The sixteenth month went up the hill first.
Ren made the sachets over two quiet mornings. Twelve sachets, each labelled before its knot. He carried them up wrapped in a clean cloth. The cloth was folded over them, corner to corner. At the office, the cloth was opened on the table. The sachets lay in their rows, inside the folds.
Osamu the clerk read the labels from the cloth. He read them in rows, left to right. Then he lifted out the sachets he chose. He took every other sachet along the rows. That choosing gave him six sachets for the scales. Each sachet sat level with the standard weight. None came up light on the pan. Then Osamu marked the month in his file. All twelve had passed the reading of their labels. The six of his choosing had passed the scales as well. He ruled the month in, twelve of twelve.
The coin for the month lay across the cloth in piles. One thousand, four hundred and forty. Ren lifted the piles one by one into the box. He counted once as he lifted them. He counted again as the box took them. The two counts agreed, as they had to. The order had run sixteen months, counting this one. No month of it had run on a promise.
The carpenters' day of payment came that week.
Their work on the back room was done. The new frame rose where the old had been. Its timbers were pegged and true. The roof above it was whole again. No oiled cloth covered any corner now. The light came in by the window, plain. The room smelled of cut wood and dust.
The head carpenter walked the frame with Ren. He shook each main timber, in its turn. None of them gave, under his hand. Then he named the price of the work. The price was the price agreed for it. Frame and roof, at the carpenters' price.
Ren paid it from the strongbox, in the back room. The new room held its first counting, that day. He counted the money out on the workbench. Three thousand, eight hundred. The head carpenter counted it after him. He counted it into his work apron's pocket. The two counts agreed, coin by coin. No note was signed, for the work. No price was moved, at the paying.
The carpenters took their tools down that evening. The shop's back room was a room again. Its racks could be filled without a cloth. The autumn making rested there, in sealed rows. Its seals were in their holding days. Their second checking still lay ahead, jar by jar. No man's roof changed those days. A seal's days were the seal's days.
That payment was written in the day book. Frame and roof, paid to the carpenters. Out: three thousand, eight hundred. The month had come in, in the same week. In: one thousand, four hundred and forty. The two lines lay together on the page.
The street took five jars in the same days.
Every one came from the year's first month. That month had opened the week with nine jars. Its last jars were going now, in their order. A jar went to the bathhouse end, one morning. A jar went to a house behind the noodle counter. Two jars went on a day of first cold. The last jar went at the shutter, by lamplight.
At the counter, Ren gave each course in full. Three days, he said, each time. The cup hot, morning and evening. Ren watched each jar go out the door. He wrote each going in the day book. The year's first month held four jars, after them. They were the last four of their making. They would go in their turn, oldest first.
The office's paper came down two days later.
It came by the runner, in the morning's middle. The runner carried the office's spoken word alongside it. A corps house's fever had emptied the office's own stores for that house, he said. Ren took the folded sheet and broke its seal. Inside lay the request, in the clerk's hand. A second sheet lay under it, as before. The second sheet was the register keeper's copy. It held the shop's line, copied whole:
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.
The keeper's copy did not stop at the line. Below it, Ren's own conditions followed, word for word.
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 read the conditions twice, slowly. They were his own words, come back to him. They had been copied at every order since.
Then he read the request itself, twice.
The sheet was a store paper, not a fever paper. It asked for jars for the office's stores. It named the autumn making, the season's making, now sealed. It named twenty jars from that making. It named a price of three hundred for one jar. The sum of it stood at six thousand. And it named a day for the taking. The day was three days off. The making had been sealed at the autumn sealing. It had stood on its racks since then. Its drying was done, and the labels said so. Each label carried its drying week, already past. No sealed jar on those racks was drying. What the day struck was not the drying. What it struck was the making's readiness.
Each seal had been checked once, at the first checking. Five seals had split at that first checking, that autumn. New wax could still crack late, though. A crack not yet shown could still come. So each seal had to be checked again, jar by jar. That second checking came after the holding days. It was the checking that finished a making. The second checking stood written in the day book since the sealing. It had not been done yet at the day the paper named. A date named before that checking claimed a lot not yet ready. The line's words were plain on that point. A lot is ready when the making is ready. This making was not ready yet. The condition stood on the sheet at his right hand.
Ren set the two sheets side by side. The request lay at his left hand. The copied line lay at his right hand. Between them lay the second condition. It did not bend toward either sheet. A date inside the seals' days could not stand. The line's clause said why, in full. A lot is ready when the making is ready. It had been written for a week like this.
A fever had risen fast in a corps house, in those days. The office's own stock was short for that house. That fever was real, and Ren did not doubt it. But this paper could not answer it. A store paper named stores, not a fever. It could not take jars for a house's fever. For that fever, other jars stood ready. Jars of older months stood on the shelf. They could go out today, at the board's price. They could go under a paper that named the fever. This paper did not name it. This paper named only the autumn making, and a day too soon.
