Chapter 4: Customer (Part 1)

Finally, the school bell rang around 4:30 PM and it marked the end of school sessions. All my classmates started standing up, taking all their bags and grouped up with their acquaintances. It proves their excitement to go to their after-school lives—just by judging how noisy they were.

This is how I end my day, being the first one to slip out without doing anything extra at all. If I were to miscalculate my timing, the corridors would be filled up with loud students and it would be hard for me to squeeze through. Not an ideal situation.

As I walked out of the building, I gazed in the afternoon skyline, and saw my shadow walking beside me. Looking around, hundreds of them moved in a sea of red, some were facing their friends, some romantics were holding hands, and the rest of loners were just reading under the tree shades.

"I'm unlucky…"

I breezed through them like I always did. Staying for longer would just fill me with either curiosity or envy. But in my defense, that envy is just about their social skills, not because they have someone that they could rely on emotionally.

On a rare occasion, I found myself taking the train instead of walking straight to the park. It's because I picked up a pamphlet just near the school gates saying that there would be a youth event just near Yuenchi, so getting there as soon as possible was crucial. Of course, if I got there too late, I might risk missing the entire crowd.

As the train filled with home-bound students started moving, the landscape opened up. For a glorious, fleeting moment, I caught the wide-open view of the port. Huge metal cargo cranes stood like colossal sentinels against the horizon, with tall skyscrapers being shadowed by the Port Tower. The sun caught the surface of the vast, glittering water, momentarily blinding.

“Is this really Kobe?”

“Yeah!"

"Look—there’s the port! Wow!"

"I told you it’s underrated. Tokyo was so crowded yesterday I thought I’d faint.”

I heard the unmistakable cadence of foreign tourists behind me—talking in excited English. I could understand them well, as I have read lots of English literature before. I could picture them wide-eyed on the surroundings, but had zero awareness of how loud they were. That's always the problem with foreigners, they talk too loud in a country that values the quiet.

Meiwaku.

“Well, at least the convenience stores there had everything. The stores here were smaller and lacked some necessities."

“Mm. But cheaper, too. Our hotel last night was half the price of the one in Shibuya.”

Cheaper, huh?

I blinked slowly at the window, letting the setting sun send a small warmth to my face.

That’s how they’d see it. Temporary residents don’t worry about the long-term effects of the places they briefly step on. They take pictures. Buy souvenirs. Sleep. Leave. Then the city deals with whatever rises after.

The two female tourists kept talking, discussing which “hidden gems” to visit, which restaurants were “worth photographing,” which districts were “authentic but aesthetically pleasing.” until one line stuck:

“I heard Kobe’s not as popular because it doesn’t have a lot of flashy stuff.”

That made me send a sidelong glance at them.

For starters, Kobe is beautiful. If you asked people what places come to their mind first when they hear of the country's name, Tokyo, Okinawa or Osaka will be their no brainer answer. Kobe was never part of it, but for me, it has the kind of beauty that doesn’t brag about itself.

Kobe doesn’t plaster itself on travel brochures or stuff itself into a vlog thumbnail with neon captions like “TOP 10 HIDDEN GEMS OF JAPAN!!!” No one’s trying to sell it to the world, and maybe that’s why it still feels ours.

I am grateful. I am grateful that Kobe wasn’t more famous.

Don’t get me wrong—it deserves to be. But fame is a double-edged knife disguised as a bouquet.

Let me explain this in a nutshell: Tourists flood a place, and due to exposure, suddenly everything costs 30% more. Even the cheap bread at the local corner store surely will explode like wagyu steak. When a city becomes an attraction, the basic necessities magically become “premium experiences" for the sake of profit.

And people like me…don’t survive those “premium experiences.”

No tourists means no inflated prices. This leaves no desperate businessmen trying to squeeze money out of every corner of the street. We will be forever living in a quiet port city—slow enough for someone like me, who doesn’t ask for much, to keep up.

Kobe is beautiful, yes. But it is also merciful.

The train screeched softly as the pneumatic brakes kicked in, pulling into my stop: Sannomiya Station. I feel the familiar lurch that signals the end of the journey. The door opened with a hiss, and a wall of sound hit me: a mixture of announcements, the distant rumble of another train, and the loud, cheerful melody of the station's departure chime. It's instantly louder and warmer out here than it was inside the train car.

A few minutes of walking takes me to the sprawl of tall buildings and entertainment areas.

I maneuvered past office workers and other students rushing to their destinations, carefully avoiding being seen by anyone who might recognize me.

It's just they'd assume that I'm living my life youthfully and glamorously being always present at the metro sprawl.

Anyhow, I'll just stop them right there—if they ever thought that “Oh, he’s being with his friends sipping ramen or singing in karaoke bars again!”

No, of course I don’t have any strong interest in doing that as a part of my own go-home club.

And it's not like statements like that would work on the first try. Most of them were too preoccupied with their own life to take notice of what I am doing anyway.

