The Shore Diner: Not Rushing the Young Ones

Hiiragi-san read the Window 4 article aloud at the counter — about how the young one of those enormous creatures had approached the window, stopped partway, and turned back. "They say the ones over there didn't rush it along," she said. Inui, stopping by after drum practice, grunted agreement without pausing his chopsticks: "Back in my firefighting days, we had a veteran who always said rushing a rookie only slows things down more."

The twenty-year-old regular next to him, working through his bowl, murmured, "I remember being too slow to keep up in a festival procession as a kid, and my parent had to hold my hand." Hiiragi-san teased, "You were a kid yourself not that long ago, and already talking like it's ancient history," and the young man laughed it off: "Compared to the kids over there, I'm still plenty young."

Thinking about it, we don't make children match an adult's stride over here either. Sometimes a regular's grandchild comes into my shop, and the parent never rushes them, waiting however many minutes it takes for the order to be decided. Hearing about the window, Hiiragi-san said, "The size and the way of life must be completely different, but somehow it's oddly reassuring that not rushing the children is the same."

Inui steered the talk back to next year's autumn festival: "Our three-lineage drumming started out slow and childish too. We didn't rush it, and it came together on its own." When Hiiragi-san laughed, "Everything you say comes back around to the drums eventually," Inui just reached for his teacup and said, "Nothing wrong with that — it's fine if these kinds of stories all come back to the drums."

Whether the one over there will ever cross remains something nobody knows. Nobody at my counter asked anything more about it tonight.