The Miracles of the Namiya General Store

by Keigo Higashino

  The man grabbed Kosuke’s arm. His grip assured him that this was no voluntary chat.

  The man brought him to what appeared to be his office. He had said it wouldn’t take long, but Kosuke wound up detained there for hours. That was because he wouldn’t answer the man’s questions.

  Not even the first one.

  “What’s your name and address?”

  7

  The man who had approached him at the ticket counter was a detective from the Juvenile Division of the Metropolitan Police Department. A lot of boys and girls tried to run away from home at the end of summer, and these detectives watched out for them at Tokyo Station in plainclothes. He had Kosuke the second he spotted him wandering anxiously around the station in his grubby T-shirt. He followed him to the ticket line, waited for his chance, and winked a signal to the ticket agent. It was no coincidence, then, that the man had disappeared out back.

  The detective told Kosuke all of this in the hopes of getting him to finally say something. He had clearly underestimated how hard this was going to be. He expected Kosuke to give up his information, after which he’d go through the usual procedure of calling up his parents and his school, and wait with him for somebody to pick him up.

  But Kosuke withheld his identity. If he peeped, he’d have to explain the entire escape.

  Even after they’d moved him from an office in the train station to a conference room at the police station, Kosuke kept his mouth clamped shut. They brought him a rice ball and some cold barley tea, but he wouldn’t touch it. He was starving but knew better than to scarf it down. If he did, he’d have to answer their questions.

  “All right,” the detective laughed. “Truce. It’s about time you ate something.” He left Kosuke in the room alone.

  Kosuke stuffed the rice ball in his face. This was the first time he’d eaten since the leftover curry with his family the night before. It was just a ball of rice with a single pickled plum inside, but to Kosuke, the flavor was ambrosial.

  Before long, the detective came back in. “You ready to talk?”

  Kosuke looked at his hands.

  “This kid is a nightmare,” he sighed.

  Someone else came in and discussed something with the detective. From the few words Kosuke was able to make out, it sounded like they were checking his description against missing persons lists across the country.

  Kosuke was particularly worried about what his school would do. If they called every single middle school to look for him, his school would note that he was absent. Sadayuki had said he called and told them his son was out of the country with his family for a week, but hadn’t they found that story a little fishy?

  Night came, and Kosuke had a second meal in the conference room. Dinner was a rice bowl with tempura. It was damn good.

  The detective was beat.

  “Can you please just tell me your name?” he pleaded. Kosuke felt a little sorry for him.

  “Hiroshi,” he muttered.

  The detective’s face lit up. “Wait, what’d you say?”

  “Hiroshi…Fujikawa.”

  The detective fumbled for his pen. “That’s you, huh? What are the characters for that? Actually, you write it.”

  Kosuke took the pen and paper from the detective and wrote the characters for “Hiroshi Fujikawa.”

  It had occurred to him in passing that he would have to use a fake name. He took a Japanese character from the term World Expo, which could be pronounced “Hiroshi,” and “Fujikawa” from the name of the rest stop.

  “And your address?” the detective asked, but Kosuke shook his head.

  He spent the night inside the conference room. They rolled in a cot and made it up with bedding. He wrapped himself in the blanket and slept straight through the night.

  The next morning, the detective sat down across from Kosuke once again.

  “It’s time to make a decision. Either you tell me the truth about who you are, or you can head over to Juvenile Affairs. At this rate, we’ll be stuck in here forever.”

  Kosuke wouldn’t answer him. The detective was getting peeved and scratched his head.

  “What the hell happened anyway? Where are your parents? Haven’t they noticed that their son’s gone missing?”

  He stared into the surface of the tabletop.

  “Ah well,” the detective sputtered, all out of ideas. “Seems like you have a pretty good reason to keep quiet. And Hiroshi Fujikawa—we know that’s not your real name. Is it?”

  Kosuke glanced at the man and quickly looked down again. Upon realizing he was right, the detective let out a huge sigh.

  Soon after, Kosuke was escorted to Juvenile Affairs. He was expecting something like a school building, but when he got there, he was surprised to find an old European mansion. When he asked, they told him it had actually been someone’s residence once. Only now it was in awful disrepair with paint flaking from the walls and the floorboards buckling.

  Kosuke spent about two months at this facility. Over the course of his stay, they had him meet with a lot of different people. Some were doctors, some psychiatrists. All of them were trying to get to the bottom of this “Hiroshi Fujikawa.” But none of them could ever do it. What puzzled everyone the most was that not a single missing person profile fitting his description had been submitted. Not to any police department in Japan. Where were his parents? Wasn’t anybody watching him? They all wound up at the same ragged nonconclusion.

  The next place he lived was a children’s home called Marumitsuen. It was far outside Tokyo, but only about half an hour from where he used to live. At first, he worried that maybe they had figured him out, but the demeanor of the grown-ups there assured him they just happened to have space for him.

  The four-story building was nestled in the hillside, surrounded by trees. The kids who lived there ranged from infants all the way to high school boys with unkempt stubble.

