The Shore Diner: The Alley

The night news broke of the "Bokyo no Kai" arrests, one of my regulars — a first-generation Drifter who's usually the loudest talker at the counter — didn't say a word for once. He just sat there with both hands around his teacup, reading the article in silence. On his way out he said only, "I wasn't fooled, but I can't say I don't understand how someone could be" — and left earlier than usual. I didn't ask anything more. Some nights, asking isn't the kind thing to do.

What filled the silence instead was Kameido's "vanished alley." Hearing that it's on the map but in nobody's memory, one regular said, "Now that I think about it, the street in front of my childhood home looks a little off from the old map too." Another laughed it off as overthinking, and before long everyone had dug out an old neighborhood map to compare notes. No alley turned up, but the fact that a dusty old map comes out from the back of the counter on nights like this feels about right for this shop.

The Bokyo no Kai story and the vanished alley story. One preyed on someone's weakness; the other seems like nobody's fault at all. Entirely different in weight, and yet tonight they got roughly equal airtime at my counter. Some people exploit the hope that something might arrive from over there; meanwhile, something over here can simply vanish from a map and trouble no one at all. Tonight reminded me that what this city doesn't know comes mixed — some of it kind, some of it not.

One regular joked on his way out, "If that alley was real, it probably would've been a shortcut right out my back door." Whether that's true or not, tonight it was a good enough story either way.