“My father gave me that old watch,” Yoshiko explains. “Smaller in real life, of course. I accidentally broke it when I was a child. But I still remember every detail, how my father would let me hold it as he read me bedtime stories, how he’d time me as I was trying to beat my record at the school track. One of the few happy memories I have of him.”
“You never really talk at the meetings,” Akira says. He studies the woman in many of the photos, realizes he has seen her at one of the vendor stalls in Ameyoko Market.
“I prefer to talk one-on-one,” she says, “I don’t really get to have adult conversations anymore. It’s just me and my daughter.”
Akira holds up one of the family photos and points to a balding man in wire-frame glasses.
“I didn’t plan on falling in love with a son of a bitch,” Yoshiko explains. “I thought I needed him when the pandemic began. At first, he was wonderful. But he asked for a transfer not long after we were vaccinated. No money. He’s only seen his daughter once since she got sick. But tell me more about you.”
Akira doesn’t know where to begin. Should he behave as if he’s the kind of member in their support group who sees their life as nearing an inevitable completion? Should he treat this meeting like the beginning of a friendship? He continues to explore Yoshiko’s shop item by item as if picking through her mind with chopsticks. Despite her being older than him, he can’t help but feel a strange attraction toward her, a developing crush made more real by the simple fact that they’ve both suffered.
“I don’t really have a home now,” Akira admits.
Eventually, after a few friendly encounters, Akira suggests they meet regularly after Yoshiko returns home from work at night and tucks in her daughter. While he has talked to others in VR, they’ve all been men, who mostly dwell on the many ways the government has screwed them over. But Yoshiko talks about life, despite the sadness. She celebrates happy memories, tells him how, even now, she finds joy in speaking with her customers. Akira explains that he used to see this stage in his life as a slight detour, a stepping-stone to something better, and maintaining that belief grows harder every day.
On Yoshiko’s private VR island, she’s guiding Akira through her antique shop to a rock garden outside. The wings of her Pegasus avatar seem to phase through the objects they pass.
“It’s not just that I want a real job,” Akira says, finding a mossy boulder to sit on. “It’s impossible to meet people now.”
“People like to forget about the sadness of the city,” Yoshiko responds. “They walk and walk. No one stops. It’s like we’re all still infected. We choose to be blind to each other’s suffering. It might make things easier to bear, but our hearts are cold.”
Yoshiko manages her ten-year-old daughter’s plague symptoms all on her own. They were only mildly alleviated by the vaccine. Her daughter is often bedridden and lost in her mind; a vibrant little girl broken by the lingering mutations of the virus. Yoshiko sells calligraphy prints and trinkets for food, to keep the lights on. I know no one except my daughter. My mother is dead. I haven’t spoken to my father in decades—an old fool. I don’t have the luxury of making friends in the real world. You’re basically a stranger, and you’re all I have. It’s pathetic.
Akira doesn’t want to be a stranger, though he knows that’s what they are now. He tells her whenever they sign off that he’s there for her. He tells Yoshiko that she isn’t alone.
Akira always takes the same route through the crowds of Ueno Japan Rail after returning from his strolls around the Ameyoko Market. Niches along the marble wall outside the train station are carved with the names of early plague victims. They were once adorned with candles and flowers to honor the dead. Now trash and graffiti line the sidewalks and people zoom past with barely a glance. But on this night, something catches Akira’s attention. A flyer pinned to an old bulletin board peeking out from behind a row of interactive ad kiosks, the simple piece of paper stands out among the frenetic lights:
Printing Press Operator Needed for Part-Time Project
There is no email, no phone number, only an address and a handwritten map instructing interested parties to go there during business hours and to dress all in white. Akira tears the flyer from the board, folds it neatly, and sticks it into his back pocket.
With the paper gently nudging him through the thin fabric of his pants, Akira imagines what the earnings might be, how he might move out of the virtual cafe and meet Yoshiko in person for once. He tries not to get his hopes up, but he’s unable to stop thinking about the endless possibilities. Akira follows the map and finds himself on a narrow side street in front of a dilapidated wooden building with a traditional tiled roof and torn shoji windows. On either side of the building are modern boutique hotels with glass and chrome facades. Akira stands beside a faded tanuki statue on the building’s stoop and gazes at a flickering light on the top floor, and dreams of another life.