The Miracles of the Namiya General Store

by Keigo Higashino

  And so they decided to wipe Kosuke Waku from the face of the earth.

  The detective from the Juvenile Division of the Metropolitan Police Department, the case agents from Juvenile Affairs, and all the other grown-ups had tried to crack Kosuke’s identity, but none of them could do it. Of course they couldn’t. He was a ghost. All documents about a certain middle school student named Kosuke Waku had been wiped from the records. There was no trace of his former existence.

  The words his mother said to him up in his room, just before they ran, crossed his mind: Your father and I—well, your father especially—we’re ready to do anything if it means giving you a good life. Even putting our lives on the line.

  She hadn’t been lying. Kosuke was where he was today because they had been ready to make that sacrifice.

  Kosuke shook his head and took another gulp of whiskey. No. He could have avoided all that pointless suffering if those people hadn’t been his parents. He even had to give up his own name. He had gotten this far only by sheer will. That was all.

  Nevertheless, the pangs of regret and remorse were growing in his heart.

  When he’d run off, he’d left his parents with no other option. Kosuke had backed them into a corner. Why couldn’t he have asked them one more time before they ran? Forget this whole plan and go back home. Start over, from scratch, as a family.

  “Is something the matter?”

  He looked up. Eriko’s expression was concerned.

  “Something really must be bothering you.”

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Thanks.”

  He glanced over the stationery on the counter. As he read through what he’d written, a feeling of displeasure spread over his chest.

  The letter felt worthless, a parade of self-satisfaction. No echo of gratitude for the old man’s kind advice. My philosophy is that when things get heavy, you have to carry that weight yourself. What the hell was that? Who knows where he would actually be if it weren’t for his tortured parents’ sacrifice.

  He ripped up the paper, tore it to shreds. Eriko gasped.

  “Sorry. Listen, would you mind if I stuck around a little longer?”

  “Of course not.” She was smiling.

  He took up his pen and looked down at the stationery.

  Maybe the old man had been right after all. If it keeps you together and in the same boat, you have a fighting chance of getting back on course. That part of the letter came back to him. But Kosuke hadn’t taken this advice. He’d bolted off alone, leaving the boat without a destination.

  So what should he write?

  That he ignored the advice and ran off from his parents, eventually driving them to suicide? Should he write the truth?

  I can’t do that, he thought. It’s the wrong thing to do.

  It was as yet unclear how far the story of the Waku family suicide had spread. But what if the news had made it to the old man? He just might have a hunch that the son was none other than Paul Lennon. He would have regretted telling the boy to follow his parents.

  This evening, an event was being held for the old man’s thirty-third memorial rites. Kosuke had a duty to offer a gesture to help him rest peacefully. It had said “unfiltered opinions” were welcome, but that didn’t mean they wanted brutal honesty. The important thing was to express to them that the advice had been spot-on.

  After thinking it over, Kosuke drafted a second letter. It started off almost the same as the first one.

  To the Namiya General Store,

  About forty years ago, I wrote to you for advice using the name Paul Lennon.

  My question involved how my parents were planning to escape from town. I was torn about whether I should go with them. That letter was never posted on your wall. You said that was the first time someone had sent you a serious question.

  You told me it’s not good for a family to separate. You said that if it kept us together and in the same boat, we had a fighting chance of getting back on course.

  I took your advice and went with them. I did what they asked me to do. It was the right decision.

  I won’t go into details, but my parents and I found a way to free ourselves from suffering. In the last few years, both of them passed away, but I think they each would have said they had a good life. I can say I’m blessed.

  It’s all thanks to you, Mr. Namiya. I just had to put pen to paper and thank you.

  I suppose this letter will be read by someone in your family in your stead. I hope this is an acceptable contribution to your memorial service.

  —Paul Lennon

  After rereading the new letter a few times, Kosuke had a strange sensation. What he’d written was eerily similar to another thank-you letter, the one the old man’s son said his father received from the boy who had the exact same problem.

  It had to be a coincidence.

  He folded up the sheets of stationery and stuffed them in an envelope. His watch said almost midnight.

  “Can I ask you for a favor?” said Kosuke, standing up. “I’m going to go drop this letter off. I won’t be long. Think I’ll have time for one more round when I’m back?”

  Eriko looked at Kosuke and the letter with some confusion, but her face broke into a smile, and she nodded. “Sure. That works.”

  “Thanks,” said Kosuke. He took a ten-thousand-yen bill from his wallet and placed it on the counter as collateral to dissolve any suspicions about his leaving without paying.

  He left the bar and walked into the night. The other establishments were all already closed.

  He knew the way. In minutes, the Namiya General Store was up ahead. Kosuke stopped short. He saw a silhouette in front of the store.

  Was she there for the same reason as him? Kosuke walked up to the shutter to see. There was a woman in her midthirties, standing in a suit. A Benz was parked in the street. In the passenger seat was a cardboard box filled with CDs from a certain female artist. Copies upon copies of the same CD. Maybe this woman and the artist were affiliated in some way.

  The woman slipped something into the mail slot in the shutter and went over to her car. She noticed Kosuke and froze. Her face was flush with caution.

