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Tomorrow, October.
I pull a storage box out from the back of the closet.
When I lift the lid, the smell of mothballs rises.
A cardigan, still folded.
A sweater with stretched-out sleeves.
A mustard-colored jacket, worn only once.
Clothes met again after half a year look, a little, like strangers.
I tried the jacket on.
At the bottom of the right pocket, my fingertips touch something.
The night of the changeover
I pack the summer clothes into the empty box.
Washed-out T-shirts.
A linen shirt I bought and never wore.
The one with the price tag still on, I pretend not to see.
In the Heian court, it seems, the seasonal change of clothes was called kōi.
Each time the season turned, people changed what they wore.
It was only after the calendar changed in the Meiji era, they say, that it settled on June and October, as it is now.
Over a thousand years, a court ritual became a small ritual in a six-mat room.
Inside the box are the traces of my folding from half a year ago.
Some with the corners neatly squared.
Some just rolled up and shoved in.
Both done by the same person.
A card, business-card size
What came out of the pocket was a small card.
White letters on deep green.
On the back, a hand-drawn map.
The lines, leaning a little to the right, are probably my senior colleague’s hand.
Near the edge, there’s a faint trace of something like blue powder.
It took a moment to remember.
A senior colleague at work had given it to me last autumn.
On the way home from drinks.
“It’s a place you can drop into, even on your own.”
I didn’t go.
Opening the door of an unfamiliar place, alone.
Back then, even that much felt very far away.
In the spring, my senior colleague moved to another department.
We’re on different floors now.
I set the card on the desk.
It isn’t even six, and it’s already dark outside.
At the foot of the stairs
That Friday, on my way home from work, I got off at Kannai.
In the mustard-colored jacket.
Turning two corners as the map showed, I found a narrow staircase.
At the foot of the stairs, I stop for a moment.
I pretend to look at my phone.
I pretend, a little, to be waiting for someone, too.
From above, a dry sound comes down.
Something hard knocking against something hard.
A short pause, and then another.
I climb the stairs.
“Just one?”
The person at the front desk said it, looking up.
Before I had even opened my mouth.
When I nod, out come a slip and a case of balls.
“The table at the back, please. Use any cue from the wall.”
That was all.
On the slip, only the time I came in is written.
Four or five people in the place.
At a table in the back, someone alone is setting up balls and shooting them, again and again.
At the table next to it, another person alone.
Those with company are fewer.
A small square of chalk sits on the rail of the table.
The same blue as on the edge of the card.
From the wall, I pull a cue from somewhere in the middle.
I start to set the balls in the triangle, and my hands stop.
I leave a few rolling loose instead.
I shoot.
The white ball runs off in the wrong direction.
Once more.
This time it connects.
The ball it hit bounces off the cushion and comes back.
The person at the back has been shooting the same angle over and over.
Their face never once turns my way.
The fifth time, or the sixth.
The one I aimed at sank into the corner pocket.
A small sound, and that was all.
I was the only one who heard it.
Back to the pocket
After an hour and a bit, I hand back the slip.
“Come again.”
Down the stairs, the night wind is colder than I expected.
I pull the front of my jacket closed.
On the way to the station, there seem suddenly to be more people in long sleeves.
For the first Friday of October, maybe it was just the right weight.
On my phone, I look up my senior colleague’s name.
My finger stops.
I don’t know what to send.
I turn off the screen.
When I put my hand in my pocket, the card is there.
I push it deeper, just as it is.
This year’s autumn is in my pocket.
👉 See the Yokohama Billiard Hall Guide
