at a low market counter near the alley entrance, a hand-lettered cardboard price sign taped to the front, the vendor's side of the counter crowded with stacked wax paper and a worn cutting board, the kind of counter that has been the same counter for thirty years — the vendor has just passed the warm wrapped onigiri across with both hands — S's hands have closed around it but neither person has moved yet, the exchange one beat from complete
The paper was still warm when she handed it across.
Not from heat — from her hands, maybe, or just the motion of wrapping. She folded the corners without looking at them, the way you do something you've done ten thousand times, and passed it to me over the counter with both hands, the way you give something to a person you've already assessed and found acceptable. I hadn't been here before. She had no reason to know me. But the gesture said she'd already decided about me, and the decision was fine.
I took it and walked.
onigiri wrapped in white paper, one corner unfolded, dark pickled filling just visible at the torn edge
inside a covered market alley barely four metres wide, corrugated metal roof amplifying rain into percussion, vendors' styrofoam boxes and ice trays lining both sides, a sodium strip light running the length of the ceiling casting flat yellow onto wet concrete underfoot — mid-alley, onigiri half-unwrapped in both hands, paused — not eating, listening to the rain change register on the metal above her
The market was in its second version by then — the ice being broken down and rebuilt, the first wave of buyers already gone, the vendors doing the arithmetic of what was left. I ate walking through the covered alley, the onigiri still warm through the paper, rice and a dark centre I didn't try to identify before I ate it. Pickled something. Good. The rain had started outside and was loud on the metal roof of the alley, a different register than on stone, percussive and close.
the market arcade mouth opening onto the rain-wet street, Japanese vendor signs in kanji overhead, ice-packed display stalls receding into the alley
The linen shirt was fine. The overshirt came out of the bag when I cleared the far end of the alley and the rain was real. Not because it helped much. Because it was the right response to the thing.
at the open far end of the covered market alley where the roof stops and the city begins — the threshold a hard line: dry concrete behind her, wet pavement ahead, rain falling in a pale curtain beyond the metal edge, a narrow lane of low shopfronts disappearing into grey — she has just pulled the overshirt from her bag and is pushing one arm into the sleeve, paused at the exact boundary where shelter ends and rain begins
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I didn't buy anything else. I'd planned to be practical this morning and wasn't, and then was anyway. The carry-on was already at maximum and I knew it.
The walk back to the hotel was six minutes. I'd counted it on the first morning, before I knew the city, and the number had stayed accurate.
I didn't change before the train. The overshirt was doing its job.
The market smell stayed on me for the first hour out of Hakodate. Fish and cold air and the particular staleness of styrofoam. I didn't mind. The coast ran alongside the tracks and then the hills came up and folded the sea behind them, and that was that.
What she wore
day7-scene1
The slate tank was a good call — light enough that I wasn't sweating through the fish market, dark enough that nothing showed.
day7-scene2
I pulled the overshirt out of the bag when the rain started — not because it would help much, but because it felt like the right thing to do.
day7-scene3
I didn't change before the train — there was no point, and besides, the overshirt was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.