The Miracles of the Namiya General Store

by Keigo Higashino

  “But how, if they haven’t been written yet?”

  “If I go to the store, I’ll be able to retrieve them. I know it sounds insane, but I somehow know I can. That’s why I need to make it there, no matter what.”

  Yuji’s voice was adamant. He didn’t look as if he was having a delusion, at least not to Takayuki.

  This wasn’t a story Takayuki could say he believed, but he had made a promise, and he had to heed his father’s wishes.

  4

  When Takayuki came to, he was still cramped up in the Civic, and it was still dark. He turned on the interior lights and checked the time. A few minutes shy of five in the morning.

  He’d parked on the street beside a little park. He cranked up the seat from its not-quite-horizontal incline back to normal, tried to crack his neck, and stepped out of the car.

  After using the public bathroom in the park, he washed his face. He used to come here all the time to play. He had a look around, amazed at how small it actually was, and wondered how he could have played baseball in such a tiny space.

  Back in the car, he started the engine, flicked on the headlights, and rolled off down the street. It was only a few hundred yards back to the house.

  The sky began to take on color. By the time he parked in front of the store, he was able to make out the letters on the sign.

  Takayuki left the car and went around back. He had his spare key with him, but he decided to knock.

  After he’d waited a few dozen seconds, he heard a pattering sound behind the door.

  The door unlocked. It opened, and there was Yuji, facing him. The look on his face was utter peace.

  “I thought you might be ready soon,” said Takayuki. His voice was ragged.

  “Come, come in.”

  Takayuki stepped inside and shut the door snug behind him. Something about the air changed. He could feel it. As if they had been cut off from the outside world.

  He took off his shoes and stepped up into the house. Though it’d been neglected for so many months, the interior was clean. He’d been prepared for it to be dustier.

  “Wow, it’s so clean. Even though it hasn’t—”

  “Been aired out” was what he was about to say. But he stopped short when he saw what was sitting on the kitchen table.

  Rows and rows of envelopes. Dozens of them. All clean and white, almost all addressed to the Namiya General Store.

  “Did these…all arrive last night?”

  Yuji nodded and sat down in a chair. He scanned the rows of envelopes and looked up at Takayuki.

  “It was just as I suspected. The second I sat down here, these letters came flapping through the mail slot. It’s like they were waiting for me to come home.”

  Takayuki shook his head.

  “After you went outside, I sat out front for a bit. I watched, but nobody came by. No one even passed the house.”

  “Well. Still, all these letters.” Yuji uncurled his fingers. “Letters…from the future.”

  Takayuki grabbed a chair and sat down across from Yuji. “I don’t believe it…”

  “Didn’t you believe me when I explained things to you?”

  “No, I mean, yeah, sure.”

  Yuji laughed. “But deep down, you were skeptical. How about now? Or are you going to tell me you think I did this all myself?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that. I know you didn’t have the time.”

  “It would take hours just to prepare all these envelopes, let alone write them all. And just in case you’re wondering about the stationery, it’s not anything we ever sold.”

  “I believe it. I’ve never seen anything like this in the store.”

  Takayuki was a bit uneasy. Could something like this actually happen outside the world of fairy tales? He thought for a minute that maybe it was all someone’s idea of a clever joke or magic trick, but no one would go to all this trouble. Where was the fun in fooling an old man in his last days on earth?

  Letters from the future—perhaps that was the only explanation. If what Yuji said was true, this was a miracle. Takayuki should have been ecstatic, but he kept his cool. He was still somewhat perplexed, but he was surprised he could keep himself together.

  “So did you read them?”

  “Yep,” he said and picked up one of the envelopes. He pulled out the folded letter and handed it to Takayuki. “Have a look.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Takayuki took the pages and unfolded them. The contents weren’t written by hand, but in a typeface, printed on white paper.

  “Whoa.”

  Yuji nodded. “At least half the letters are printed up like this. People in the future must all have personal printing machines for text.”

  This alone was strong enough evidence that these letters were from the future. Takayuki took a deep breath and started to read.

  To the Namiya General Store,

  Are you really opening up again? The post said it would be for just one night. What’s the occasion? I debated what to do but figured hey, even if this is a trick, who cares? I’ll write and see what happens.

  I guess it’s been almost forty years now since I wrote you with this question:

  “Tell me how I can get an A+ on a test without studying or cheating or anything.”

  I know I was in grade school, but what a stupid thing to ask. But you gave me an amazing answer.

  “Ask your teacher to test you on yourself. Since you’re the topic of the test, whatever you say will be correct.”

  When I first read it, I thought you were messing with me. I just wanted to know how to get an A+ in real subjects, like literature or math.

  Your response stuck with me. Through middle school and high school, I thought of it whenever I had a test. It made that much of an impression. It meant a lot to me that you would respond to my stupid question in such a thoughtful way.

