The autumn came in with dry leaves and cool mornings.
The street asked the way it asked every autumn. Fevers rose in the low houses first. Then they walked upward, door by door. At the season's turn, the shelf held forty-two jars. Ren read them month by month as he counted. Twelve jars carried the second autumn month's labels. Thirty jars carried labels from this year's first month.
In the first days of the autumn, six jars went out to the street.
They went one and two at a time. A jar to a house where the grandmother kept the door. A jar to the rope walk end, carried by a boy. Two jars on a wet morning, under coats. A jar at noon, paid for in coin counted twice. A jar at the shutter, as the lamps were lit. Each course was told at the counter, plain. The whole course, three days, morning and evening, the cup hot. No caller paid more or less than the board said. Street coin stayed at the counter, as it always did. Ren counted it at night, when the shutter came down. None of it went into the box.
Six jars, all of the second autumn month. Six of that month were left. Ren wrote the count in the book at the week's turning. Then he left the page open to dry. Outside, a cart went past with the office's mark on its side. It was going down, toward the depot at the hill's foot. Ren watched it go, and thought nothing of it. The paper came the next morning.
The paper came down from the office in the runner's satchel.
The runner lifted it out between two fingers. Its seal faced up. Ren took it to the window, for the light. He broke the seal with his thumbnail. Two sheets slid out onto the sill. The top sheet was the keeper's copy. The sheet under it was the requisition.
The copy gave the shop's line first, in the keeper's hand:
Aoyama Yakusōten — outside supplier. The fever cure, in jars of the shop's standard. The wound powder, in sachets. At the board's prices, as posted.
Below the line, the copy set down the two conditions, in full.
Nothing goes up the hill without its label — the name, the drying week, the mark. No label, no lot, in any month, for any asking.
No date set by the office skips the drying. A lot is ready when the making is ready. If the hill wants a thing faster than the leaf dries, the hill waits, or does without.
Ren had read those words in the winter, on another paper. They came back here unchanged, under his name. A line kept its conditions with it. That was part of what the line meant.
Ren turned to the requisition, on the sill.
He read it from the top. His thumb moved down the edge as he read. The low streets had their fever again, for the autumn. The office had counted its own stock for the corps houses first. A corps house lodged the ninja corps. It fed the corps from its own stores. So this paper called on the shop's line instead. It called for eighteen jars of the fever cure. The price stood at the board's price. Three hundred for one jar, and no less named. The jars were to go to the office depot. The depot stood at the foot of the hill. They were to go there on the morning the paper named. Every jar it named already stood sealed on the shelf. The named morning came after the making's own days. Nothing in the sheet asked Ren to hurry. Nothing in it asked him to cut the price.
He lifted the copy once more, beside the window. He matched it against the call, point by point. The line was the same line. The conditions were the same conditions. The count of jars was the same count.
He turned to the runner, who waited by the door.
"Tell the office the depot will have its jars that morning," he said. "I will bring them down myself. The paper will go with them, for the count."
The runner left with the answer in his head. Ren slipped the requisition inside the day book's cover. The copy stayed out, on the counter's shelf. It would ride down with the trays.
The jars were taken the way the rotation takes them.
Ren worked along the shelf in the early light. The second autumn month had six jars left. Those six came down first. They were the oldest jars in the shop. Their labels faced him as he lifted each one. Then he turned to the year's first month. Twelve jars of that month came down after them. Eighteen jars were set in rows on the back bench. Six of the old month. Twelve of the young one. No jar had been reached past. No younger jar had been taken before an older one. The rotation had done the choosing. Ren had only done the lifting.
He read the labels aloud, there in the back room. No one else was in the shop yet. He read them for the count, not for company. The name, on each jar. The drying week, on each jar. The mark, on each jar. Eighteen times, the same three things. One jar's label had a lifted corner. He smoothed it down and pressed it flat. It held. The jar went back into its row.
The jars travelled in flat trays, not in crates. Four trays, with rims, and straw laid between the jars. Ren carried them down through the street, two trips, tray by tray. A boy from the tea stall walked the second trip with him. The boy carried nothing. He walked ahead, and moved a handcart out of their path. The depot sat at the foot of the hill. It was a low yard, roofed on one side. The office kept its stores there, and its carts. The morning was cool, and the yard smelled of straw and axle grease.
