Chapter 4: The Price of One More Day

Two weeks passed. Kenji did not return to the store.

He went to work. He filed reports. He ate convenience store onigiri -- from a normal convenience store, one that sold normal things -- at his desk. His coworker Taniguchi told him about a new ramen place in Shinjuku, and Kenji said it sounded great and did not go.

He opened his laptop twice and stared at the novel. He closed it both times.

His hand was healing, slowly. The ring finger could almost straighten now.

On a Thursday evening, walking home from the station, he found himself at the store again. He hadn't intended to come. His feet had simply carried him, the way they used to carry him to Yuki's apartment before the divorce, back when love was a direction his body knew by heart.

Ms. Sakamoto was restocking shelves. The store looked different tonight -- quieter, emptier. Many of the products were gone. Where CONFIDENCE (Tropical Flavor) had been, there was only dust.

"Running out of inventory?" Kenji asked.

"Running out of you," Ms. Sakamoto said. "The store adjusts to the customer. There are only so many things a person needs."

"How many people come here?"

"Just you, Kenji. It's always been just you."

This should have terrified him. It didn't. It felt, absurdly, like a compliment.

On the back wall, in a refrigerated case that hummed with a sound like a lullaby, sat a single item. A plain white box, the size of a bento, with neat black lettering: ONE MORE DAY -- Contents: 24 hours. Non-transferable. Use with someone you've lost. Price: Everything after.

Kenji's throat closed.

"My mother," he whispered.

"I know."

"What does 'everything after' mean?"

Ms. Sakamoto removed her glasses. Without them, her eyes were dark and vast, older than her face.

"It means you get one perfect day with her. Twenty-four hours. She'll be healthy, the way you remember her before she got sick. You can say everything you didn't say. You can play piano for her. You can cook her that egg porridge she liked." Ms. Sakamoto's voice was steady and precise. "And when the day ends, you go back to your life, but you won't remember it. The day, or her. You'll lose every memory you have of your mother. The good ones, the fights, the guilt, her voice, her face. All of it. Gone."

The store hummed.

"That's monstrous," Kenji said.

"That's the price. One perfect day for a lifetime of imperfect ones." She replaced her glasses. "Most people don't buy it."

"What do they do instead?"

"They go home. They sit with the ache. Some of them start writing again, or play music, or call their ex-wives. They find out that the ache is what's left of love after the person is gone, and that it's worth keeping."

Kenji stared at the white box.

He thought about his mother's hands -- small, always cold -- pressing his fingers onto piano keys. He thought about the last time he'd seen her, in the hospital, when she'd squeezed his hand and said, "Kenji, promise me you'll finish something."

He hadn't.

"Can I think about it?" he asked.

"The store closes soon," Ms. Sakamoto said. "For you, I mean. You're almost done shopping."

She handed him a can of hot coffee -- regular, 120 yen, the same brand his mother used to buy him after piano lessons.

He drank it on the walk home. It tasted exactly right.