  But I didn’t truly appreciate just how amazing your response was until I started teaching kids myself. That’s right—I became a teacher.

  From my first few days behind the podium, I was in trouble. The kids in my class wouldn’t open up to me and wouldn’t listen to what I said. They weren’t getting along with one another, either. Nothing was working. They had no focus, and they wouldn’t come together as a class. Aside from their friends, they couldn’t have cared less who they were learning with.

  I tried all kinds of things, like integrating sports and games into the lessons, or having the kids hold debates. None of them worked. No one was having fun.

  Then one of the kids said, “I don’t want to do any of this stuff; just teach me how to get good grades.”

  When I heard that, I knew what to do. I’d been reminded of a very important lesson of my own.

  As you’ve probably guessed by now, I told them I was going to have them take a different sort of test, something we’d call the “Friend Quiz.” They would be assigned a random classmate and answer all kinds of questions about them. We started with the basics, like their birthday, address, siblings, and their guardians’ jobs, then went on to things like hobbies, talents, favorite celebrities. When they were done with the test, the “friend” would tell them the correct answers. Then, the students would all grade themselves.

  At first, they were confused about what to do, but after two or three rounds, they got the hang of it. The only secret to scoring high on this test was to learn everything you could about your classmates. My students were communicating with one another so effectively you’d think they were a different batch of kids.

  For a newbie like me, this was a revelation. It gave me the confidence to stick with teaching. In fact, it’s what’s kept me teaching to this day.

  All of this is thanks to you, Mr. Namiya. I’ve been wanting to thank you all these years, but I didn’t know how to express my thanks. I’m so glad I finally had the chance.

  Sincerely,

  A+ Akira

  PS. I am assuming that this letter will be rec
eived by a family member on your behalf. I would be most appreciative if they would place it on your altar.

  The second Takayuki looked up from the letter, Yuji asked him, “Well?”

  “I mean, it’s great.” That’s the least he could say. “I remember this question about how to ace a test without studying. It’s so cool getting a letter from one of those kids.”

  “I’m amazed, too. And he’s so appreciative. All I did was write a serious response to his jokey letter.”

  “But he’s never forgotten.”

  “It seems like it. And not only that, he’s run with it and made it into something new, adapted it to his circumstances. He says it’s thanks to me, but things went the way they did because of all the effort he put in.”

  “But I think you really made him happy by seriously engaging with his little joke instead of ignoring it. That’s why he still remembers.”

  “My response wasn’t anything special.” Yuji looked over the rows of letters. “Most of them are thanking me for how I helped them out. I appreciate it, but when I read them, I can’t help but feel like my advice only worked because they put it into practice. If they hadn’t had the resolve to do the work on their end, they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, no matter what I said.”

  Takayuki nodded. He agreed.

  “It’s good you got to see it, though, right? It proves you steered people in the right direction.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.” Yuji scratched his cheek. He picked up another envelope. “There’s one more I’d like you to read.”

  “Why this one?”

  “Read it. You’ll know.”

  Takayuki took the envelope and pinched out the folded pieces of paper. The densely packed lines of the letter were handwritten in a neat script.

  To the Namiya General Store,

  I heard online that you were reopening just for tonight, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to write this letter.

  I actually only know about your advice indirectly through some stories. Someone I know wrote to you asking for advice. Before I say who that was, please allow me to explain how it is I made it here.

  When I was young, I lived in a children’s home. I have no idea when I arrived. My first memories are of being there with other children. I thought that was how everybody lived.

  But when I started going to school, I wasn’t so sure anymore. How come I had no parents? Why didn’t I have a house?

  One day, a caretaker told me how I had wound up in their care. She was the only one I trusted and confided in. She said when I was one year old, my mother was in a car accident and passed away. I never had a father. She said she would say more when I was older.

  I was so confused. Why didn’t I have a father? Time passed, but things didn’t get any clearer.

  Then in middle school, we were asked to do a report for social studies where we had to research events that took place the year we were born. I was looking through some newspapers that’d been scaled down at the library, and I stumbled across an article.

  The article described how a car drove off the road into the harbor, and how the driver, Midori Kawabe, died in the crash. She had been driving with her one-year-old daughter, and from the lack of skid marks on the road, they thought there was a high chance of a murder-suicide.

  I knew my mother’s name, and I had once asked where she had been living when she died. This was her.

  I was shocked, and not only to find that my mother’s death was a suicide instead of an accident. It was also an act of murder. She had been trying to kill me, too. This was an enormous blow.

  I left the library, but I didn’t go back to the children’s home. Please don’t ask me where I went. I can’t remember. All I could think about was how I should have died, and there was no reason for me to go on living. My own mother had wanted to murder me. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one who loved me unconditionally? I was worthless, and I had no right to be alive.

  I was taken into custody on the third day. They found me in a corner of this little amusement park on the roof of a department store. I have no idea why I was there. All I remember is having the thought that if I jumped from somewhere high, it would be easier to die.

