By four in the afternoon, Sendai's sunlight had lost much of its bite. The sun hung low above the rooftops to the west, bathing the entire street in a warm orange glow.
Kashimo wandered out of the shopping complex carrying a bulging plastic bag stuffed with toothbrushes, towels, slippers, shampoo, cups, trash bags... and a bunch of other things he had picked up from the list without being entirely sure he would need them.
In his other hand, he gripped his new phone, a tiny silver-gray flip phone that looked like a toy in his large hand. For a phone in 2002, making calls, sending texts, and playing Snake was already pretty good. He had spent ten minutes figuring it out on a bench in the shopping complex, and in the end, he had accomplished exactly one thing: saving Kenjaku's number.
After saving it, he stared at the lone name in his contacts, fell silent for two seconds, and snapped the phone shut.
Just in case I run out of money and have no one to borrow from. He supplied himself with a perfectly reasonable excuse.
His stomach growled just then. Kashimo glanced down at his belly and realized that all he had eaten since morning was two portions of last night's leftover curry rice, cold because he could not be bothered to heat it up. Before leaving that morning, he had planned to grab something along the way, but as he wandered around, he had forgotten all about it.
He looked around, his gaze settling on a street sign. Asaichi was not far from here, about ten minutes on foot, and it should still be open at this hour. Japan's kitchen had every kind of food imaginable. Just the place to fill his stomach.
Kashimo shifted the plastic bag