● Freshman Year, June – Asamura Yuuta

I handed a book in its crisp paper cover to the customer, who had just settled her payment with a credit card. As she turned to leave the store, her silver hair fluttering behind her, I offered the customary farewell from our service manual.

“Have a nice day.”

It was a line straight from the English-speaking customers section, under “Customer Departure Greetings.” The words left my mouth before I realized my mistake. Crap. It was pouring outside. The rain hadn’t let up since the wet season began on the sixth.

Of course, I knew “Have a nice day!” was meant to be a friendly equivalent to “Please come again,” but as she stepped out and opened her umbrella, I couldn’t help but imagine her thinking, Easy for you to say…

…Am I overthinking this?

Probably. Still, just rattling off phrases I’d memorized from a manual made me anxious. I couldn’t be sure the proper nuance was getting across. It wasn’t as if I could think of a better way to handle it, though.

“Good work, Yuuta-senpai.”

I turned at the sound of the cheerful voice to see my junior coworker, Kozono Erina-san, standing there with her hands clasped behind her back. A playful grin danced on her lips, highlighting the reddish tint on the inner strands of her hair.

“Still, the number of foreign customers has really shot up, hasn’t it?” she remarked.

“Yeah. It feels like they’ve been targeting my shifts for the past two days.”

“I helped, like, five of them just yesterday, y’know?”

Eh, that many?

The surprise must have shown on my face, because Kozono-san added a firm, “For real.” So it seemed my recent encounters weren’t a fluke; if anything, I was dealing with fewer than average.

“Maybe they just find you easier to talk to, Kozono-san.”

“Don’t you think they just saw me helping someone else and came over?” she mused. “It happened one after another.”

“Ah… right.”

This petite junior of mine could manage a conversation in English that was just shy of fluent. It was miles better than my own stumbling, Japanese-accented attempts.

“It’s amazing how you can handle customers in English without getting flustered, Kozono-san.”

Her natural confidence surely played a part, but whenever Kozono-san spotted a customer in need, she’d proactively approach them with a “May I help you?” even if they didn’t appear to be a native English speaker. Once they realized she could communicate, they’d switch to English, too, and before long, other foreign customers who had been watching from the sidelines would start relying on her as well.

“This is making me wish I’d properly learned to speak English like you, Kozono-san…”

“Well, I’m used to it from school,” she said with a shrug.

“Which high school did you go to again?”

“Didn’t I tell you before? Aoki International, y’know~”

“Ah… right.”

Aoki International High School was known throughout Tokyo for its focus on English education. I’d heard they even created their own unique English problems for their entrance exams and gave extra points for proficiency, making it a popular choice for returnees, exchange students, and foreign children living in Japan.

“It wasn’t just high school,” she added. “For some reason, the elementary and middle schools I went to were all pretty enthusiastic about foreign language education, too.”

Did her parents deliberately choose those schools for her? The thought crossed my mind, but with no proof, I just offered a vague, “Is that so.”

“Sometimes, even in subjects other than English, the teachers would conduct the class in English.”

“Really?”

“Like during art class, we’d have a native English speaker as the teacher. There were quite a few classmates from English-speaking countries, too. We used to teach each other English and Japanese.”

So international!

“That’s why my ears are just used to English.”

“I’m jealous.”

Her words only reinforced the feeling that I was in trouble if I didn’t get serious about practicing my own conversation skills. The fact that an English customer service manual was prepared late last year was solid proof of the increase in foreign customers—a sign of the times, addressed by the entire bookstore chain.

Come to think of it, the lecturer in my economics class had mentioned it during an aside. He’d said the number of foreign tourists in Japan was increasing every year. At the time, I’d reacted with the same detached “Huh” and “Oh, really” as the other students. But after being forced to deal with customers in English for three days straight, I was feeling it firsthand.

I brought it up with my senior coworkers during my evening break. To varying degrees, they all agreed they’d been encountering more non-Japanese-speaking customers.

“See? It’s just that kind of era,” Kozono-san declared as she entered the office, having already changed out of her uniform and into her street clothes.

“You’re done for the day?”

“Yep. I’m going shopping with my mom, so I got to leave early. As your cute junior, it pains me that my time working with you is cut so short, Yuuta-senpai, though~”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Of course, you’re allowed to be sad, too, y’know? You’re losing out on fun interactions with your junior, after all. Right? Se~npai!”

Kozono-san linked her arm with mine, pulling my right arm close while putting on a coddling voice.

