The Namiya General Store… These were words Harumi would never—could never forget. When she clicked on the result, she was routed to a proper website. The site announced that with September 13 marking the start of the thirty-third year after his death, they were hosting a memorial service for the old owner with hopes that people who had written to him for advice would write again and tell them whether it had made a difference in their lives. They asked for people to leave their letters in the mail slot out front, between midnight and sunrise.
This was unbelievable. After so many years, she was not expecting to see that name today. And what was this about a “One-Night Special”? The site was apparently being managed by someone in his family, but beyond saying the event was being held to coincide with the old man’s memorial service, it gave no other details.
At first, she suspected it must be a prank. But why would anyone bother? What payoff could there be in fooling people? How many people would even read the post?
What moved Harumi most profoundly was discovering that September 13 was the date of the old man’s death. On September 13, it would be precisely thirty-two years since her contact with the Namiya General Store had been suspended.
This couldn’t be a prank. She was certain the event was real. And if it was, she couldn’t sit back on the sidelines. She, of all people, had to write one of these letters. It would of course be a letter of thanks.
But there was something she would have to check first. Was the Namiya General Store really still around? Was it still there? Harumi went back to the Tamuras’ old house a few times a year, but she had never ventured as far as the shop.
She had an errand to run at Marumitsuen that day anyway. A meeting about transferring over the building. She could stop by the store on her way back.
The meeting, as before, was with the vice-director, Mr. Kariya.
“The Minazukis have given me full authority on this matter. As you know, it’s been their policy to stay out of managing the home.” His thin eyebrows twitched as he spoke.
“In that case, you might apprise them of the fiscal standing of their property. It may well change their way of thinking.”
“They’re regularly informed, thank you very much. That was part of our agreement when I took over.”
“I see. Would you mind sharing the same information with me?”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. It’s none of your concern.”
“Mr. Kariya, I need you to listen to me. As it stands, this building is going to go under.”
“That’s not for you to worry about. We’ll get by one way or another. Safe trip home.” Kariya bowed his head of slicked-back hair.
Harumi decided that was enough for today, but she had no intention of giving up. She would just have to figure out a way to persuade the Minazukis.
In the parking lot, she found her car covered with clots of mud. She spun around to see a posse of kids was peeking over a fence. They ducked down to hide their faces.
Oh dear, she sighed. They must think I’m a bad guy. No doubt Kariya had told them some tall tale.
She drove away without cleaning off the car. Through the rearview mirror, she saw the kids had spilled into the street, shouting “Don’t come back”—or something like it.
Despite this unpleasant distraction, she had not forgotten her intention to stop by the Namiya General Store. Harumi turned the wheel, relying solely on a fading memory.
Soon she was back in a familiar scene. In those thirty some odd years, it had barely changed.
The store was just as it had been when she came by with her letters. Its sign was all but indecipherable, and the rust scabbing its shutter was painfully thick, but the structure was swathed in the warmth of an old man waiting for his granddaughter.
Harumi came to a stop, rolled down the passenger-side window, and looked out at the building. When she drove off, she drove off slowly. She thought she may as well have a look at the Tamura house, too.
After finishing work on September 12, Harumi stopped home and cracked open her laptop to draft her letter. She had meant to start sooner, but the last few days had been crazy, and she couldn’t find the time. That night, she was supposed to have dinner with a client, but she told them she needed to deal with an urgent matter and asked the most trusted member of her staff to go in her stead.
Rereading and rewriting the letter again and again, she didn’t finish until after nine. After that, she wrote out the text on stationery. She had a personal rule about handwriting all correspondence to important contacts.
She had a look over the final copy, checking for mistakes, and folded it into an envelope. She had purchased the stationery and the envelope especially for this occasion.
Packing took some time. It was getting to be ten when she left the house. Mindful of the speed limit, she kept her foot on the gas.
It took her just under two hours to reach the vicinity of the shop. Her plan had been to go straight there, but she had a little time left before midnight and decided to drop her bags off at the Tamura house, where she was going to spend the night.
After purchasing the house, Harumi had made good on her promise to let Hideo carry on with her life there, but Hideo hadn’t lived to see the start of the twenty-first century. With the passing of her Auntie, Harumi touched up a few things and began using the house as a suburban getaway. This was the closest she had to a childhood home. She loved how green it was around there.
The last few years, she had been going only once every month or two. The refrigerator was empty, save for condiments and whatever was in the freezer.
The area around the house had only a smattering of streetlights. It was usually too dark to see beyond the headlights of her car this late into the night. But in the moonlight, she spotted her old house from a distance.
There was nobody in sight. They had a garage, but she parked on the street. Shouldering a tote bag with her change of clothes and makeup, she stepped out into the night. The big round moon was beaming in the sky.
She walked under the gate and unlocked the front door, opening it to the smell of an air freshener. The fragrant pod was sitting on the shoe cabinet. She had put it there herself last time she came by. She set her keys beside it.
