Late autumn thinned the light over the street.
The mornings came up grey now. The roofs held their frost till the sun climbed. Behind the shop, the beds lay cut and quiet. Their year of cutting was done. What they had given was already counted. What they would give next was not yet written anywhere.
The last leaf of the year waited in the back room. Its leaf had come from the beds' last cut. It had come from the bought leaf kept in the store. Its parts were chalked on the store post, each under its own mark. Ren laid it out on the drying racks, one layer to a rack. He spread each handful thin with his fingers. Air had to move between the leaves. A thick layer dried uneven, and uneven leaf made uneven work.
Rack by rack, the back wall filled. The leaf lay green going grey, in the room's cool air. It was not jars yet. It was not a count yet. The book gave it no number. A thing on the racks was a promise the leaf made to itself. The shop had learned not to count promises. When the leaf dried true, it would be made and sealed. Then it would be counted, jar by jar, and not before.
Ren chalked the racks' tally under the leaf's own mark. Then he washed his hands and opened the shop.
The street still asked, in its autumn way.
The front of the shelf held the year's first month. Four jars of that month were left. Behind them, the second month of summer waited. Behind those, autumn's first month. The front month served before any month behind it. That was the rule, and the shelf kept it without being told.
The first caller came as the shutter went up. She carried a basket on her arm, empty but for a cloth. Her house had a fever in its back room. Ren took the jar from the front row. He said how it must be taken, slowly and clearly. The whole course, three days, morning and evening, the cup hot. She said it back while she folded the cloth round the jar. She paid the jar's price in full, as the board set it. The coin went the counter's way, as street coin always went.
At noon, Daichi came in out of a thin rain. His coat dripped onto the floorboards. The fever was in his own house this time, he said. Ren set the second jar of the front row before him. Daichi counted the price out slow, the way he did all things at a counter. He heard the course and repeated it with his eyes on the jar. Then he put the jar inside his coat, against the rain, and went out bent a little against the weather.
The third jar went out in the afternoon, in dry cold. An older man took it for his wife's sister's house. He held his cap in both hands while the course was told. He repeated it twice, the second time cleaner than the first. Ren waited through both tellings. Waiting cost nothing. A course told wrong cost more than time.
The fourth jar went the next morning, early. A young wife came for it, with her hair still wet from the yard. The telling took longer with her. She stopped Ren twice and asked the hours again. Morning and evening, he said. Three days, he said. The cup hot, he said. She said it back whole the third time, and smiled for the first time since the door. She carried the jar home in both hands, like a bowl of soup.
When Ren set his hand to the front row again, it met the shelf's wood. The year's first month was gone. It had gone out whole, jar by jar, to the street and the hill together across its life. No jar of it had burned. No jar of it had waited past its life. The row behind it slid forward in the day's work. The second month of summer held the front now. Its labels turned outward, where any eye could read them.
That evening, as the lamps were being lit outside, a girl from the candle stall came in. Her mother's house had taken a fever at midday. Ren took the jar from the new front row. It was the first jar of the second month of summer to go. The course was told at the counter while the lamplighter's boy passed the window. She repeated it clean, first try. The jar went out into a street of new lamplight, wrapped against the cold that was learning the street's name.
Five jars gone, in the week's turning. The book would take them at the week's end, by their months.
Word came down from the office in the week's middle.
The year's papers would be read before the winter. Ren was to come up when the street's morning work allowed. He climbed the hill in the late morning, with empty hands. He carried no box. He carried no jars. A reading needed nothing carried. That was the point of it, and he knew it on the path.
The office kept its long table and its low light. Osamu the clerk had the papers ready. They lay on the table in three places, with bare wood between them. On the left, the register, shut. In the middle, the standing order's file, shut. On the right, a folder, shut, thinner than either. Nothing lay open. Nothing had been written that morning. The keeper's pen rested in its stand, capped. A reading was the only work the table would do.
The keeper opened the register first. He opened it at the shop's line. The page had the year's quiet look. The name stood in its square capitals, as it had been written in the autumn before. Aoyama Yakusōten. Outside supplier, under the name. Under that, the two preparations stood named. The fever cure, in jars of the shop's standard. The wound powder, in sachets. Below the preparations, the keeper had copied 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.
