I guess she’s just bad at dealing with my sister.

Nao fell for a guy named Nishino from the light music club a while ago. She ended up getting rejected, but I heard my sister and Goura were involved somehow. I don’t really know what happened, but there was some kind of trouble, and my sister must have done something to scare her…I don’t think she’s gotten over that yet.

Nishino was going to some other school now.

After that, rumors started going around that he was a good for nothing guy who made moves on lots of girls behind the scenes. Believing Goura to be the source of the bad rumors, he tried to set fire to shop in retaliation.

Nishino transferred to another school as soon as his suspension was up.

I can’t really tell anyone, but it was my fault Nishino had that misunderstanding. I heard Goura talking to some regulars about what happened with Nao and carelessly told the people in my club about it. My story came as the final straw just as rumors were starting to spread about what Nishino had done, but I later learned that Nao never told anyone at school what had happened. I didn’t know she was keeping silent about the whole thing.

I guess I talk too much.

It felt like it would be a bad idea to mention it after the store was almost set on fire, so I didn’t say anything. I’m writing about it here instead so that the stress doesn’t build up. No one around me knows I’m using the computer in the middle of the night like this.

The books my sister bought yesterday were still piled up near the entrance when I got back from school this afternoon. She can’t carry heavy things up the stairs yet, and although I volunteered to carry them up later, I had completely forgotten about it.

Anyway, I took carried all of them up to the second floor because they would get in the way of sweeping the entrance. The second floor was currently part of the Shioriko Zone that I couldn’t do anything about, with books lying all over the place. She’d probably get angry at me if I left the books in one of the empty spots though.

I saw something nostalgic among the books in the hallway on my way back.

The King Has Donkey Ears

It was a picture book that was read to me when I was younger. It was supposed to be my book, but it must have been absorbed into the Shioriko Zone at some point.

I couldn’t remember what kind of story it was at all, so I took it back to my room to read it for the first time in a while. It’s actually pretty interesting.

A slightly clumsy king named Midas happened to pa.s.s by two G.o.ds having a music contest. Although the better player was obvious to anyone who listened, Midas declared that he preferred the worse player.

At that, the G.o.d became angry and cursed King Midas by transforming his ears into donkey ears (what a petty G.o.d). Midas hid his donkey ears out of embarra.s.sment from everyone except his hairdresser, threatening to kill him if he ever dared to tell a soul (the king’s pretty cruel too).

The hairdresser didn’t tell anyone, but since he couldn’t keep such a huge secret himself, he dug a deep hole near the riverbed and shouted: “the king has donkey ears!”.

I closed the book and thought.

I guess I was doing the same thing as the hairdresser by writing in the journal. I was secretly writing down all the things I couldn’t tell the people around me.

This journal is my hole in the riverbed.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this up, but I knew there was no one at the bottom of this hole for now.

I decided to leave it at that.