# Part Two: What Remains After Payment
## Chapter 4: A Stranger’s Attachment
The venue was an old warehouse by the river.
A white cloth sign hung above the entrance, with the number of exhibitors and the event hours printed beneath the event name. Mizuno accepted a paper map and went inside with the acquaintance who had invited him.
Rows of long tables filled the warehouse. Small booklets, photo books, poetry collections, comics, and travel journals created a narrow world on each table. The smells of fresh ink, paper, and old lumber mixed together, while exhibitors’ explanations and visitors’ voices flowed continuously through the aisles.
“More put together than you expected, right?” his acquaintance said as they walked.
“I thought it would be mostly photocopied pages.”
“There’s that too, but apparently a lot of people use printers now.”
Near the entrance, photo books with thick covers were arranged on a table. The cover of one showed a housing complex at night. The price was 2,000 yen.
When Mizuno picked it up, only the black areas of the rough paper reflected the light dully as he changed the angle. The pages showed corridors between buildings, an empty park, and the lights of people’s lives left in windows. Wide margins surrounded the photographs. The last page listed only the locations and the dates they were taken.
“It’s beautiful.”
His acquaintance leaned over from the side.
“Yeah.”
It had been made not only for viewing the photographs but also to remain as an object on a shelf. Mizuno felt the cover again. The price of 2,000 yen did not seem strange. After hesitating briefly, he bought it.
The maker slipped it into a clear bag and added a piece of cardboard so the cover would not bend. When Mizuno took the paper bag, the weight of one book remained in his hand.
Farther in were two-color comics and poetry books sewn by hand. Cloth-covered boards. Booklets with rounded corners. Works with translucent sheets inserted between pages. Most were priced between 1,000 and 2,000 yen, and touching them was enough to tell that time had gone into the paper, printing, and binding.
He did not think they were expensive.
The people who made them had probably wanted to hand them over in those forms.
But Mizuno could not buy everything. He read several pages at each table, listened to the author’s explanation, and then looked at the price. Even when the contents interested him a little, his hand did not immediately reach for a booklet by a writer whose sentences he did not know.
The more beautiful the cover was, the more it could feel as though he was being asked to keep the object carefully as well. What would he do if he read it once and it did not suit him? Leave it on his shelf? Give it to someone? Throw it away?
The problem was not only the amount of 1,500 yen.
He did not know how much of the attachment a stranger had carried for a long time he could receive.
Near the center of the venue, the maker of a travel journal was explaining it to a visitor.
“I went to this place for three years. I didn’t go to the tourist sites. I only walked the roads local people use in their daily lives.”
The writing was dense, and there were many photographs. Three years of travel and observation, along with the time spent choosing the paper and checking the printing, had taken the form of a single book and been placed on the table.
Mizuno read several pages, then put it back. There was nothing wrong with it. He simply did not yet have a reason, here and now, to take on the maker’s three years.
Near the far end of the venue, the tables were spaced a little farther apart. A stack of thin booklets sat on a small table by the wall.
White copy paper had been folded in half and stapled down the center. The same paper was used for the cover and the pages, and a station staircase was drawn in black lines on the front.
The title was *Between Transfers*.
The price was 300 yen.
Mizuno picked one up. It was about twenty pages long. The paper was thin, and the printing had no special finish.
A young man with glasses sat behind the table. He did not begin explaining as soon as Mizuno opened the booklet.
The first page held a short piece about people seen during the morning commute.
Someone who stood in the same place every morning.
Someone who always used the same staircase.
Someone who always checked the time before the train arrived.
Even in those few lines, Mizuno recognized the scene. It was something he must have seen every day without keeping it in his memory.
“It’s short,” the man said.
Mizuno looked up.
“You can read it in about one train ride home. You can probably start in the middle too.”
“Is it several short pieces?”
“Seven. They’re all about stations or trains.”
Each piece ended after two or three pages, with few illustrations. It was less a beautiful book with generous white space than the minimum form needed to read the writing.
“It’s 300 yen.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that cheap?”
Even without unusual paper or elaborate printing, there were printing costs and the work of bringing the copies to the venue.
The man did not look as though he had been waiting for someone to call it cheap.
“I think it’s hard to pay 1,000 yen from the start for writing by someone you don’t know.”
“Different if you’ve read them before?”
