Tomoka Shibasaki - Spring Garden

From the age of four through to the age of ten, Nishi had been given intensive baseball training by her dad. Every day, from six in the morning, and then from five thirty in the afternoon after her dad had finished work at the factory, they would practice pitching and fielding in the park on the estate. Her father wanted to do something to build up the physical strength of his asthmatic daughter, and he was convinced that, since the times were changing and women in the future would have more freedom to do what they wanted, it was better to do things differently from other people. It also seemed as though he was trying, through her, to reclaim his own childhood, a childhood he had missed because his family had been too poor for him to enter any sports club at school. He told Nishi about his dream of producing Japan’s first female professional baseball player, just like Yuki, the heroine of a Shinji Mizushima manga that he had read over and over. Nishi watched reruns of the cartoon series based on that manga, and really felt like the gutsy Yuki was the image of herself in the future. She believed that, just like Yuki, she would fight and win, and so, apart from the times when her asthma was really bad, she practised every day. Her father had no experience of playing baseball himself, so he read books written by famous players and coaches, and put together a practice schedule for her accordingly.

After Nishi started primary school, on weekends she visited the batting centre close to the factory where her dad worked. At those times her brother, who was one year younger than her, would tag along, but her father said that male professional baseball players were ten a penny, and that besides, boys should grow up to be brave and strong, and choose their own path, even if it meant breaking the rules a little. After watching a bunch of Jackie Chan movies, her brother took up karate, but packed it in after a few months. It was the summer of Nishi’s fourth year in school when her father decided that she didn’t have what it took to be a professional baseball player. By that time Nishi, who had always turned down requests from friends to play after school or on the weekend, no longer got invited by other kids to do things. When she was left alone in the classroom at break and after school while all the others were in their various clubs, she read the Osamu Tezuka manga series Phoenix and drew pictures in the margins of her notebook or the back of flyers. In other words, Nishi said, it had been her early spell of baseball that had led to her developing the talents to do her current job, which she liked, and that was one of the reasons she believed that she had luck on her side. In the fifth year, a girl who entered the class from another school was given the seat next to Nishi, and soon enough, the two began chatting to one another. Through her friendship with that new girl, Nishi began to be included by the other kids too.

The last time her years of baseball training had proved useful was when she’d started her first job. She and fourteen colleagues had been out drinking, and decided to go to a batting centre. In a game called Strike Out!—where you had to bat the ball and hit nine panels in a grid—Nishi had knocked down seven panels, coming in first among her colleagues, thoroughly surprising them. Being drunk, Nishi had really wanted to tell her father right then and there how happy she was for his training, but her parents had divorced before she’d gone to senior high school and she no longer had any way of contacting him.

Haruki, who was in top spirits after having his ball skills complimented by Nishi, announced with a gleam in his eye that he wanted to be a baseball player when he grew up. When Nishi saw him again not long after, he’d decided he wanted to play either for the New York Yankees or the Texas Rangers, at which point Nishi realized how much more international baseball had become since she was a kid, when it had all been about Japanese teams.

Yuna, his sister, was at the age where she was picking up new words at great speed, and would ask Nishi all kinds of questions. Nishi had never been good at interacting with children, but she found that listening to the slightly bizarre things that Yuna came out with was fun. Miwako said her husband had told her he was relieved to see her looking more cheerful.

“Is that really true?” Taro asked as he squeezed a wedge of lemon over their second plate of deep-fried chicken. “You didn’t just lie your way in there?”

“Honestly, I can hardly believe it myself that an opportunity like this landed in my lap the way it did. Mrs Morio is just such a good-hearted person. The kind of person who doesn’t understand what it even means to distrust someone, you know? I sometimes wonder if it’s safe, you know, inviting people loitering outside your house inside, but people like her attract positive energy, I think. I get the feeling that family will be blessed somehow, whatever happens. It’s weird to think that those amazing families you sometimes read about in magazines actually exist, though, isn’t it? It’s kind of incredible.”

Nishi was on her sixth beer.

“If that’s true, then why did you have to keep it from me?”

“I didn’t want to jinx it. It’s a rule of mine not to broadcast things until they’ve happened. I didn’t tell anyone the university I was applying to until I got in, and I didn’t tell my friends I was drawing comics, either, until I made it.”

Nishi ordered beer number seven.

“It has happened, though, already. Isn’t this exactly what you wanted?”

“But I still haven’t managed to see the bathroom. To get to it, you have to go through a big washroom with sinks and stuff, so you can’t see it from the hall. That’s my one wish, to see those lime-green tiles. If I can, I want to take a photo, from the same angle as that photo on the last page of the photo book.”

As she spoke, Nishi chewed on an umeboshi from the dish of simmered sardines she had just ordered. Looking at her, Taro began to feel concerned. Nishi was the type of person who wouldn’t have hesitation about exploiting a moment when Mrs Morio was distracted to sneak into the bathroom. Or else she might come up with some ruse in order to get in, like saying that her own bath was broken.

“You told Mrs Morio about the photo book, right?”

“Actually, no.”

“What? You’ve kept that quiet?”

“Just think about it. If someone told you they’d been watching your house for ages, wouldn’t you get a bit scared?”

“You wouldn’t have to mention that part, though. You could just tell her about the book.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Nishi tilted her head to one side and smiled. There was something affected about the gesture, and it irritated Taro a little. It made him think that for all her friendliness, Nishi was actually just using Mrs Morio.

“Don’t you think it’s time to call it a day? You’ve made it inside the house, and seen the garden.”

“You’re right, of course. I know that. But the thing is, there’s no guarantee how long that house is going to be around for. It’s fifty years old now. The housing market is good at the minute, and there are construction sites springing up all over. That one by the railway tracks, for example. That’s going to be a fancy new apartment block.”

Hearing this, Taro realized that the increase in new detached houses in the neighbourhood and all the renovation taking place was exactly what they were talking about on the news programmes, where they attributed it to the economy and the rush to purchase and fix things before the rise in consumption tax, and so on. He heard people speaking about the housing market when he visited clients, but he’d always thought it was something that bore no relation to his life. But on his way to the station, he saw building after building rigged with scaffolding and covered in plastic sheeting. Now the block of flats across the street from View Palace Saeki III was getting knocked down.