  Kosuke held up the letter and pointed to the mail slot. She understood, and her face relaxed. She wordlessly acknowledged him with a simple bow and climbed into her Benz.

  How many people were doing this tonight? The Namiya General Store must have touched the lives of more people than he realized.

  Once the Benz had rolled off, Kosuke slipped his letter in the slot. He heard it flap down. A sound he hadn’t heard in forty-two years.

  It felt as if a chapter of his life had at last come to a close. Perhaps everything had finally been settled.

  Back at Fab4, the flat-screen had been turned on. Eriko was fiddling with a remote behind the counter.

  “What’s up?” Kosuke asked.

  “There’s this video my brother loved. I was going to show you. They never released it officially, but I know it’s somewhere on this bootleg.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What would you like to drink?”

  “Right. I’ll have another whiskey.”

  A glass of Bunnahabhain was placed in front of Kosuke. Just as he reached for the drink, the film started playing. He was about to take a sip, but he pulled the glass away from his lips. He knew what film this was.

  “Is this…?”

  Onscreen was the rooftop of the Apple building. Against the winter wind, the Beatles were playing again. This was the climax of the movie Let It Be.

  He put down the glass and fixed his eyes on the screen. This was the film that had changed the course of his life. It had taught him just how tenuous the ties that bind us really are.

  And yet—

  The Beatles on the flat-screen were somehow different from what he remembered seeing in the theater. Back then, their hearts seemed scattered, and their performance refused to come together. But seeing them here, inside the bar, he got a different impression.
<
br />   The Fab Four were rocking out. They were having a blast. Sure, they were breaking up, but playing together here reminded them of how it all began.

  When Kosuke watched it in the movie theater, he’d seen them struggling, a projection of his own painful experience. He had stopped believing that anyone could stay together.

  He grabbed his glass and gulped the whiskey down. Closing his eyes, he thought of his parents and prayed.

  CHAPTER 5

  PRAYERS FROM THE SKY ABOVE

  1

  Shota came back from the storefront. His face was not encouraging.

  “Still nothing?”

  He nodded and sighed. “I guess it was just the wind.”

  “That’s all right,” replied Atsuya. “No biggie.”

  “I wonder if he read our response,” said Kohei.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Shota responded. “The letter isn’t in the milk crate. Who else would have taken it?”

  “You’ve got a point. So why haven’t we heard back?”

  “Well,” Shota began to say, but then he deferred to Atsuya.

  “Who cares?” Atsuya said. “What are we supposed to do with him? It probably made zero sense to him. If another letter comes, it’ll just be more trouble. What are you gonna do if he asks us to explain?”

  The other two looked down.

  “See? That’d be a pain in the ass. It’s fine as it is.”

  “It’s crazy, though,” said Shota. “I mean, what a coincidence that Floundering Musician was that guy.”

  “I mean, yeah.” Atsuya nodded. There was no way he could disagree.

  Just after concluding their correspondence with Moon Rabbit, they had received a letter from a new person asking for advice. They were incensed by what they read. This guy’s so-called problem was that he couldn’t decide whether to take over the family fish shop or pursue his musical career. Sounded like a spoiled brat who was never going to be satisfied.

  When they wrote back, they took potshots at him and called him out for being spoiled and told him to smell the roses. This was not at all what Floundering Musician had been expecting, and he shot them back an inflammatory rebuttal. The guys doubled down with some more invective, but something strange had happened when the next letter from the Flounder arrived.

  The guys had been sitting out in the store, waiting for his response, when they physically saw the letter slip in through the mail slot—and stop halfway. But what really got them was what happened next.

  Through the mail slot, they heard somebody playing the harmonica. It was a melody they knew well. A song called “Reborn.”

  This had been the breakthrough hit for the artist Seri Mizuhara, one with a famous backstory. And that backstory had a personal significance for the three guys in the store.

  Seri Mizuhara was raised with her younger brother at a children’s home, Marumitsuen. When she was in elementary school, the building caught fire on Christmas Eve. Her brother would never have made it out alive if it weren’t for the man who saved him, an amateur musician hired to play a Christmas show. The man suffered third-degree burns all over his body and breathed his last at the hospital soon after.

  “Reborn” was one of his originals. Seri sang his song for everyone to show her endless gratitude, and it had eventually launched her career as a singer.

  These three had heard this story countless times since they were kids; after all, they were also raised at Marumitsuen. For the kids at the children’s home, Seri Mizuhara was a source of pride and a ray of hope. They aspired to follow her example and find their own way to shine someday.

  Which was why Atsuya, Shota, and Kohei were stunned to hear “Reborn” outside on the harmonica. When the song was over, someone pushed the letter through, and it thwapped through the slot.

  The three guys asked one another what was going on. They had calculated by now that the people asking for advice were living in 1980. Seri Mizuhara would have been alive but still a kid. It would be years before she recorded “Reborn.”

  There was only one conclusion: “Reborn” had been written by the Floundering Musician. And he was the one who had saved Seri’s younger brother.