At the depot, the work was done on the yard's long bench.
Osamu the office clerk had come down before them. His file lay open at the bench's end. The depot's own man kept the yard's tally board. He chalked nothing till it was counted. Ren set the trays down in their rows. Osamu took up the requisition. He read the count off the paper. Then he counted the jars off the trays, under his hand. Eighteen, against the paper. The count agreed.
Then the labels were read aloud, at the bench.
Osamu read them. His voice was the same voice he used at the hill's long table. It carried no farther than the bench. The name, the drying week, the mark. Jar by jar, tray by tray. The depot man listened with his chalk raised. Twice he chalked, and stopped, and waited for the next. When the last label had been read, he chalked the count on the tally board. Eighteen, read and agreed.
For the weighing, the yard's beam was used. It was a bigger beam than the shop's. It took a tray at a time. Osamu chose two jars, by his own choosing. They came out of their trays. They went onto the beam's pan, one at a time. Their weights agreed with each other. They agreed with the standard the line named. Osamu nodded once. The jars went back into their rows.
Then the money was counted, on the bench's clear end.
Eighteen jars, at three hundred the jar. Five thousand, four hundred. It was set out in hundreds, from the depot's pay box. Ren counted it down the bench, coin by coin. Then he counted it back, into the strongbox he had brought down empty. The two counts agreed. Osamu ruled a line on his file's page. The depot man chalked the delivery on his board. The trays stayed at the depot, stacked by the stores door. Ren's part of the work was done. It had been done in a yard, in the open air. Chalk dust lay on his sleeves.
The writing under the line was done at the register, after.
Depot paper went up the hill in the day's course. The register office kept the book, not the depot. So the entry under the shop's line would be written there, by the keeper, from the depot's paper. Ren did not climb to watch it written. The winter's entry he had read before the book shut. This one would come to him the paper's way. Papers had their own roads, in that office. They arrived.
It arrived with the thirteenth month.
The thirteenth month of the standing order was made in the same round of days. Twelve sachets, tied and labelled, no sachet tied unlabelled. Ren took the box up the hill himself, in the late afternoon. The light lay low on the path. At the office, the box was set on the clerk's table. The labels were read at the inspection. The six sachets the clerk chose, of his own choosing, went onto the scales. They came off the scales agreed. Twelve of twelve, and the month stood accepted. The month's money was set out and counted. One thousand, four hundred and forty. It went into the box, under Ren's count.
With it came a second sheet, folded small. The clerk gave it across the table, on top of the box's lid.
"From the register," the clerk said. "The keeper copied the entry for your book."
Ren opened it there, under the office's lamp. It was the keeper's copy of what now stood in the register. Under the shop's line, a new entry stood written in the keeper's small hand. The entry named the name, the preparations, the two conditions. The date, copied. The count: eighteen jars of the fever cure. The place named: the office's depot. The price named: the board's price. A second entry stood under the first. The line had worked twice now. The book held two dated entries for it.
Ren folded the sheet along its own fold. He put it in the box, on top of the money. He carried the box down the hill through the dusk. The shop's lamp was lit in the street below him. It had been lit for him by no one. It burned because he had lit it before he climbed, against his own return.
That night Ren wrote the round of days into the day book, in simple writing.
The second order against the line is delivered and paid. Eighteen jars of the fever cure were taken by rotation. Six were the last of the second autumn month. Twelve were of the year's first month. Read aloud, weighed, agreed, at the depot. Paid: five thousand, four hundred, counted twice. The writing stands under the line at the register, shown by the keeper's copy, brought back with the month.
The thirteenth month stands delivered and accepted: twelve of twelve. In: one thousand, four hundred and forty. The box stands at seventeen thousand, seven hundred.
Orders against the line, since the name was written: two. Paid against the line, since the name was written: twelve thousand, six hundred.
The shelf, that night, held eighteen jars. All of them were of the year's first month. The second autumn month was empty, gone out whole. On the racks behind the counter, the second making dried on, uncounted. Its jars were not yet jars. The book let them wait, the way it let everything wait, till they could be counted true.