The keeper read the entries under the line, in his reader's voice. His voice carried no farther than the table.
The first entry was the winter's. Twenty-four jars of the fever cure, delivered on the morning the paper had named. Paid at the board's price. Seven thousand, two hundred. The second entry was the autumn's. Eighteen jars, delivered at the depot, at the hill's foot. Paid at the board's price. Five thousand, four hundred.
The keeper laid one finger under the two sums. He added them aloud, once. Twelve thousand, six hundred, paid against the line since the name was written. Two orders against the line. Both delivered. Both inspected. Both paid. The conditions had held at both orders. Labels had been read at both. No date had skipped the drying at either. The line had worked twice, and the register said so in entries, not in praise.
Then the keeper shut the register. He slid it to the table's far end, away from his hands. Only then did Osamu open the file.
The standing order's page was a different page, in a different hand's keeping. Its months ran down the page in a column of their own. The year's months stood in that column, from the eighth month to the sixteenth. Each month had its line. Each line was ruled the same. Twelve sachets. Twelve of twelve, delivered and accepted. Month by month, the column ran, unbroken. Osamu read the column down, month by month, and no farther.
No hand added the file's count to the register's count. The two counts were not the same kind of count. One counted orders against a line, in jars and in coin. The other counted months of sachets, running beside the line. The papers kept them apart, on separate pages, in separate books. The men kept them as the papers kept them. When the column ended, Osamu shut the file. He set it beside the register, with the bare wood still between them.
Then the keeper opened the folder.
The folder held the dossier's loose pages. On top lay the refusal, on its own page. Osamu read it aloud, as the clerk whose hand had written the request. The request was written first. Twenty jars, asked on a day inside the week. The paper was a store paper, for the office's stores. It named no fever, and no house's fever. The jars were to come from the autumn making. The autumn sealing had closed that making. Its jars had rested on the racks ever since. The date named fell before their second checking. Each seal had been checked once only, at the first checking. Five had split at it. Ren's day book held the second checking, in writing. At the day named, it still lay ahead. The lot was not ready, in the line's own words. A lot is ready when the making is ready.
Under the request stood Ren's answer, written at the shop. A refusal, in plain words. The date could not be met under the line's second condition. No jars would go out before their readiness.
Under the refusal, the sum stood written. Six thousand, not taken.
The refusal did not stand under the line in the register. It stood here, in the dossier, on its own page. The register was for work done against the line. The dossier kept what had been asked against the line, and refused. Both books told the truth. They told different parts of it. The keeper turned the refusal's page down and shut the folder.
Nothing had been written at the table. The pen had stayed in its stand. The year's papers had only been read, and the reading was the work. Ren asked for nothing. Nothing was promised to him. The line would work again when a paper cited it, or it would not. The months would run while sachets were made and accepted. The refusal would stay filed, costing what it had cost.
He went down the hill through the early dark. The shop's lamp burned in the street below. The racks' leaf breathed its green smell through the back room's door.
That night, Ren wrote the week into the day book.
The year's papers, read at the office. Orders against the line: two. Both delivered, both paid. Paid against the line: twelve thousand, six hundred. The standing order's months keep their own column, apart, and were read apart. The refusal stands filed in the dossier, on its own page. Twenty jars asked on a day inside the week. A store paper, for the office's stores. The autumn making was sealed at the autumn sealing. Its second checking had not come yet at the day named. The lot was not ready. Six thousand not taken. The refusal is not counted as an order.
The street, this week: five jars. Four of the first month of the year, and one of the second month of summer. The first month of the year stands at none. It went out whole. The shelf stands at ninety jars. The second month of summer: forty-three. The first month of autumn: forty-seven.
The last making of the year is on the racks. It is not counted.
Ren shut the book. On the shelf, the second month of summer held the front. In the back room, the year's last leaf dried in the dark. The winter had not come yet. Its papers were in order, and its shelf was counted, and both were waiting to be used.