From the café at the 41st floor of Park Hyatt, with panoramic view Jun can see the town where Jun and his wife. His pupil shrinks because of bright light of the sun, the public apartments lining up along the Tokyo Metropolitan Road Route 431 can be seen enlarged. Focusing on a small grocery at the ground floor facing the pavement, his left eye catches a long-haired young man that grabs coins in cash register. His right eye chases the fleeing man.

 

Thief!

 

*

 

His wife stopped by the grocery store every evening. Two old women lived at the ground floor of the public apartment and dealt with liquors, canned foods, confectioneries. She called their store Woody's Grocery.  

 

Because younger sister is wearing thick glasses with black-frame like Woody Allen. 

 

She said. Woody's big glasses frame lost a hinge was reinforced with Scotch tape. Sisters were selling the dusty foods and the beers which were not cooled. 

 

They are sad people, but I like them.

 

She laughed. 

 

Cup noodles cheaply purchased at a discount supermarket in the neighborhood are sold on their shelf at the regular price.  But sisters were often watching sumo wrestling on TV at the dining room.  Sometimes they did not notice that customers are in the store. They despair at the world after all the coins of the store were stolen. 

 

One day, the store was shut down. A note stuck on the window said the sudden death of elder sister. 

 

I wonder if Woody can live alone.

 

She sobbed.

 

Woody could not calculate by herself. When her elder sister returned to the cash register hurriedly from the kitchen, Woody cried like a child. Her elder sister cooked stew for the supper often in the living space of the store. From the kitchen, I felt a smell of warm steam. Woody cannot do anything alone. Woody became loneliness. Everything was gone.

 

It was the end of the summer. 

 

*

 

She enjoys a scent of orange peel floating on the coffee. From the café at the 41st floor of Park Hyatt, they can view the town covered with yellow carpet of ginkgo leaves. The Tokyo Metropolitan Road Route 431 was once a waterway. It is a road made on the traces of the Tamagawa Aqueduct that led to the water purification plants in Tokyo. The place where water purification plants had been located once is now a skyscraper business district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. 

 

Jun knows she fears the darkness of waterway under the road covered with concrete. The public apartments lining up along the Tokyo Metropolitan Road Route 431 may be her breakwater.