“Yes, but no one knows my writing yet,” the man continued as if correcting himself. “I probably wouldn’t pay it either. If people don’t read me first, there’s no next step or anything else.”
He was not saying his writing was not worth 1,000 yen. He was directing toward himself, as the writer, the same hesitation a reader might have about paying 1,000 yen to an unknown writer.
“Did you ever think about being more particular about the paper or the binding?”
“I did.”
The man took another booklet from under the table.
Its thick gray cover had the title printed in silver, and the spine was sewn with thread. When Mizuno accepted it, it had a different weight from the photocopied booklet.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is, but this version would cost about 1,500 yen a copy.”
Inside was the same writing as in the current booklet.
“If I sell it for 1,500 yen, people have to want it not just for the writing but as an object too.”
The man did not reject the gray booklet.
“This one looks more like a work, though.”
Then he picked up the thin 300-yen booklet.
“For now, I thought it was more important to have people read the writing.”
It seemed that the wish to make a booklet with the silver title had not disappeared. But if the completeness of the object came first, it would become harder for people to try the writing they did not yet know.
Mizuno compared the two.
If he were going to own one, the gray booklet was better. But the one he wanted to read immediately was the 300-yen version. Because it was thin, he could put it directly into his bag and open it on the train home. Even if it did not suit him, it did not feel as though he had strongly rejected the writer’s work as a whole.
“I’ll take one.”
“Thank you.”
The man started to put the booklet into a clear bag, then asked, “Do you need a bag?”
“This is fine as it is.”
“All right.”
When Mizuno placed 300 yen on the table, the man started to reach toward his tin of change, then saw that it was the exact amount. The three coins fell into the box on the table and made sounds at three different pitches.
“My name is Kubo,” the man said.
“There’s just my contact information in the back. It doesn’t have to be feedback, but if you find a typo or something, please let me know.”
“I will.”
Mizuno placed the thin booklet beside the photo book he had bought earlier. Between the thick cover and the cardboard backing, *Between Transfers* almost disappeared.
By the time he rejoined his acquaintance and left the venue, evening had come. Wind passed over the river. Whenever the warehouse door opened, the voices inside spilled out briefly.
“What did you buy?”
Mizuno lifted the paper bag a little.
“A photo book and a thin booklet of short pieces.”
“Any good finds?”
“The photo book was beautiful as an object. I don’t know about the writing yet.”
“How much?”
“300 yen.”
His acquaintance laughed immediately.
“So it came down to price after all.”
Mizuno tried to deny it, but he could not find the right words.
The price had been one reason. If it had not been 300 yen, there was a good chance he would not have bought Kubo’s booklet without knowing his writing.
But he did not think it had little value because it was cheap. Nor had he thought it was acceptable for the value to be low because it cost 300 yen.
It was an amount that let him move a little closer to something he did not yet know.
They parted at the station, and Mizuno boarded a crowded evening train. All the seats were occupied, so he stood beside the door and took *Between Transfers* from his bag.
When the train started moving, the vibration of the wheels traveled up through the floor.
The first piece was about a man who retied his shoelaces in the same place at the same station every morning. The narrator did not know his name and had never spoken to him. Then one morning, the man stopped coming. That was the whole story.
In the next piece, a woman missed her transfer and got off once at a station where she had no plans. There was nothing outside. She bought a hot drink from a vending machine and sat on a bench until the next train. For that brief time, no one knew where she was going.
Nothing unusual happened.
Mizuno did not stop reading.
At each station, the doors opened, people got off, and people got on. Mizuno closed the booklet to let passengers pass, but whenever he opened it again, he immediately found where he had been. The thin paper had begun to curl, and the darkness of the print was not completely even. None of that got in the way of reading.
When he finished the last piece, Mizuno had gone one station past his stop.
He noticed only when he looked at the display above the doors. There was no need to panic. He could change to a train in the opposite direction at the next station.
Mizuno closed the booklet.
Although he had finished reading it, the man from the first piece remained with him. A person who had stood in the same place every morning had stopped appearing one day. Even without knowing his name, the absence could be noticed.
At the next station, Mizuno got off and crossed to the opposite platform. There was some time before the train back arrived, and he opened the first page again.
The payment of 300 yen had ended at the venue.
He had also finished all twenty pages of the booklet.
He had not finished receiving it.
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