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

Should I say I’m disappointed, too? Still, I’d much rather she let go of my arm. Any closer, and I was going to end up touching her.

“Yuuta-senpai… why aren’t you flustered at all?”

No, no. It’s not that I’m not flustered, you know?

“Well, I am troubled, I guess,” I managed.

“That’s the kind of reaction you’d give a little niece,” she pouted.

She’d hit the nail on the head. I had experienced this before. The year before last, when I visited my dad’s family in Nagano, my little relatives had clung to me just like this, pestering me to play. How nostalgic. Kozono-san wasn’t that much younger than me, but at her height, she wasn’t much different from a tall elementary schooler.

Perhaps that was the wrong thing to think. Crap. Kozono-san’s expression was rapidly turning grim. Her face soured in the blink of an eye.

Then she started rattling off at a dizzying speed.

“Jeez, honestly! Senpai started college and our shifts don’t overlap as much, so I thought I’d treat myself and unleash my super-special secret move, but now I feel like it got canceled before I could even use it! Does this mean Ayase-senpai has repeatedly used all sorts of expert techniques on you, desensitizing your body to the point where I can’t get my necessary dose of nutrients from your flustered face? Is that what it is? Is being used to something that scary? Oh, I see!”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. She said that so fast I couldn’t catch a single word. Also, why did Saki’s name come up at the end?

“Just because you became a college student two years earlier, I’ll be one in two years, too! And my 18th birthday is coming up soon!”

Well, that’s true.

“The words ‘No Minors Allowed’ will be a thing of the past!”

What is she even talking about?

“I’m leaving. Good work today!”

With loud footsteps and a sharp tone, my junior threw the door open with a bang and stormed out, leaving me utterly bewildered as to what I had just done.

Setting aside the true meaning behind Kozono-san’s mysterious behavior… the fact remained that my cram-session English for entrance exams was useless for serving foreign tourists, and that’s what was getting me down.

Reading some English books might help, but our store didn’t have a foreign-language section. Just as I was considering a trip to the public library, I remembered Yomiuri-senpai telling me I’d have to read more English articles once I got to university. Apparently, most of the latest papers and academic literature are published in English first.

This applied to all fields—natural sciences, engineering, medicine, social sciences, humanities, you name it. The common language of academia is English. This was one of the things I truly came to realize after starting university. When lecturers touched upon the latest topics, the papers and journals they referenced were always in English.

But it’s not so easy to just “read them.” A famous journal in sociology, for example, is the AJS, the American Journal of Sociology. To read it, you have to go to the official website or the university library. It’s not like you can find it in a regular bookstore…

Wait, that’s right. The university library.

They have papers and academic journals. And plenty of foreign books, too. It might be the perfect place to get into the habit of reading English while studying for my classes. It probably wouldn’t help my conversation skills much, but it was still a chance to get some exposure to the language.

Should I give it a try…?

As I left the office after my break, an elderly woman wandering the aisles caught my eye. Blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair. She had an elegant air about her, perhaps from Eastern Europe. Taking a deep breath, I recalled the manual and asked in my best English if she needed any help.

By the time I finished my shift and got home, it was past midnight. The rain had intensified while I was inside, forcing me to take shelter for a little while before heading home.

“I’m home,” I said quietly at the entryway, but the apartment was silent.

I was too late tonight. Just as her message had said, Saki was already asleep. It couldn’t be helped. Between university and her internship, she must have been exhausted.

On the dining table, lit only by the soft glow of a night-light, a dinner for one was laid out under a tent-shaped mesh cover. Grilled fish—salmon, maybe?—along with a few side dishes and a pack of natto. A sticky note from Saki was left on the table. The miso soup was in a bowl in the fridge, likely because it would spoil otherwise. With how hot it was getting, everything would probably need to be refrigerated come July.

The air was getting humid, so I turned up the dehumidifier on the air conditioner just a little. After heating the soup and serving myself some rice, I put my hands together.

“Thanks for the food.”

I flaked the salmon apart with my chopsticks and brought it to my mouth.

Eating alone felt bland and dreary. I couldn’t even turn on the TV for fear of waking my dad. I’d eaten alone countless times since I was a kid, but now that having Saki across the table from me had become the norm, the silence felt heavier, lonelier than before.

Come to think of it, I was the one who went to bed first yesterday. She’d had a meeting at Akihiro-san’s office and sent a message saying it might run late, so I should go ahead and eat. I wonder if she felt this way, eating by herself last night.