  “If you don’t want to tell us about your background, that’s fine. But you need to give us a birthday. We can’t send you to school until we know what grade you’re supposed to be in.” The person asking him was middle-aged, bespectacled.

  Kosuke thought about this. His real birthday was February 26, 1957, but he thought it would be risky giving away his real age. Then again, he couldn’t pretend to be much older. He had never even seen a textbook for third-year students in middle school.

  The answer he gave was June 29, 1957.

  June 29—the day the Beatles landed in Japan.

  8

  He polished off his second Guinness.

  “Care for another?” Eriko asked. “Or would you prefer something a bit stronger?”

  “Maybe, yeah.” Kosuke scanned the liquor bottles lined up behind the bar. “I guess I’ll have a Bunnahabhain, on the rocks.”

  Eriko nodded and took down a glass.

  “I Feel Fine” was playing from the speakers. Kosuke drummed his fingers to the rhythm but caught himself and stopped.

  He looked around the bar again. What was the deal with this place? He couldn’t believe that this was in his backwater hometown. There were other Beatles fans around him growing up, but he was proud to have been the resident maniac, their biggest fan.

  Eriko broke ice into chunks with an ice pick. The way she worked the tool reminded him of when he used to carve wood with a chisel.

  Life at the children’s home wasn’t so bad. He didn’t have to worry about his next meal, and they sent him to school. His first year at the new school was a breeze, since he’d fibbed about his age and got to repeat a grade.

  He went by Hiroshi Fujikawa, but everybody called him by his first name, which was unusual in Japan. There was a short period where he wasn’t used to it, but soon he answered to it as if he’d been doing it his whole life.

  He didn’t have any friends. Or more precisely, he didn’t make any. He was scared that if he got too close to anyone, he’d want to tell them who he really was. To keep this up, he had to isolate himself. Seeing him so reticent, f
ew kids ever approached him, and a lot of them thought he was creepy. In fact, they found him too weird to bully, and he was always on his own.

  He may have had no friends to play with, but he never felt especially lonely.

  After moving in, he took up a new hobby: wood carving. He picked up fallen branches from the woods around the home and carved them into whatever took his fancy. At first, he was just killing time, but a few creations later, he was hooked. He made everything—animals, robots, superheroes, cars. The more complex, the better the challenge. He never worked off any plans; it was way more fun to make it up as he went along.

  When a project was done, he gave it to one of the younger kids. At first, they didn’t know how to respond, since Hiroshi mostly kept to himself, but when they held the carving in their hands, they smiled. It was rare for these children to ever get a new toy. Soon the kids were putting in requests: “I want Moomin,” “Hey, make me Kamen Rider.” He looked forward to seeing these kids smile.

  Kosuke’s carving abilities were well-known among the staff. One day, he was called to the director’s office and asked something completely unexpected: How would he like to do this for a living? The director knew someone who ran a wood-carving studio, and he was looking for a successor. If he moved in with the master and apprenticed there by day, Kosuke would be allowed to go to night school and get his high school diploma there.

  He was almost done with middle school. Kosuke figured the staff was probably getting antsy about what to do about him.

  As a matter of fact, they had just checked a very important item off their list. They wanted him to have a legal name. They had begged the family court to create a registry for him, and their plea had finally been granted.

  This measure was generally reserved for abandoned children of a very young age; it was rare for a request to be accepted for someone as old as Kosuke. But it was more than that. There had never been another case where a person obstinately hid their background to the point that the police couldn’t even suss it out. This was a unique request.

  The people from the family court had come to meet him a few times. Like everyone else, they tried to get him to talk about his upbringing, his background, anything, but Kosuke assumed the exact same pose as always. He persisted through his silence.

  “Maybe he’s suffered some kind of trauma that erased his memory of his identity,” they finally said. “Maybe he couldn’t tell us even if he wanted to.” That was the latest theory. Maybe those grown-ups had only picked it as a way of cleaning up the mess.

  Just before graduating middle school, Kosuke’s name was legally registered as “Hiroshi Fujikawa.” And just after graduation, he left the children’s home for Saitama, where he began to study woodworking as an apprentice.

  9

  Studying with the master wasn’t easy. This man had the spirit of a typical craftsman: inflexible and stubborn. The first year, Kosuke was only allowed to tend to the tools, take stock of the materials, and clean the shop. After he had made it to his second year of night school, the master finally let him carve wood. But he could only carve whatever he was told, producing the same thing twenty or thirty times within a single day. He couldn’t move on to another form until every rendering was identical. It wasn’t what you’d call a dynamic job.

  But the master was a good man who cared about Kosuke’s future. He saw it as his personal mission to set him up as a working craftsman. Kosuke could tell this work wasn’t just because he was cheap labor or because he was next in line to succeed the shop. The master’s wife was just as kind.

  When he graduated from high school, he started to work officially at the studio. In the beginning, he took on simple projects. As he got adjusted and the master placed more trust in him, his tasks became more complicated, but also more rewarding.

  Those days were satisfying. The memory of fleeing town with his family had not escaped him, but he revisited that night less and less. He was now able to say he had made the right decision.

