The Shore Diner: The Box That Got Opened

At the Third Appraisal Center, about a fifteen-minute walk from my shop, one of those containers finally got opened on Monday. On the day itself, several press cars drove past the front of the shop, and one regular said, with odd pride, "Today's the day our street gets famous." The result, as everyone now knows, was a liquid resembling water — and the one thing that came through clearly was that nothing came through clearly. Two days later, my counter still hasn't tired of talking about it.

What's interesting is how cleanly the regulars split. One side — call them the "wanted an answer" camp — kept saying, "They went to all that trouble opening it, and I really thought something would turn up." The other side — the "fine staying unsolved" camp — said, "It stayed a mystery even after opening it, and honestly that's a relief." Tonight both camps sat at the same table arguing over a shared dish of simmered vegetables, while I just poured the warm sake and listened.

The line that landed hardest for me came from the "fine staying unsolved" side: "If it ever got solved, we'd run out of things to talk about. What would we do for material at this shop?" Half a joke, but I think half serious too. This city's counters stay lively precisely because of what nobody knows.

I hear the master lost at the shopping district's tile-throwing club — his first loss in three years, one regular informed me, though I still don't really understand the rules. Tonight the opened container and the lost match got roughly equal airtime, which tells you something about how this street weighs its news — not always the way you'd guess from outside.

Next month the training course for second-generation Shore Crossing witnesses starts, I hear. One of my customers who serves as a witness said she's still deciding whether to sign up. What's known and what isn't stay mixed together tonight, same as ever, and all my shop needs to be is what it always is — a place to fill your stomach first.