Maybe I should have stayed up and waited for her.

Lately, it felt like we were having more of these little moments of being out of sync. Even though we lived under the same roof, our schedules rarely aligned anymore.

On top of that, we hadn’t been able to gain any more experience since that. We’d agreed to hold back whenever either of my parents were home, which meant waiting for a time when they were both out. Such convenient opportunities didn’t come around so often. We were supposed to have taken a new step forward as a couple, but it felt as if we’d jumped right into a fog.

“Ugh, bitter.”

A voice escaped me as I accidentally bit into the burnt part of the fish. As if to swallow the sound, I shoveled rice into my mouth and forced it down my throat.

The next morning, I ate breakfast while stifling a yawn.

“Didn’t get enough sleep?” my dad asked from beside me, poking at his dried sardines. I just nodded.

“Stayed up a little late.”

“Are you okay?” Saki asked with concern from across the table. It had been a while since the three of us had eaten breakfast together like this.

“I got home a little late from my shift, so my prep and review for class got pushed back,” I explained. I’d started after midnight and didn’t get to bed until after 2 AM. On top of that, I had to wake up thirty minutes earlier than I did in high school, so frankly, it was tough. I was just glad today was a light day for classes. Still, with math first period, I had to wake up early regardless.

Should I have cut my prep time short for more sleep? But that lecturer moves at a speed beyond comprehension… One minute he’s saying, “This part is crucial, so make sure you learn it,” and the next he’s saying the exact same thing about something else. Isn’t everything crucial? What is up with linear algebra?

“Is Ichinose University too far, after all?” Dad wondered aloud.

“Well—it’s farther than Suisei, but it’s only a thirty-minute difference, which is the same commute time as you, Dad.”

“I’m usually in bed by ten. I get a full eight hours every day,” he said. “I know you’re still young, but I’d rather you didn’t skimp on sleep.”

“Yeah… I’ll do my best,” I replied, sounding like a politician giving a non-answer. For now, I just needed to finish the food in front of me. My entire life lately felt like a cycle of eating, sleeping, waking up, and eating again. There was studying in there somewhere, I was pretty sure.

“Want some tea?”

“Ah, yeah. Thanks.”

Saki, having already finished her meal, poured me some tea from the teapot and placed the cup within my reach. She could make it to school on time even if she left at the same time as she did in high school. Up until May, she’d woken up early just to walk with me, but lately, her classes had gotten harder and her internship left her exhausted, so she’d been sleeping in a little more. Inevitably, we ended up leaving the house separately. This morning, she had made breakfast, which was why we were able to eat together.

──Drifting apart for such trivial reasons, we’re missing out on more and more time together.

The thought from last night returned, and with it, a formless, hazy cluster of anxiety welled up inside me.

My mental landscape turned dim and faded. Even the steaming hot rice in front of me seemed to have been dyed gray—no, wait, that was just the soy sauce-mixed grated yam I’d poured over it.

“How’s driving school?” my dad asked, pulling me from my thoughts. It took a moment for my brain, which had been contemplating grated yam rice, to switch gears.

“Ah, yeah. It’s so-so, I guess.”

My answer couldn’t have been more vague, but my dad, unlike his unworthy son, kept the conversation going. “Well, it’s not something you get the hang of right away.”

If it were me, I might have ruined the mood by retorting, “So you’re saying it’s not going well?” The difference between us was palpable.

“It’s been about a month since you started, right? What have you been working on?”

“Ten periods of classroom lessons, learning the laws and stuff. And some driving practice on the course.”

I had a feeling I could manage the classroom part. You needed 45 out of 50 on the written exam to get your learner’s permit, but compared to studying for university entrance exams, it wasn’t that bad.

The problem was the practical driving lessons. I never felt it when Dad was driving, but being in the driver’s seat myself, holding the wheel… it was purely terrifying. When I stepped on the accelerator, the car lurched forward, and the scenery flew past at a frightening speed. The expression “like flying” was a perfect fit.

Come to think of it, I’d hardly ever played those racing games in arcades. My friend Maru had invited me countless times, but I was never interested, and eventually, he stopped asking.

I wonder if things would have been different if I’d at least tried one of those simulations. The driving school had a game-like machine for Hazard Perception Training. The name alone sounded scary. I was already dreading that part of the curriculum. What if I messed up?