  They brought me to a hospital. I was so weak, and I had slash marks on my wrists. I was hugging a bag when they took me in, and inside they found a bloodstained razor blade.

  For a while, I wouldn’t speak to anyone. I couldn’t even make eye contact. I was barely eating and got skinnier every day.

  One day, I had a visitor—my best friend from the children’s home. She was my age. Her little brother had a disability, and they had been sent to live with us because their parents were abusive. She was really good at singing, and I loved music. We became the best of friends.

  With her there, I felt able to speak. We were chatting about nothing special, and out of nowhere, she said to me she had something very important to tell me. I got the sense the staff at the home had sent her. They probably knew I wouldn’t have spoken with anyone else.

  I told her I already knew everything and didn’t want to hear it, but she shook her head aggressively and told me I only knew a piece of it, and I didn’t know the real facts.

  Like, for example, did I know how much my mother weighed when she died? I asked her how was I supposed to know that. She said she had weighed sixty-seven pounds. I was about to ask her how she knew, but I backtracked. Sixty-seven? That’s it?

  She nodded and went on.

  When they found Midori’s body, she was unbelievably skinny. The police investigated her apartment and found almost no food, except for some powdered milk. There was one jar of baby food in the fridge.

  According to those who knew her, Midori couldn’t get a job and had blown through all her savings. She was behind on her rent and was going to be evicted. This was enough to suggest that she killed herself and tried to kill her child, out of hopeless desperation.

  But this didn’t explain why her child had miraculously survived.

  “In actuality,” my friend explained, “it was no miracle at all.” Before she went on, she had something she wanted me to read. She handed me a letter.

  She said the letter had been found in my mother’s bedroom, tucked away with my umbilical cord. All this time, it had been kept under lock and key by the staff at the home. They had talked it over and decided it was time for me to see it.

  I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to “Ms. Green River.”

  I was hesitant but had to open it and see what was inside. It was carefully handwritten. For a second, I thought it might be written by my mother, but midway through, I realized it was written to her, not by her. My mother was “Ms. Green River.”

  The letter was offering her advice. Evidently, she had confided in this person in some way. From the letter, I gathered she had gotten pregnant by a man who already had a wife and kids, and she was torn up about whether to have the child or have an abortion.

  It was disturbing to learn about the scandal behind my birth. It felt awful to know I was conceived under such immoral circumstances.

  I screamed and cursed at my mother in front of my friend.

  “Why did you even have me? You should have let me go so that I wouldn’t have to be here suffering. You wouldn’t have had to try and kill us both.”

  But my friend said I had it wrong and told me to keep reading.

  Whoever wrote the letter said that the most important thing was whether her unborn child would wind up happy. It said, “Even having both your parents is no guarantee for a happy life, and unless you’re prepared to push through every form of hardship for the sake of providing for your child, I would say you shouldn’t have the baby. Even if the man was in the picture, I’d give you the same advice.”

  “Your mother had you,” my friend said, “because she was prepared to do anything to make you happy. The fact that she held on to this letter was the ultimate proof. “That’s why she couldn’t have been trying to kill either of you.�
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  She said the passenger-side window of the wrecked car had been all the way open. It had been raining that day since morning; there was no way they had been driving with the window down. Her mother must have opened it after the crash.

  Which meant it wasn’t a murder or a suicide. It was an accident. Midori Kawabe had barely been eating, and she must have gone into anemic shock from malnutrition while she was driving. She had borrowed the car, like she said, to bring her child to the doctor’s office.

  Midori blacked out and then came to when the car crashed into the water. Through the chaos, she opened up the window and freed her child from the vehicle, praying that would be enough to rescue her.

  When they found her in the car, her seatbelt wasn’t even unbuckled. The anemia must have dimmed her consciousness.

  The rescued child weighed over twenty-two pounds. Midori had been feeding her enough.

  My friend asked me what I thought of the whole story. Did I still wish I’d never been born?

  I wasn’t quite sure how to feel. I’d never met my mother in person. My anger was an abstraction. But trying to convert it into gratitude only made me more confused.

  I told her I didn’t think anything of it.

  The car crash was her own fault, and it would never have happened if she hadn’t been too broke to eat. Saving me was her responsibility as a parent. She was an idiot for not being able to save herself, too.

  For that, my friend slapped me across the face.

  She was crying and told me not to think of life that way. Had I already forgotten about the fire?

  I didn’t know what to say to that. She was referring to the fire that had happened three years earlier in the children’s home on Christmas Eve. I was just as terrified as everyone else.

  My friend’s little brother was one step behind the rest of us and almost died. He wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for this musician who had come for a performance. I can still remember what he looked like; his face was so kind. While everyone was scrambling to safety, he stopped and listened to my friend and ran back up the stairs to save her brother. Her brother made it out alive, but the man had third-degree burns all over. He died in the hospital.