She felt her way along the wall until she found the light switch, then took off her shoes and stepped up into the house. There were slippers, but she rarely bothered wearing them. She went down the hall to the door at the end, leading into the bedroom.
She opened the door to the bedroom and again felt the wall for the switch, but she stopped before she found it. Something was out of place. No, it was more as if she smelled something out of place. A faint but foreign smell that did not belong in her bedroom.
Sensing danger, she motioned to turn, but something grabbed her hand before she could flick the lights on. It tugged her arm and pressed something over her mouth. She didn’t even have a chance to scream.
“Easy, now. Keep quiet, and we won’t hurt you.” The man was behind her. She couldn’t see his face.
Harumi’s mind went blank. Why was this man in her house? What was he doing here? Why did this have to happen to her? A flurry of questions spun around her.
She felt compelled to resist, but her body wouldn’t move. It was as if her nerves were paralyzed.
“Hey, I saw some towels in the bathroom. Grab me a few.” The man was yelling, but nobody responded. He repeated himself, clearly vexed. “I need those towels! Stat!”
She sensed another shadow tripping through the darkness. Someone else was here.
Harumi breathed fiercely through her nose. Her heartbeat was still violent, but gradually, her decision-making skills were returning. She realized what was pressed over her mouth was a hand in a latex glove.
“Aw, come on,” whispered yet another man, off to the side behind her.
“Too late now,” barked the man restraining her. “Come on, look through that bag. There’s probably a wallet in there or something.”
“How much?”
“Only twenty, thirty thousand, and a bunch of random point cards.”
The man sighed by Harumi’s ear. “That’s it? Whatever. Just pull out the cash. Those cards aren’t good for anything.”
“What about the wallet? It’s from a good brand.”
“It’s no good if it’s broken in. The bag’s pretty new; it’ll come with us.”
Footsteps approached them. “Are these okay?” The voice was young, like the others.
“All right. Use one as a blindfold. Tie it tight behind her head so that it won’t come loose.”
She felt him hesitate for an instant, but a second later, true to his word, a towel was pulled tight over her eyes. It smelled a little bit like laundry detergent. The one she always used.
The towel was tied tight at her neck. This was not a knot you could wiggle out of.
Next, they made her sit down at the dining room table and tied both of her wrists behind her to the backrest and bound her ankles to the legs of the chair. All the while, the gloved hand remained pressed into her face.
“We’d like to have a little talk with you,” said the leader, the one with his hand over her mouth. “I’m going to take my hand away, but you’d better not make a racket. Trust me, you don’t want to see our weapons. If you start yelling, we’ll kill you. But we don’t want it to come to that. Talk nice in a quiet voice, and you won’t be harmed. Nod if you promise you’ll behave.”
Having no reason to disobey, Harumi nodded. The hand let go of her face.
“So, as you have probably already guessed, we’re burglars. We thought the house was empty. We weren’t planning on you showing up, and we weren’t planning on tying you up like this, either. No hard feelings.”
Speechless, Harumi sighed. This late in the game, saying “no hard feelings” was an empty pleasantry. Meaningless.
And yet, she found it in her heart to see where they were coming from. Instinctively, she knew these guys weren’t true villains.
“Once we’ve gotten what we came for, we’re out. But we’re not ready to leave yet, ’cause we haven’t found anything worth taking. Which brings us here. We need your valuables. Where do you keep them? We’re not picky. Trinkets, honestly anything. Speak up.”
Harumi was catching her breath. “There’s nothing…here.”
She heard him snort.
“Yeah, right. We looked you up. Don’t try to fool us.”
“I mean it.” Harumi shook her head. “If you looked me up, you’d know that. I don’t stay here often. That’s why there’s no money, nothing valuable around.”
“You can say that, but there’s gotta be something.” His voice was strained. “Think harder. You’ll come up with something. We can wait until you do. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
He got that right, but Harumi had nothing to tell him. There was nothing valuable in the whole house. The few heirlooms she inherited from Hideo were at her apartment in the city.
“There’s an alcove in the next room, the room with the tatami. The bowl set up there came from a famous studio.”
“We got the bowl. And the calligraphy scroll on the wall behind it. What else you got?”
Hideo had told her the bowl was real, but the scroll was screen printed, a fake. Harumi figured she had better not tell them.
“Did you see the bedroom upstairs? The smaller one.”
“We poked around, didn’t see anything good.”
“Did you check the drawers in the dresser? The second one down has a false bottom, and the lower half is full of jewelry. Did you see that?”
The man didn’t answer her. He seemed to be gesturing to his friends.
“Go check,” he ordered. One of them ambled upstairs.