If it was this scary driving by myself, I couldn’t imagine ever being able to drive with other people in the car.

When I confessed as much, my dad gave a wry smile. “Everyone’s like that at first. A driver who’s full of confidence from the get-go would be way too scary, don’t you think? It’s better to be cautious. There’s no need to rush. You’ll be able to drive properly soon enough.”

“I wonder if a day like that will ever come.”

“It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine,” he repeated, as if to blow my anxiety away. “I’m looking forward to going for a drive with you behind the wheel, Yuuta.”

I can’t be that optimistic, though…

“By the way, Saki-chan,” Dad said, turning to her. “Are you not getting a license?”

“I’m not really thinking about it right now,” she replied. “Honestly, the internship is full of so many new things. I don’t think I have the capacity to add anything else new.”

“I see. Well, as long as you’re living in Tokyo, there’s no real inconvenience,” Dad agreed. “But still, if you want a license, it’s better to get it while you’re young. When you get older, it becomes a pain to start new things.”

He says that, but Dad, I’m already finding it a pain. Starting something new…

I chewed on the thought internally.

…it really does take a huge amount of energy.

“Yuuta— Ah, um, Nii-san.”

Saki’s voice pulled me back. She had almost used my name before remembering my dad was there and correcting herself. “Hm?” I lifted my head, and she pointed toward the wall clock.

“Shouldn’t you be leaving soon…?”

I turned to look. Crap. If I missed the next train, I’d definitely be late.

“Sorry! I’m going.”

“Mm. I’ll clean up. Now go, go!”

Abandoning my after-meal cleanup entirely, I grabbed my bag and dashed to the station, barely managing to jump onto the train as the departure bell rang. I leaned against the door as it closed with a clatter, my breath ragged.

Safe. I’ll make it somehow.

After a series of last-minute train transfers and a brisk walk from the station, I made it to class just in the nick of time. As I was taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart, Nakamura, sitting next to me, spoke up.

“Hey, man. Cuttin’ it real close today, ain’t ya?”

“Yeah, just a little…”

The door at the front of the classroom opened, and the lecturer went straight to the podium, starting the lecture without so much as a greeting.

No mercy. Damn you, linear algebra.

Once first period was over, I didn’t have another class until third period, giving me nearly three hours of free time. I headed straight for the university library.

I searched the catalog, picked out a few foreign books, and decided to read a couple of the library-use-only sociology journals while I was there. I also found the original version of a book our lecturer had recommended, so I decided to check it out. I already had the translated version, so I could compare them. To my surprise, the catalog also listed regular novels.

“Oh…!”

A small cry escaped me. What had caught my eye was I, Robot and Tales of the Black Widowers. I recognized them immediately as Isaac Asimov’s Ware wa Robot and Kurogoke-gumo no Kai. One was science fiction, the other mystery, but both were from the master himself. They were collections of short stories I’d read in translation long ago. Asimov’s prose was easy to understand, so I figured I might be able to handle the original. I decided to borrow them.

After completing the checkout process, I skimmed through the journals. As expected, they were dense with difficult, specialized terms that made my eyes glaze over, but I felt like I got the gist of the topics they were covering.

With my borrowed books in hand, I had an early lunch at the cafeteria and then headed to the lecture hall for my third-period class. As I was flipping through one of the books, Nakamura called out to me again, this time with Kikuchi beside him. I had a lot of classes with these two, so we’d become pretty close.

“What’s that! Whoa, you’re readin’ somethin’ heavy!” Nakamura exclaimed with exaggerated surprise.

“I borrowed it thinking it might help me study English,” I explained.

Kikuchi traced the cover of the book with his eyes. “Well, it might help with reading comprehension. I don’t think it’ll help with spoken English, though.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I think spoken language and written language are different. Besides, it won’t train your ear, right?”

That’s true. I kind of had a feeling that was the case. If I was serious about studying conversation, I should be listening to audio materials or watching foreign movies without subtitles, like Saki did. I knew that. But I preferred reading books.

“Well, I’m hoping it’ll be helpful in some small way,” I said. “Besides, I’ll have to read the latest papers eventually anyway. I figured it’d be better to get used to long English texts.”

Kikuchi seemed to accept that with an “I see.”

“I don’t wanna read no English papers in the first place!” Nakamura grumbled.

“You won’t get the credits then,” I pointed out calmly, which only made him scowl.

“Do we really gotta be that good at English?”

