A few more days passed.
The street outside the Mediation Office now had seven lamps.
Kiyoshi took a detour down this street on his way home from school. He walked slowly, his eyes not on the lamps, but on the people beneath them.
A figure crouched beside the seventh lamppost, head lowered, counting them off with a finger.
One lamp, two lamps, three.
Upon reaching the end, the figure started again from the first.
The person wore ordinary clothes. After crouching long enough for their legs to go numb, they shifted position and counted again.
As Kiyoshi walked past, the person drew farther into the lamplight's shadows without a sound.
Kiyoshi did not stop.
His face remained forward, his pace unchanged.
The person counting lamps neither raised their head nor looked toward him.
Counting lamps was not counting people.
The last letter made of newspaper clippings had talked about selecting people. This time, the person crouching beneath the lamps was counting lamps. Kiyoshi knew the difference.
He only memorized where the lamps stood.
He did not speculate about why the person was counting them.
Kiyoshi committed the positions of all seven lamps to memory.
He did not write them down, but tucked them into a corner of his mind for whenever they might prove useful.
The street lamps went out one by one.
Only the Mediation Office's white wooden sign still held a faint glow.
Kiyoshi had walked some distance away, yet the lamp counter's gaze still rested on the back of his neck. He did not turn around, so he paid it no mind.
People were still queuing inside the Mediation Office.
The calico cat beside the lot-drawing tube had moved, stretching out beneath the number board to bask in the sun. Whenever someone tried to shoo it away,