As far as anyone knew, I was just a lonely boy who always spent his time alone behind a dango stall in a quiet Yuenchi park every afternoon. And that suited me fine. I wanted it that way. I was content.

It was the routine I've been in for years, selling at Shimizu's Mitarashi Dango Castle. And me, the red-haired prince residing behind it was turning sticks, basting glaze and breathing steam.

Today, the crowd was as expected: large, with a mix of high school and college students moving to the nearby Minato Park.

As the first customer approached me, the rhythm already began:

"Good afternoon! What's your order?"

"Alright, I'm on it.”

"Here's your change. Do you want an extra glaze?"

“That would cost 10 yen…”

…and "Thank you, come again!"

Then another, and another, until I already hit the quota just an hour and a half after setting the stall up.

After that, the crowd dispersed, making me assume that everyone was already at the said event. I used this window to watch the life of others happen around me.

The few people left were the isolated eggheads reading books under the trees, some stylish boys being followed by hopeless romantics of the opposite genders. At one point, I even saw a confession between two students that were also my schoolmates. I don't know how it went, as I have no particular interest in eavesdropping.

Albeit 2 hours late, the solitary princess of the auburn camphor kingdom finally appeared across the walkway.

She sat on the same spot, opened her bag, and unfolded her sketchpad. She tied her long golden hair into a ponytail, exposing her snowy pale nape. For some reason, she didn’t draw right away like she used to. She kept turning on pages, and occasionally lifting her eyes and looking around.

I clicked my tongue, the sound crisp and sharp in the park air.

“Stop…staring.” I mumbled to myself.

I am just planning how to approach her to hand over her worksheets, but it looks like I was acting suspicious. I just gulped the feeling and returned to flipping dango sticks.

Before, I only ever spared her a glance or two—just enough to confirm she wasn’t, say, collapsing from heatstroke or getting robbed. It’s totally normal civic duty stuff, see—but I can’t say the same for now.

My eyes keep drifting back to her longer than it's supposed to be. I get it, we’re two people who always wanted to be “left alone” but couldn’t quite get ourselves out of the picture. I fear the day that I’ll get caught. I fear the time I’ll get called a creep, a stalker or a pervert. And to add insult, maybe people will think that I’m a desperate vendor trying to lure in the distant princess with eye contact.

Either way, none of it would be great for business.

I rubbed the back of my neck, realizing how tense I’d become. I tried to think of everything as part of the status quo, and it’s just another day of two strangers from ten meters across.

Strangers, yes, but I knew what her hands looked like wet with miso steam. The way her slender fingers, painted with colors as blue as her eyes, traced along the tip of the bowl.

I knew what she looked like up close in my dim apartment, and her golden hair that never refused to catch light.

I knew her grace from our witty exchanges that will make an average person's brain spill from their ears. How she uses French, sharp and intense, like a sword in the hand of a goddess with no mercy.

I wonder when did I start to notice and remember such details.

Naive, right? Just like how I knew that she puts more salt in meals than usual.

And more than that, I knew how stubborn she was when she ignored Nakabeni-sensei.

I’d seen her do that to other teachers and students so many times before, but now, I can’t help but think it feels off now that we have known each other and talked at the very least. I don’t mean it as a concern, but a flick in my chest, perhaps.

I found no proper method to approach her. The last time I approached her was out of desperation, but now, having just papers in my hand, that wasn’t nearly enough of a reason.

Kousaka Akari did not like people coming at her without good reasons. She didn’t like being touched, talked to, bothered, stared at, breathed near, or even shared a place with if she could help it. Do I even need the rain again just to spare me a headache?

For a few more days, I kept doing the same thing. Attend class, ignore people, eat lunch alone, review the term exams, look at the bench, plan my approach, and work at the dango stall. Kousaka-san and I kept coexisting on an astronomical distance, even though we’re just ten meters apart.

That was the case until a certain afternoon the following week.

I was serving two office workers ranting about their manager and a mom pushing a stroller on that particular day. Everything had been going smoothly—with the caring mother occasionally humming her child to sleep and rocking the stroller slowly.

After them, nothing followed. So I turned my back to the counter to rinse the tray under the small tap, taking a breath after the mini-rush. When I straightened up and turned back to face the park, the customer standing in front of my stall left me glued to where I was standing.

It wasn't just another customer; it was the last person I thought would ever be my customer.

“Can I buy something?” she asked.

I nearly toppled over the tray by the bombshell she threw at me, but I quickly masked the surprise by adjusting the fire, basting the next batch, avoiding eye contact like it was radioactive. I fumbled with everything superficial just to pretend I didn't notice the anomaly standing right in front of me.

The unthinkable just happened. How would I deal with this if my carefully built facade is crumbling before me?

Fine, just suit yourself, Itsuki.

“...Kousaka…san…?” The name escaped my lips as I finally met her eyes.