  He was glad he hadn’t stayed with his parents. Making a clean break was the right choice. If he had followed that old man’s advice, where would he be?

  This moment of peace was violated in December 1980. He heard the news on the TV.

  John Lennon had been murdered.

  The reel of his life replayed before Kosuke’s eyes, starting with those vivid days when he first discovered the Beatles. There were sad and bitter memories, too, but even these were tinged with their nostalgia, as such things always were.

  Had John Lennon ever regretted breaking up the Beatles? The question occupied his mind. Had he ever thought it was too soon?

  Kosuke shook the thought away. There was no way. In the wake of the breakup, the four Beatles had launched careers as solo artists. This was possible only because the Beatles had broken free from whatever binding spell had held them together. Just as Kosuke had: He’d attained happiness only after he cut ties with his parents.

  Their hearts had grown apart. Once that happens—he was certain—there’s no fixing it.

  Then in December, eight years later, he read a shocking article in the newspaper. There had been a fire at Marumitsuen. Not everyone had made it out alive.

  The master told him to go and see how they were doing. Kosuke drove up in the shop van the next day, to show his support. He hadn’t been back since the time he came to say a few words after graduating from night school.

  Half the building was blackened and caved in. The children and the staff were hunkered down in the gymnasium of an elementary school nearby. The space was heated with kerosene heaters, but everyone looked cold.

  The director was an old man by now, thrilled by Kosuke’s visit, and perhaps a little baffled, too. This was the boy who wouldn’t even share his name, now grown into a man, with tender feelings for his ill-fated childhood home.

  “Tell me if there’s anything I can do,” Kosuke told the director.

  “The thought alone means everything to us,” he said.

  On his way out, a voice behind him called out, “Is that you, Hiroshi?”

  He turned and saw a young woman approaching him. Maybe in her midtwenties. She was wearing an expensive-looking fur coat.

  “I knew it was you, Hiroshi. Hiroshi Fujikawa, right?” Her eyes were sparkling. “It’s me, Harumi. Harumi Muto? Don’t you remember me?”

  Kosuke was sorry to say he didn’t. The woman opened her handbag and pulled something out.

  “How about this? I know you remember this.”

  “Whoa,” he breathed.

  She was holding a carved wooden puppy. He remembered making this. It was one of his carvings from when he was still living at the children’s home.

  He looked at her again and started to get the feeling he’d seen her face before. “Were you at Marumitsuen, too?”

  She nodded. “You made this for me. When I was in fifth grade.”

  “I remember now. At least, I think so.”

  “Oh man, really? I never forgot you. This little guy is my favorite.”

  “Ah, well, I’m sorry.”

  The woman laughed. She returned the carved dog to her handbag and pulled out a business card for Kosuke. It said Office Little Dog, Harumi Muto, CEO. Kosuke gave her his card. Her face lit up with delight.

  “A wood-carving studio… I knew you would go pro!”

  Kosuke scratched his head. “My boss would say I’m only halfway there.”

  They sat down together on one of the benches outside the gymnasium. Harumi said she had come as soon as she could after hearing the terrible news. She mentioned offering the director her assistance.

  “They did so much for me. I want to do something to give back.”

  “That’s noble of you.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “My boss told me to come.” He looked down at her card. “You’re running your own company, huh? What kind of company is it?”

  “It’s a small operation. We mainly put together events geared t
oward young people, produce ad campaigns, you know.”

  “Cool,” mumbled Kosuke, just to have something to say. Whatever she did, he wasn’t getting it. “That’s impressive for your age.”

  “It’s not like that. I was lucky; that’s all.”

  “It takes more than luck. It takes ambition. I’m impressed by anyone who starts a company. It’s so much easier to collect a paycheck.”

  Harumi thought it over.

  “It’s really just my personality. I’m not so good at taking orders. I could never keep a part-time job for very long. When I left Marumitsuen, I was struggling with what to do with my life. That’s when someone gave me some advice. It was priceless, really. It gave my life direction.”

  “Someone, huh?”

  “Well,” she said hesitantly, “he runs a kind of general store.”

  “A general store?” Kosuke asked with confusion.

  “It’s just this little store, near my friend’s house, but the owner would give you free advice, on any problem or worry. All you had to do was ask. I think someone did an article about it for a magazine. I had nothing to lose and tried it out, and he gave me the best advice ever. I’m who I am today because of him.”

  Kosuke was stunned. She had to mean the Namiya General Store. There couldn’t be another general store like that around.

  “I bet that sounds hard to believe, huh…?”

  “No, not at all,” he said, trying to act normal. “Sounds like an interesting place.”

  “Right? I wonder if it’s still there.”

  “Well, I’m glad that work and everything is going well.”

  “Thanks. Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve been making a lot more from my side gig.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Investing. Stocks, real estate, equity club memberships.”

  Kosuke nodded agreeably. He’d heard a lot about this lately. Real estate was skyrocketing, and the economy was riding high. It meant good business for a woodworker, too.

  “Are you interested in stocks?”

  Kosuke laughed at her and shook his head. “Not even a little.”

  “Really. That’s probably for the best.”