He could have sent the new jars. That was the hard part, and he knew it. The jars were there, in the back room. Their rows filled the racks, in plain sight. Six thousand was a large sum, for this shop. No one in the street would have known. The only thing refusing was a condition. The only thing behind it was his word, written.
But the jars were not ready, and he knew that too. A jar sent before its second checking was a guess. A guess, sold as a cure, was worse than none. Later houses would trust those jars wholly. They would trust them because the line was behind them. The line was there because it had never guessed.
Ren refused in writing, that same morning.
He took a clean sheet, at the back bench. He wrote his answer in his square hand. He wrote it the way the line was written. Plain, counted, and with its reason in it.
To the office, from Aoyama Yakusōten. The twenty jars named cannot be sent on the day named. The day falls in three days. The autumn making was sealed at the autumn sealing. It has stood on its racks since then. Its drying is done, and its labels say so. My line says, in its own words: a lot is ready when the making is ready. This making is not ready. Its seals were checked once, at the first checking. Five seals split at that first checking. Their second checking stands written in my day book. It has not yet been done at the day named. A date named before that checking asks for a lot not ready. That is what the second condition at my line forbids. For the fever in the corps house, jars stand on my shelf. They can go today, at the board's price. They can go under a paper that names the fever. This store paper cannot take them. When the making has passed its second checking, the line will answer as it has answered. Not before. — Ren of the shop.
He read the sheet over, once, for errors. He found none, and changed no word. He folded it along a straight fold. The runner waited at the counter, patient. Ren gave him the folded sheet, on its own. The request he kept, folded into the day book. The copy of the line he kept out, with the papers.
"For the file," Ren said to the runner. "As it is written."
The runner took the sheet up the hill. That was all the scene the refusal had. No higher voice came down about it. No officer beyond the ordinary ones touched it. The clerk had written the request, in his hand. The keeper would file the answer, in his book. Papers carried the matter the rest of the way. Papers had carried the line from its first day.
The answer came back down, days later, as a copy. The office's clerk had ruled a note under it. The note said the refusal was filed, as written. It said the sum was written with the refusal. Six thousand ryō, not taken, against the line. The file held request and answer together. Filed together, the refusal read plain.
The line in the register did not move. It was as it had been since its writing. Two orders stood accomplished against it. Twelve thousand, six hundred had been paid against it. The refusal added no order to that count. It added a page to the file, instead. Conditions that cost nothing were only words. These had cost six thousand, and held.
The autumn making was counted last, after the refusal.
By then, its holding days had run out. Its checking days had run out too. No day of either had been skipped or shortened. The named day had passed when Ren took the racks down for the second checking and its count. Ren took the jars down rack by rack. He passed his thumb over each seal once more. The old wax had held, smooth and whole. The new wax on the racks behind had held as well, without a crack. He read each label as each jar left its rack. The name, the drying week, the mark. On the back bench, the jars lined up by their racks.
The tally stick moved along each line in turn. The count of the making, whole, was fifty-two. Fifty-two jars had been made, in the autumn. Five of them had been burned, at the checking. Their seals had split, in the new wax. That loss was already written, in its place. Fifty-two, less the five burned, was forty-seven. Forty-seven jars were the net of the autumn making.
Starting at the bench's near end this time, he counted again. Forty-seven came back, unchanged. Then the jars went onto the shelf, in their rows. The year's first month was in front of them. The second summer month was between. Oldest first, as the rule was written.
That night, the day book closed the lot in its usual unadorned hand.
The sixteenth month stands delivered and accepted: twelve of twelve. In: one thousand, four hundred and forty. The carpenters are paid for the frame and the roof of the back room. Out: three thousand, eight hundred. The box stands at sixteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty.
The refusal stands filed, with its request. Twenty jars were asked on a day three days off. The paper was a store paper, naming the autumn making. That making was sealed at the autumn sealing. It had stood on its racks since then. Its second checking had not yet been done at the day named. Six thousand ryō not taken. The shelf jars offered for the fever could not be taken by this paper. The second condition held, as written. The line did not move.
The autumn making is counted off its racks, after its checking days. Fifty-two jars were made. Five were burned at the seals. Forty-seven are the net of it. The shelf stands at ninety-five. Four are of the year's first month. Forty-four are of the second month of summer. Forty-seven are of the autumn making.
Ninety-five jars stood behind the counter that night. Four old jars were at the front of them. The refusal's page lay filed, up the hill. The line stood in the register, unchanged by it. Ren shut the book, and set the lamp low. The shop had less money than it might have had. It had the same line it had always had. Those two facts were the same fact, read twice.