The dresser had belonged to Hideo, and its antique design had made it hard to part with. It was true that there was jewelry in the secret drawer, but it wasn’t Harumi’s. They were accessories that Hideo’s daughter, Kimiko, had bought herself when she was single. Harumi had never properly gone through them, but she suspected there was nothing valuable. If there had been, Kimiko would have taken it when she got married.
“Why did you pick me…my house to rob?” Harumi asked them.
The leader seemed to shrug. “Worked out that way.”
“Then why’d you bother to look me up? You must have had a reason.”
“Shut the hell up. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“No, it doesn’t. Zip it.”
Harumi listened to him. She knew not to provoke an adversary.
The awkward silence was finally broken by the words “Do you mind if I ask a question?” It wasn’t the leader who said it. She was not expecting something so polite.
“Dude,” spat the leader. “What are you saying?”
“Come on, man. I really want to see what she says.”
“Forget it.”
“What is it?” Harumi said. “Ask me anything.”
Someone clucked melodramatically. It sounded like the leader.
“Are you really gonna make it a hotel?”
“Make what?”
“I heard you’re going to tear down Marumitsuen and put up a love hotel.”
That was a name she wasn’t expecting to hear. She felt caught. Kariya must have sent them.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I’m hoping to renovate the building and take it over, as a children’s home.”
“Everybody knows that’s just a front,” the leader interrupted. “Your company makes its money by giving makeovers to dying businesses. Like the business hotel you turned into a love hotel.”
“We took that job, true, but it has nothing to do with this. I’m funding the Marumitsuen project myself.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying. I hesitate to add this, but I would never build a love hotel out there anyway. No one would come. I’m no idiot. Trust me. I’m a friend of the voiceless, the powerless.”
“Really?”
“Dude, she’s obviously lying. Don’t listen to her. Friend of the voiceless? Listen to that shit. She’d part with anything that doesn’t turn a profit.”
Footsteps thumped down the stairs.
“What took you so long? What were you doing up there?”
“I couldn’t figure out the false bottom. But then I got it. Look at all this stuff.”
The costume jewelry jingled. He’d apparently brought down the entire drawer.
The other two were quiet. They were probably calculating how much the hoard of trifles could possibly be worth. Not that they knew any better.
“All right, take it,” someone ordered. “It’s better than nothing. Let’s put it in the bag and scram.”
Harumi heard fabric against fabric and a zipper pulled open and shut. They were adding the accessories to the rest of their loot.
“What should we do about her?” asked the man who broached the question about Marumitsuen.
After a beat, the leader said, “Get the duct tape. We don’t want her causing a ruckus.”
She heard tape tearing, then felt it strapped across her face.
“We can’t just leave her like this. If no one comes and finds her, she’ll starve to death.”
There was another beat. The leader generally got the last word.
“Once we’re a safe distance away, we’ll call her company and say their president is bound and gagged. That solves things.”
“What if she has to go?”
“She can hold it.”
“Do you think you can hold it?” They were asking Harumi.
She nodded. As a matter of fact, she didn’t have to go yet. But even if they’d offered to bring her to the bathroom, she would have refused, if it meant having them out a second sooner.
“All right, let’s get out of here,” he commanded. “Don’t forget a
nything.”
She felt the three of them leave the room. Their footsteps plodded down the hall and out the front door.
A little later, she heard their voices again. She made out the words car keys.
Harumi remembered she’d left them on the shoe cabinet.
“Shit,” she mouthed through the tape and bit her lip. Her handbag was on the front seat of the car parked in the street. She’d pulled it from her tote bag on her way out of the car.
The wallet inside her tote bag was her backup. Her actual wallet was in her handbag. It had at least two hundred thousand yen in cash, not to mention all her credit cards and debit cards.
Thing is, the wallet wasn’t what was bothering her. She’d be happy if that was all they took. But she doubted they’d be so focused. They were in a rush and would probably make off with the handbag without even looking inside.
If they had, they would have found her letter to the Namiya General Store. This she could not let them take.
But what difference would it make? Even if they left behind the letter, she would still be stuck, until morning at the earliest. And the “One-Night Special” at the shop would be over at the crack of dawn.
She had only wanted to say thank you. To tell him that thanks to him, she had become a person of consequence, and that she planned to use her high position to make a difference in the world. The letter was her chance to say so.
But then this had to happen. Why her? What did she ever do wrong? She hardly felt like she deserved it. All she’d done was take this as far as she could, and in good conscience.
The leader’s words came back to her.
Friend of the voiceless? Listen to that shit. She’d part with anything that doesn’t turn a profit.
That had been a blow. When had she ever done anything like that?
But then she remembered the bawling face of the president of the manju company.
Harumi blew air through her nose. Blindfolded and bound to the chair as she was, she smiled ruefully.
She had tried so hard and gotten so far, but maybe she had been a little too pragmatic. This wasn’t comeuppance. No, it was a warning that she’d do well to open up her heart a little.
The Miracles of the Namiya General Store Page 28