“Doesn’t that depend on your career path?” Kikuchi countered. “If you want to go to grad school, English is probably essential. Nowadays, it’s a given for master’s students and above to speak English. Apparently, there are even classes conducted entirely in the language.”

For context, a “Master’s” is what you get after completing a master’s program in graduate school, and a “Doctorate” is for completing a doctoral program. The standard lengths are two and three years, respectively.

“I ain’t goin’ to no grad school,” Nakamura declared. “Why do I gotta keep studyin’ after I’m done with college?”

“In the first place, university is for people who come to study academics,” Kikuchi said pointedly.

While he had a point, realistically, students who were here to “devote their lives to academics” were probably in the minority. I certainly didn’t think of myself as that much of a scholar. Is Kikuchi… different? He doesn’t look it.

Just then, the lecturer entered the classroom, and I hurriedly put my book away.

While half-listening to the lecture, I found myself mulling over Kikuchi’s words.

──University is a place for people who come to study academics.

He was right. I’d never considered grad school, but my motivation for choosing this university was to take Professor Mori’s lectures. It wasn’t to get a driver’s license or master my bookstore job. I had to remember that.

Of course, wanting a driver’s license for my future with Saki was also how I truly felt.

Third period ended, and I stepped out of the lecture hall. The sun was still high. On the bus to the driving school, I reread the books I’d borrowed and thought about my next trip to the library. This first visit had been preoccupied with just finding books and learning the checkout procedure. Next time, I could focus on searching for the references in my textbooks. This was a new challenge, and I wanted to make it part of my routine.

The difficulty of the practical lessons at driving school gradually increased. S-curves, crank turns, hill starts, parking—the list of things I had to learn just kept growing. Between university and my part-time job, there was a limit to how much time I could attend, and the road to getting my license was steeper than I had imagined. My skills were improving at a snail’s pace. With June about to end, I couldn’t say for sure if I’d even get it before summer break.

Amidst these struggles, a wind of change appeared at my part-time job.

That day, I headed straight to the office as soon as I arrived. I had to greet the manager and submit the paperwork for my transportation expenses.

“Coming in,” I called out as I opened the door.

The manager was talking with a tall man in a suit I’d never seen before. Given that they were in the office, he had to be connected to the bookstore, but he was a stranger to me. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.

“Autumn, you say?” the manager asked.

“It’s a full-scale renovation. I think it’ll take four months.”

“If we have to close the store during that time, some of our part-timers might quit. It might be better to put out job ads early… oh, Asamura-kun, hello.”

“Yes. Um… I came to claim my transportation expenses… should I come back later?”

“No, no. Don’t worry about it,” the manager said. “We were just talking about the store renovation I mentioned a while ago.”

“Oh… yes. Understood.”

I went to the document shelf, pulled out a form, and listened with one ear as I filled it out. They were discussing a large-scale renovation starting next autumn, set to be completed by the following spring. More than that, they mentioned shifting the store’s focus, significantly reducing its function as a bookstore to prioritize a different main business.

I’d heard the criticism before—“You’re a bookstore, yet selling books isn’t your main thing anymore”—and as someone who would find that troubling, I suppose it was just the way of the world. Considering the recent increase in foreign tourists, I could understand wanting to make better use of the Shibuya location. The manager argued that was precisely why there should be foreign customers who want to buy Japanese books, but a discreet glance at the important-looking man he was talking to told me the reaction wasn’t favorable.

Just then, I finished filling out the form. I couldn’t linger without a reason, and more importantly, my shift was about to start.

“I’ve filled out the form.”

“Okay. Just put it in the usual place.”

I submitted the form and left the office. As I changed into my uniform and headed to the sales floor, their conversation echoed in my mind. The scenery of this bookstore, a place I had grown so accustomed to over the past four years, might be about to change.

Time flows like a river and never stops. Just as the second law of thermodynamics states, the entropy of a closed system only increases. Nothing lasts forever. People, too, cannot stay in the same place forever. It made me feel anew just how transient the world is. Impermanence is the norm. The term “daily life” doesn’t refer to things that don’t change; the true nature of daily life is that it changes little by little every day.

I remembered what Narasaka-san once said: that age eighteen is the beginning of preparations for adulthood. About half a year has passed since my birthday. New university, new friends, new experiences… Just like Saki, who started her internship at Akihiro-san’s office, I probably have to search for my “next self,” too.

Have I been able to start preparing to become an adult?

I hope I’m growing, even if it’s just little by little…