Though a banquet had been set up in the drawing room, Tokié’s future husband lowered his trousers in their sitting room – his best suit ruined (of course, fearing for their reputation, Tokié’s father would later pay him compensation) – where the doctor, on a house call, daubed the suitor’s backside with iodine tincture and remonstrated with the family about summoning him for a minor injury they could have treated themselves. Perhaps it was true that the family could have treated the injury themselves, but just who among them would have been the appropriate person to minister to the exposed backside of the young man chosen for their daughter, who had come there to ask for her hand in marriage? Later in their life together, Tokié would apply ointment to his bites and even haemorrhoids, but at that time, the couple had barely exchanged a kiss.
The suitor somehow managed to get through his proposal but since it was difficult for him to sit down, he beat a hasty retreat, hardly eating any of the feast. Tokié’s mother insisted on packing some of the food for him to take home but all in all it was a miserable experience.
Though before this, he may have been fine with dogs, he seemed traumatized thereafter and developed a fear of them (and certainly of the Kai Ken breed, a hunting dog with powerful jaws). If they happened to encounter a dog, no matter how small, he would squawk and hide behind Tokié.
And that was why, even after they had their own house, the prospect of having a dog never even occurred to either of them.
Over the last few years since her husband died, Tokié had been longing to have a dog – it was now or never.
The awful memory of being bitten on the backside before his marriage proposal had scarred her husband to the point that he would cry out if they even crossed paths with a Chihuahua, the sight of which would lead their grown son to tease his father, which would then cause her husband to sulk. Tokié would take note of where there were likely to be dogs and nonchalantly lead them on a detour so as to avoid them. She would take these memories of their life together to her own grave.
If she got a dog, would that make it difficult for her husband’s spirit to return home for the Bon festival and his memorial services, she wondered?
She’d just make sure not to get a Kai Ken.
Obayashi Station
Shoko had got off the train at the old lady’s recommendation and was taking in her surroundings.
She considered going into the waiting room on the same platform, but the windowed, cold-looking interior contained nothing more than a row of hard plastic benches – nothing refined save for the alternating colours of pink and blue. Though air-conditioned in summer and heated in winter, the waiting room was still rather rustic. On rainy days, the windows probably fogged up with condensation.
The lavatory was clean, but still, nothing particularly special, and the vending machines looked fairly ordinary too.
Baffled, she headed towards the ticket gate when—
A tiny tailcoat whizzed by, followed by a cacophony of chirping from above.
Shoko looked up to see a swallow’s nest, with a clutch of baby swallows leaning out over the sides.
The parent bird shovelled food into the chicks’ mouths, before flying off again in a rush, as the same ruckus rose up from the other side.
She turned around to see another nest. Looking about, she counted three more while an endless chorus of baby swallows swelled amid the fluttering wings of their parents.
Under each nest, a cradle had been crudely fashioned. And beneath the cradle located just inside the ticket gate she spotted a notice written in vivid brushstrokes:
A message that would melt even the toughest heart. It must have been written by someone who worked at the station.
Signs calling attention to swallows’ nests weren’t uncommon, but the ones Shoko usually encountered were to warn about the birds’ droppings. She didn’t ever recall one that played at being a humorous greeting from the swallows themselves.
She had bought a ticket that allowed her to go as far as Umeda but she decided to have a look around first. It was such a tiny station, there wasn’t even a space for drop-offs. Instead, pedestrians came and went along a gently sloping, forked path that was paved in asphalt on one side and brick on the other.