  The letter said he’d been thrown off by their advice but that this had given him a chance to take stock of his situation. He told “Mr. Namiya” that it would help him figure things out if he could meet him in person.

  The guys were stuck. Should they tell Floundering Musician about what was going to happen to him? Could they really tell him, “Hey, buddy, listen up. In 1988, you’re gonna play at a Christmas show at Marumitsuen, and the building is gonna catch fire, and you’re going to die”?

  “Let’s tell him,” Kohei suggested. “Then he won’t have to die.”

  “But if he doesn’t die,” Shota reasoned, “her brother will die instead.”

  Kohei had no way of contesting that.

  Atsuya made the final call: They weren’t going to mention the fire.

  “Even if we did, he probably wouldn’t take it seriously. He’d think it was some creepster giving him a prophesy. It would turn him off, and he’d probably just forget about it. Plus, we already know about the fire and about Seri becoming a famous musician. Awful shit is going to happen, no matter what we write. All we can do is help him accept his fate.”

  Shota and Kohei were on board. But what exactly should they say?

  “I want…to show him how thankful we are,” Kohei began. “If it wasn’t for him, Seri Mizuhara maybe would have never gotten famous, and we wouldn’t have ever heard her singing ‘Reborn.’”

  Atsuya agreed, and Shota said, “Let’s do it.”

  They worked together on what to write. The following is a snippet of their letter:

  Your efforts in music will never be in vain.

  Your music will save lives. And the songs you create will absolutely live on.

  Don’t ask me how I know. Just trust me. I’m positive.

  Hold on to this until the end. The very, very end.

  That’s all I can say.

  They had left their letter in the milk crate and, a little later, gone back to check. The bin was empty. The Floundering Musician must have taken it away.

  They were expecting a quick rebuttal. That’s why the door was shut, why they’d been waiting all this time.

  But no letter came. Up till now, it had taken no time at all for a response to show up in the mail slot. Maybe the Floundering Musician had read their letter and got what he needed.

  “All right, let’s open the door.” Atsuya got up.

  “Wait a sec.” Kohei caught him by the leg of his jeans. “Just a few more minutes.”

  “For what?”

  “You know.” Kohei nervously licked his lips. “The back door. Let’s leave it open just a little longer.”

  Atsuya sneered at him. “Why bother? I don’t think Flounder is writing back.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m done with him anyway.”

  “Okay. Then why?”

  “Well, I was wondering if someone else might send a letter.”

  “What?” Atsuya snapped and looked down at him. “Listen to yourself. If we leave the back door shut, time will never pass in here. Get it?”

  “I get it, I get it.”

  “Yeah? ’Cause if you did, you’d know we can’t go pulling shit like that. We got in over our heads and had to muddle through, but now we’re out. We’re not goddamned advice columnists.”

  Atsuya kicked free from Kohei’s hand and went out through the back.

  He checked the time. A little after four. Two more hours to go.

  The idea was to leave at six. The trains would be running by then.

  He went back inside. Kohei looked dejected. Shota was toying with his cell phone.

  Atsuya took a seat at the kitchen table. The candle on the tabletop was flickering. Must have been the air from the outside.

  This sure is a weird house, he thought. He looked over the dingy walls. What the hell was causing all this superna
tural woo-woo? And why were we dragged into it?

  “I’m not sure if this makes sense,” whispered Kohei, “but I feel like tonight, for the first time in my life, I’ve made a difference in someone else’s life. Me, you know? An idiot like me made a difference.”

  Atsuya scowled. “That’s why you wanna keep on doling out advice? It ain’t gonna pay you squat.”

  “I’m not trying to get rich here. This is just the first time I’ve had a chance to seriously consider what someone else is going through, and maybe even help.”

  Atsuya clicked his tongue.

  “And what good is it doing us, getting drunk on this idea of helping people? No one needs any advice from us. Ms. Olympics interpreted our letter in the most convenient way possible, and Flounder doesn’t know what’s good for him. I’ve been saying the same thing all along. We’re losers. We got no business giving anyone advice.”

  “But even you were smiling when we got that last letter from Moon Rabbit.”

  “I wasn’t pissed. But the exception proves the rule. We’re in no position to offer people our opinion. We’re—” He pointed to the bag heaped up in the corner. “We’re good-for-nothing crooks.”

  Kohei looked hurt and hung his head. Atsuya saw his reaction and snorted.

  At that moment, Shota let out a loud cry. “What the?”

  Atsuya almost fell off his chair. “What’s wrong now?”

  “Wait, hold on.” Shota held up his phone. “There’s something on here about the Namiya General Store.”

  “On the Internet?” Atsuya raised his eyebrows. “Just someone writing about their memories or something, right?”

  “That’s what I expected, too, when I searched for it online. I figured someone must have posted something about it.”

  “Is that what you found? Some kind of memory-lane thing?”

  “Not exactly.” Shota showed Atsuya his phone. “See for yourself.”

  “Come on,” he replied, but he took the phone and skimmed through the backlit screen. The header said “the Namiya General Store—One-Night Special.” Once he read what followed, he knew why Shota had been startled. Atsuya himself felt his blood go hot.